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When running for president, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain was talking about media “gotcha questions” against him, and said, “When they ask me who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan I’m going to say, you know, I don’t know. Do you know?” Cain’s joke was rooted in picking and making fun of a place he saw as so completely obscure and random that nobody would care about or even know it existed. However, Uzbekistan in Central Asia is starting to get noticed, and might be the next big destination in international travel. Uzbekistan has appeared on several lists of best places to travel, and YouTuber Drew Binsky, who has been to every country in the world, states that Uzbekistan might well be the cheapest country in the world and that Central Asia is his favorite travel region.

When traveling to Uzbekistan, most people hit the “Big Three,” which are the cities of Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva. These three spectacular cities were on the Silk Road and Spice Route, and display marvelous medieval mosques, minarets, and madrassas with magnificent turquoise tiles. While I will at some point write about visiting those cities, in this article I want to write about a place that not many tourists visit when going to Uzbekistan, but one that is still worthwhile, and that is the capital, Tashkent, as well as a fantastic day trip you can take from there to neighboring Tajikistan.

Located in eastern Uzbekistan, a 2.5 hour highspeed train ride away from Samarkand, lies Uzbekistan’s largest city and capital with approximately 3 million residents. While Tashkent lacks the spectacles of the touristy cities, the capital is a mix of old and modern, traditional and cosmopolitan, and is the financial center of the country. It is filled with luxury hotels and world-class restaurants. Throughout the city, you can find centers serving plov or osh, one of the national dishes of Uzbekistan, or rice pilaf and meat. A restaurant that I highly recommend is Afsona, which gives a modern take on Uzbek food, providing traditional meals in an upscale setting.

Much like other former Soviet cities, you can see in the city architectural layers from its traditional past, to its Communist era, to today. To see old, traditional Tashkent, head to the Chorsu Bazaar. Located in Tashkent’s old town next to a 500-year-old madrassah, the Chorsu Bazaar is a market that is over a hundred years old, and it is hard to imagine that it has changed much since then. Surrounding a building, there are many stalls selling everything from clothing to vegetables. Step inside the bazaar buildings and you will find jewelry and gold sections of the market, and then in the middle, a giant domed structure that has largely butchers and stalls selling meat. For animal lovers, this area is not for the faint of heart as you will see pretty much every part of the animal being sold here and the smell can be a bit overwhelming. On the second level are great views of the meat market and also numerous stalls selling dried fruits, teas, and spices.

However, the highlight of Tashkent might be its Communist-era remnants. In the middle of the city is Amir Timur Square, with one of the three national statues of the 14th century Uzbek-Mongol conqueror Timur, the nation’s historic hero, as well as a museum dedicated to him. Right behind Timur’s statue is the Hotel Uzbekistan, built in 1974 to highlight for guests of the city the brutalist architecture of the Soviet Union. Standing before this hotel, which you can still stay in, feels like a complete time warp and it is easy to imagine the rooms having been bugged by the KGB to monitor the prominent guests who stayed in what was once considered the city’s most elite hotel. The best example of Soviet architecture you can actually find below ground in Tashkent’s underground metro, which until a couple years ago did not allow photos as the metro also served as a nuclear bomb shelter. Opened in 1977 as Central Asia’s first metro, this major attraction costs less than 50 cents to experience, as you can pick from Tashkent’s four metro lines and 50 stops which you want to see. Much like Moscow’s metro, the Tashkent subway system has beautiful, ornate stations that were meant to inspire pride among the workers on their daily commutes. Easily the most famous station in Tashkent’s metro is the Kasmonavtlar Station, dedicated to the Soviet space program. In this station are murals of various Soviet cosmonauts and space heroes, as well as Galileo and Ulugbek, the grandson of Timur who was a world-renowned astronomer in addition to being an emperor. The ceiling is designed to look like the Milky Way, while the walls of the station are meant to resemble space with dark, navy blue tiles.

In modern times, the Uzbek government has also built many madrassahs in the Old Town that are designed to look like their more famous counterparts in Samarkand and Bukhara. These buildings house some of the world’s oldest Qurans and also have many educational centers on Islam, and if you have more time in Tashkent are likely worth spending a couple hours checking out.

While there are not many day trips to take from Tashkent, there is one that is particularly interesting, and that is to the neighboring country of Tajikistan. Located only a couple hours away from Tashkent is the second largest city of Tajikistan, Khujand, another Silk Road city that today has a population of around 200,000 in the city proper, and a million people in the metro area. The drive to Khujand is beautiful, especially as you enter the Fergana Valley. The Fergana Valley is an ethnically diverse region that encompasses parts of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It is mountainous, and while some areas are more desert, it is overall very green and famous for being highly successful in agriculture. For this reason, the produce that I had in the Fergana Valley was easily the freshest and best tasting in my and my wife’s lives.

When you arrive at the Uzbek-Tajik border, it is an experience in itself. Historically, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan do not have the best relations, though in recent years these have improved. After going through numerous checkpoints and walking for nearly a mile through no-man’s land at the border checkpoints, you will successfully arrive in Tajikistan where dozens of taxi drivers stand offering to take you to Khujand, about half an hour away, or even Dushanbe, the capital, located a 6-hour drive further. Khujand is a beautiful city with ancient roots dating back over 2500 years and was conquered by Alexander the Great, who renamed the city “Distant Alexander.” The downtown has a well landscaped park adorned with thousands of colorful flowers. This park leads up to the riverbank of the Syr Darya, Central Asia’s longest river at 1400 miles, which cuts the city in two. At the nearby Citadel ruins, dating back to the 8th century with origins from a couple thousand years ago, you can stand on top of the mound and get great views of the river, the city, the surrounding mountains, and the gondola, which connects the city from one side of the river to the other. Check out the promenade overlooking the river that houses busts of prominent Tajiks from history too.

In Khujand there are a couple of museums worth visiting. On the northern side of the citadel ruins is the Historical Museum of Sughd (the name of the province that Khujand is in). The museum is an elaborate reconstruction of what the fortress may have looked like hundreds of years ago. Inside are exhibits on the caveman days and prehistoric times in Sughd, Alexander the Great, and Timur Malik who resisted the Mongol invasion. The mosaics of Alexander show his life, including featuring him and his Tajik wife from the Khujand area. The museum also shows crafts, rugs, and weavings that are traditional to the area. During Soviet times, Khujand was known as Leninabad, named for Vladimir Lenin, and there is an exhibition on that period as well, and also on the modern state of Tajikistan. Next to the museum is a new elaborate building designed to look like the madrassahs of Samarkand, Uzbekistan, with a stunning and ornate interior. Outside of the structure are areas that display Tajik woodworking, art, and music. Khujand also has a 16th century mosque with wooden carved columns and an adjoining mausoleum to the 12th century poet and ruler Sheikh Muslekheddin with an opal dome. However, Khujand’s main attraction might be its sprawling bazaar, the Panjshanbe Market, meaning the “Thursday market.” With its rich produce in the area, it is worth getting fruits and dried apricots and nuts from here as you go through the long rows of the market.

As Uzbekistan rises in tourism over the coming years, it is likely that Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khiva’s charm may be spoiled by overtourism; as a result, when you go to Uzbekistan head to Tashkent and a daytrip to Khujand, where you will likely be one of the only tourists and get to see a slice of authentic traditional and modern Central Asia.

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