Although the capital of Uzbekistan is unlikely to make many tourists’ hearts skip a beat, most of them stop over in Tashkent upon their arrival and/or before their departure. Tashkent is a rather sleepy, provincial city. To someone who, like me, spent a few hours in Istanbul on the way to Tashkent, it seems terribly sleepy and terribly provincial. However, it is interesting in a way since it lacks a centre. Reduced to rubble by an earthquake in 1966, it was rebuilt by the communist authorities, who on this occasion convinced the central authorities in Moscow to allocate resources for construction of a rapid transit line – the Tashkent Metro – the first in Central Asia.

 

Upon arrival I left my hotel near the Kosmonavtlar metro station looking for the centre. What I mean by the centre of a city is a congested area, bustling with people and streets lined with shops, lively cafes and restaurants, fashionable clubs, cinemas, theatres, along with banks, hairdressers’ and so on. What I found in Tashkent, however, were single shops and restaurants, in one of which I had dinner before continuing my wander. However, I didn’t find anything you could call a centre. When you look at the street map, it seems that the centre stretches between Amir Timur Square and Mustakillik (Independence) Square. The squares are spacious with grandiose buildings rising around them, but there were hardly any people there so I didn’t feel as if I was in the centre. Sayilgoh Street, for some curious reason nicknamed Broadway, did not look central either: it is a cheerless pedestrian precinct lined with rather ugly buildings and kiosks serving fast food and cold drinks. Finally, in a different part of the city, I came across one street where there were a few more shops, restaurants and cafes along a stretch of 100 to 150 metres. This was Amir Timur Street (not to be confused with Amir Timur Square) by the Television Tower (the Bodomozor metro station). Some restaurants can also be found along Sharof Rashidov Shoh ko’chasi between Afrosiyob and Ozbekiston, near to Kosmonavtlar metro station. Only later did I find out that the communists had designed the city in this way on purpose: there was to be no centre where people could gather and exchange ideas.

 

The metro itself is a tourist attraction. For one thing, some of the stations are really very nice. Secondly, the post-Soviet atmosphere is more detectable here than anywhere else. You don’t buy tickets but tokens; they are not sold by machines but by cashiers. By the way, the metro stations in Tashkent are the only places in Uzbekistan where you are conscientiously given your change – elsewhere no one really cares about change below UZS 500, or even below UZS 1,000. So if you happen to collect banknotes, the metro stations provide an opportunity to snap up virtually valueless banknotes of UZS 200. As for tokens, you insert them into slots in a turnstile. However, for some reason the turnstiles remain open, so there is someone there keeping an eye on passengers and checking that they are honest… There are also security guards (soldiers?) looking into the bags of passengers, but this is a sign of the times we live in. The metro network consists of three lines: red, blue and green (though the carriages of all the lines are blue). The network is not thick, so you sometimes have to walk quite a distance from the station. You can also flag down a car and the driver may be eager to drive you for a small fee (read more: Uzbekistan: practical advice).

 

Tashkent does not boast many monuments. In my view, the most interesting one is the Kukeldash Madrasah, located next to Chorsu Bazaar. It dates to the 16^th century and is still active, with a beautiful, well-maintained inner yard. Nearby rises the oldest and the largest mosque in Tashkent, namely the Friday Mosque, erected in the 15^th century and the third largest in Uzbekistan (after the Bibi-Khanum Mosque in Samarkand and the Po-i-Kalan in Bukhara). A few hundred metres to the north of the bazaar is the Hazrati Imam Ensemble, which consists of the Hazrati Imam Friday Mosque (built in 2007), the Muyi Mubarak Madrasah (from the 16^th century), housing a museum of ancient books, mainly the Koran, as well as the Barak-khan Madrasah, the most beautiful one, also built in the 16^th century. Chorsu Bazaar itself is a tourist sight, for many tourists the most interesting one, as it is one of the oldest and largest bazaars in Central Asia. The bazaar owes its specific atmosphere to cheap eateries and money-changers touting tourists. Maybe Chorsu Bazaar is the proper centre of the city, as you can buy just about everything here, from fruit and vegetables, to clothes, leather bags and industrial goods at prices much lower than in the shops. The bazaar is another place where the post-Soviet atmosphere can be easily detected.

 

On my last day, I went for a walk from my hotel to the nearby Alisher Navoi Park. According to my newly published guidebook (2019), the locals love having a rest in the cafes and restaurants located by this man-made lake. The absence of residents might be explained by the time – it was around midday on a weekday, but all that was left of the man-made lake was an empty pool. There was no trace of a single cafe or restaurant. In a different part of the city, by the Television Tower, I visited the White Mosque (2014) and had a good lunch. The Television Tower was closed, but I didn’t regret it much – you can only admire the view of the city through the glass windows at the top.

At the very end, I was pooped on by a pigeon. I didn’t take much of a liking to Tashkent. Apparently the feeling was mutual.

The Crying Mother Monument was built in honour of 400,000 Uzbek soldiers killed during the Second World War, and their mothers. The creators used the Pieta motif.