Tashkent Botanic Gardens Walk

For about seventy cents a person, you can get fresh air in Tashkent's Botanic Gardens. The difference of clarity is astonishing and as winter approaches and the heaters turn on, dust and pollution constantly hang in the air. Inside the garden, you are buffered from the smog and city noise by a variety tall trees and thick plant overgrowth. Most plants are unlabeled, or were once labeled but have since faded. It's so fresh here, even the public drop toilets don't stink. We paid an additional fifty cents each to step inside the green house, well heated by radiators, but our favorite part of the garden was the side that backs to the city zoo. I can't identify trees very well, but of the caged birds beyond the fence, I could. Loud birds chirping and squawking made the whole experience feel a bit more wild and remote. 

Tibetan Cherry Tree

untouched photo

 

Amirsoy Ski Resort Is Real Hiking

After last weekend's unwanted political pig wrestling match, it was time to venture out of the city without a guide. Our safest bet was to check out Uzbekistan's newest ski resort: Amirsoy. It was such a hotly anticipated opening, the resort was ready before the road to get there was last year. Hairpins and 12% grades made for an impressive drive to the base where we were guided into the dusty lot in an orderly fashion, but the parking of vehicles was more like a monster truck rally event.

We paid about five dollars a person to ride up to 7,500 feet in their spacious gondola to enjoy a panoramic view from the Maygashkan Mountain. Folks in bedazzled heels, hijabs, track suits, or Jack Wolfskin gear gathered in their respective groups to drink, picnic, take selfies, and hike around the rocky summit. As usual Mark and Deets wore shorts, thus pegging us for Americans and a few folks enthusiastically inquired about the election and getting green card issues solved. Skidding down the rocky Alfa Run to the eastern saddle of the mountain, we enjoyed a short 3-mile hike to a neighboring peak reserved for future development before riding back down. But, is it even a hike if you take the chair lift? Mark says: no way. I say: do whatever it takes to be able to hike alone, and I am okay if it's considered cheating.

Come winter time, Amirsoy should have ten runs, two lifts, five magic carpets, plus a tubing hill. A daily pass costs between $15-24 USD (weekday/weekend) and a season pass is about $400. There are chalets available to rent and the restaurant has fabulous shashlik (meat kebabs) so I can see us returning for much needed mental health breaks and fresh air sooner than later.

We completed the day trip with a loop around another ski resort outside of Chimgan, where there are 6 very vintage lifts and you pay by the ride. I understand the resort is also popular for winter horseback riding and snowmobiling. How that works among the throngs of plastic boot walkers hauling equipment on ice and snow, it must be fascinating. Whatever. Sign me up.

A good chunk of Chimgan village has tightly fit vacation homes called dachas, a wildly popular sanitarium, and countless road side stands selling brilliantly colored plums, pears, apples, and nuts. Oh, and honey with many hues of brown and gold and yellow. Uzbekistan has very active beekeeping associations in all the regions of the country, and with good reason.  Honey is an important product here. According to a 2016 publication about honey in traditional cuisine of Uzbekistan, there are 134 different types of flowers that bees rely on in one region alone. There is a high consumption everywhere and the beekeepers pride themselves on meeting and exceeding international quality standards. They weren't wrong. We all got sugar highs on empty stomachs for the 90-minute drive home.

Dangerous edge! Don't come closer than 2 meters. 

Ironically, the print was so small I had to get super close. 

The edge indeed spills over immediately. 

Gondola summit to the left.

Exploring beyond.

Credit: Mark

Charvak Reservoir

Masked (yay!) vendor who told us all about his extended family living in New York. 

Halloween Hike: Tian Shen-ish Mountains

Even though we like Tashkent so far, it is still a big city, and with big cities there are big headaches: noise, trash, pollution, traffic, harried life. If you squint on a good day against the haze, you can see the western end of the Chaktal Range of the Tian Shan Mountains from the city, and we were aching to go hike them. Getting there wasn't easy though - because there are no hiking guides and no maps (that I have found). Roads are often blocked off for secret military reasons, so you are forced to detour. Forget about consistent GPS and cell phone coverage. Then, if you get to where you want to go, trailheads are not marked and the word "trail" itself is relative, leaving hikers to make it up as they go.

