Rode the Tashkent subway this morning and added six or seven tokens to my travel shrine. The tokens are clear blue plastic and I though they were pretty fab. The subway reminds you somewhat of the DC tunnels in that they're wide and the ceiling arches overhead. We are FORBIDDEN from taking any photographs anywhere near or in the subway so don't expect to see any. We exited at a subway stop dedicated to Soviet and Uzbek cosmonauts with paintings of different cosmonauts dotted around that looked a bit like men in washing machines. I was a bit puzzled by the scarcity of people on the trains or platforms between 9 and 9:30 am. When in rush hour in this country? Where is everybody?
Next we visited the Museum of Applied Arts today which had lovely suzanis, ceramics, jewelry, woodwork, reconstructed rooms and a have few saddlebags. Fortunately it allows photography and in fact the room guides seemed delighted at I wanted to take a picture of every hat and textile. Think I might have gotten a few decent ones. Shops nearby yielded disappointing results and left empty-handed.
A note about Tashkent women and their fashions: they are clearly having fun with western clothes (especially shoes) and styles. Young women wear crazy outfits; painted-on jeans, sparkly tops, with oversized pocketbooks and stiletto heels just to walk around town! It's like a 14th St fashion parade. Like the Japanese, women have very straight black hair. Unfortunately some are beginning to experiment with haircuts (not in a good way). I saw some young women yesterday whose hair and clothing made them almost appear to be Japanese. They had long shag hair styles and were wearing pouffy oversized tops with tight jeans and the overall look was rather baby doll. Back to sparkles; outside the mosque yesterday we saw a women wearing a hot pink sequined head scarf, pants and shoes. Did I mention the entire outfit was pink? I should mention that although the vast majority of the population of Uzbekistan is Muslim, the practice of wearing the veil was banned in 1926. So while older women dress more conservatively, young women in the city are following contemporary trends.
In the afternoon rode from 1 to 7 pm to get to Samarkand. The countryside is completely flat between the two cities with the exception of a mountain pass that served as a funnel into and out of Tamerlane's kingdom. We heard a story that Tamerlane used to count the number of men in his army by having each man a rock as he went to battle and then pick up a rock when he returned. The number leftover were the number of men killed in battle.
Passed zillions of fields of cotton ready for picking. We saw picking going on and an endless line of light green busses parked at the edge of the road, waiting to take the pickers back home. Pickers are teachers and students; government forces them to work two to three days a week picking cotton and they are bussed out to the fields. Cotton is the most important crop here.
Staying at the Regal Palace Hotel.
tashkent to samarkand
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