Tashkent: mobile beer carts and very fresh chicken!

Surprisingly there was a car sent by the hotel waiting to pick us up. Our hotel was in the inner suburbs sandwiched between the crumbly Russian built apartment blocks to the East and the remaining old Uzbek houses that had withstood the earthquake. These houses have wide verandas, imposing doors and delicate filigree on their balconies. They invoke thoughts of a graceful age of civilisation and the arts, which gradually conceded to Russian practicalities and heaved its final sigh during the 1966 earthquake. These houses seem incongruous and slightly embarrassed to be sitting side by side with Russian apartment blocks, turning their tired faces to the autumn sun with the resignation that they won’t be around for much longer.

We were greeted at the hotel by the teenage receptionist – shown to our room and indulged in (semi) hot showers. Bliss. This was followed with a sample of the local beer before we collapsed very satisfactorily into bed.

Setting out to head into town the next morning brought a whole host of first impressions. Wide arterial streets (built for tanks) occupied by turquoise Daewoo cars bustling about to a backdrop of gaudy advertising billboards for products such as mobile phones and the local water park. Overgrown flowerbeds line the roads highlighting the Islamic Uzbek love of flowers and beauty, flavoured with a distinctly Russian soupcon of negligence. The pavements are full of people manning little homemade stalls – usually selling fruit from their gardens, cigarettes, lighters and roasted nuts. Unusually, in cash strapped Uzbekistan you never have to buy whole packets of anything – hence the opportunity to purchase a single cigarette or nappy should the need arise.

Lottery ticket sales are big business here (a dash of the capitalist dream perhaps) often hawked by buxom babushkas or aging military veterans. Local bakeries waft tantalising aromas across greasy countertops and hand out buttery pastry filled with sharp cheese, fresh spinach or spiced meat. The melon season was clearly upon us as evidenced by the heaps of melons blocking side streets with bored teenagers manning their goods, which were all handily wrapped in raffia type stuff to provide a handle with which to carry them. The shops and houses are generously interspersed by tired, dusty parks featuring carbuncled paths and large iron statues of bossy Russians mid speech. Although some of the parks seem to be places of leisure and relaxation, many of their occupants look as though they live there or at least have no where better to spend their days. There are also strange concrete protrusions littered around the place. Now these might be just where the gardeners keep their tools – but they do have a conspicuously ‘nuclear bunker’ look about them.

People watching was perhaps the best fun and we certainly provided entertainment for the locals (perhaps it was the concept of sandals without socks that was proving so amusing). The women were pretty when young in a dark and exotic sort of way with long eyelashes and a coquettish smile, tending towards the Italian Mama look in middle age. The poorer girls dress more traditionally with triangular scarves partly covering their hair, loose kaftan type tops teamed with baggy trousers and a startling collection of plastic slippers and home knitted socks. Trendier teens look misguidedly towards 1980s Russia for fashion inspiration and totter over the potholed streets in high heeled mules and skin tight jeans. In contrast to their demure sisters they are brazen in grabbing attention, plastered in make up with hair inexpertly coiffured to perfection. In essence they are the embodiment of the advertising hoarding models praying on Tashkent’s materialism. Who says advertising doesn’t work?

In contrast, few of the men seem to be going for the Russian look. The odd one or two brush the clinging dust off their baggy suits and polish their pointy toed shoes on the backs of their trousers, but the majority clearly take after their fathers and their grandfathers before them. Straggly moustaches are de rigueur, complemented by close fitting Uzbek caps and jumpers and shirts of indeterminate pattern and origin. This is where Christmas jumpers go to die. Whereas the women catch your eye and giggle or try to sell you something, the men oscillate between leering and ignoring you. The same as men anywhere really.

Our initial wanderings brought us into a smarter park dominated by a stern statue of Timur. Since independence Uzbekistan is doing its best to assert its culture and is choosing to do that by massing behind their favourite warlord – Timur. Just in the way that the Mongols look to Ghengis Khan as their spiritual warrior and the Kyrgyz honour Manas, Uzbeks place their admiration in Timur. This phenomenon is heightened in post Communist Central Asia, for many, filling the gap of organised religion. Although a Muslim nation, outpourings of faith are discouraged for fear the extremism found in the Fergana Valley and due to deep suspicions engendered by generations ground down by communism. So although Islamic virtues are widely practiced, the call to prayer is banned and many mosques are being turned into tourist attractions. It feels secretive, as though faith is tolerated but not talked about, something that ‘other people do’ and a subject you certainly don’t bring up at a dinner party! If, on the other hand, you want to discuss the murderous advances of Timur through the 14th centaury – then go ahead….

Enjoying the cool of this park and listening to the soft playing of the water irrigating the boarders we were especially impressed by the very un-Islamic local beer carts on the corners that come with a helpful bar man and a tap to top up your tankard (you bring your own) for that after work drink…sorely tempting – I’m just waiting for an Uzbek entrepreneur to bring that concept to London.

We also found the central market and get thoroughly lost in the Chorsu Bazaar and looking at the heaps of lovely vegetables. It is situated in a huge covered building that looks a bit like a sports stadium from the distance. A cornucopia of food, clothes and pretty much anything an Uzbek family would want. Despite looking chaotic, the organisation is obvious when you get amongst the stalls. Like a department store there are clear areas for different types of goods – some more familiar to a western visitor: clothes, shoes, meat etc and some less expected – sour cheese balls anyone? The sales people are vociferous but friendly and all too happy to see visitors in their midst.

It doesn’t take much imagination to strip the experience of the plastic bags and other modern accoutrements and go back in time – the market women still wear local costume of brightly coloured, striped shalwar kameez type garments; the men are swarthy with moustaches that declaim their importance and through which they drag on roll ups and the children, dressed as miniature adults, shyly peer around their mothers’ skirts at the weird tourists.

On leaving the bazaar we suddenly noticed we were in even more of a minority than usual – being the only women. We were outside one of the main mosques – the Juma or Friday mosque – a male domain. We were surrounded by bearded supplicants dressed in white robes all queuing for their post prayer meal. Whilst no hostility was evident we were obviously out of place and decided to make our way home.

As the city began to empty at the end of the day we were standing at a cross roads watching the Uzbek commute. We were also wondering what the strange sounds we could hear were, until we noticed that the chap standing next to us with carrier bags full of ingredients for supper also had a bag containing a live chicken - that was understandably a bit unimpressed with being transported that way!