Had Enough Of The Great Game...

Well, not much has been happening over the last few days - compared with our Tajik adventure, anyway. Andy and I are now back in Tashkent, from where we are due to fly out to Delhi. We have had just about enough kebabs, plov and chai to last a lifetime, and although Uzbekistan has some amazing sights we have actually now seen them all. Or all the ones we are interested in, anyway.
So we have been attempting to change our Delhi flights from the 4th to the 2nd - a marathon task involving the Uzbek Airways office in Fergana, the airport at Fergana (who denied all knowledge of there being any such flight), a days journey to Tashkent, the Uzbek Airways office in Tashkent, the Trailfinders office in Manchester and my mum, who was not helpful (only kidding mum!). We have now managed to ensure that we are on the next available flight out of here, leaving at half past ten tomorrow night. Unfortunately we will now encounter precisely what I was trying to avoid when we booked the flights originally - Delhi airport in the dead of night. Not for the faintheartened, as Jane knows well...
So, some of the things that we have endured - sorry - enjoyed over the last few days.
The second worst taxi drivers yet, from the Tajik border to Khokand. This is one of the reasons we are getting fed up with Central Asia - what should have been an extremely simple journey in a shared minibus for a fixed price is just not that simple once the locals see a Western face. Our presence sent the driver and his mate into hysterics as they saw their chance to make a quick buck. So we spent the journey being harrassed to pay over the odds, or hire them for our onward journey. They ended up not letting us off the minibus at the end of the journey, and we had to endure being pushed about and people shouting in our faces. Just not up for it any more. Because we (contrary to what they thought) didn't come down with the last rainfall, we stood our ground and got what we wanted, namely a minibus ride to where we wanted to go, for a fair price. Not that difficult, you'd think?
So we spent a couple of days in Fergana, main city in the Fergana valley region, known for its cotton harvest and its climate. And now known for its utter boring-ness. This is where we had the brainwave to get the hell out of Central Asia.
We were staying in a classic old Soviet hotel where guests are simply an inconvenience, somewhere beneath the cleaners in the hotel hierarchy. Maybe people run out of hotels a lot here without paying, but once again the receptionist went on and on at us to settle the room bill. We did offer to pay early, but then had to endure 20 minutes of messing around while the guy explained that although his prices were quoted in dollars, he wasn't happy for us to pay in dollars and if we did, we would receive 40 dollars change in Uzbek sum (a wad about the size of a house brick). We'd had enough by now so after lots of messing around he gave in and said we could pay when we left the next day, by which time he would have some dollars change for us. Unsurprisingly the next day nothing had been communicated to the rest of the staff and we went through the whole argument again. In the end it took us half an hour to check out, whilst we had the argument again with the new receptionist, dug our heels in, he called his money changer friend, and when this guy turns up with our change they try to rip us off. Arrrrggghhh!!!