Uzbekistan Is Calling

The name Samarkand had always evoked ephemeral (and in retrospect, slightly misplaced) images of the Silk Route, frenzied sand dunes and magic carpets, so Uzbekistan had always been near the top of our next-destination-list. Owing to a juxtaposition of providence and promotion, Uzbeki tourism has also been in the spotlight in recent years, and foreign traveler numbers are at an all-time high.

Is this spotlight justified? Our 10-day long visit provided a resounding confirmation. The country is a beautiful fairytale : historic cities restored almost to a fault, a sprawling well-developed capital, a well-connected railway, hearty, coma-inducing food, and above all a people that are very welcoming to share their country with visitors.

Tashkent

Despite the tall arches and richly painted walls of Samarkand and the sparkling minarets of Bukhara and Khiva, it was Tashkent that took me most by surprise. A well-planned city, with wide roads roomy, risk-averse intersections, robust public transport and squeaky-clean public spaces. Tashkent received a Soviet-fueled makeover in the 70s and 80s, and fifty years later, as an independent country, the city has grown into a sturdy bridge, one end tethered to its silk route origins and the other to a modern, swanky commercial capital.

Pencil in Tashkent at the end of your Uzbekistan trip, it’s a good way to round-off an itinerary and acclimatize yourself with the real world after experiencing (an overdose of) blue-tinged grandeur through the country.

Chorsu Bazaar

Tashkent's Chorsu Bazaar is most remarkable in its organized chaos. The market is constructed in a variety of domes, each for different sections - home goods, fresh produce, clothes and more. My most favourite section was the bakery : lines of fire-powered tandoors, and an assembly line of dough stamped with unique distinguishing marks and freshly baked bread some sprinkled with sesame seed, some delicately sweet etc at the other end.

Walk through the alleys selling fabric – Impossibly tall columns of swirling colour and big, bold Ikat prints. Stop by the tea connoisseurs mixing some unique blends of berries, herbs with tea. Don’t forget to check out what most visitors miss – right across from Chorsu is a row of carpentry shops fashioning everything from cribs to coffins and everything in between ( including toothpicks).

Metro Station hopping

The most authentic way to live a city is to ride it’s public transport, and in Tashkent, the elaborate metro stations are a destination rather than a means to reach one. Built during Soviet era, the central idea was that these train stations should be “palaces for the people”.  Each station is built on a unique theme  - celebrating the country’s primary crop (cotton), to space exploration or paying tribute to erudite scholars poets and scientists. Here’s the link to our recommended route. Don’t forget to pop out of the underground every once in a while, to check out the facades of the stations too.

Samarkand

One of the world’s oldest continuously inhabited cities, Samarkand was a prominent city under various rulers and empires including Alexander and Genghis Khan. It later became the dazzling capital of Timur in the 14th century, and it remains a monument today to his reign.

You need atleast two days to see Samarkand. Staying close to the Registan will make it easy to walk around the main areas of interest.  

Start Day 1 by heading to the 15^th century Bibi Khanum Mosque. Engage a guide to narrate the stories behind the construction of this mosque with its twinkling blue dome. Right behind the mosque is one of the city’s best markets. Clothes, Cutlery, Household objects, spices, food, everything under one roof. It’s a dizzying display of irresistible colour and texture, all the more difficult to not loosen the purse strings because all the vendors are genuinely friendly and eager to chat with you!

Next, amble over to the Bibi Khanum Teahouse for lunch. A teahouse is an informal, relaxed-dining experience, with good local food like kebabs and fragrant osh (rice) decked with raisins with a side of Chalap – a unique concoction of fermented milk with herbs/cucumbers.

Spend the evening in the Registan square–A triumvirate of a Mosque, the Ulugh-Beg and Sher-Dor Madarsas, set in the middle of a beautiful garden. The complex, bejeweled with intricate mosaic work in blue, turquoise and gold, is so vast, that despite the number of visitors, you can easily find a quiet corner for yourself to soak in a cloudless sunset.  Tickets to the square include the light and sound show (not in English, but still remarkable and easy to get a general gist)

On Day 2, cover some of the remaining landmarks of the city. We found two particularly remarkable, Shah-i-Zinda, which is an eerily beautiful mausoleum of various members of the royal family, including a cousin of the Prophet himself, and Gur-e-Amir, the final resting place of Amir Timur. In the evening, head over to the Hazrat Khizr Mosque, for expansive views of the sun setting over Registan and Bibi Khanum Mosque.

