Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and has a little over 2 million inhabitants. It was first known around the 2nd century BC as a small settlement. In the 17th century, it was part of the Bukhara Khanate, and in 1809 it became part of the Kokand Khanate. It is a very pleasant city and has little traffic, which is certainly a relief for us, Dutch people, who are used to lengthy traffic jams.
In 1966, a big earthquake devastated the city, and it was rebuilt with help of the Russians. Many stories exist, pointing towards the fact that the Russians exerted more influence than necessary on the rebuilding and that they used the occasion to stay in the country. 20% of the newly build apartments was given to Russian building volunteers, which lead to big protests among the Uzbek population. The Russians certainly left a Soviet stamp on the city.
Tashkent, existed since the second century, as Ming-Uruk (thousand apricot trees), and there are still millions of fruit trees available in streets and gardens. Tashkent has not always been the capital of Uzbekistan. In 1809, it was an annex of the Kokand khanate. In 1865, Uzbekistan came under Russian "protection" and in 1918, Tashkent was declared the capital of the autonomous Turkestan SSR. However, after the Uzbek autonomous SSR was split off, Samarqand became the capital and only in 1930 the role was given back to Tashkent.

Tashkent means "City of Stone" and it got its name in the 11th century. The Anchor Canal divides the city in two parts, the old Uzbek and the new Russian part, even though since the earthquake this division is not clear anymore. In the old part you can find Chorsu (means crossroad in Uzbek) bazaar, a very colorful place, amid small streets with mud houses. Besides Chorsu stands the Kukeldash Medressa (picture on the right), which was built in the 16th century.
The Barak Khan medressa, picture to the left, is nowadays used as a selling place for handicrafts. You can find beautiful boxes with miniature paintings, hand carved wooden objects, big metal boxes, ceramics. There is hardly any tourist there so you can enter the shop and look at how the artists are working. The only other "tourist place' in Tashkent is Broadway, an euphemistic name for one small street lined with small restaurants in prefab wooden buildings or tents.
Recently, the government has demolished Broadway and cut the threes that obstructed the view on the statue of Amir Timur. They are also busy destroying the mud houses close to Chorsu. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and apparenlty the Uzbek Government does not want to take up that role.

Not only are there few cars on the street in Tashkent, the ones that are there are usually very old. In the Netherlands a car of more than 25 years old would be an old-timer, well, in Tashkent every other car is an old-timer. You can find Wolgas, Zhigulis, very old Ladas and Moskvitches. Also public transport has seen its best days and frequently buses are stranded or the driver is jumping out to quickly repair some fallen off part. However old, they are always crammed with people.

Apart from motorized vehicles, you still see a lot of donkey carts in the street. Goats and sheep also are quite normal, especially in the smaller street. Our neighbor kept a cow on a very small patch of land at the side of our street. Other neighbors used to walk 4 sheep as if they were dogs, twice a day. Afterwards they were brought back to their garden.
Policemen are a special species here. Since their wages are very low, they have to use their creative gifts to earn money. They will stop cars and tell them they trespassed some law. The truth content of this statement maybe zero; however for the driver it will be a trade off between time and money. If you have time to discuss, usually he will let you go after 5 or 10 minutes, If not, you get out of the car, put your hand on your chest, bow humbly, simply put 1,000 soums in your closed driving license, give it to him, recollect your empty driving license and off you go.
Tashkent has also a metro line since 1970, and almost all stations are beautifully decorated. Many artists have taken part in the design and every station has a theme.

The quality of food is very good in Tashkent. In the bazaar and on every street corner you can find fresh and very tasty fruit and vegetables. The fruit to the left is called "kurma" and I have never seen it anywhere else; the Uzbeks adore it and it is very beautiful too. The other thing special is lipioshka, which is also eaten in other Central Asian countries. It is a flat bread, baked in a clay oven without yeast, decorated with special bread stamps. It is simply delicious. Also, they have delicious apricots. Apricots blossom very early, and since winters can be very cold but also very short, around Navruz the country was full of blossom. In Uzbekistan, every street in the city is lined with fruit trees (which gave raise to the early name of the city), so for one or two weeks, you would only see blossom everywhere. In autumn, there would be dried apricots in the bazaar, in various qualities, from very cheap to very expensive. But tasting is always free.

The weather is normally quite nice and almost always sunny. In the year 2000 the sun became too much, there was almost no rain in summer which lead to a drought crisis in parts of the country. In July and August it can be as hot as 45 Celsius, but it does not happen often and the nights are cool. In winter normally there will be two weeks of snow and cold. Once however, as you can see on the picture to the left, we had snow in August, which was very strange because the next day was another hot summer day.
Close to Broadway, Amir Timur, the national Uzbek hero and slaughter of many citizens, is sitting high on his horse, overlooking the city from the central square.