Can the beauty and convenience of Uzbekistan tell us anything about why people choose to travel where they do?
I don’t think we talk enough about Islamic architecture. The Persian inspired mosques and monuments that dot the ancient Silk Road are world treasures — and Uzbekistan has the crown jewel.
I spent three days in Samarkand and every night I found myself in the same spot, sitting on the long stone steps overlooking the Registan. I had seen so many pictures of it in advance of my trip but was still left completely unprepared for just how massive it is. The minarets dotting the square are 33 metres tall. The ceiling of the arches stretch upwards 7 storeys.
The first night I spent three hours there, waiting until 1am to have the view entirely to myself. The next two I retired earlier but still spent a substantial period basking in the glow of the madrasas’ grandeur.
I cannot recall what I was thinking about during that time. On the first night I spent around an hour talking with two locals looking to practice their English before a move abroad. The rest of the evening I soaked in the gradually decreasing hum of people milling about, rarely focusing in on a bit of English floating by, like a piece of driftwood getting caught on rocks.
The feeling has stuck with me, it is one I have chased all over the world: serenity, gratitude, magic. I firmly believe every country has a recipe of places, people and moments that can evoke these emotions. But for me personally it is rare that the view of a man-made structure can do so on its own. For instance, the monastery in Petra accomplished this, but it is not simply the structure, it is how it occupies the surrounding landscape that makes it so striking.
It is not just the scale of the Registan that is enrapturing. Giant buildings like that of the Tokyo Skytree or Burg Khalifa have brought a ‘wow’ to my lips due to the way they tower over their local contemporaries. The Registan amazes from all distances. Up close it is full of the same immaculate detail that is common to most Persian Islamic inspired works. The tile work is almost offensive in how busy it is, it takes your complimentary white space and laughs. True human desire is to see patterns and here you have to make no apologies for your indulgence.
Then finally there is the beautiful bright blue. Show me a blue building anywhere in the world and I will almost certainly show you a tourist destination. Could increasing tourist revenues in your city (if not inundated) be as simple as a can of paint?
Are you convinced yet?
Uzbekistan has more to offer than the Registan and Samarkand. Bukhara’s old town is a joy to walk through with small stone alleyways opening up into remarkable madrasas and mosques of its own. I cannot speak for anything West of here but have heard great things and regret that I was not able to find the time to see the remnants of the Aral Sea.
Getting to all of these places is also incredibly easy. You can take a high-speed train from Tashkent to Bukhara and continue overnight to Urgench and Khiva from there. By Western standards the tickets are extremely cheap — really the whole country is. The two hour train journey from Tashkent to Samarkand is about 9$ US and mine arrived early!
I am not going to claim that Soviet urban planning was exquisite but there are sidewalks almost everywhere and broad lines of trees separate them from the mega boulevards common to this part of the world making walking not just doable, but a relatively enjoyable experience compared to a lot of North American cities.
Accessible? Reliable transportation? Safe? Beautiful sites? Relatively Walkable? Cheap? Full marks across the board. Uzbekistan has all the makings of a backpackers paradise.
In 2019 Uzbekistan welcomed 6.75 million visitors, a respectable number similar to Cambodia and Argentina. Yet 5.7 of these were from its neighbours of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. As UN World Tourism data includes a number of categories beyond “holidays, leisure and recreation,” like visiting family and religious pilgrimages, I doubt many of these visitors are regularly hitting up the sites likely to dominate typical tourist itineraries. The fact that only 2.5 million were overnight guests seems to support my suspicions.
So where is everyone? Why aren’t people flocking to Uzbekistan?
It is not totally perfect. While I know it has a really interesting history, I struggled to learn about it from most of the attractions I visited, having to instead turn to wikipedia and an old Islamic history textbook I had that talks a bit about Timur’s life and complicated legacy. I was especially disappointed by the museums I visited in Tashkent.
There is a better answer here: accessibility. But that has recently changed. The government introduced visa-free travel in 2019 to virtually every major tourist sending country on Earth. Tashkent is increasingly well connected to major airport hubs by Uzbekistan Airways, an airline I was quite satisfied with when I flew with them in 2022. So is it about to explode? I think it’s a fascinating country to watch.
Traveling has made me develop a fascination with people’s perceptions of places and tourism is one way to measure that. Why are some countries popular destinations and others are not?
Surely it is relatively obvious, people want to travel where there is good weather, navigable transportation systems, safety, beautiful sites, fascinating history, great food, a lack of bureaucratic red tape and perhaps shared cultural values. If prices are low then that can’t hurt either.
But no so fast.
Iceland, now extremely well known, actually had a small tourism industry before the 2008 financial crash. In 2010 Eyjafjallajökull volcano erupted and shortly after tourist numbers did as well. This publicity paired with an aggressive ad campaign by the Icelandic government, free week-long stopovers on Icelandair and a depreciated currency worked wonders for bringing people to the small island nation. It was also in my view, the first country to really experience an Instagram tourist boom. Early influencers rushed to document their experiences and people’s phones were being bombarded with images of the blue lagoon and snæfellsnes.
Social marketing is coming. Familiarity is a pull for many and the lack-there-of for others instead. For bloggers and vloggers there is pressure to ‘discover’ new aesthetically pleasing destinations, i.e. Uzbekistan.
Will it follow the path of Iceland into the ills of mass tourism?
I don’t tend to think it will though, Central Asia is not exactly close to Europe or North America. Chinese tourist numbers are certain to grow but I have no estimates as to how much as it is not a demographic that I have any informed perspectives on. I cannot say for sure though. Where people go on vacation is more about the person choosing than it is of some notion of the “quality” of that destination. It is of course a factor; I know Uzbekistan is amazing, how many people grow to share my opinion may reveal a bit about just how much.
