mehnatThe Journey via Tashkent
Uzbekistan Airways (HY) is a small airline. One can be perhaps forgiven for concluding without access to financial records that it is able to sustain its operations due to prudent financial management, seeing as it is running itself for around two decades without having to shut shop. This is very unlike the trend here. Confused and poorly managed Kyrgyzstan Airlines and Kazakhstan Airlines, or even much larger regional players like Kingfisher Airlines and Spicejet Airways come to mind.HY's hub is at Tashkent international airport; an airport which is nothing to write home about if one is interested in writing only about big things. But this medium sized airport appears to be doing a great job for short haul connectivity which would be unachievable if TAS was not functioning sustainably or even if it were to be not functioning as efficiently as it does. The relatively new transit area at Tashkent is small and simple, with seating for not more than around four hundred persons. Even a casual observer can claim as a matter of fact that Uzbekistan Airways gets considerable business for an airline of its size thanks to this small transit zone. An additional fact which has contributed to this success is the Uzbek relaxed rule which frees citizens of most neighbouring countries from seeking transit visas.
The other great thing about Tashkent airport is the courtesy shown by the employees of this airport and its main airline to passengers. Three times I have passed through this airport in 2014, and each time there have been one or two polite conversations and small actions by their staff which are only bound to make this airport more popular. This time I received possibly the only vegetarian meal on the onward flight to OVB, dominated as always by beef-eating passengers. The senior flight purser was kind enough to do this for me. He frequently does night halts in Delhi and Amritsar, and is quite knowledgeable about flight connections throughout the larger region. Uzbekistan airlines never serves pork or bacon but the season on other edible species never closes here.
TAS offers a smoking area for desirous passengers, a small bar cum smoke-shop, a couple of designer wear shops, and a fast food area. The bar and the food joint do not seem to accept USD any longer, but the most popular credit cards work in both. A tip for the security check here —put your wallets and mobile phones in trays provided instead of carelessly putting them on the X-ray conveyer. The weather here is perfect for a change of clothes regardless of whether you are flying to cold Siberia or cool India. They helpfully announce every flight several times here unlike the new fangled silent airport policy at Delhi.
Inefficiencies in various regional airlines / governments can also be deduced by any visitor. For example there are no Chinese passengers on view, which gives rise to the conclusion that Tashkent is either not connected with important cities like Urumqi, Lhasa, and Kashgar/Kashi, or (more likely) that China has not signed a bilateral with Uzbekistan to permit TAS to handle Chinese transit traffic. The fact that one has to take two flights to reach Novosibirsk from Delhi also flies in the face of logic as can be seen from two facts. The first is that the distance from Delhi to Novosibirsk is practically the same as the distance from Delhi to Bangkok. The second is that Novosibirsk is a very important city of Russia. Connectivity is unlikely to improve if reports of Air-India staff being detained by immigration staff at Moscow continue to appear periodically on the homepage of the Times of India website.
There are flights from Seoul, Delhi, Amritsar, Bishkek, Almaty, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Dubai, Istanbul, Krasnoyarsk, Chelyabinsk, Samara, Volgograd, Minsk, Moscow, and even Kiev —incredibly enough in these days of conflict in Ukraine. The flight to Dubai appears to be very popular among transit passengers, and the transit lounge almost totally emptied out within twenty minutes after its announcement. This writer has seen trends observable on the internet in the last year which show that Central Asian workers are shifting their base en masse from Russia towards Turkey and Dubai to avoid discriminatory behaviours. Coming back to Tashkent Airport's transit lounge Tel-Aviv, Delhi, and Istanbul are not doing too badly either in terms of traffic. Transit traffic to Israel and India appears to substantially consist of people bound towards their own countries, with even a few yarmulkas and turbans vying for attention.
There is obviously another much larger part of this airport which caters to citizens of Uzbekistan and people arriving in or leaving this country or visiting this region. I met a small group of passengers on the flight from Delhi. They consisted of members of two related families from Samarkand which had stayed in town for three months to get treatment at the Apollo Hospital. They had infact overstayed their two month visas by a month —for which the Indian government was kind enough to only fine them the sum of one hundred dollars, and no deportation. This shows that India is willing to give concessions in order to have fruitful interactions with citizens of all peaceful and friendly countries. Such a policy pays dividends as is hinted by the many small courtesies at TAS for an Indian man.
Cost of treatment was on the higher side according to them but they returned with an impression of Delhi being an affordable city, which today is more often than not not far from the truth for citizens of former Soviet countries. Agricultural produce for example is considerably more expensive in Novosibirsk region than in India's National Capital Region; but the cost of air freight from Delhi to Novosibirsk is unjustifiably high. Custom clearance and permission to import is also long-winded. All these factors constitute non-tariff barriers. On top of this there are no direct flights as mentioned earlier. Then there is the question of duty and surcharges. If these barriers are removed and some logically argued shortcuts are found on both sides of the bilateral relationship then Indian farmers and Siberian consumers can reap valuable benefits.
Tashkent is a very important city in former Soviet countries. This is mainly for sentimental reasons, although not entirely because of them (sentimental reasons). A lot of people from colder parts of that country used to spend their holidays here. The city can get fairly cold from an Indian's point of view but the cold here is never nearly as bad as the cold in even many of the larger and better known cities of the European part of Russia, leave alone Siberia or the far east. There is a popular saying which originated in Soviet days, “Лучще малинкий Ташкент чем Болшой Магадань.” Transliteration “Luchshi malinkiy Tashkent chem bolshoy Magadan.” Translation “Better small Tashkent than big Magadan.” Magadan being a town in the far eastern area known for being a cold place. The fact of the matter is that Tashkent is one of the biggest cities in the whole of the former Soviet Union while Magadan is a very small town.
All governments of the Soviet Union used to make extremely large plans for Tashkent and then execute them due to its warm climate and due to a sub-conscious desire to have a large city away from the areas which were affected by the Nazi invasion. This is exemplified by the massive reconstruction carried out in Tashkent after the earthquake of April 1964.
Arrival in Novosibirsk
Flights over Kazakhstan seem to be always above an apparently calm envelope of clouds in the experience of this writer. The plane descends as you approach your destination. The Ob river can be seen on the right side as soon as the the flight comes to a level below the clouds. For some reason the blanket of snow gives a great feeling of calmness and joy. Novosibirsk airport is undergoing renovation. In a span of six months this writer has seen a change from a mobile ladder and an arrival bus to walking off an air-bridge directly into the upper floor of the airport. The pre-immigration space has been expanded and there are now immigration windows on Christmas Day instead of the three that one saw in June.Arriving in Novosibirsk in winter can be slightly hazardous for southern people like us. It is good to be dressed for cold weather. In winter this city is usually five to ten degrees colder than Tashkent. One can always remove a few items of clothing if the temperature is more than originally expected but it is not a pleasant experience to have to suffer the cold while having to open one's baggage to look for more clothes. It is also prudent for personal safety and protection of self from extreme weather to have a ride to the city waiting for you, because there does not appear to be any system of pre-paid taxis at this airport. This might change at any time because they seem to be in a hurry to take the airport to the next superior level.
Manish Udar
