Tashkent: Soviet & Storks

Tuesday this week was spent in Tashkent, the capital and largest city in Uzbekistan (second of four countries in five days). Tashkent is actually one of the oldest cities in the world and on the original Silk Road, however very little character from ancient times remains. In 1966 the entire city was destroyed by a major earthquake and the Soviet central planners saw an opportunity to build an entirely new model city. I have to admit, from a city planning standpoint they did a nice job as Tashkent is very, very green, full of large parks, tree-lined boulevards, monuments and squares. It all came at the expense of the central Asia feel of the city, which is essentially relegated to the Old Town area. There are a lot of Soviet apartment blocks in the city, but hardly any are taller than 5 stories, so Tashkent is spread out and has very little tall buildings.

Three interesting facts about Tashkent:

• Tashkent has the only metro (subway) system in central Asia, it was built following the 1966 earthquake and it has some of the most ornate stations in the world. While in the city I did not have a chance to check out the stations but I'd recommend viewing the images of stations on this website: http://www.orexca.com/tashkent_metro.shtml

• The largest square in the former Soviet Union was in Tashkent, now called Independence Square, covers 30 acres. It was built on the former site of Kokand Khan's palace, but it was demolished by the Russians after the Tsar defeated the Khanate (along with several others in the early 1900s). The square used to include a 30-foot tall statue of Lenin, which has since been removed and replaced with a giant globe.

• In 1991, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, Tashkent was the 4th largest city in the USSR and today has 4 million people.
  

Most of our day in Tashkent was spent at two college fairs, both at the only international school. We were outside, had a college fair with the TIS students, lunch, and then a second college fair open to the public (over 300 people attended the public fair!). Here is a picture of the lunch spread we had courtesy of TIS:


After the college fairs we headed out to explore the city for the afternoon. Most of our time was spent at some older historical sites. Our first stop was the Telyashayakh Mosque:



This mosque is part of a complex that includes several other very old buildings and a small bazaar where we spent some time shopping for goods. In case you were wondering, $1 = 1,682 Uzbek sum...so we literally had pockets full of "cash" to do shopping.

Something neat, and a little random, is the presence of storks in Tashkent. I have never seen a stork in real life, but they are not only on the grounds of the mosque...


... they are featured in statues and signage around the city. Who knew? All babies come from Uzbekistan...

One of the other neat aspects of this old town complex was it is home of the Uthman Qur'an, considered to be the oldest copy in the world. It is believed to have been written in 651, just 19 years after Muhammad would have passed away. It was in Tashkent, but was taken to St. Petersburg in the 1860s after the Russians invaded but was returned to the region in the 1920s as a good will gift by Lenin when consolidating power. It is now in the library of the Telyashayakh Mosque.

After some sight seeing we wrapped the day up with dinner at a local Uzbek restaurant called Caravan that specialized in Uzbek cuisine: