Uzbekistan: Dipping a Toe into Central Asia

Chester here! 

Many times when we've been asked where we are going on this crazy trip, we didn't mention that we were going to Uzbekistan. This is because the conversation tends stop as we get quizzical looks as people try to place exactly where Uzbekistan is and why we would go there. Which is totally fair - it is definitely not a destination that many North Americans know of and I feel I'll start this entry with the what and why of why we ended up here.

Uzbekistan is in central Central Asia, one of two countries in the world that is in surrounded by other landlocked countries, all of which are other former soviet -stans with the exception of Afghanistan. It is a region that sort of fuzzes out in most Americans' picture of the world, having none of the heft of China, India or Iran, nor the long tragedy of Afghanistan. 

That fuzziness was my main draw to the region - what were these countries like? The history of Silk Road trade across rugged and vast landscapes plus the more recent influence of the Soviet Union fascinated me and I looked into including the region on our trip. My original plans were a bit overambitious, but as I whittled them down I ended up focusing on Uzbekistan as it seemed to be the most accessible for the week and a half we had for the region between Europe and Japan.

To be clear, Uzbekistan was one hundred percent my idea and Nikita very kindly indulged my curiosity in including it, which I very much appreciate.

Tashkent

Uzbekistan's sprawling capital served as our entry and exit point for the country, but we did not spend a ton of time there because we read there was not much notable to see in the city. That was true in comparison to what we later saw in Bukhara and Samarkand, but we did enjoy exploring the huge Chorsu bazaar, the artsy subway system, and a few monuments. Along the way, we picked up some early observations.

First, the city itself. Tashkent is no dusty desert oasis. It was the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, and is now the largest city in Central Asia with some three million inhabitants. It has a subway, which is good because it really does sprawl and is far from walkable. Vast avenues of cars surge between huge blocks of monuments and office parks. So - not the most charming place to stroll, but luckily Yandex (Russian Uber) taxis were dead cheap and the subway was pretty good, so getting around was not too much of a pain. 

Spices. I think this one of Nikita's best photos.

Fresh bread rounds for sale at the central market for about 40 cents.

Chorsu Bazaar, with horse meat for sale.

Second, the people. As I incorrectly navigated us through packed subway stations, Nikita and I both commented on how unique the Uzbek population looked to us. Coming from somewhere as diverse as Oakland, it sometimes feels like the whole world can be seen on the streets. On the streets of Tashkent however, we both noticed that the blend of Asian, Slavic and Persian features on people was something we had never really seen before and definitely made us feel a long way from home - which we were.

In the Tashkent metro.

 

Monument to Amir Temur, with the very soviet Hotel Uzbekistan in the back.

Nikita admiring more art on the subway.

We ended up coming back to Tashkent on our way out but were no more charmed the second time around, though we did visit a neat decorative arts museum. Mostly, it was just a place to begin and finish our journey. 

Bukhara

We hopped between cities in Uzbekistan on the country's reliable train network. The star of the train system is the new high-speed Afrosiyob line that zips passengers from city to city - but not us. I was unhappy to find out that this line is so popular that it sells out months in advance so I missed getting tickets for two of our three legs including this one, our longest. So it was five and a half hours on the comfortable but unexciting Sharq line as it shuddered through desert, cotton farms, and dusty villages.

The Sharq.

 

Finally, we arrived in Bukhara, one of the major tourist attractions of Uzbekistan. We were still pretty tired from all our travel, so we did not do much exploring when we got in the first night but we did end up having some very restorative soup and tea at a little restaurant that we liked so much that we visited it the rest of our nights in town. We wanted to save most of the city for the next day when we had our tour, but we did marvel at the Chor Minor mosque which was just next to the B&B we were staying at. 

The next morning we did a tour to introduce us to the sites of the city and I am so glad we did. No doubt that we would have been awed without it, but our guide Sunny was excellent and added so much context that it really brought the history of Bukhara and its splendid mosques, madrassas and minarets to life.

Chor Minor - a smaller mosque a few steps from our B&B.

Bukhara scenes

 

A mausoleum with incredible brickwork.