We hired a local guide who kinda knew where to go. She shared some interesting details about the dynamic landscape and boasted about meeting Paul McCartney once. Unfortunately, she also had a lot to say about politics and current events, nothing of which I cared to discuss on my family hiking trip. And her singing was terrible. There had to be a silver lining somewhere. By not having a proper trail - I could socially distance as much as I wanted. 

At this time of year, the mountain's plants are brown and brittle but the spines were as sharp as ever. Only the juniper trees were green and thriving. They made excellent hand holds when we were sliding down or scrambling up. We ate tiny fruit off a tree, which looked like yellow cherries with a pit and tasted like apple-mango. We watched eagles, sparrows, and vultures glide overhead against a panoramic view of snow dusted mountains that spread into Kazakhstan. My children summited the extinct volcano like champs, and the charm of the vastness was enough to put me in a cautiously good mood for the rest of the day. 

donkey: осел (pronounced osel)

Vendors on the R12 highway at dusk.

Khazrati Imam Mosque and the Old City Neighborhood

If I ever go on a walking tour of Tashkent again, I promise to remember the following: 

1. Public bathrooms are very hard to find on walking tours. 

2. Bring water, but not too much (see #1). 

3. Bring snacks. Avoid the kind of hangriness that even ice cream and fresh non can't cure if you wait too long. Also, making unannounced pit stops where the group is likely to lose you before venturing into a maze of unmarked streets is probably not a good idea.  

4. The city is huge. Before we got to the good stuff, we covered long boring distances over littered and broken sidewalks, neglected landscaping, and rows of temporary fencing, all while listening to the roar of urban traffic and construction. 

5. Free walking tours means literally all walks of life could be on the tour: masked, half-masked, non-masked, jerks, cool people, whiners, dog-walkers, nosy and intrusive photographers, networkers, smokers, etc...

6. Beauty is everywhere, especially in between the noisy spaces. You just have to look. It's etched into the stone and wood, sewn into the fabric, glowing from the children, and illuminating the neighborhood paths.

Photo credit: Mark

tradition, chic, & tech

Photo credit: Mark

Details I missed but Mark caught - 

near the statue of Abdulla Qodiriy, a famous Uzbek playwright.

Photo credit: Mark

Khazrati Imam Mosque

Spare Prayer Rugs

Shoe rack

Pre-spaced devotion

Old City and the Kolkouz Canal

Old City alley

 

Street Snax in Tashkent

Along a pedestrian path, a man sells cups of "salqin ichimlik" dispensed out of a large yellow tank hooked up to a cooling unit. Roughly translated as cool-drink, it looks like tinted sugar water and tastes vaguely like a cross between Gatorade and Kool-aide. A small cup costs about 10 cents, a large is 20, and 50 cents for a liter. The cool drink's competitor sells kbac (pronounced kvass) and she charges about a third more. Around this region, kbac is far more popular than cool-drink. It's a traditional fermented Slavic/Baltic beverage commonly made from rye bread. Kbac tastes a bit sour, a bit sweet, and a bit nutty. And, it is overwhelmingly refreshing. In my opinion, it should be served very cold and consumed quickly because flat, warm kbac tastes like sadness. 

Either drink pairs well with fall days and street snacks so long as it is chilled. Interestingly, I found that most restaurants ask customers twice if they want iced drinks over concern for illness - ice is not really a thing here, but cold drinks? Yes. 

For a starch fix, buy a cup-o-corn or cobbed corn seasoned with liquid margarine and served in a plastic bag. The corn doesn't have the esteem of Iowa sweet corn, but it does has an impressive, strong flavor. Savory, Central Asian pastries called somsas might be filled with meat or chicken, pumpkin, or potato and are well worth the price of 25 cents. They are best eaten immediately out of the oven to minimize soggy pastry dough and heartburn from the onions and garlic - which blessedly are staple ingredients here. 

