Oddities of Uzbekistan

 Oddities of Uzbekistan

You arrive; you expect new sights; you will get lots, unfamiliar and beautiful .

You will also be struck by some aspects , many rather strange . Here’s a selection.

Imagine a multi-story car park . You have forgotten on which floor you left your vehicle. You enter a nightmare: all the dozens and dozens of parked cars are of the same make, model and colour. What to do? In the UK the solution would be to wake up . In Uzbekistan, however this could be a reality.

 

General Motors had a joint venture with the government. It’s now fully nationalised, but the Uzbekistan “Chevrolet “ very much remains. Tariffs protect its near monopoly . One VW Golf-sized model has a massive share of this protected market. The preferred colour (for hot summers) is white. The result is that roads, and their frequent traffic jams, are full of the same white Chevrolets, like some huge fleet of taxis run riot (yes, the actual taxis are usually the same model and colour).

Tashkent and other main cities (at least in central areas) suffer not at all from litter. Streets and pavements are spotless. An army of cleaners works away.. which may be connected to the next fact.

There are no beggars in central and tourist areas (or only one encountered during our visit, a gypsy girl and her very bored younger sister). Is this because of heavy policing? Unlike in Egypt, where armed paramilitary police (and beggars) are everywhere , the only police we came across were the unarmed , bobby-like, tourist police. They seemed to be there to help rather than knock heads. But I have to be tentative about judging what is really going on in a fairly autocratic state .

I can be less tentative about the next fact. There are no dogs in the cities. (In Tashkent our bus did eventually pass one dog on a lead - possibly a tourist dog.) It’s remarkable. Our guide told us that it’s not a religious thing- the habit of canine pets has never caught on among a population of dwellers in small apartments. In the countryside there are dogs. The ones we met were running loose but friendly, enjoying the appreciation of those visitors starved of canine company.

In my previous blog I mentioned that in Uzbekistan planes land and depart all through the night. Also trains run. Also traffic flows, or jams. After we had arrived at Tashkent on an internal flight at 0130 am (of course) our bus to the hotel passed a five-a-side football game taking place on an urban pitch. Not uncommon, said our guide.

The currency (‘Som’) is ridiculous. 1,000 UZB Som = 6p. Most dealings are in multiples of 100,000 or even 1,000,000. Very confusing and potentially expensive if you fail to keep track of the “0s”. I thought I had paid correctly for some drinks, only to be surprised by 50,000 change. (Honesty is rife.)

As in many countries, you are expected to bargain over market and craft shop purchases. Sometimes it best to outsource the process. We wanted to buy some silk materials (after all, we were supposedly following the Silk Road).

The young woman seller (with excellent self-taught English) quoted a price and looked at us. After a pause, she said “you’re supposed to suggest a lower price …”. So we did. She replied “I can’t possibly agree that- but if you up add [another item or two] I can meet you at $xx (USDs are the favoured tourist currency). We decided that she was better at bargaining for us than we were; so agreed.

The roads outside the cities, apart from one or two recently completed major highways, are in a state of disintegration . Most stretches have lost their tarmac top layer exposing the underlying rubble, quickly full of potholes. The UK still has some way to go to catch up with this mess.

There has been wonderful continuity of monumental and city building since the Middle Ages.  And recent , post Soviet, preservation efforts have had spectacular success . But the old city of Samarkand (called Afrasiab), destroyed by the Mongols, is a desert of lumpish terrain. The same is true of the large area of habitations that once extended outside the palace fortress of Bukhara (itself well preserved). Archaeology is still to systematically uncover these interesting places.

Uzbekistan is doubly land- locked: on every side two countries lie between it and any sea. A career in the Uzbek navy is not advised.

May 2026