Uzbekistan- The Country of Mosques

On 2nd Feb2023 I booked a family trip to visit Uzbekistan. Growing up I have heard stories of how beautiful the city of mosque is and since I was little it was always on my travel bucket list. Fast forward 17 years I finally get a chance to get this off my bucket list. On 5th feb2023 8pm we got on the plane and our first destination was the city of Tashkent. Since it was a short trip of seven days we decided to visit the city of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara.

After a long flight we finally reached the Tashkent international airport. From there we grabbed a taxi for our hotel, The Hyatt Regency. Since we were jet-lagged we decided to spend the day at the hotel in order to get some rest and grab dinner over at Hyatt regency.

After dinner me and my brother decided to check out some nearby coffee shops and quick stroll around the neighbourhood. After having a cup of coffee each we went back to our hotel to get a goodnights rest as we have a long day tomorrow.

We got up early in the morning around 8am, grabbed a quick bite at the hotel. Later on around 10am we headed out to our first stop at the Minor Mashjid in Tashkent city. Even though this place is called minor but in no way this felt minor, upon arrival the grandeur white structured left us in awe. The architectural magnificience is unlike any other we saw till now.

By the time we reached the Mosque It was already Dhuhr, so we catched the Dhuhr prayer at the minor mosque. From listening to the Adhaan to following the Imam who led the prayer the experience was surreal.

After completing our prayers we decided to grab lunch at one of the reknowned restaurants in the city, Besh quzon.

Since we know that Uzbekistan is well known for it's plov so it is a must order. To go along with this we order a few kababs on the side. We waited about 20 minutes for the food to arrive and it smelled phenomenal. The delicate meat spread across the bed of fragrant and well seasoned rice and chickpiece looked amazing and so was the taste. All in all the flavours of the dish was neither overwhelming nor underseasoned, rather it was on point. The flavourfull rice accompanied by the tender meat was perfect. The kababs were also very delicious, we could make-out all the spices while still getting the flavour of the juicy meat.

After finishing our lunch we decided to pay the Taskent tv tower a visit.

This is no Eiffel tower but it's always fun to get a good look of the whole city from a height place. So we decided to go to the top of the tower and get a good view of Taskent city under the blissful evening sun. The view was stunning.

After spending some time enjoy the view we could not give up the opportunity to the rotating restaurant inside the tower. So for a quick evening snack we sat down at the restaurant near window and ordered some coffee and traditional sweets. The experience of sipping coffee and sitting by a window where the view keeps changing every second giving a full 360 degree view of the whole city is breathetaking. This alone made the whole trip worth it.

As the sun went down we decided to head back to our hotel and call it a day.

On the next day, we got up early, checked out from the hotel, grabbed a taxi for the train station. We got on the bullet train and off we went to Samarkand.

After two hour train journey we finally arrived at our destination.

SAMARKAND
The beautiful architecture work here is amazing as well. I tried my best to capture the grandeur designs of some of these works.

It was indeed a memorable trip for my family. The experience we had is absolutely amazing. Thank you for taking your time to read out my post.

Special thanks to @thekittygirl for this wonderful banner.