Uzbekistan. Unknown, Underrated and under the Radar, but Not for Long!

Time visited: October 2023

Time spent: Two nights

Prologue and Politics

Uzbekistan, which formed part of the Silk Road, the ancient trade route between the Far East (China) and the Mediterranean (Venice, Italy), is a doubly landlocked country, meaning it is surrounded by countries that themselves are landlocked. These countries are Kazakhstan (north), Kyrgyzstan (north-east), Tajikistan (south-east), Afghanistan (south) and Turkmenistan (south-west). These Central Asian countries and Turkey make up the Turkic world.

Uzbekistan’s population is 36 million. Its main ethnic group is the Uzbeks (84.5%). Uzbek is the main language, but Russian is also widely spoken and understood. The main religion is Islam (96.1%), with the majority of the followers being Sunni Muslims.

The Scythians first occupied this land between the 8th and 6th centuries BC. In the 7th century, the Umayyad Caliphate from Arabia conquered and extended its borders to Persia and Central Asia, eventually reaching India. This was when the Arab conquerors brought Islam to Uzbekistan and converted the nomadic Turkic people to Islam (and very successfully too).

The next major upheaval in Uzbekistan was the invasion by Genghis Khan (1162 - 1227), the founder of the Mongol Empire, in the mid-13th century. After Genghis Khan’s death, his empire, marred by infighting, slowly disintegrated. However, one of the tribal chieftains, none other than Tamerlane or Amir Timur (1336 – 1405), emerged victorious and established the Timurid Empire in 1388. Samarkand was the capital of this new empire. His reign marked the Islamic Renaissance in Uzbekistan. Art, culture, education, science, philosophy and religion flourished during this period. Amir Timur is revered as the founding father of Uzbekistan.

By the 19th century, the Tsarist Russian Empire had expanded into Central Asia. All the ‘stan’ countries, except for Afghanistan, were eventually annexed and incorporated into the Russian Empire. In 1865, Tashkent became the political centre and capital of what was then known as the Russian Turkestan. By the early 1920s, Central Asia was firmly in Russian hands.

Communist Russia continued to dominate Central Asia as the USSR. In 1991, the USSR disintegrated and the Republic of Uzbekistan was born. 1 September 1991 is celebrated as their Independence Day. Uzbekistan’s first president was Islam Karimov, who was previously a Communist leader. His was a repressive regime. The situation improved when Uzbekistan’s second president, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, replaced him in 2016. He was the Prime Minister during Karimov’s reign. He made significant reforms and improved relations with the neighouring ‘stan’ countries. He is still in power.

Uzbekistan is a major producer and exporter of cotton. It also has an ample supply of natural gas and is the largest electricity producer in Central Asia. China has much investment interest in Uzbekistan, especially for Xi Jinping's Belt and Road initiative. Xi sent experts to help Uzbekistan restore many mosques and madrasahs, including funding the retiling of its beautiful blue Majolica mosaic pieces.

Tashkent in a Nutshell

Apart from being the largest city in Uzbekistan and its capital, with a population of three million, Tashkent is also the most populous city in Central Asia. During the Soviet Occupation, while Tashkent witnessed significant positive growth, it also experienced some negative demographic changes due to forced deportation from various parts of the Soviet Union.

A significant example to illustrate the above is the forced deportation of about 172,000 ethnic Koreans from Vladivostok, a Far Eastern city of the Russian Empire, to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan using 124 trains. Initiated in 1930 and carried out until September/October 1937, it was the first mass transfer of an entire nationality in the Soviet Union. Why did Stalin undertake this massive operation? 

At that time, Russia was fighting with Japan over Manchuria. As the Koreans were subjects of the Japanese Empire during this period in history, Stalin charged them with espionage. By deporting them far, far away, he wanted to “stem the infiltration of Japanese espionage”.

Over the generations, the Korean population lost much of its language and many of its customs, and adapted to a Russian way of life and worldview. Therefore, it is not surprising to meet a Korean in Uzbekistan or a Korean-Uzbek. 

Much of Tashkent was destroyed in 1966 by a 5.2 magnitude earthquake, but it was rebuilt as a model Soviet city with wide boulevards and large chunky apartment blocks typically found in cities once ruled by the Russians.

Day 1: Kuala Lumpur to Tashkent

We checked out of the Yu Hotel at 8:00 am and arrived at KL International Airport around 9:00. Our flight wasn’t until 11:40 am, so we had plenty of time. While queuing to check in, as Uzbek Airways didn’t allow us to do so online, we met two young Uzbek men, Islam and Shoxabbos. They were students in Malaysia and quite fluent in English. They had finished their studies and were heading home. They complained that Malaysian food was too spicy and flavourful. This should have rung alarm bells in me because for the next 10 days, I was eating relatively bland Uzbek food!

After checking in, we adjourned to Grandmama’s Café for a local brekky. We shared a char kway teow and a prawn mee. It was pretty good for airport standards, but of course, we had to fork out blown-out airport prices.

Soon, it was time to make our way to the departure gate. We saw our aeroplane painted in the national colours of Uzbekistan: blue, white and green. When we finally boarded the plane, we noticed quite a few Malaysian holidaymakers, and a few Uzbeks too. There was indeed ample leg room, as mentioned by the reviews that I had read. The seats were comfortable, the cabin crew members were pleasant and polite, and we were served plenty of food for lunch!

