Winds of change in Uzbekistan make this a land of inimitable hospitality

With only five million tourists coming in annually, it remains the sort of unspoilt place

Young Sanobar, who sells exquisitely crafted scissors and knives to tourists at her family’s quaint shop deep in old Bukhara, looks up as I walk in, and asks, “India?” To my surprise, she launches into an effusive account in Uzbek and broken English, of  her father’s heart surgery in India, her emphatic recall of  the prosaic names of  Gurugram hospitals — “Artemis bad, Medanta good” — sounding almost incongruous in this romantic setting. A squad of colourfully decked-out middle-aged women from the Ferghana Valley flash gold teeth as they pass by our visiting group of journalists from the Indian Women’s Press Corps (IWPC) and chorus “Shah Rukh”(as in Khan). And at Bukhara’s 420-year-old Jewish synagogue, richly evocative of the storied heritage of a tiny Jewish community, octogenarian Abram Iskhakov gives us a moving, passionate lecture on why he stays on when many have left, and then begins talking wistfully about — well, yes — Raj Kapoor. “I was such a fan,” he recalls in Russian, “that I went to the airport to receive him, but we couldn’t speak because we didn’t have a common language.”

Tilla-Kari Madrassah, Samarkand

Uzbekistan is remarkable as much for the luminosity of its ordinary human encounters as for its fabled Silk Route cities like Bukhara and Samarkand. With only five million tourists coming in annually (Italy, by comparison, gets 10 times as many), it remains the sort of unspoilt place where a person you’ve met on the street will invite you in for a tour of his house, introduce you to his mother, pull out his son’s wedding album and send you off with a fistful of sweets. (Note: this actually happened.)

Only a minuscule 24,000 Indians visit (some of them whispered to be sex tourists), despite the almost ridiculously short flying time (Delhi-Tashkent, for example, is only three hours), which means millions of us are passing up opportunities to bask in the reflected glory of Bollywood stars and Indian doctors. This is not a one-way street, however. Uzbekistan has quite a lot that should make Indian visitors feel humble. Partly because of its Soviet legacy, it ranks higher than India on the Human Development Index, and boasts far superior rates for the labour force participation of women and maternal mortality. Civic infrastructure is Western standard, including the high-speed intercity trains and the Tashkent metro, where the young offer seats to the middle-aged and the elderly with heartening alacrity. And what the visitor fresh from India cannot help but notice is that this country is dazzlingly swachh in a way Bharat will never be.

Freshly baked traditional Uzbek bread

There is much more to savour — for example, the pinch-me-and-I’ll-wake-up feeling of standing in Central Asia’s loveliest square, Registan, on a cool, clear morning, gazing at turquoise domes, soaring minarets and exquisitely tiled archways set against a brilliant blue Samarkand sky. It’s not just a lesson in aesthetics but in history, because the place has witnessed everything from  the ferocious 14th-century nomad-king Timur’s empire-building and Babur's failed struggle to hold on to a city so lovingly evoked in his Baburnama, to Tsarist moves, Bolshevik rallies, Soviet parades and finally the birth of a new country in 1991, with Timur as its anointed folk hero (a fact you would have to be blind to not notice in Uzbekistan since he is everywhere, from currency notes to giant statues). It’s hard for Stalinist follies to hold their own against such grandeur, or even against the rustic charms of Uzbeki bazaars laden with almonds, raisins, salted apricot kernels, indescribably flavourful melons and the most vividly yellow-skinned lemons I have ever seen. Still,  there is a nostalgic appeal to these monstrous relics of a bygone era, like the Hotel Uzbekistan in Tashkent, which one guidebook aptly describes as “so ugly it’s almost beautiful”.
 

Only 24,000 Indians visit annually despite the almost ridiculously short flying time, which means millions of us are passing up opportunities to bask in the reflected glory of Bollywood stars and Indian doctors

Winds of change are blowing through this country of 32 million, under the aegis of an unlikely reformer. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who took power two years ago after the death, in office, of the long-serving dictator, Islam Karimov, was not expected to be an agent of change. He was, after all, Karimov’s prime minister. However, he has ushered in fast-paced economic reforms — “a decree a day”, exclaims an Indian official in Tashkent admiringly — and loosened the screws on a beleaguered citizenry, from sacking the country’s dreaded spymaster, to freeing jailed political prisoners and journalists, and encouraging Uzbeks to share grievances through online forums. Shortly before we arrived, a deputy prime minister responsible for the ritual humiliation of farmers and local officials for not meeting deadlines had been fired, after videos of ill-treatment went viral.
 

The Shah-i-Zinda avenue of mausoleums in Samarkand

Some changes are obvious. We landed in shiny but tree-laden Tashkent, painted in autumn colours, on a chilly November morning on the new tourist-friendly e-visas introduced this summer (they take three days instead of a cumbersome two weeks, as before), and whizzed through the green channel, since visitors are no longer required to fill in foreign currency declarations at the airport. We exchanged our dollars for a mini-sackful of the Uzbeki soum (hundred dollars yield more than eight lakh soum) at official counters rather than seeking out the shadowy grey market. Floating the currency is seen as Mirziyoyev’s boldest move yet, effectively devaluing it by 90 per cent. He has also abolished restrictions on how much foreign currency individuals and organisations can buy, removing an impediment to foreign trade and investment.

This “Uzbek Spring”, as some dub it, blooms especially prettily in the offices of animated officials. For example, the suave deputy tourism minister, Ulugbek Kasimhodjaev, warming to his theme of “strategic initiatives to make Uzbekistan more welcoming”, regales us with plan after new plan: more flights (including from a greater number of Indian cities), new hotels (some with Indian collaboration), a Schengen-style “Silk Route visa” for all the five Central Asian countries, free Wi-Fi zones, more credit card terminals, even the staging of a mock Indian wedding in Tashkent to encourage wedding tourism.  

While his buoyant mood was apparent, it is not as easy to gauge sentiments on the street in a country that has lived through decades of authoritarian rule and is, for all the change in the air, still no democracy. However, snatches of conversations, sometimes on Google Translate, do give you a sense of an upbeat mood — especially among the young, who are such a visible presence on the streets in their cheap, chic Chinese winterwear. (In fact, the country is experiencing a youth bulge with 56 per cent of the population under 30, with its concomitant challenges of job creation.) For example, both the 21-year-old Tashkent language student, Shams, who accompanies me to his favourite eatery, Non-Kabob, a popular new Turkish-inspired fast food joint with a distinctly Central Asian twist (the offerings include sandwiches of surprisingly tender horsemeat) and Hayit, who has started a new coffee bar in Samarkand, seem fired up by the fact that entrepreneurship is being encouraged by the new regime. But it’s also poignant talking to the young in Uzbekistan, who at one level are like young people everywhere, keenly aware of smartphone models and complaining about the high cost of data; at another appearing held back by their country’s long history of isolationism and repression, their limited knowledge of English (which means some are  barely aware of trends like Airbnb and Netflix) and an ingrained respect for authority. Startled by my comments on Indian politics, one young man asks tentatively, “So in India it’s not necessary to respect political leaders?” The short answer, I tell him, is no.