Doppelganger

Maybe not the right colour scheme....

Top right corner

Slightly different colour scheme.

Completely different colour scheme.

To Singapore via Amritsar and Delhi.

Flying over mountains (Himalayas).  They are a lot closer to the plane than usual!

It was green flying into Amritsar.

We could see the Golden Temple of Amritsar.  What a bonus!

And what looked to be a junkyard. Or just storage?

Arriving in Delhi.

Abandoned aircraft.

One place where you do not want to be stuck is the miserable area in Delhi where you wait for your next boarding pass to be issued.  Tashkent could only issue our boarding pass to Delhi.  We had to wait in this Transfer Area for someone to come and issue our onward boarding passes to Singapore.  As time went by, I realised I would have to keep asking or it seemed we would be forgotten.  One lady was looking for some passengers, so I asked if she were looking for us.  No, she replied, I am looking for people who are stranded!  Hardly reassuring.  There was a tiny kiosk, and we could not leave to go to other sections of the airport.   Another poor lady, with two hungry children, had flown from Canada, missed her flight to Afghanistan, and was trapped in the lounge.  She would be there till the next day.  About one and a half hours later, the Singapore Airlines person arrived, issued our passes and took us to the airport.  Living in the first world is a privilege.

And one last pic.  Ah, the English language.

Leaving Uzbekistan.

Each hotel would issue a record of our stay.  The slip of paper had to stay with our passports, and were collected when we left.  These are mine.  Not sure what would happen if I lost any.

Departure Board.

 The aircraft that flew us to Delhi.

 The cabin

The meal.  I didn't realise there was a main course coming.

Tashkent - Bits and Pieces

Self explanatory.  Yet another way to differentiate between the sexes.

Can have both at once.

Money to be made.

We assumed VAT was included.  But it wasn't. 

Made in Belarus.  Not common in Aus.

 Guess which dessert this was.  There are various spellings, but this isn't one of them.

Alayskiy Bazaar

This bazaar was near our hotel, so we wandered down to have a look. There was fruit and veg, meat and eggs, beautifully arranged.
Fruit.

Veg.

Salads.  We had eaten many over the past few days!

Bread

 Meat

And guess what these are?

(Tongues).

Eggs

Tashkent - random street scenes, and churches.

Tashkent is a very modern city, with wide multi lane streets.  These are various shots taken from the bus.

After mosques and madrassahs, we wondered about churches  We saw this one from the bus.  It is a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin, Tashkent.  It was built in 1871, and enlarged in the 1990s.  It was a pity we couldn't have a closer look.  There is also a bell-tower.

But after the rest of the group had gone to the airport, BL and I went looking for churches marked on our map.  We only found one.  It was the Sacred Heart Cathedral, aka the Polish Roman Catholic Church.  Construction began in 1912, the church was closed 1926 and the building abandoned.  It was restored in 1976. 

It had a bell too!