’25 Oct Tashkent and the Fergana Valley

Above are guys in the plov shop. I’ll tell that story first because, you know, plov, it is the essential food group of Uzbekistan.

This place, Besh Qozon, is very much a tourist attraction but also I think Tashkent people come here too because it is h.u.g.e. and there just aren’t that many tourists. Below is what the guide, Nargiza, called Wedding Plov, enough for a wedding.

They make five different kinds of plov with slightly different ingredients. Here you can see three of the probably twenty stations in this building. The ovens in the back are where they are making bread. It’s the same idea as the others where you make a super-hot surface and then whack the dough against the side, only these ovens face out instead of facing up.

Their five types of plov.

We went up to the top of one of the nearby hotels for this view. The trees here are truly fabulous.

Far away from the car, driving fast, and out the car window, this building is a big deal so I’m putting it here to remember.

This is the Minor Mosque, made almost entirely of white marble, opening in 2014. Minor, btw, means lighthouse and the name is meant to symbolize light and hope for the believers.

That’s the guide there in the foreground. I loved how her coat would bloom out when she walked but it was hot today and she soon abandoned the coat and the hat.

At this mosque instead of just having a scarf to borrow they had the coats below and I have a video of me walking to the steps and back with my coat blooming out too. I tried to find the shortest one because even that one was long.

Where the men pray. The guide said the reason the women’s section is so small is because when men pray at the mosque they get 24 rewards in heaven and when they pray at home they get 1. For women it is the reverse, they get 1 reward for praying at the mosque and 24 when they pray at home. AI thinks this is an oversimplification but basically right.

Returning the coat, there was a tour group trying to get fitted out.

Nargiza’s favorite somsa place. We got there just in time to order before the line went down the sidewalk.

They make somsas in the ovens facing up.

I didn’t catch the driver’s name.. and Guide Nargiza. It can be very nice to have a car, a driver, and a guide. I can walk through the market with the guide and then, there is the driver at the other side, waiting. All the visiting is like that, no doubling back for extra steps!

Remember how at the beginning all the cars were white Chevys, either the four-door sedan or the micro-bus, but here in the capital city and somewhat in the bigger city of Samarkand, there are more choices. I’ve ridden in two of these BYD cars, also built in Uzbekistan like the Chevys, they are Chinese all electric, super comfy, all the features, and affordable. And BYD? On some of the cars it is spelled out – Build Your Dreams.

Here’s a pano of the plaza of the Hazrati Imam complex. Oh my it’s a long story. I’m going to mention here about the 1966 earthquake that decimated Taskhent. Wikipedia says 80% of the city was destroyed but there are large discrepancies in the statistics.

“Estimates of those made homeless by the disaster ranged from 200,000 to 300,000 while the official death toll was 15 people. This figure may be an underestimate due to Soviet secrecy and other sources estimated death tolls ranging from 200 people to 0.5% of the city’s population of 1,100,000.”

Interestingly this complex withstood the quake as did the opera house built in part by Japanese prisoners of war in 1945-47.

The Soviet government initiated a massive reconstruction effort, including resources from all over the USSR to help rebuild the city. The reconstruction was done with remarkable speed, with much of the city rebuilt in just 3 1/2 years. It’s hard to picture what the city must have looked like in those 3 1/2 years. “The rebuilding effort accelerated the modernization of Tashkent. The new city was built with modern, standardized designs, and the reconstruction process nearly doubled the size of the city. The new designs often blended regional construction traditions with modern socialist architecture.” I was 19 in 1966 and remember nothing of this event or subsequently learning about it.

But according to the guide, these buildings, most from the 16th and 17th centuries, were not damaged.

“The Hazrati Imam complex (also known as Hastimom or Hastim) is an architectural monument dating from the 16th to 20th centuries. The complex consists of the Moʻyi Muborak madrasa, the Qaffol Shoshi mausoleum, the Baroqxon madrasa, the Hazrati Imam mosque, the Tillashayx mosque, and the Imam al-Bukhari Islamic Institute. The ensemble was built near the grave of Hazrati Imam, the first imam-khatib of Tashkent, a scholar, one of the first Islamic preachers in Tashkent, a poet and an artist.”

Notice the awning on the very far right. That door leads to the place where an historic Koran resides.

Notice the No Photos signs. I was sitting on a back bench and took a photo of the woman taking a photo because it was irresistible.

The Koran here is known as the Uthman Quran and also the Samarkand Kufic Quran (where I first heard of it). This 353-page parchment manuscript, believed to date back to the 7th century, believed to have been written between 644 and 648 AD. 

This building is the Muyi Muborak Madrasah, a 16th-century madrasah. The Koran was originally kept in Medina and moved through cities like Damascus and Baghdad before being brought to Samarkand in the 14th century. After being moved to St. Petersburg and then Ufa, it was eventually brought to Tashkent. In 2000, UNESCO certified the manuscript as the only original copy of the Quran that has survived to the present day. 

