Exploring Tashkent

The hostel breakfast was good. I started with some cornflakes and yoghurt. Then the hots from the kitchen included eggs on toast, sausage roll, cracked bulghur wheat (I think) and some garnish.

I headed out after 0800 by metro headed for the Sheikhantaur Mausoleum Complex. It was a little hard to find as part of it was inaccessible within a university compound and the remainder tucked on the edge which made it accessible. It wasn’t anything to write home about but still nice enough to have a little bit of traditional architecture in Tashkent (most of it was flattened by earthquake in 1966 leading to boring Soviet style buildings).

From there I walked to the History Museum of the People of Uzbekistan. The walk took me through broad boulevards with lined with parks and government buildings. There was a huge presence of officers in their bluish-green uniforms.

They seemed rather serious and quite authoritative in managing pedestrians. I dared not take any photos for nearly my entire day out.

The museum started with the prehistoric, then Bronze etc leading to the Silk Road era and finally modern day Uzbekistan. It was interesting even though not all displays were captioned in English.

I continued to Amir Timur Square but it was hard to get a good angle of any monuments and buildings on camera. I realised the Uzbekistan Airways office was nearby. First attempt turned out to be the Corporate HQ which didn’t have any customer-facing staff. A little down the road, I found the ticket office where I could check that my booking through Expedia was A-OK. When bookings are not made directly with the airline, bad things can happen, eg. the ticket number may not be correctly transmitted and the airline thinks it hasn’t been ticketed and might cancel it. It has happened several times before.

It was midday and I decided it was time to take the metro home. I took the wrong exit back at my station, Oybek. I walked down a wide boulevard. Pedestrians were being stopped. Then came a long motorcade of black expensive vehicles led, accompanied and tailed by motorbikes with screaming sirens. With the number of Kyrgyz flags hanging around town, I deduced that the Kyrgyz president was here for a visit (and I confirmed it later on the internet).

For lunch I tried plov (pilaf) which is also known as osh. It is greasy lamb rice. Quite yummy but I was concerned about how much fat was in it. While I took mine in the same restaurant as last night, I did see how fat had pooled in the pan on the street-side version.

I rested for the rest of the day and had a simple dinner of lavash (like a kebab roll-up). It was delicious … the bread had delaminated into a flakey crispy layer while retaining a soft layer. And the filling was tasty too.