By Richard Gervase Morley, BUS Society member and Uzbekistan devotee
My U-log
I am a new member of the British-Uzbek Society. Rosa Vercoe, to whom I am indebted for my induction into the Society, has asked me to write a blog about my trip to Uzbekistan in September 2024.
I am not entirely sure what a blog is. I have decided instead to write a U-log (after all, a Yule log seems appropriate in the run-up to Christmas) – by which I mean some very general first impressions of Uzbekistan.
One of the things that struck me about the place was how clean the streets were. There were sweepers everywhere, wielding great, wide brooms. As a result, there was no litter at all. There were plenty of litter bins on the pavements, helpfully arranged in colour-coded sets of three.
Equally to my surprise, there seemed to be no beggars on the streets. And no dogs! Most astonishing of all, not a single smoker (except for a policeman I spotted lighting up on a train, where it’s illegal).
And another thing, you’re not hassled by souvenir-sellers as you would be in Istanbul or Cairo. Instead, there’s an overall feeling of benevolence and calm. There are reassuring Tourist-Police kiosks, and old men on benches peacefully playing backgammon. In fact the country felt so safe I never got round to using the secret money-pouch that people tell you to wear on holiday.
And another thing, you’re not hassled by souvenir-sellers as you would be in Istanbul or Cairo. Instead, there’s an overall feeling of benevolence and calm. There are reassuring Tourist-Police kiosks, and old men on benches peacefully playing backgammon. In fact the country felt so safe I never got round to using the secret money-pouch that people tell you to wear on holiday.
And everywhere you see beautifully dressed locals, both in ancient style and in modern and of all ages
Even museum guides dress up, and musicians, young and old, dancers, carpet-sellers.
What’s more, I must have stumbled across more weddings than I’ve had hot dinners.
These children, on the other hand, were embellished with nothing more than their gold medals, apparently won for prowess in Mental Arithmetic.
Driving is a skill mastered equally early in life.
But past a certain age, a siesta is always welcome.
In any case it’s worth being able to stay awake at night for sights like these.
I mentioned I’d been on a train. Another pleasant surprise. Really wide aisles, and tables the size of football pitches.
plus a double arm-rest between seats, and a bin in front of every seat. Not to mention window-blinds and TV. And, unbelievably, complimentary tea, complimentary pastries, complimentary tissues and complimentary newspapers.
Does this remind you a tiny bit of British railways? No, I thought not.
Food: it’s delicious. You’ve heard of naan; well, in Uzbekistan it’s called non.
Equally, you know your pilaff. Here they call it plov, and they manage to consume it in industrial quantities
It looks like this on the table.
And it sells a lot of T-shirts.
You might find Napoleon Cake (even though the First Consul never got further east than Cairo).
On the other hand, you probably won’t come across the Millionaire’s Shortbread that you find all over London. But that’s not to say you won’t be a millionaire. All you have to do is change a mere sixty quid at the airport and you are the proud possessor of a million Uzbek so’m.
Autumn is the time for melons.
Gin was hard to get hold of, but I switched very happily to the local vodka, which I’m glad to say they always kept chilled. And we tasted some excellent Uzbek wine.
The restaurants and cafés were incredibly cheap; and (very civilized, this) they had wash-hand basins situated quite separately from the toilets, so that the grimy traveller could wash before lunch.
What about the people? Well, they were very friendly. And they professed themselves more pleased than we could have imagined by the smallest attempt on our part to speak Uzbek. Moreover, it was quite impossible for me, at the age of 73, to stand for more than a few seconds on the Metro — people of both sexes would leap to their feet and insist on my sitting in their place.
But why, you may ask, was I in Central Asia in the first place?
I can answer that in a single word. Tamburlaine. He gets a bad press in Britain, probably because of Christopher Marlowe’s unflattering play, Tamburlaine the Great, Part One. (Not that his image was noticeably enhanced by the same author’s Tamburlaine the Great, Part Two.) But thanks to the dynasty founded by this energetic conqueror, that of the Timurids, we get the most fabulous architecture imaginable.
More turquoise domes and blue-and-white tiles than you can shake a stick at:
And yet, for me, the highlights of the tour turned out to be two much earlier buildings, which had miraculously been spared the loving attentions of Genghis Khan.
One was this forest-like mosque in Khiva.
And the other, this mausoleum in Bukhara, with its seemingly woven brickwork (and not a trace of colour).
However, the zenith of my Central Asian adventure harked even further back in time. Have a look at this.
Far to the east, in this town of Marg’ilon in the Ferghana Valley, we stopped for lunch, only a day’s horse-ride, we were told, from China. It was only after lunch — a chicken dish accompanied by the ubiquitous ‘non’ bread — that I consulted my notes. Way back in 327 BC, no less a person than Alexander the Great had lunched in the very same little town, on his way to conquer India. And on that day so long ago he’d been given — wait for it — chicken and bread. For me, the centuries seemed to fall away. I felt I had touched the hem of Iskander, that hero of history and legend known throughout Asia.
Well worth going to Uzbekistan for, I’d say.
THE END
Credits:
We travelled courtesy of Voyages Jules Verne.
Aziz Rakhmatov of Bukhara was our brilliant tour-guide.
My fellow-traveller Nick Bowles took the pictures of the T-shirt, the non-bread, the plov-making, and the four well-dressed ladies.
