[ ITINERARY · THE DISPATCH ]

3 Days in Tashkent: Soviet Metros, Bazaars, and Uzbekistan's Modern Front Door

A real three-day Tashkent plan: chandelier-lit metro stations, the chaos of Chorsu Bazaar, and a Korean carrot salad you didn't see coming. Day by day, honest, no filler.

Most people treat Tashkent as the airport you fly into before the pretty stuff in Samarkand. Big mistake. This Tashkent 3 day itinerary exists because the city snuck up on me — I came in expecting grey Soviet sprawl and left genuinely fond of the place. It IS grey and Soviet in parts. But it’s also got the most beautiful metro I’ve ever ridden, and a food scene that’s quietly mad.

Quick history, because it explains everything: a huge earthquake flattened central Tashkent in 1966, and the Soviets rebuilt it as a showcase city, all wide boulevards and grand public works. That’s why nothing feels old in the centre. The old stuff survived out on the edges.

Spend the morning just riding the Tashkent Metro. I’m serious. Until recently you couldn’t even photograph it because it doubled as a nuclear bomb shelter, so the stations are this incredible, under-documented secret. Kosmonavtlar station is all cosmonaut portraits on a deep blue field, like swimming through the Soviet space dream. Alisher Navoi has these carved ceiling medallions that belong in a mosque. A single ride is something silly like 1,700 som — a few cents. Buy a token, ride three or four lines, gawp openly.

Then surface at Chorsu Bazaar, under its giant turquoise dome. This is the proper one, the loud one. Pyramids of spices, slabs of meat, that nuclear-orange dried fruit, and old women who will hand you things to taste whether you asked or not. Buy non bread, buy halva, eat a samsa straight from the tandoor oven while it’s too hot to hold.

Walk to the Hazrati Imam Complex afterwards, the religious heart of old Tashkent. It holds what they claim is the world’s oldest Quran, the Uthman Quran, a huge deerskin thing behind glass. Whether or not it’s THE oldest, it’s old, and the room is hushed and worth the stop.

Start at Amir Timur Square, the green roundabout at the city’s heart with Timur on a horse where Marx and then Stalin used to stand. Around it sits the wedding-cake Hotel Uzbekistan, peak brutalism, you’ll either love it or hate it. I loved it.

Late morning, get a taxi to the Central Asian Plov Centre (Besh Qozon) up by the TV tower. This is lunch and it’s a spectacle — enormous cauldrons, men with shovels, and they cook a set amount each day and when it’s gone, it’s gone. So go before 1pm. Get the plov with quail egg and horse sausage if you’re brave (I was, it’s good, don’t overthink it). It’s communal, chaotic, cheap, and one of my favourite meals anywhere.

Afternoon, walk it off in Independence Square and the surrounding parks, then the leafy stretch along Sailgokh Street, sometimes called Tashkent’s Broadway, lined with artists and cafes. Tashkent does parks really, really well — wide, shaded, full of families at dusk. And the fountains go nuts after dark.

Slow it down today. The State Museum of Applied Arts is in a gorgeous old merchant’s house, the building as much the draw as the suzani embroidery and ceramics inside. If you’d rather, the Museum of Fine Arts has a sneaky-good collection. Pick one, don’t do both, you’ll get gallery legs.

Now the food twist nobody warns you about: Tashkent has a big Koryo-saram community — Koreans deported here by Stalin in the 1930s — and Korean food is woven into everyday life. Find a market stall or cafe doing morковча (Korean-style carrot salad), kimchi, and noodles, and have a wildly good, slightly confusing lunch. It is one of the most “only here” things you can eat.

Spend the last afternoon doing a bazaar at a gentler pace — go back to a quieter corner of Chorsu, or hit a smaller neighbourhood market, and just buy gifts: dried fruit, ceramics, a cheap chapan robe if you’re feeling it. Then a final cup of green tea somewhere shaded.

Stay near Amir Timur Square or just off it — you’re central, walkable to a metro stop, and an easy taxi from anywhere. Skip the cheap places way out by the airport unless you’ve got an early flight. The metro plus Yandex Go covers everything; you genuinely don’t need a car. And the Afrosiyob train station for Samarkand is an easy ride out, so this slots neatly before the rest of Uzbekistan.

Three days is plenty for Tashkent and honestly more than most guides give it. Give it the time. The metro alone earns its place.

Should I even bother with Tashkent? Yes. Two days minimum, three if you like food and trains. It’s the warm-up act that turns out to be half the show.

This article contains affiliate links marked rel="sponsored". We may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.