I have earlier written about my interest in former Soviet countries. In June 2025 I visited another two of them – Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. To Indians not well versed with the globe, these countries appear as a homogenous cluster located somewhere near India, but they don’t know exactly where. I do not write travelogues and this is not one. Just some observations that I want to document.

Central Asia as a region has always been a place of interest for me, even within the former Soviet Union. Being from India, a place with very high population density, I was always interested in the exact opposite – how life would be in places with very low population density. As a kid, I searched for such countries, and frequently found Central Asia countries as being among the least densely populated. The others were Canada and Australia, but these didn’t hold any intrigue. I treated them more or less like the USA.

Uzbekistan has seen a surge in tourism in the recent years, including from India due to the liberal visa regime. It has the most ‘historical’ places of interest amongst all the five ‘-stans‘. Although our trip started at Tashkent, it were the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara that held the most interest for us, as they do for most other tourists.

Once you start sightseeing in Uzbekistan, one thing become obvious – the god-like status of Timur. Timur is by far the most venerated personality in the country, overshadowing any politician. For Indians, this is something to be processed. Our history records Timur as an invader and marauder, although his military conquests spread far and wide, not just to India. It is a classic case of someone’s hero being somebody else’s villain. I do not wish to go into the military history of Central Asia, because it is a vast subject on its own.

The Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and Turkmens are grouped together as Turkic people. The Tajiks are Iranic people and excluded from the grouping. It is from these regions that people moved westwards and eventually settled in Anatolia, the region we now call Turkey. In reality, the people of Turkey are not exactly all Turkic. But the name has stuck because the last ruling family, the Ottomans, were of Turkic origin. But let’s get back to Uzbekistan. I have been to Turkey also, and I did find similarities in the words (I desist from saying ‘language’ because I don’t understand either Turkish or Uzbek). The Uzbek people also look similar to Turkish people. The cuisine and traditional dresses also have similarities.

Among Kazakhs and Uzbeks, I found Uzbeks to be more religious. To the casual observer, there are more mosques in Uzbekistan than in Kazakhstan, and you are more likely to find skull cap wearing men and abaya wearing women in Uzbekistan. In fact in Kazakhstan, I did not see a single man or woman wearing clothing associated with Muslims. Even in Uzbekistan it’s not very common, but you can see it. By and large both – women and men in both countries wear western clothes, at least in the bigger cities that we visited.

Uzbeks are also more chatty with tourists as compared to Kazakhs. At many points during our trip, we were asked about our country of origin. We were also frequently asked if we were Muslims, but not in a suspicious way. They were just curious. When we told them we are not Muslims, there was no change in their behaviour, and they continued to be chatty and friendly.

On one of the days, we did a trip to Chorvoq lake, about 90 kms northeast of Tashkent. Getting there was easy using Yandex, but returning wasn’t. We were unable to get a taxi on Yandex app and had to resort to the old fashioned way of standing by the road side and hailing down passing cars. An inquisitive driver, about 35 of age, agreed to take us back to Tashkent for a reasonable fare. He told us (through Google translate) that he generally does not travel that far, but agreed to take us because he wanted to talk to us (people from another culture). I was very impressed by his attitude. I like people who are curious about cultures, history, politics and generally ‘aware’ beings.

For the next 1.5 hours we (my wife and I) communicated with him using Google translate. I must add here that this was the time when India and Pakistan were on the brink of war in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Pahalgam. To my surprise, the driver (whose name I don’t recollect now), was aware of the developments in South Asia, but he had a different version from what the world knows. One of his questions was “Do you think what Modi is doing is right?” Initially I understood this to mean as “Is Modi right in oppressing Muslims“, something I expect to hear from politically aware Muslims when I travel. It would emerge during our conversation that his question was directed at the current situation, and he didn’t really seem to be clued in to the sociopolitical discussions on Indian social media. I gave some diplomatic answers to his questions about the conflict and we moved on to discussing about Uzbek society.

He told us that doing business in Uzbekistan is very difficult for ordinary people. The businesses are controlled by people connected to the government, who will do everything in their means to crush independent entrepreneurs. He also admitted that there is Russian meddling in the affairs of the country. If not handicapped by Google Translate and time at hand, I would have asked him many more questions. He also told us that their government gives them the equivalent of USD 50 per month, per child as allowance. Schooling is both free and compulsory. This is probably a system inherited from the Soviet era. In both countries, I found schools numbered, and not named. In the Soviet system, schools were state owned, and you simply went to a school in the neighbourhood where you stayed, regardless of social status.

Our friendly driver told us what we now hear universally – that the working class has it very tough. What they earn is just enough to cover their expenses for the month. No savings are possible. The young men and women who unlike their parents and grandparents did not grow under the shadow of the Soviet Union, and are more exposed to the outside world through social media are an ambitious lot. They want job opportunities and want to travel the world just like we were doing.

As an Indian it takes some time to process it. For us, financial struggle has many degrees. It can mean absolute squalor of the kind that exists in many parts of India, or it can mean having just a basic life, with no dreams being fulfilled. In Uzbekistan, which has similar per capita income as India, there is no squalor, but the latter kind of financial struggle does seem to exist for some people. It is not very visible as the country is very clean, roads are well built, public facilities are good, there are many green areas, power and water supply do not seem to be erratic and the people appear to be well fed, well dressed and tidy. Unlike its much larger neighbour Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan is not blessed with oil & gas. Tourism is important for their economy, which explains their general friendliness to tourists. They are also a proud people and you can expect questions like “how do you like Uzbekistan” from young and old people alike.

I mentioned earlier that Uzbeks seem more religious than Kazakhs. However, this is ultimately relative. They are not conservative. Alcohol is available and consumed by locals, as well as by tourists. There are no restrictions on dressing for men or women. It’s only while entering a mosque that you are required to cover yourself appropriately. People do not stare at women wearing short dresses. However, if you stand out from the crowd like we did, you may get some stares, especially if you are travelling in non touristy places like the Metro. It’s all very casual and not the probing kind. Also it’s mostly the elderly who stare and not the younger lot. I found Central Asia to be the safest place we have visited. I know safety is a bigger subject and relative, but what I am referring to is the ‘feeling of safety’. At absolutely no point in our trip did we have even the slightest fear that we will get mugged or accosted by aggressive locals. Even at late hours of the night you can find couples and even women walking alone in dark alleys. This is not just my assessment, but that of many travellers. These are great countries and I encourage everyone, especially Indians to visit them. Currently Pakistani airspace is closed to Indian airlines, but you can try Uzbekistan Airways which has direct flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Tashkent. We Bangalore people aren’t so lucky. We had to travel on Air Arabia via Sharjah, as our connecting Indigo flight from Delhi to Tashkent got cancelled. These places are jus about 3 hours from Delhi, roughly the same duration as Delhi to Chennai or Trivandrum.

You can read about our experiences in Kazakhstan in this post.