There are cases full of historic books. I liked this border.

The guide called this dress a woman’s passport. From its materials and decorations you can know everything about her, her age, her marital status, her station, number of children, the occupation of her family and her husband’s family, and probably more that I’ve forgotten.

Next we went to visit the Chorsu Bazaar. It’s pretty stunning plus it goes on for blocks around.

This is one of the food galleries with local favorites being made at the minute.

The colors!

One of the metro stations. Like St Petersburg, Tashkent is well know for its fabulously decorated and individualized metro stations. I was going to take myself on a hop-on-hop-off tour but didn’t get around to it. Why can’t we do everything?!

Thank you Nargiza, it was great! I’ve mentioned how incredibly dry the air is which is not doing my hair any favors…

I took a morning stroll down to the area they call Broadway Alley. It’s several blocks of walk-streets with restaurants, clubs, snacks, and entertainments. One website said “The real name of the alley is “Sayilgoh”, which means “venue of events” in Uzbek” but google thinks it means park, and it certainly is surrounded by parks.

A crossroad of the walk streets.

These folks fed this machine 10,000 som bills one after the other after the other trying to get that yellow rabbit. Groans and belly laughs ensued, just like everywhere else in the world.

This was very large and I could not look away.

There’s a little indication of the nickname Broadway. ‘Everyone’ said this street might have fallen a little on hard times since other areas were drawing the upscale crowds. I was there on the early side, well before lunch and a lot of the places weren’t open yet.

Some of the surrounding park.

The fountain there is in the middle of the Tashkent City Park which sits between my hotel, the Lotte City Hotel, and the highlight Alisher Navoi Theatre & Opera (Uzbek=Alisher Navoiy nomidagi davlat akademik katta teatri, “Alisher Navoi State Academic Grand Theatre). The two buildings are facing each other and make for an interesting view.

Dinara, the woman who organized this trip picked me up at the hotel and we went to a Georgian place for lunch. We enjoyed it all and it was special to be able to be together in person after exchanging so much WhatsApp over the last few months.

Georgian style dumplings – similar flavor but different shape from those in Uzbekistan.

The name of the restaurant is Manana, according to Dinara, named after this guy below. Google thinks manana means mother in Uzbek.

Parking is definitely an issue in Tashkent and places hire attendants to make all this double parking possible. Dinara has her phone number permanently displayed on her dashboard so anyone can call her if they are blocked.

After lunch Dinara dropped me off at the Amir Timur Museum.

The first thing you see upon coming up the inside stairs.

These portraits surround the whole mezzanine.

I liked this picture, it reminded me of the movie they were making back in Bukhara.

This isn’t my fountain but there are many around just like it.

The streets walking home, oh these trees.

The picture above is a coal train moving through the valley. Most of the pictures that follow have some aspect of coal in them and I’m pretty sure that all this coal contributes to the terrible air quality that reminds me of LA back in the 50s when we were burning trash out in our back yards and our cars were belching smoke. Maybe bad air is something we have to look forward to again.

This took most of the day – a drive to the train station, a long-ish train ride, and another hour from the train to my hotel. Also it was the first time I had a window seat on the train. I had three train rides and what are the odds, all the seats were facing backwards and when I did get a window it was blocked by a pillar. But for this ride I was able to change seats to a single, on a full window, facing forward. So here comes a slew of pictures out the train window traveling through to Fergana Valley.

But first let’s look at a map of the Fergana Valley. Notice how it’s a thumb of Uzbekistan that pokes into three other countries. The other map shows the topography and also the cities I’ve visited.

You can tell where the river runs by the trees.

Driving from the train station to Namangan, I could make this picture more clear but really this is the way everything looked, blurred by the air. I’m not going to mention about the air any more because what would be the point.

Everyone loves the mountains surrounding the Fergana Valley, you can see them in the topographical map at the beginning, and I failed to understand fully that I wouldn’t be going to the mountains, which was obvious of course, if I’d just looked at my itinerary on a topographical map!

All batter-fried chicken in any type of restaurant is call KFC. And xot-dog too are omnipresent.

I put this here to remind me of all the apartment construction. This is one small example of buildings I could see everywhere I traveled. What are all these new people going to do I wonder. Some new housing complexes are 4-5 time bigger than this. I never did get it straight.

I spent one night in Imran Palace in Namangan and there was no where to walk from there. I was getting picked up early for a tour that would end in Kokand so I didn’t bother about going out. I got some dinner delivered (the front desk guy forgot to order the tomato salad so he made some up from their breakfast ingredients which was very sweet).

My guide for the day, Dilshod, below, personally refurbished this madrassa and turned it into an educational museum that hosts school tours almost every day. He gathered photos, documents, and artifacts of all sorts. Honestly, he was cheerful and seemed to be enjoying himself telling stories about this place.

