Tashkent Between Procedures: Bazaars, the Metro, and the Center of Islamic Civilization

Tashkent is where you'll spend most of your trip: the clinic is here, the hotel is here, and so are the first days of recovery. The good news is that it's built for exactly that — green, spacious, with a working metro, and without exhausting tourist crowds.

Best of all, you can walk around Tashkent without stepping into direct sun. Lots of shade, lots of covered spaces, and the metro handles the distances.

Bazaars

This is the first thing worth doing here. Not souvenir rows for tourists, but real markets the whole city actually shops at.

• Chorsu — Tashkent's oldest bazaar, under a huge blue dome. Spices, dried fruit, cauldrons of plov, rows of traditional knives. It stays cool under the dome even in July.
• Alay — more urban and tidy, closer to the center. A good stop for fruit and nuts.
• Yangiabad — a flea market, if you're into Soviet-era cameras, pins, and other antiques.

The Center of Islamic Civilization

A vast new complex near Hazrati Imam Square. A building with a huge dome, a museum, a library, manuscripts. The centerpiece is the Uthman Quran, one of the oldest surviving copies of the Quran in the world, dating to the 7th century.

Worth visiting even if it's not your usual interest — the scale and architecture are impressive on their own. It's also fully indoors and air-conditioned, so it works fine in the first days of recovery too.

The metro

The Tashkent metro is an attraction in its own right. Stations were built like palaces: marble, metalwork, chandeliers, mosaics, domed ceilings. Photography was banned until 2018 — the metro was considered a strategic site. It's allowed now.

A ride costs next to nothing by a visitor's standards, trains run frequently, and it's the fastest way to cross the city.

Where to eat

Plov in Uzbekistan is eaten at lunch, not dinner, and at dedicated plov centers, where it's cooked in cauldrons that serve hundreds of portions. It's normal for plov to run out by evening.

Beyond plov, try tandoor samsa, lagman, shurpa, and, if you find the right place, khanum. Uzbek flatbread deserves its own mention — every city bakes it differently.

What else

• Amir Timur Square and the Broadway street next to it — shade, benches, street artists.
• Magic City Park and Tashkent City — new parks with lighting and fountains, nice in the evening.
• Minor Mosque — a white marble mosque, calm and beautiful.
• The Japanese Garden — the quietest spot in the city, if you just want to sit for a while.