(Last Updated on Apr 6, 2024)

The capital of Uzbekistan and the largest city in Central Asia, Tashkent literally translates to “Stone City”. It is very close to the Kazakhstan border. As with most cities in the region, it was completely destroyed by Genghis Khan only to be revived and restored to glory by Amir Timur. It was built as a modern Soviet city after the 1966 earthquake – including the iconic metro which continues to operate to this day!

Our journey started at Tashkent and we were now back after an amazing journey covering Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand. When we left off in our last blog, we had enjoyed visits to the iconic monuments of Samarkand and boarded the Afrosiyob high speed train to Tashkent. Let’s dive right into Day 6 of the trip!

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Day 6

The train hit a top speed of over 260 kmph on this leg from Samarkand to Tashkent. The Tashkent train station was quite huge and it took us some time to get to the main road. We took Yandex from the train station to our guesthouse near Chorsu called Gulnara.

It was a proper residential area and the guesthouse was just one of the houses on the Ozod street. We checked into our room and settled in. It was a very basic room and quite small in size. Tashkent was quite expensive in terms of hotel rates and even this guesthouse did not come very cheap. As with all the rooms we had stayed in till now, this one too was full of stuff from the brand Artel – fridge, AC and TV! This brand was everywhere – when I googled it, I found that it was quite a new brand and they seemed to have done something right to get this level of adoption!

No one was particularly hungry (after that wholesome lunch at Samarkand). But my dad, sis and I decided to explore nearby and walked to a restaurant, Lagman House, for dinner. It was as local a place as could be – the menu was entirely in Uzbek and Russian and so were all the staff. We had some chicken kebab, kompot and a Napoleon pastry. Once again, Google translate came in very handy in helping us communicate that we wanted only chicken and no other meat. The meat was fresh and kebab delicious. It was past 10pm but there were plenty of people walking on the streets and atleast this neighborhood felt quite safe. We walked back to the guesthouse and slept.

Day 7
It was our last day of exploring Uzbekistan. We had kept our itinerary flexible and decided to skip the mosques and mausoleums – we had seen plenty of the best monuments in the country already and didn’t want more of the same.

We started the day with the breakfast at our guesthouse – salad of cucumber and tomato, cheese, salami, bread, eggs and tea. Breakfast was served in the backyard – an open area with 4-5 tables spread out and 3 tapchan (the raised seating+dining furniture) on one side of it.

We walked over to the Chorsu bazaar. Google maps was quite bad at showing routes here in Uzbekistan – it did not have a lot of walking routes mapped – it told us to walk all the way to the main road and go along that. We used the Maps.me app find a shortcut to Chorsu through some narrow residential lanes. Here we again saw yellow pipes outside houses and all along the little streets – similar to what we had seen in Bukhara and Samarkand – we assumed these were carrying gas.

The market area was quite huge. There were many domes spread across a big area. We started off in a section which had plants and flowers. Next, we went to a section for sweets and bought biscuits and a giant sugar crystal which we had seen in some other shops as well. We continued walking towards the large central dome. On the way, we got sidetracked and entered the gold market thinking that it was connected to the other ones. Tip: don’t enter the gold market. It is a standalone building.

Finally, we crossed a section with fruits and vegetables and got to the dome. To our surprise the entire place was full of meat! All kinds of meat imaginable! Any cut you can think of, you’ll find it here!

We walked around it once and moved on. We couldn’t find any good variety of souvenirs here – there were a few shops but nothing impressive. Another tip: don’t leave your souvenir shopping till Tashkent. Buy the good stuff in Bukhara and Samarkand.

As we walked around, we noticed a lady next to a huge pile of watermelons and asked her if she would cut some up for us. And to our own surprise, we almost ended up finishing an entire watermelon – it was tasty and perfect in that weather! If you are in Uzbekistan, eat the watermelons!

We decided to take a break and head back to the room. On the way back, we saw a small wagon with a tap at the end and a lady pouring out drinks from it. We bought a couple of glasses and tried it – it was Mors, a drink very similar to Kompot. It comes under the family of Russian fruit drink alternates to cola and fizzy drinks. It was quite refreshing! We headed to our room and slept through the hot afternoon.

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After a break, we took cabs to go to Besh Qozon, the Central Asian Pilaf Centre. It is a giant restaurant next to the Tashkent TV tower where they make plov in huge cauldrons and bake nan breads in human sized ovens. They literally walk into the oven to place the dough and take out the baked bread. It was well worth the hype – the plov was excellent! It pairs well with the achik chuchuk salad (tomato and onion), yogurt with basil and dill, quail eggs, bread and kompot.

The menu had limited items but everything tasted excellent – even the bread! One way to know if the food is actually good is to check how many locals visit there – this was filled to the brim with them!