The museum focused on the life and mission of Ibrat Muzeyi.

I learned something today. I thought all the Russian I was seeing was actually Russian from the Soviet days. It is from the Soviet days but not necessarily Russian. From 1940 to 1993 Uzbekistan used the Cyrillic alphabet for the Uzbeck language and in 1993 began transitioning to the Latin alphabet. Before 1940 they were using the Arabic script.

These designs were made with paint.

How the building looks from the outside.

The property includes a large park and a language school.

Next stop was the ancient and destroyed city of Axsikent.

“Before its destruction, Axsikent was a major, fortified city with a citadel, residential and handicraft areas, and a deep moat surrounding it. It featured important buildings like mosques, a palace, and a caravanserai, and was known for its skilled artisans, particularly in crucible steel, glassmaking, and ceramics. The city was strategically located at the confluence of the Kasansai and Syr Darya rivers and was a thriving trade center along the Silk Road.”

The government has embarked on a major project to turn this important and historic excavation site into a tourist attraction.

There are signs up now and so many steps and boardwalks to see what’s happening.

Entering this building you can’t help but think about the Terracotta Warriors in Xion and that’s a very successful tourist attraction as well an important and historic excavation site.

Another excavation on the same site.

Development plans.

Looking across to the river Syr Darya.

And across the street there was a nice fried fish spot…

…much like the fried fish place where we ate in a yurt. Here you eat under the trees. Notice the platforms and tables and cushions. It’s how they do.

As long as I can still do this, I can travel wherever I want to go.

Back in Namangan, Dilshod wanted to show me where he grew up, in one of the Soviet blocks that are still completely occupied.

Then we took a little stroll through the amusement park that was there in Dilshod’s youth. So little was electrified and the kids were enjoying themselves entirely.

We swung by a market to admire these breads and buy one to eat right now, which was very good, fresh so a little crunch on the outside and soft on the inside. It a few hours you can play hockey.

There was a madrassa on the street with the market, and interesting because of the designs in the bricks.

We dropped off the guide and headed out for our many hours drive to Kokand and the hotel “Silk Road Kokand”.

Remember how Fergana Valley is a thumb of Uzbekistan that pokes into several countries and is bordered by Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. The tour guides all said the main populations in Central Asia are of Turkish and Persian origin and can often understand each other’s language.

I’m writing this more than a week after getting home and I don’t remember ANY of these names. None. I’m going to hope I can get the guide to help me! So I’ll say a few words and hope for identifying information will be forthcoming.

The man who knows everything, according to the guide.

They made me do it! “Sit here sit here!” They all took this shot.

This is a different place…

The only minaret I saw in the middle of a courtyard, and there’s a reason. But what was that reason?

We saw many craftsmen this day and tomorrow too. Here is a carver making the omnipresent pillars.

And here is a master weaver.

We enjoyed a visit through his shop and he offered us tea and tasty treats.

It was lovely. The tea and treats are on the right. On the left is some halvah tastes from another shop where we got to watch the master maker produce (and then taste!) several flavors.

On the way back to the car, through the parking lot, we found her making what the guide called a Russian specialty. Oh let’s have some, say I! The guide was a little iffy never having tried them before but she reported a delightful experience and that she would bring her other tourists here whenever she was in the area. Oh joy, after 3 weeks, this was the first hot sauce on offer!

True, more snacks. This was the snack-i-est day of the trip! This is the driver and the guide.

Yup, another place I don’t remember.

I got a treatment from a local lady to ward off the evil eye. She put me in a mini-daze that was delightful.

We visited the museum/home of the fellow in the frame referred to by the guide as ‘attractive to all women’.

One of the caretakers at the house, as I was admiring the grapes, she climbed up to harvest us a plateful. They were wonderful.

Another fascinating place!

This stop was to visit an old hotel that had been converted into studio spaces for artists. It was very cool, and oh goodie, more tea and treats!

From a balcony outside the converted hotel.

Traffic and the setting sun. What a great day!

Today we visited two workshops that represent highlights of Uzbek art, weaving and pottery, and will close out my time here.

Those are silkworm cocoons and they can pull a single almost invisible string from each cocoon and make thread with any number of strings depending on how thick they want the thread to be.

This is for real.

I was the only tourist here at the time so I got everyone’s attention. They are about to tie dye some silk scarves. They asked me what color I liked and I said red, for fun. The red turned out orange which was actually perfectly fine because I like orange too.

They made these three from start to finish in about 15 minutes. It was quite impressive.

More coal. You might remember I talked about the air quality and all the burning of coal. It’s also true that the Fergana Valley is surrounded by mountains and has atmospheric conditions much like in LA.

The next stop was a wonderful pottery studio and I know it’s an important place but I forget all the details because so much time has passed.

I had a fabulous two days with the guide, Mrs Madina. I will remember you!

Then I had a day off in the hotel to get read to face my journey home and here it is 10 days later finally finishing this journal.