Our side dishes consisted of a potato salad, a cucumber salad with chicken slices (definitely NOT ham ) and a bun with accompanying butter and cheese spreads. Two choices were available for mains – either a beef goulash or a chicken with rice. I selected the beef goulash. It was very delicious! Some Malaysian chef did a great job cooking this goulash as the airline would have refilled their supplies from Kuala Lumpur. Dessert was a slice of apricot cheesecake. We had no complaints whatsoever with our lunch.

And yes, they DO serve alcohol even though Uzbekistan is a Muslim country. I had a Bombay gin and orange juice cocktail.

The flight took about 8 hours. Before landing, we were given beef sandwiches. Simon thought that we might have been served horse meat! The Uzbeks do eat horses.

As we approached Tashkent, we flew over the majestic snow-peaked mountains, which were part of the Tian Shan mountain ranges in Central Asia. It was an awesome view looking down at these ranges from up high.

We landed at 4:40 pm Uzbek time. Being three hours behind Malaysia, it was actually 7:40 pm for us. The international airport at Tashkent was called the Islam Karimov International Airport after their first President. While making our way to Customs, I was extremely disappointed to find that duty-free alcohol was non-existent for incoming passengers. Only a tiny duty-free shop was in sight, and all it sold were cosmetics and perfume. Darn!

Since the Uzbek currency, the Som, was not traded in the open market, we couldn’t get any beforehand. Simon went to a counter to get a bit of som first. I waited at the carousel for our luggage. The strange thing here was that I couldn’t just connect my mobile phone to the airport Wi-Fi even though it was freely available. To get a connection, we were asked to provide a local mobile number. A fellow passenger who was waiting for his luggage was kind enough to help me connect to Wi-Fi using his number! We bade farewell to Islam, the young student. Shoxabbos was nowhere to be seen.

We had booked ourselves a centrally located apartment through Tashkent City View Apartments. Not wanting to negotiate fares with cabbies in a new country, we asked our contact person at the apartment to book us a transfer to our accommodation. Where accommodation and transfers were concerned, the tour operators in Uzbekistan charged us in US dollars! We had to pay 10 USD per car for the transfer.

I was on the lookout for my name on a piece of paper as we walked out of the airport.  Sure enough, I saw my name.  Even though there were plenty of cabbies around offering transport to arriving passengers, they weren’t pushy or insistent. They knew their limits, so getting out of the airport wasn’t an unpleasant experience.

The airport was located 12 kilometres from the city. The traffic was heavy! I would learn later that Tashkent roads are always full of cars and traffic never seems to cease. And there was plenty of hooting too! I guess this wasn’t surprising in a city of three million people. As expected, our driver spoke no English.

Our two-bedroom apartment was very spacious. It was equipped with a washing machine too! We certainly needed that as we had all our sweaty clothes from KL and Bentong to launder. All the necessary kitchen amenities were provided. Our apartment was on one of the higher floors, so we got quite a good view of Tashkent from our windows. For two nights in this comfy apartment, we paid 170 USD. After our two nights here, we were off to Bukhara and Samarkand. We would still spend another two nights in Tashkent before flying back to KL, but at this point in time, we had not decided where we wanted to stay upon returning to Tashkent.

It was getting very late by the time we checked into our apartment. After settling in, we ventured out to look for dinner. We consulted Google Maps for places to eat nearby. Our location was pretty central but we were right in front of some major crossroads with plenty of cars. Thankfully, there were pedestrian crossing lights, but we still had to be very careful. It was rather scary trying to make our way to the strip of shops where dinner could be found.

We chose a restaurant called Xadra Milliy Taomlar, which had heaps of authentic-looking Uzbek food cooked in large woks. Many locals were dining there, which was a good sign. As expected, the menus were all in Uzbek, but at least, they had pictures. We pointed to what we wanted. Uzbeks eat a lot of beef and lamb (no fish or other seafood as they are doubly landlocked). Even their salads are served with slices of meat in them!

We ordered a mixed vegetable salad served with strips of beef. Another dish was stuffed capsicums (like a Greek Gemista). In addition, we ordered a meat platter with pieces of grilled beef/lamb, cut-up portions of intestines, some sausages and dolma. Uzbeks love their big round bread called Obi Non. We were served one of these. We were happy with our orders. They were quite tasty.

We saw the cooks, mostly young men, preparing bowls of hot, boiling soup with tomatoes, potatoes and mutton in them. They were served in cute, small ceramic pots with a handle on each side. This was shurpa, a traditional rich Uzbek soup with usually four components – meat (lamb or mutton), veggies, fresh herbs and spices. Although we were tempted to order a pot, we didn’t have enough room in our stomachs to put it all in.

I must say we discovered a fair dinkum local restaurant and thoroughly enjoyed our first Uzbek dining experience. On our way back to the apartment, we checked out the shops we walked past, hoping to buy some fruit and washing detergent. There didn’t seem to be much local fruit for sale. I settled for some oranges and pears. We had to walk through a rather brightly lit park. We also walked past a huge, impressive-looking blue-domed building, which was the performing centre of the Uzbek Circus! However, it was all dark and we didn’t see any circus performance being advertised. Perhaps it was already autumn, and many events/activities were winding down for winter.

And with this, our first day in Tashkent was over.