We took cabs again to start our metro tour at Bodomzor metro. This was the part that I was looking forward to the most in Tashkent!

The Tashkent metro system is a work of art in itself – every station is designed uniquely and carries the charm of a bygone era with the functionality and aesthetic of a modern public transport. The metro was constructed in the Soviet era when the entire city was being rebuilt after a devastating earthquake. The metro also served as underground bunkers to keep the citizens safe in the eventuality of a war. The metro is a matter of pride in Tashkent and well preserved – in fact, photography was prohibited inside till 2018.

We covered the following stations in our first route – Bodomzor, Ming Urik, Oybek, Kosmonavtlar, Alisher Navoiy, Paxtakor and Amir Timur Xiyoboni. This included two change-overs of lines. Some of the trains were ancient – you can see through the windows on the ends of the coaches. At places where the train turns, you can see the entire length of it making the turn – right from the first coach to the last one. Some of them were modern – like the ones you get to see in some European countries.

We got down at Amir Timur station and walked out to find ourselves right in front of Hotel Uzbekistan. It was a lot better looking in reality than what you see in photos. A fine piece of Soviet architecture, Hotel Uzbekistan is an icon of Tashkent. We crossed the road through an underpass and entered the Amir Timur square. It was a nice park with a statue of Amir Timur on a horse.

We sat there for some time while Parth ate his share of the plov. He was sleeping peacefully at Besh Qozon and missed the whole thing. We met some Indians who were travelling there from Dubai. Apparently, next week would see a flood of tourists from UAE coming over to nearby countries as there was an entire week of holidays for Eid. As I sat on one of the benches there, I could feel a subtle vibration when the metro train passed underneath!

We walked along the Sailgokh street towards Independence square. It was almost 6:30pm but most of the shops were still closed. I really wanted to visit the national history museum but it was closed by now. We passed by an area that was full of table tennis tables. Another street was completely covered in paintings of all sizes – most of them depicted scenes and monuments from different places in Uzbekistan.

Everyone was feeling a bit exhausted with all the walking and we were hoping to find a cafe where we could sit down for some time. But there was nothing open even at 7pm! So we crossed the road over to the Independence square. We sat next to the fountains and spent some time there.

We looked for dinner places but found nothing nearby which served something other than plov, manti and kebabs. We really wanted some familiar food as it was almost a week since we had been away from home.

We decided to get back to our room and then go to the same place as last night for dinner. We entered the Mustaqillik maydani station, got down at Paxtakor, changed over to Alisher Navoiy, got down at Gafur Gulom and finally at Chorsu.

The Chorsu stop is something I will not recommend especially after 8pm. It gets dark and you enter right in the middle of the market when people are shutting down their shops. We lost our way a couple of times and finally reached the main road. We then took the morning route and walked back to our Guesthouse. This last part drained everyone of their energy and we ended up skipping dinner.

It was almost 9:30pm by the time we finished our payment for the rooms. The guesthouse was being run by a family and only the old grandmother and grandfather were at home at that time. She kept speaking to me in Russian and by her tone, I was getting a sense of things and speaking back to her in English. She said we should book city taxis for the morning as Yandex may not be dependable for a 4:30am pickup. She helped with the booking by calling up the cab’s helpline. We packed our bags and slept.

Day 8
We had an early start to the day. We woke up at 4am (the sky was already bright!!). We said goodbye to our host and left for the airport. It took us hardly 20 mins to reach. One of the lasting memories we will have of Uzbekistan is the sound of squealing tires as vehicles made sudden turns on the roads and kept skidding. We had never experienced this anywhere else. There were no two wheelers anywhere, only cars which kept squealing as they turned corners or changed lanes.

And that brings us to the end of this adventure in Uzbekistan. Thank you for all the love you’ve shown over the course of this series of blogs and making them the most viewed ones. We will be following this up with an “Itinerary” post and “Travel and Eats” post – so that you can easily plan your trip to Uzbekistan.

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Check out our other Uzbekistan blogs here:

• The Roughest Start We’ve Ever Faced – a cancelled flight, a delayed one and many other challenges kicked off our trip to Central Asia
• Time Traveling in Khiva – A Hidden Treasure of Uzbekistan
• Enchanting Bukhara – A Treasure of the Silk Road. Join us as we explore this oasis
• Samarkand – Where History and Beauty Converge
• Tashkent Tales – The Uzbek “Metro” Capital
• The Uzbek itinerary – plan your perfect trip to Uzbekistan

Continue with us on our next trip to Kazakhstan here:

• The Kazakh Itinerary – the perfect short and sweet itinerary through the Steppes
• Almaty – The Origin Of Apples And An Amazing City!
• Captivating Kazakhstan – Awe-Inspiring nature at its finest – a journey through steppes, mountains, lakes and canyons