I hurt my nose in Tashkent, it wasn’t a fight with an aggressive taxi driver ripping us of for the third time that week, nor was is a babushka body checking me on the metro.  It was the “kamikaze” flume at Tashkent Land.  I was trying to protect my nose from inhaling water as I plunged the height of a six story building and as I hit the water I scraped my nail up the outside of my nose losing a lump of skin and leaving  a Harry Potter style scar.  

 

The scar didn’t give me any magic powers though and for the second time since arriving in Uzbekistan I fell ill.   This time really ill.  Consequently my enduring memory of Tashkent was the flume and also wandering deliriously huge distances between metro stations. Tashkent is the classic 60s Soviet city.  A grid system with lots of empty squares

 

 

Once I had got my strength back we moved on from the capital city into the rich and fertile Fergana valley.  I was quite happy to be leaving Tashkent and move further east....it’s rather unnerving to think that a small piece of me will forever remain in Tashkent.