Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is a country of blue gold and a living fairy tale

Uzbekistan is a place where time stopped in the 15th century, but at the same time it is moving forward at a speed of 300 km/h on the Afrosieb train. Here, every city is an open–air museum, and every bazaar is a theater where the main actors are people, spices and silk.

Samarkand is why people say the word "WOW" out loud for the first time. Registan Square – three giant madrasahs of the XV–XVII centuries, covered with turquoise domes and majolica, which still shines as if it was laid yesterday. Gur-Emir is the mausoleum of Tamerlane with a golden ceiling, the observatory of Ulugbek, Shahi-Zinda Street is a necropolis with a mosaic of the color of the sky. Here you can understand why Samarkand was called the "Rome of the East" and "the face of the Earth."

Bukhara is a "museum city" with 140 preserved monuments on 140 hectares. Labi House is a pond around which old people have been sitting and drinking tea since 1620. The Ark fortress, where the emirs lived until 1920, the Kalyan minaret (47 m), under which they were executed under Tamerlane, and the Poi-Kalyan complex, which takes your breath away. In the evening, the whole old town is illuminated, and it seems that you have entered the "One Thousand and One Nights".

Khiva is a perfectly preserved medieval city inside the walls of Ichan-Kala. Here you can get lost in the narrow streets, go through any door and get into a museum or someone's house, where they will immediately pour you green tea and put a tandoor cake. The Kalta Minaret was never completed – it was supposed to be taller than the minaret in Bukhara, but remained short and thick, like a bright turquoise pillar.

Tashkent is a modern capital, where the metro is palaces underground (each station is a work of art). Here, old mahallas are adjacent to skyscrapers, Chorsu Bazaar is a mountain of spices as high as a house, and pilaf is eaten with spoons from plates the size of a basin. Uzbeks say, "If you haven't tried Tashkent pilaf, you haven't been to Uzbekistan."

People are the main treasure. Uzbeks are masters of hospitality and irony at the same time. They will invite you to visit – they will bring out all the best that is in the house, and they will also apologize that it is "not enough". They'll ask: "Are you married?" – and in five minutes they are already looking for a bride for you. They smile broadly, speak beautifully and for a long time, even if they just ask for directions.

Food is a separate religion:

• Samarkand pilaf with mutton and yellow carrots,
• Bukhara pilaf with raisins and chickpeas,
• Tashkent with devzira and Kazy,
• shurpa, manti, lagman, samsa from tandoor, duplyama, norin, hasip. And all this is washed down with green tea per liter per person.

Nature didn't let you down either:

• Nuratinsky mountains with rock paintings and mountain villages,
• The Kyzylkum Desert and the dinosaur plateau,
• Aydarkul is a huge artificial lake in the middle of the desert, where you can live in a yurt and catch carp.,
• Chimgan and Beldersay are ski resorts 80 km from Tashkent.

The traditions are alive: gold embroidery, Rishtan ceramics, Margilan silk, ganch carving, miniature. They still sing "Er-er" at weddings and give you gold earrings the size of saucers.

Uzbekistan is a country where you are welcomed as a native, fed as at the last supper of your life and escorted with the words: "Keling Yana!" (Come again!). And you're coming. Because not only the heart remains here, but also the stomach, and the soul, and the feeling that you have touched a real fairy tale that is still alive.