Khujand and Tashkent

Made our way yesterday from our little mountain guesthouse in Tajikistan to the big city of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. We were lucky crossing the border, our guide said it’s generally a 2-hour procedure, including about 0.5 km of walking through No-Man’s-Land between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, but the gods smiled on us, and it was just 40 minutes end to end. Whew!

Stopped en route in Khujand to see the gigantic market there. The group split up, and I went to the upper level for a bird’s-eye view. If you look right in the centre of this photograph, you will see a lady in a striped blue and white top, she is a fellow traveller, Amanda from Australia. I saw her there, but it wasn’t until I saw the picture that I realized it looks like “Where’s Waldo?” And Amanda agreed, because she asked for the picture for her Instagram. 🤓

There was also an outdoor market, and I will post a picture, plus one of brooms for sale. The ones on the left were very hard and are used for sweeping outdoor steps, sidewalks, and roads; the ones on the right are softer, and intended for indoor use.

Also in Khujand was an unusually modern citadel, which I decided to bypass. I needed a break from touring, plus it was getting late in the day for good light, but luckily My Lovely Assistant Geoff was up to the task and has provided a couple of photos. The first one is the citadel itself, and the second a beautiful floor in the building, made entirely of Canadian wood!

We toured Tashkent metro stations this morning. The Soviet regime seemed very big on creating beautiful stations, and we picked half a dozen or so to visit. Very inexpensive tour, just the price of a subway ticket. I will post a few pictures; the most interesting to me was Cosmonaut station, which commemorated Yuri Gagarin as the first man in space, prominent Russian and Uzbek astronomers of the past, the first woman in space, and several others.