It seems I can't write a post without a bit of nerding out on history, so let's get into it. Bukhara is a very old city with Zoroastrian roots that has traded hands between Persians and Turks many times over its long history. Throughout that time Bukhara was a legendary stop along the Silk Road and a center of Islamic learning and culture. The rich leaders of Bukhara built many mosques and madrassas over the centuries, occasionally rebuilding them after ruffians like Genghis Khan knocked them down. Its golden age was a bit after the reign of Tamerlane, when it was home to poets and princes of the sprawling Emirate of Bokhara until the Bolsheviks conquered it and incorporated it into the USSR in 1920. 

A mosque with incredible wood decor.

 

What all that history left behind is several complexes of gorgeous, blue-tiled buildings with soaring arched entries covered in intricate geometrical designs. This is Timurid architecture, some of the most impressive Islamic architecture in the world. To us, each new building was more astounding than the last, the blue tile designs more intricate, mysteriously mathematical yet evoking something beyond words or numbers. It is striking what you can do when you are only allowed to create non-representational art.

A Timurid medley.

 

Birds!

Perfect symmetry.

 

Two other things worth mentioning from our tour were the synagogue we visited and the bazaars with many craftsmen working and plying their wares. First - the synagogue. Bukhara is the nexus of Jews in Central Asia and while the population has greatly diminished in recent decades due to emigration, there is still a sizable population living in Bukhara itself. Our guide took us into the synagogue along with a larger group, so we were able to hear about the community from an elder that was present (as well as very sweet praises to his wife).

Inside the synagogue of Bukhara.

 

Visitors to the Bukhara synagogue. Top right is Hilary Clinton.

Cajoled into a photo by a hat seller. Turned out to be a nice photo.

Being on the Silk Road, it was only natural that we did a bit of trading ourselves. Bukhara thronged with the shops of carpet vendors, metalsmiths and seamstresses and our guide introduced us to the best ones. Some appealed to us less (hard to take a scimitar on the plane) but we did end up buying a carpet, painting and some other items as gifts. Being in the second half of our trip, we are a bit more willing to make the extra effort to carry bigger souvenirs, and we are excited to get these items into our eventual future home.

Everything on sale from carpet hangers...

...to unused Soviet pins.

Our rug!

Outside the tour, we took in many more passes on the architecture and also visited a hammam. After lifting our bags (and many steins of beer at Oktoberfest) we needed to stretch and relax our bodies a bit. There were not a ton of options in town so we opted for the best rated one on Google and booked an appointment. It was an experience to say the least! I jokingly called it the "Tamerlane massage" because it truly felt fit for a nomadic horse warrior. We were vigorously stretched, cracked and scrubbed down with a fiery ginger paste that left us feeling alert and limber, though not exactly relaxed. Another varied spa experience to add to the books.

An embroidery artist at work in her workshop.

 

More scenes around Bukhara.

Finally - Bukhara really was a feast - we were lucky enough to be in Bukhara for its first Biennial art exhibition. This brand new event brought contemporary art to many unused caravanserai buildings in the old town, as well as spruced up the local art museum for a new age. We spent a few hours in the evening exploring the art with locals. Some of it was interesting, but a lot of it was so contemporary that it went right over my head. On a meta level, I enjoyed seeing how people interacted with art like this in a more conservative place where it is likely fairly unprecedented to have exhibitions like this.

A new tile piece for the Bukhara Biennelle.

An outdoor installation for the exhibit - an "open air mosque"

A nice piece at the Biennial.

 

Bukhara was definitely our favorite stop in Uzbekistan, it really felt alive as a crossroads of history and the town buzzed with both locals and tourists. Speaking of those tourists - it became clear to us in Bukhara that it is mostly Americans who are not visiting Uzbekistan. Russians, Chinese, and lots of various European tourists are visiting in increasing numbers. It is not overrun but it is not undiscovered either, and we found Uzbeks to be universally welcoming and excited to have visitors from abroad.

Samarkand

Our next stop was another famous Silk Road city and the capital of the mighty but brief Timurid empire, Samarkand. We were a bit subdued here due to some turbulence getting adjusted to the food, so about one and a half our three days was spent in low-key fashion relaxing in our hotel room but venturing out in the evening for dinner. On our second full day, we explored the city in the evening on a tour with a young guide we arranged on GetYourGuide.

