“The day we became millionaires”.
Misleading statement……. We exchanged $200 USD and got back 2,180,000 Uzbeki Cym (pronounced “SOOM”). The bills were 100K and 5K notes, so we ended up with a stack of 37 bills. Talk about a fat stack! (We were told you used to have to bring a back-pack to carry your money… but that thankfully they recently added the 100k note, which made it easier and less bulkier to carry your money around.)
A quick background on Uzbekistan. It’s located in Asia, essentially the very center of Asia, in the “Stan” cluster – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. While Afghanistan and Pakistan are nearby, they are not part of the “Stan” clique.
The country has been around for 2700+ years (relics have been found and dated around this time), was under Soviet rule (communism) for 126 years becoming an independent country in 1991 after the fall of the USSR, and is a predominantly Muslim country.
They are a self-sustaining third-world country, producing enough natural gas and fuel to support themselves, as well as numerous crops (cotton, wheat, rice, fruits/vegetables). When we say ‘third-world country’, it’s categorized as such due to their horrible infrastructure. Their roads are horrendous, nearly non-existent at times (we’ll get to that around Day 5 and more so on Day 7), and their water/sewer systems are archaic. This in no way means it’s a poor, dirty country, although wages are low but then so are the cost of things. The country is very safe and the people are extremely friendly and welcoming to Westerners (we’ll get to that on another day). In no way did we feel unsafe or threatened by Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Our tour group headed out for a city tour of Tashkent, boarding a full-size bus. Why is this so exciting? If you’ve been squished on a bus with 40+ other people, sharing seats/body heat, cramming backpacks wherever they fit (sometimes on your lap…..for hours at a time). A full-size bus for 14 means you have an entire row to yourself. Actually, both rows on either side of the aisle for moving back and forth to look out the window on either side!!!!
Okay, enough talking… get on with some pictures.
The first stop was at the “Monument of Courage”, commemorating a 5.1 magnitude earthquake that shook the city in 1966. The massive statute stands on the epicenter of the quake and is symbolically marked by a crack leading up to the statute. Miraculously only 9 people died! Or, did they? This occurred when Uzbekistan was under rule of USSR and all news & information released to the public was questionable. Over 500K people were left homeless and most of the buildings in the city were destroyed or damaged to the point of unsafe occupancy.
The next stop was an amazing mosque complex – Khast Imam Square – where we first encountered the 4 M’s. Mosques, minarets, madrasas, and mausoleums. The complex was beautiful, open, and clean.
The right-hand building above housed a 7th century Koran, which was written on deerskin parchment, along with antique versions of the Koran written in multiple languages. If only we could have photographed it to show how incredibly thick deerskin ‘paper’ is!
The mosque was massive, holding 5,000 worshipers.
This is the back-side of the mosque, and as you can see there are 2 minarets on either side of the building, from which the call to prayer comes from.
Here’s a better shot of a minaret with some people to give you scale for it’s height. Neither Jay nor Tim elected to take the stairs to the top, as they were oddly spaced (high rise to the steps) with a low ceiling such that you’d have to slightly hunch in order to climb the high stair… nope, didn’t sound fun at all.
The entrance to the courtyard is just to the left in the picture above, with the courtyard shown below:
Removing your shoes at the shoe racks shown above (prior to stepping on the carpet), and with the ladies head and body covered (most used scarves), we entered through different doors (as is required, an entrance for men and an entrance for women).
The picture above was the men’s entrance. Not only were there separate entrances, once inside the men and the women are partitioned off from each other. The women’s side was quite bland…..blue carpet, white walls, and little to no decoration. The men’s side had prettier blue carpet, was twice the size of the women’s side, with some more ornate decoration.
How can we attest to this? With no men in actively praying, our guide opened the partition to allow the women to step over to the men’s side explaining that, given the lack of men worshiping, he was able to ‘invite’ us to step over to take a look.
The last “M” we saw at the complex was the madrasas (pronounced ma – dross – aa). Madrasas were the schools and learning centers in the Islamic world. At a certain age, parents would relinquish their children to the teachers at the madrasas where they would then live, eat, learn, etc.
The size of a madrasas depended on the founder’s ability to house and feed a given number of students. Most that we saw were sized for a few dozen students, although it was relayed to us there were some that were large enough (had enough revenues) that they could house a few hundred.
Although we did see several single story (like the one below), most were two story structures, with the classrooms on the 1st floor, and the living quarters on the 2nd, cooler floor.
The typically grand entrance (see above) entered into a central courtyard, that then all of the rooms (1st floor classrooms and/or 2nd floor residence rooms) opened up onto.
When the U.S.S.R. brought modern forms of education (more like the schools and classrooms we are used to) to the country, most of the madrasas ceased to function as schools. (Yes, there are still a few that are active.)
All of the ones we visited had local shops in the classrooms, with vendors selling anything from paintings to woodwork, to general souvenirs.
Next stop – the Chorsu Bazaar! Think local farmer’s market on steroids. And then multiply that by 9,999! The main building at the bazaar is a large, round, blue dome.
To enter the bazaar property, you had to go through the front gates, that did have a police presence. You then had to wind through a series of merchants selling all kinds of goods (as one would expect at a bazaar).
The main dome consisted of a main floor, with an upper ring balcony around the edges. We went up the steps and entered the building on the upper ring balcony, leading to an amazing sight – a bird’s eye view of the hundreds of vendors on the main floor with the dome soaring above them all!
