My mother is trying to say something to me.
“WHAT?” I bellow at her, taking out one of my earplugs and letting in the deafening roar of the plane’s engines.
“THESE ARE JUST LIKE THE ONES THEY HAD WHEN I FLEW TO NEW YORK IN THE SIXTIES!” yells back my mother, indicating the cramped interior of our tiny Altyn Air plane, the ten rows of seats, the shabby upholstery and air conditioning vents overhead.
I try not to look out the window at the shuddering wing and its whirring propeller when I stand up to rummage in my rucksack for my jacket and jumper. They’re both thin cotton and don’t do much to block out the cold, which becomes steadily more intense as we gain height.
What happened at the airport
We didn’t plan to fly Altyn Air. The hours I spent at the travel agent’s last month had resulted, I thought, in the purchase of two tickets with Uzbekistan Airlines, the largest Central Asian airline, and one with a good safety reputation. But when we got to Manas Airport this morning, our flight and the two preceding ones to Tashkent had all been cancelled.
While we were trying to figure out what to do, an official looking woman came round and scribbled on the tickets of the passengers for Tashkent. Who was she? Was this some kind of airport scam? I didn’t know.
After we waited a while longer, the eight people travelling to Tashkent this morning were driven the length of the airport – past the US bombers, past the Aeroflot planes, past Uzbekistan Airlines, past Air Astana, Air Mongolia, SibAir, KyrgyzAir, Tajikistan Airlines – finally arriving at the solitary Altyn Air plane.
I’m still not sure why, and I’m not particularly happy about it because Altyn Air — unlike Uzbekistan Airways — is on the EU air safety blacklist. Were we simply transferred to another airline because the Uzbekistan Airways flights were cancelled? Or was something more dubious going on, some kind of airport scam? I don’t know.
Air safety blacklist
“At least it’s a light plane,” says my mother, once we are buffeting through thick clouds and the noise has died down a bit. “If there’s any engine trouble and we have to crash land, it’ll just float down to the ground like a butterfly.”
Just then the clouds part, revealing jagged peaks and glaciers. My mother has made the mistake of assuming most of Kyrgyzstan is as flat as the Chui Valley, but we’re flying over the spur of the Tien-Shan that juts into Uzbekistan as far as Samarkand. She holds my wrist so tight it feels as if the circulation will get cut off.
The unnerving glimpses of sheer rock seemingly only metres beneath us take away our appetite for the green tea (which cools rapidly in the frosty cabin) and packets of dry biscuits handed out by the stewardess. Maybe the plane will crash in a remote mountain valley and we’ll all die.
It’s not until we break through the clouds and I see a huge expanse of close set grey buildings and rain-washed city streets that I start to feel excited. The wet roofs stretch as far as I can see in every direction. Tashkent was the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, after Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, and is still the biggest in Central Asia.
Altyn Air has delivered us safely to Tashkent, and our baggage is waiting for us.
Passport control
Still, I’m nervous. I have a Russian friend from Uzbekistan who has talked so many times about what he and people he knows have suffered at the hands of Uzbekistan’s sinister militia. I was warned not to say I was a journalist, and wrote ‘secretary’ on my visa application, but I’m afraid they will somehow divine that I was lying. What will my mother do if I get taken of for interrogation or turned away at the border?
We queue uneasily at passport control, but my mother is whisked through in barely a minute, far quicker than at Manas airport. Then it’s my turn. The swarthy young customs official smiles warmly at me through the glass.
“Your mother?” he asks, cocking his head at where she’s standing waiting for me.
“Yes.”
“Welcome to Uzbekistan.”
Steppe in Style 
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