Exploring Samarkand

 

The two highlights were a complex of mausoleums and Registan Square. The mausoleum complex, the Kusam-ibn-Abbas, had the most dense collection of building decor we had seen yet, with narrow alleys between buildings filled with beautiful blue tile work. Notably, the cousin of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) is buried here.

The entrance to the mausoleum

Inside

 

Registan Square was the other place that was really impressive, an icon of Uzbekistan and a central meeting point in the city. Three madrassas face each other across a square, each totally covered in swirling interlocking tiles. The interior courtyards were equally impressive, especially a golden mosque from the 17th century, the Tilya Kori Mosque.

 

 

 

Scenes around Registan Square

 

Interior courtyard

Inside the 17th century Golden Mosque

A wonderfully detailed dome

Our guide was very knowledgeable and walked us through the glory days of Samarkand when it was the capital city of the empire of Amir Temur, also known as Tamerlane. Amir Temur is a national hero of Uzbekistan, viewed as a great conqueror and statesman, though those whose lands he conquered view him as more of a genocidal warlord. On our last stop, we visited his tomb.

Our guide and Amir Temur's mausoleum.

 

The last thing we did in Samarkand before making our way back to Tashkent before our flight was a day trip to Shahrisabz. This city was Amir Timur's birthplace and has the ruins of his summer palace which would compete with the Taj Mahal had it not been sacked by the Bukharans a few decades after it was built. This was a nice day trip and we got to see some more rural and mountainous areas, but not the most spectacular thing that we saw in Uzbekistan. 

Tasting some very strong cheese on the way.

 

The landscape on the way to Shahrisabz. Keep in mind it is early Autumn, so a long time since rain!

The ruined summer palace. An interesting contrast to the immaculate restoration elsewhere.

 

Some really cool motifs inside another mosque.

Last picture of blue domes for the post.

I do have to say, after this day trip we were practically seeing blue tile in our sleep! We felt like we had seen all that we needed to see, and luckily we were able to get a high-speed train back to Tashkent. From there, we said hayrlashuv to Uzbekistan and started making our way to Japan.

Stray Observations

A few interesting things we noticed in Uzbekistan, unrelated to anything else but sort of defined the experience for us:

1. Very safe, mildly sane: Uzbeks seem to trust each other a lot and it is not uncommon for a waiter to take your debit card at the table and ask for the PIN so he can complete the payment on his own - nearly unthinkable in the U.S.! Beyond that, kids play freely in the streets and people are as helpful as they can be given limited English. There are an intimidating number of police around which made us wonder if this sense of safety comes downstream from the heavy police presence or if it is just for show given an already very safe society.

2. Everyone is a baby! Teenagers run Uzbekistan, or at least seem to. Waiters, drivers, tour guides - nearly all are under 25 or so. Uzbekistan is a very young country and its population has doubled since independence in 1992, so there are relatively lots of youth in comparison to older folks.

3. Chevrolet as far as the eye can see: Four out of five cars on the road are Chevrolets. We did get to the bottom of this phenomenon - it turns out there is a state-owned car factory that more-or-less licensed Chevy models for production and thus undercut foreign competition, making Chevrolets the most economical for Uzbeks. 

 

Nothing but Chevys,

 

Reflections and Projections 

I guess you could say Central Asia is a little less fuzzy for us now. Uzbekistan was a gamble, but I think it paid off. The blend of Russian, Chinese, Persian, and Turkic cultures was fascinating, and it was fascinating to see all those ancient cultures blend with each other and global modern influences as well. Most of all for me I got to satisfy a huge curiosity that I've been carrying around since I first fell in love with maps and wondered exactly what was going on in all these countries deep in the middle of Asia. 

 

Of course, ten days in one country is just a starting point and not a full answer. The more I learned, the more questions I had about the other countries in the region, and I might want to explore more in the future (but not anytime soon). Given how friendly people were and how relatively easy traveling was here, it makes me excited to visit more off-the-beaten path destinations in the future.

 

Thanks for reading! 

 

One last photo of Bukhara's minaret.