You can’t go wrong with food in Samarkand, nevertheless, our favourite restaurants in the city were Labi G’or for sheesha, evening drinks and impromptu communal dancing and Old City Restaurant for heavenly food, with plenty of vegetarian options.

Bukhara

First things first. The city of Bukhara has nothing to do with Dal Bukhara.

Nonetheless Bukhara is one of Asia’s best-preserved medieval cities, and it was a beacon of prosperity in its heyday.

The best place to stay in Bukhara is the old, walled city, which is a smattering of bazaars, restaurants, traditional workshops interspersed with old madarsas, mosques and royal buildings.

Book a free walking tour to give you a short introduction to the story of Bukhara, and go back in your own time to places you loved the most. We met a most enterprising guide via the tour we booked on GuruWalk, and he took us through some fascinating buildings like one of oldest currency exchanges of the world, a unique building that both Jews and Muslims worshipped in and the Bolo Hauz mosque with its wooden pillars. You will also cover the Poi Kalyan complex, and Bukhara's famous minaret in your walking route.

Spend evenings by the Lyabi Hauz, a small, shaded pond in the center of Old Bukhara .On the banks of the pond is a restaurant that (slowly) serves food and drinks, and is perfect to unwind after a long day of walking.

The most endearing part of Bukhara was its Doll Museum. It keeps alive the centuries-old Central Asian tradition of puppetry and puppet theatre. You can see puppets that are lookalikes of famous personalities, watch a (free!) puppet show, and buy puppets to take home a little slice of Uzbek culture with you.

Khiva

The northern Uzbek town of Khiva was built as an ancient oasis settlement, and over centuries took on its present form as a UNESCO heritage city. The inner walled-city or Itchan Kala is practically an open – air museum with more than 50 historic sites.

While you don’t need a ticket to stay inside Itchan Kala, you do need one to enter most of the historic buildings. Like Bukhara, the best way to see Khiva is to start with a walking tour. It’s a great way to get off-beat, offline recommendations from a local.

This was how we discovered the Melon Festival of Khiva. Scores of varieties of melons, sourced from villages all over Uzbekistan compete for the best dressed stall under a hot summer sun. Expect free tasting, plenty of music and dancing, and a LOT of costumes, followed by a completely unexpected concert, that we found zero information on anywhere online.

Walking through Khiva can feel a little like a theme-park and ‘put-on’, but the palaces, caravan serais, and the gates themselves of the walled-city are remarkable. Khiva’s Juma Masjid, or Friday Mosque is magnificent. It has more than 200 carved, wooden pillars supporting a flat roof, and some of these pillars date back to the 10^th century. The Kalta Minor – A stout pillar meant to be a watchtower, and a platform to call for prayer, tiled with glittering turquoise tiles is another significant monument. I particularly enjoyed the extremely well-preserved 19^th century Tash Hauli palace, where you can explore different living areas and secret passages, compare the rooms of the rulers vs the much smaller and dimmer rooms in the women’s quarters

When in Khiva try Shveti – a special kind of hand pulled noodles made with Dil. Best enjoyed at the restaurants around the Kalta Minaret, with the view of the sunset  

Pro-Tips for visiting Uzbekistan

1. Hotels in Samarkand offering Registan views are overpriced and underdeliver on promised views. As long as you are staying close to Registan, that’s good enough.

2. Keep an eye out for events! We visited a one-of-its-kind Melon festival in Khiva, just missed an osh cooking contest in Samarkand, and caught plenty of live music shows.

3. Book the Business class trains on the Afrosiyob to travel between cities – they are super-efficient and comfortable.

4. Bukhara and Khiva are explore-by-foot cities, so stay in the Old Town areas to get around easily.  Samarkand and Tashkent are not, so expect to take cabs/trains to explore them.