Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan was a wonderful surprise. Friendly people, gorgeous buildings and very clean streets. There is a pride in the cleanliness and you will find people picking up litter rather than throwing any. there is even a day every year where people clean the area around them. The women threw off their enormous Burkhas in 1935 and now wear headscarves and mainly cover their shoulders and knees. The youngsters in the bigger cities tend to wear shorter dresses but never above the knees. The beauty of the silk and embroidery industry is fabulous but everything has a meaning or a story. On the handbags pomegranates mean that you want babies and are fertile, a flower means you are pretty, a bird means you can sing. A belt with toggles denotes how many children or grandchildren you have. I attended a fashion show where the models were covered from head to toe. Stories date back to Alexander the great, Ghenghis Khan, Joab, Noah’s son Sim and the prophet Daniel is buried here. Many people have gold teeth but don’t smile for photos so it was very difficult to get a photo of anyone smiling and showing their teeth. I attended a party and women eat separately from a man with a curtain dividing the two parties. There can be as many as two hundred guests to celebrate the birth of a baby, a funeral and a wedding can stretch to two thousand. A bride has to make 40 dresses for her wedding (men only have two outfits). She attends every party before and after her wedding and bows to each table as a sign of respect before sitting down at each table for a time. She has to change her dress every hour. There are two mosques one for a man and one for a woman. Uzbekistan is predominately Muslim but not wholly muslim. In the past and even nowadays nomads wear a turban, a ring and a knife. If they died on the road the turban would be their shroud, the knife was to dig their grave and the ring was payment for burying them. The city of Khiva is a walled fortress town which was not decimated as badly as Bukhara and Samarkand. I had a guide in every city to relate the history which was fascinating. They are not allowed to buy foreign cars and all cars are white.