La Gringa y Su Esposo: Tashkent – Where clothes are black and cars are white

March 29 – 31

We flew into Uzbekistan on Uzbekistan Air. The flight was uneventful, though the entire plane clapped when we landed, so maybe they aren’t always? We collected our luggage, changed some money, and paid $7 for an official airport taxi to avoid any headache. We headed outdoors into cold and drizzly weather towards a fleet of white cars, met the driver, and headed into the city.

The contrasts with India struck us immediately. On a Friday evening the roads were busy but not completely crowded. There were traffic lanes (that were respected), wide sidewalks, no tuktuks, and most importantly, no honking! We couldn’t help but appreciate how clean and pleasant it was without having to worry about animal poop or tuktuk drivers yelling “HELLO! YES!” at us. Soon we’ll get over the reverse culture shock and stop marveling at these things, but for now, ahhhh. Another contrast that struck us was the relative wealth of Uzbekistan. It is a tiny country compared to India ($50B GDP vs. India’s $2.5T), but the per capita GDP is 10x higher due to the lower population. However, navigating the train ticket office, where all signage was in Uzbek or Russian, made us realize how easy we had it in India with English being so prevalent.

Tashkent was destroyed in an earthquake in 1966 and rebuilding was supervised by the Soviets, leading to a city with a 1970’s modern, planned feel. The Tashkent metro is beautiful, each station a different themed art deco masterpiece. Our closest station was the cosmonaut memorial station, with statues above the entrance, blue tile everywhere and artistic depictions of the Russian cosmonauts. Until just 6 months ago, photography of the metro was banned. No idea why. Also, people wear a lot of black and nearly every car is white. Also no idea why.

We became millionaires after exchanging some USD for Uzbek som (it’s 8400 som per $1). We also quickly learned that most ATMs didn’t work for us, with only the occasional Visa ATM providing USD functioning. We heard that most ATMs are out of money, which makes sense given how large stacks of som are.

The weather cleared up, becoming a sunny 70F, so we spent some time wandering the city. We walked through the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan, learning a bit about the history of the region, then walked past a large statue of Amir Timur, a famous emperor we’d never heard of. Apparently he conquered central Asia, Persia, and North India in the 1450s after being born into a small noble family in the power structure left behind by the Mongol Horde’s invasion in the 1200s. We ended up at Chorsu bazaar and grabbed a meal of beef noodle soup, bread, green tea, meat dumplings, and chicken, accidentally ordering more than we intended while struggling with the language barrier. Feast consumed, we took the metro back towards our hotel and relaxed for the evening.

Uzbekistan almost completely defied any expectations we had before arriving here. The name had conjured up images of arid desert and mountains, but much of Uzbekistan is in a large valley with a lot of green hills and agriculture, at least in springtime. The history is apparent in the people, with Russian and Mongolian mixing on top of the original Uzbeks, with the occasional descendant of Korean refugees from WWII; the restaurants and food also follow this mix. The most popular local dish is apparently plov, a meat pilaf, but there are also Russian and Chinese influences, along with several sushi joints in Tashkent (odd, as Uzbekistan is double landlocked, meaning it is surrounded by countries that are also landlocked). There’s a lot of meat, and the veggies are mostly covered in vinegar or mayo, so I’ll have to figure out how to get my fiber fix before too long!

Next stop: Samarkand.