It goes without saying that meat kebabs (shashleek) is always a good decision, as is plov, Uzbekistan's amazing meat and rice dish. Both can be found for about 1 dollar. But it's the fresh lepeshka that makes my eyes roll to the back of my head and sigh with contentment. Most of the road side signs and store fronts advertise it as "non" but it has many names: lepeshka, patir, naan. It's a simple round bread loaf made of high gluten flour, milk/yogurt, yeast, salt, and sugar and is cooked in a tandoor. A whole loaf easily feeds 2-4 people but I will happily eat one by myself. They are cheap too, about 20-25 cents each, so I knew I was getting ripped off by the stone-cold, masked grandmother charged me 50 cents. But no matter. All is right in the world when you get tear (don't ever cut it) into warm lepeshka. Better than that - getting to experience snax with someone you adore. 

Cool drink tankard

Non/Naan/Lepeshka/Patir

Somsa

there's something in the air (besides covid)

I am paying attention to a new thing here in the Uzbek capital: air quality index (AQI) which is data published by the U.S. Embassy Tashkent. When I stepped outside for a lunch time walk, the air had a low laying haze and an AQI of 159, literally topping today's worldwide ranking for cities. I thought something was off today when I couldn't breathe through my nose and the grit clouded my eyes.

Side note: I didn't think it was possible to injure myself with nasal spray, but I did. I guess was so excited to moisturize my nasal passages after our walk that I pinched my lip in the nozzle and ripped off some skin like I was some sort of snort-hound. My own daughter shook her head when she saw my bloody lip. For shame.

https://www.iqair.com

Botkin Cemetery

Tashkent summers bring the kind of heat where everything seems to sag and wilt. It's so hot, the wind blows halfheartedly, and sweat and tears evaporate like they never existed. The sun lays down a heavy blanket of UV rays, the color of an overexposed photo. Not a single soul moves faster than they need to, unless of course, they are driving. Sidewalks might exist or might not, and the roads are a constant work in progress, so it is anybody's guess to how a neighborhood walk might go. Even though wearing a mask and hat should in no way hinder my ability to walk around potholes, roots, and chunks of broken sidewalk, I struggle to keep my bearings underneath all the fabric. I'm pretty sure locals understand exactly how awkward I feel, but then maybe they smirk because no sane person should meander in such heat without purpose.

I had no purpose on this particular Sunday other than to get out of the house, lest I explode on my family for doing what all normal people should be doing on the weekend: relaxing  I don't relax particularly well. Leaving in a huff propelled me down a road that was lined with stores selling construction materials and home furnishings. I passed mechanics, for-hire laborers wearing rubber sandals, and women selling packs of gum and sweets from their two wheeled carts. Hugging any shade I could find, I turned a corner and walked beside a blissfully cool wall surrounding the Botkin Cemetery where flower and headstone vendors were in full swing. The sharp noise of faces and names getting engraved onto pieces of granite cut through the non-moving air.

When I lived in Namibia, a touristy visit to a cemetery was never encouraged - they were supposed to be places where people visit perhaps annually and/or during solemn ceremonies. But here, there were visitors gardening, picnicking, and even napping in the shade. A clarinet busker played near the fountains used to fill up jugs of water meant for gladiolas and mums, though a number of people were washing their shoes too. Two young women were changing into long skirts outside the Orthodox church entrance and a cyclist was making a delivery to the tiny store selling religious relics. Most of the headstones had the deceased's face and/or entire body etched onto them. Some displayed Orthodox crosses and others had red stars. Most plots were cordoned off with wrought iron fences and nearly all of them had had visitors at some point. I wound my way through narrow paths avoiding jagged edges of unmaintained fences, crunching through waist high yellow grass and had to talk myself down from panic when I thought there might be snakes or lions hiding in the brush. Funny how old habits die hard. 

I realized perhaps my panic might have been related to sun exposure and dehydration. But I had no money and no water to safely drink. In a full on rage of immaturity, I had skulked off with only a phone which meant I had a lovely time making my way home, blistered, sunburned, and thirsty, and a tail between my legs.