The floor appeared to be predominantly meats and meat type products given the greater ability to support heavier electric some-what refrigerated display cases:
The upper ring balcony appeared to be more utilized for dry goods, predominantly nuts, dried fruits, spices, and some sweets / candies:
Then outside of the dome, there were covered areas of building where you had endless sellers of beautiful fruits and vegetables:
Followed by areas with other food items, such as the tables of eggs and eggs and eggs… (with a few eggs on the end):
In a country that drinks a LOT of hot tea, you of course need sugar to sweeten said tea if you like sweeter tea. While we did have actual sugar cubes at some restaurants, predominantly what we saw at various locations was what would best be described as rock candy (crystalized sugar on a stick) that you could place in your tea and stir.
There were of course tables of this “rock candy” sweetener:
One of the most impressive areas we walked through was the bread area. Yeah, bread actually has it’s own area! Uzbekistan is known for their beautiful and tasty breads and the bread area was a sight to see. (We evidently didn’t get a great picture of just the table and tables of everyday bread, below is towards the end of “everyday” bread, followed by pictures towards the start of the more specialized bread, such as bread plates and bread bowls.)
You did also have areas of filled bread (i.e. fruit filled “pies”, meat filled “pies”, sweet bread treats, cookies, etc.:
But what we found probably most fascinating, was the adjacent bread production areas (just to the left in the bread hall). Yes, they make the bread they sell daily, ON-SITE.
And there’s no modern technology, it’s all made by hand. There were folks carrying large 50lb bags of flour to mixing areas, there were folks standing and kneading bread at tables in front of the ovens – ohhhh the ovens. They were wood-fired tandoor ovens (like giant kilns) large enough for a man to “walk” into. Yes, a man went into an oven (as seen in the 3rd picture below) to put more dough in to bake.
As you are finally leaving the building component of the bizarre, you walk thru an area that is essentially their equivalent of a food court. Here sellers are actively cooking their wares along the walk-way, with tables back behind the cooking areas where you can go to eat your purchased meal.
Below we stopped at a large “cauldron” containing many kilo’s of Plov (remember we made that on Day 3 after arriving), given it’s considered a regional / national dish.
It is amazing at what you find randomly. Below is two women who have a varied assortment of cheese balls that they were selling:
Finally outside, you find rows and rows and rows of “hard goods” such as clothes, shoes, electronics, even furniture. (No pictures, as it was just overwhelming the breadth of what you could find outside.)
Moving on… the final stop of the morning – the Museum of Applied Arts.
The museum was housed in a former Jewish Merchant’s home. You entered through a “front door” that opened into an inner courtyard which was very relaxing and peaceful. The traditional “porch” and entrance to the home itself was exceptionally ornate, as most tended to be that we saw.
The interior front hall was no less impressive, again being very ornate:
Here at the museum, we saw an impressive and colorful display of textiles, clothing, and instruments that are native to Uzbekistan. There were two items that stood out as they’re specific to regions in Uzbekistan – hats and suzanis.
Suzanis are woven wall hangings that used to provide insulation and decoration to the interior of the Yurts that the original nomadic peoples of Uzbekistan lived in.
Here is a loom actively making a suzanis:
And here were a couple of examples hanging on the wall:
Now on to lunch. At an Italian restaurant. And Italian restaurant in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Seems weird, huh? It was delicious!
The best part was our introduction to the UH-MAZE-ING tomatoes and cucumbers grown in Uzbekistan. It might seem a bit overboard to admit that we talked every day of our trip about the fruits and vegetables, mainly tomatoes & cucumbers, but they were truly that good. Remember how homegrown cucumbers and tomatoes taste? So fresh that you picked them from grandma’s garden and starting eating them before you even got in the house? THAT is what we experienced daily.
Uzbekistan grows all of their produce organically – no pesticides – and it’s picked and sold when ripe. It isn’t picked three weeks before it’s ripe and then shipped/trucked into their country. So, we ate truly fresh fruits and vegetables daily. And we were in food heaven.
After lunch we took a ride on the Tashkent metro, which is considered a tourist attraction in and of itself. Each stop has mosaics and art celebrating Uzbekistan and some of their famous people. While it was nice enough… given that we’ve seen the Moscow subway system, we weren’t as impressed as we probably should have been given how A M A Z I N G the Moscow subway is.
After exiting the subway, we walked to the nearby Amir Temur Square, a beautiful park with a central statue of Amir Temur. (Amir Temur was the Genghis Khan of his time, conquering a large part of that portion of Asia from Russia to China.)
Dinnertime was a treat! We ate dinner at an amusement park.
Huh?? An amusement park? Like cotton candy and everything imaginable fried on a stick? Not quite. The amusement park is an open park (no admission) with more than just rides. We had to walk through the park to get to our restaurant.
The first treat was that it was in the middle of the TASHKENT OPERA FESTIVAL 2022, and a sextuplet of tuxedo-ed men were performing onstage. They broke out in an a capella jam that was reminiscent of Pentatonix so we dubbed them the “Uzbeki Pentatonix”.
Dinner was outside, under a vine-covered terrace, and the weather was incredibly pleasant. (Tim had a lot of ants at his spot in the table, but it was still a great atmosphere.)
The final treat was waiting for us when we left the restaurant. The stage that was previously occupied by Uzbeki Pentatonix was packed with an orchestra. An orchestra who was playing the Star Wars Darth Vader theme song!
Wonderfully enough, the conductor was wearing a Darth Vader mask and black cape, with video from the movie blazing away on the large screens behind the orchestra!!
(full disclosure – Tim was somewhat humming the tune as we neared the stage and Jay thought he had simply been quick to pick up the song. Jay doesn’t do Star Wars and recognizes only the most famous Star Wars song.)
Anyway, we stood for a few minutes and enjoyed the final part of the performance. What a fun way to end Day 4!
Sorry for the length of this post… but it was a very busy day. We were glad to hit the pillows that evening.