Impressions of Uzbekistan

        Impressions of Uzbekistan 

Read all the guidebooks you like, but when you travel to a new land, nothing prepares you for the feelings and impressions that spring up on arrival. So I find.

Landing at Tashkent airport in Uzbekistan at 2 or 3 am, I was expecting empty corridors and baggage areas. Passport control was admittedly swift: nothing more than a brusque stamp. Then we went through to the carousels: the place was crowded. Welcome to the Uzbek habit of all night travel. Baggage collected , I expected a customs interrogation (we had been warned about complicated forms to complete). But we walked right out, past nonchalant officials.

On a visit to Egypt 2 years ago, emerging from Airport Arrivals was to be be confronted by a surge of aggressively importunate taxi drivers (my pull along case was seized from my grip for a while- I had to chase it down).. Not so in Tashkent. We boarded our tour bus and set off to our hotel, open all night, through the wide streets, full of the mysterious all night traffic.

Uzbekistan, so it struck me as a superficial tourist, is a country at ease with itself (at least in metropolitan areas) and very welcoming to visitors: certainly those from the West, who arrive in manageable and generally polite numbers (not yet on the Hen and Stag circuit). There also many visitors from Islamic and far east countries. Tourism is laced with piety, a moderating influence at many popular sites.

When Uzbekistan emerged as an independent country from the collapsed Soviet Union, it continued as a secular state. It is still such. However, the great majority of citizens are Muslim. In Soviet times, and in the early years of the new Republic, religion was discouraged if not repressed. These days, the reverse is true. Islamic traditions are celebrated and promoted (both Tashkent and Samarkand badge themselves as the “Cultural Centre of the Islamic World”). However it seems to be a tolerant form of Islam. Older women, for example, mainly wear hijabs; younger women choose to do so or not, without recrimination. And Islamic dress is extremely colourful. Secular dress is mainly Western but modest. And yet…our first guide (a woman) told us that newly married brides are expected to become the domestic underlings to their mothers in law- at least until another son marries.

Alcohol is available: Uzbeks brew and drink beer; vodka is popular. Wine was introduced by the Russians and is widely served in cafes and restaurants in tourist areas. Of very variable quality..

We were unprepared for Tashkent’s size and modernity. It has a population of over 3 million and is still expanding. Building cranes are everywhere. Modern shops and offices are much in evidence. Long, incredibly wide avenues, full of traffic, stretch throughout the city.

Two events have especially contributed to modern Tashkent. First, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union in WW2, many critical industries in the path of the invasion were moved to Tashkent, enormously boosting its population and development. Second, in 1966 a savage earthquake destroyed much of the city. It was rebuilt, with resources from across the Soviet Union and beyond, as a modern, indeed model, city: new apartment blocks, wide boulevards with green borders, parks and large plazas. Tashkent was the 4th city in size of the Soviet Union, and now it is the vibrant, civilised first city of Central Asia.

Enough of simplistic modern history. Our tour was marketed as following the Silk Road - exploring  the history and legacy of the ancient trading routes between Europe, Western Asia and China, together with the regimes and their monuments over many centuries.

Therefore- on to simplistic older history. To try to explain the many waves of conquests, empires rising, empires falling, countries coming into existence, going out of existence and coming in again, is beyond this essay.

I select 3 episodes. After the geographic area that includes Uzbekistan became Muslim in the early Middle Ages (Arab conquests) Islamic regimes and cities flourished. In the early C13 came the Mongol conquest led by Genghis Khan. This had a result that is easy to summarise: everything was destroyed- cities , monuments and vast numbers of people. Two buildings, a mausoleum and a minaret, were shown to us as fortuitously surviving.

About a hundred years after Genghis Khan, Uzbekistan produced its own warrior empire builder: Timur (or Tamerlane). He too conquered and destroyed places and peoples, but gave Uzbekistan status and an imperial capital, Samarkand. His successors built the medieval cities that we see today, although many regime changes and fragmentations of the country continued to occur. However,  arts and sciences flourished. 

In the C19, it was the turn of the imperial ambitions of Czarist Russia, which successfully built a Central Asian empire, Local rulers stayed in place (still building) but firmly under the thumb of Moscow (cf Imperial India). Then came the Soviet revolution. Uzbekistan was converted into a USSR republic.

The old cities and buildings we saw are almost all from the time of Timur through to late C19- but now lavishly restored where necessary and in may cases protected from traffic by diligent pedestrianisation.

Although the outward architecture of mosques and madrasahs are similar (like medieval cathedrals) the placing of many great buildings in close proximity is impressive : especially Registan square in Samarkand, and in Bukhara and in Khiva. The latter indeed is a preserved walled city, similar to Carcassonne in France, but larger, and equally full of crowds (including numerous local school parties, some obviously celebrating high school graduation ).

The true glory of the Islamic buildings is the decoration - beautiful tiles and mosaics, painted or glazed, an astonishing variety of colours and geometries, drawing the gaze up walls and gates and, internally,  to triumphant domes. 

When Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, Russian was an official language. Cyrillic script was used for both Russian and Uzbek. Now, Roman script has almost entirely replaced Cyrillic for Uzbek public signage.  English words are employed, often rather randomly, in commercial names and marketing.

There are still enclaves of Russian language and culture- restaurants, for example (we went to one and ordered Chicken Kiev..). But the most resolutely Russian place we visited was a winery. The Russians introduced viniculture and a tradition of Russian involvement has persisted. We were given a wine tasting, sitting at a politburo - sized table. The wines were introduced in Russian, translated by our polyglot guide.

The abiding memories ? The almost universal friendliness of the Uzbeks we met, the potholed horror of the country roads, and the great beauty of Islamic religious art and architecture of the medieval and early modern ages.

May 2026