7NNT25: Day 2 – Tashkent

Soundtrack: “Going Underground” The Jam

Our first full day in Uzbekistan was spent exploring the old and new parts of the capital, Tashkent, with our driver and also a guide who tried to take us through 15 centuries of history in 6 hours. In summary: most of the cultures that have dominated Uzbekistan over the centuries have had a mix of good and bad elements, except the Mongols, who were all bad. Seems like the Uzbeks still have a bit of a grudge from the days of Ghengis Khan, which I’m sure would make an Uzbekistan Vs Mongolia ice hockey game rather interesting.

So here’s the non-wikipedia version: the Uzbeks were pretty much just hanging out, doing their thing, being in the centre of a whole lot of trading until around 7th century AD, when Muslim traders started to show up. The Uzbeks became early adopters of Islam, and spent the next few centuries focusing on mathematics, science, and praying five times a day (fortunately they had the maths so they could keep count of that) while trading with the Chinese coming from the east, India from the south, and various European groups from the west. It’s all about location. Being so well positioned, at various times invaders would show up, spoil the party, and claim Uzbek lands as their own, levy taxes, suppress peasants, all that kind of thing.

Then the Mongols showed up, and having no regard for all the trading and praying (they likely weren’t fans of maths and related things) just knocked most of it back to ground level (Uzbekistan in a possible birthplace of the guy who invented algebra and demonstrated the whole theoretical importance of zero, so maybe the Mongols were out to give a practical demonstration). Regardless of whether the Mongols were counting the years, all good things must come to an end (undoubtedly there’s a mathematical proof of this somewhere, otherwise please refer to the Laws of Thermodynamics) and when the likes of Ghengis and Kublai Khan dropped off their horses, leaving the kingdom to their nepo-babies, a leadership gap emerged.

Enter Timur, our valiant Uzbek hero, here to save the day. After marrying a descendant of the Khans to fit overlord eligibility criteria, he raised an army and put Uzbekistan on the map, making Samarkand his capital (don’t worry, the magical chairs of Uzbek capitals comes later). Along the way Timur failed to dodge an arrow or two and ended up with a pronounced limp, thus getting the moniker of “Timur the Lame” or Tamerlane, which is how a lot of countries refer to him. Timur appears not to be a fan of disability shaming, and as a result set up a kingdom that spread from China in the east to Russia in the west, including most of Persia, chunks of India, and lots of the Middle East. He also regularly ransacked parts of Turkey, and anywhere else that pissed him off. For a guy with a limp he could still kick a lot of ass.

Again, nothing lasts forever, and while Timur had many wives, many mothers-in-law, and many nepo-babies of his own, his kingdom didn’t really stick around much after his death — I’m guessing that making a lot of enemies had something to do with this. None the less, as the first Uzbek-born hero (inventing algebra doesn’t count, so sorry Al-Khwarizmi) Timur now has lots of streets named after him, statues, museums, all that stuff.

Post-Timur, Uzbek history doesn’t really get interesting again until the 19th Century, when Russia annexed the region and did their best to make everyone forget Timur (fyi I’m not across how the Russians felt about algebra, but if they had nothing else to do but read Tolstoy, they probably found maths to be a bit of light relief). At least the Russians did start building things like railways and clock towers. The Uzbeks probably thought they were in with a chance of freedom when the Romanovs were deposed and disposed, but when party-people like Lenin and Stalin came along they were in for a shock.

At least Lenin gave Uzbekistan an actual border, putting Uzbekistan SSR on the map, literally. And Stalin, in exchange for an army motivated by god, allowed Islam institutions to operate. In addition to this, the Soviet Union gave them things like plumbing, statues, and thanks to algebra, brutalist-soviet architecture.

In addition to 1991 being a great year for music, it was also when Uzbekistan got its freedom. They are currently on their second President, have a flag, and otherwise do the things that independent countries do.

So with this background, we kicked off the day with the hotel breakfast, a generally interesting mix of asian, western, and central asian food choices, as well as a lot of cheese. Neither L nor I packed our emergency algebra kits, so we can’t tell you exactly how many, but definitely more than zero, maybe more than 10. The cheese was good, standout was a delightful creamy cheese with dill.

Full of cheese, we met our driver and headed to Amir Timur Square, parking opposite the wonderful soviet era Hotel Uzbekistan, beautifully brutal. Amir Timur Square isn’t square, it’s more of an oblong, but in the middle is a suitably large statue of its namesake. Of courser, if you stayed awake through my history lesson, it would come as no surprise that the current statue isn’t the original statue in this park. It’s not even the second nor third statue to be raised there. First there was a Tsarist-era general, then came Stalin, then a pile of books, finally in the mid-90s came the statue of Timur astride a horse. It’s large, iconic, and does everything a statue of a national hero should do. Apparently the first President, to emphasise the statue and its visibility, had all the surrounding trees cut short. They’ve since been allowed to grow in places, but the nearest ones all appear to have had their tops lopped.

Tashkent is famous for its artistic underground stations, so we then took in a few of these. Each one is themed, one had incredible wall to wall mosaics around the Uzbek cotton industry, another was water themed, while a third celebrated the Soviet space program. Even the unthemed stations were pretty impressive, lots of stone tiled walls and amazing pillars, no two that we saw looked the same. The trains seemed to be either soviet-era blocky little units, or more modern and streamlined carriages.

Back above ground we headed to one of the main applied arts museums, full of ceramics, fabrics, fantastically tiled rooms, and historical garments. Much of the work on display was 20th Century, but there were a few older items of interest.

While there weren’t any World War 2 battles in Uzbekistan, hundreds of thousand local troops took part, while a number of Soviet industries were moved to the region necessitating women to step into manufacturing roles. As such, Tashkent has a roll of honour of all of the fallen, and a statue and eternal flame to commemorate the sacrifices made.

Then it was time for plov, Uzbek must-eat food #1. Plov is the Uzbek form of pilaf, or pilaf is the Indian form of plov, I’m sure folks do debate which came first. A hearty staple made from rice steamed then cooked in rendered lamb fat, with added goodness of carrots, garlic, onions, raisins, lamb meat, before being served with dolmas (Uzbek dolmades), quail eggs, and optional sausage of horse meat. The table must also feature the trio of achichuk, charlop, and pickles, plus bread. Plov is made in huge wok-like pans that are easily 1 metre across. The largest ones can easily hold several hundred kilos of plov.

The best place to eat plov is at a plov centre, like a food hall that only serves 1 dish (there are several plov variants, including wedding plov — cooked in olive oil and a bit less heavy and Samarkand style, which is heavy, lots of lamb fat) plus standard condiments. These centres will easily feed over 1,000 people each day, thousands of plates of yummy goodness, lamb that just falls apart, glistening rice, and horse sausage that tastes a little bit between lamb and beef.

With bellies full of plov we took in some more of the cultural, islamic side of Tashkent, including a mausoleum for one of the first islam teachers in the city, a former scholar area now converted to stalls for local crafts, and a small shrine containing one of the oldest copies of the Koran n existence, potentially dating back to the 7th century, but possibly a little later depending on who you read. It’s an impressive book, 35kg of deer skin pages.

The tour finished with the Chorsu Bazaar, a wonderful sprawling complex selling everything you can imagine, and some things you didn’t even know existed. I’m including in this sumalak, a dish not unlike caramel that is made from germinated wheat sprouts that are then processed and simmered for hours until they result in a sweet brown thick syrup that tastes a little like caramel, but less sweet, and a little richer.

Full of food it was time to head back to the hotel, to digest, unwind, and get prepped for an early morning train ride as we take the ultra fast train to Samarkand.