What It’s Like To Take a Girls Trip Through Uzbekistan

As a Black woman, I knew my experience was going to be unique in comparison to the other women on the trip.

When I first got onto the Uzbekistan Airways plane with a middle row of three seats completely open for myself, I sighed in relief. It was going to be a long flight, about 14 hours, and it was going to be my first time in Central Asia—a fact that I decided to grapple with once I had landed in Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital. I was given questionable food on the flight and inwardly panicked. Food is crucial to me in travel and gets me through a lot of moments that may feel uncomfortable. Thankfully, once we got off the flight and went to a restaurant, the food was somehow delicious, hearty, and refreshing.

When I landed, it was morning, and the sun was just rising. It was a cloudy and misty day where the sun was fighting to come out. The temperature felt reviving after being cooped up for so long. While the driver took me to the hotel, I looked out of the window and saw rows of Soviet-style housing decorated with Uzbek art reminiscent of Asian, Arab, and European styles. The colorful columns framing the centers of the apartment buildings were stark against the gray concrete that the buildings consisted of. It was like the buildings were begging to be decorated.

We soon arrived at the hotel, where I stayed for two nights before taking another flight to Nukus. I met up with three other women on the trip. We talked about how exciting the trip looked and how we all had singular things that we wanted to see, and everything else was purely fascinating. We were deeply aware that we were a group of women on a foreign continent who had no clue what the culture was like. Every person on the trip was a woman, down to the tour guide who showed us five cities in less than 10 days. On the pre-call, one of the staff from Exodus Travels, the adventure travel company hosting us, calmly said that everything would be fine and that there shouldn’t be any issues, but we were still wary.

The next day, we had a tour of the capital, Tashkent. I went to grab breakfast and noticed that I wasn’t the only Black woman in Uzbekistan. I saw just one more, and that was more than enough for me.

Later on, when we all met up for the tour, I realized she was with our group and immediately knew that our experience was going to be unique in comparison to the other women on the trip. 

In Tashkent, the Soviet-style was apparent everywhere: the apartment buildings, the Brutalist sculptures, the subway stations, the tree-studded promenades. Considering the absurd amount of time I have spent in Eastern Europe, it felt familiar, but that familiar feeling quickly vanished when we arrived in the Old City. The mausoleums, mosques, and the central bazaar were a mixture of Asian and Arab culture and architecture, and I had never seen anything like it. You can explore these cities for days and never get tired or used to the views. It was a striking difference in each part of Tashkent, physically showing the history and growth of the city. It was modern and ancient at the same time from periods of history that I had never been in contact with before.

When we went to the bazaar, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people, meat, produce, and spices that were around me before I could even register what was being said. “Africa!” is what some of the sellers would yell at us until we yelled back, “Canada!” or “America!” It seemed offensive, but the conversation it would bring afterward was honestly worth it. I heard about these people’s daily lives, who was single and who was married, how many kids they had, all in broken English. A lot of people wanted pictures with me, considering I was a rare sight, and the Canadian writer and I were good sports and got plenty of pictures for ourselves, too.

We woke up before the sun did for our flight to Nukus and were handed a bagged breakfast in the hotel lobby while the receptionists wished us good luck on the rest of the trip. When we got to the airport’s domestic terminal, there were a lot of stares of confusion, but it was a lot more subtle than the experience we had the day before in the bazaar. The flight was quick, and the dry heat of the desert greeted us. We were only in Nukus to go and see the Savitsky Museum, a stunning museum filled with Russian avant-garde art, and to grab a quick lunch before the long drive to Ayaz Kala, a fortress built between the 4th century B.C.E. and the 7th century C.E. It was a beyond impressive feat, considering I had never seen anything before the current era, that had me ask the usual, “How the hell did they make this, and what were they defending themselves against?” These questions were answered with, “With a lot of people” and ”Anyone you can think of, this is the center of the Silk Road, and it’s always been a place that needs protecting.”

This idea of being the center of the Silk Road was prominent in the art sold in the markets. Beautiful watercolor, oil, and print paintings depicted the path that merchants would take, pointing out the main stops on the Silk Road, with the top three cities in Uzbekistan right along it: Khiva, Bukhara, and Samarkand. We went to all of these places, and each time felt like a level-up from the others.

After Ayaz Kala, we went to Khiva, the 2,500-year-old city that went through long periods of being inhabited and basically had to be excavated to see what you can see today. This is where we were asked for photos the most, separately and as a group. People were fascinated by what would bring us to Khiva, and the tourists that were common there were mainly Italians, so a group of English-speaking women from all over the world was an interesting sight. I knew it was getting out of hand when I was speaking to a woman, and she asked for a picture, but instead of a picture with her, she handed me her baby and started taking pictures of us together. I was shocked as the adorable baby with a dirt-stained face stared at me and thankfully didn’t have a full breakdown, while the mother and the rest of the group took pictures.

Even through the extreme moments, I never felt unsafe. It might have something to do with my living in Brooklyn, but I felt much safer in the cities of Uzbekistan than in many of the places I have lived in America and Europe. Many of the women on the trip felt the same.

It was in Bukhara that we spent the most time, and it was also the hometown of our tour guide, who was very passionate about the stories of this beautiful country, especially her home city.

Bukhara was tourist central, with kids selling souvenirs, hotels on every corner, hammam spas, and excellent restaurants lining the historic streets. It was filled with people speaking many different languages, and it felt unreal, almost like an amusement park for adults. The two other women my age and I sat for drinks during our free time and talked about how fun it was to do this as a trip with only women. It felt like a fun girls’ trip to somewhere we had never been. A personal tour guide for individual or group travel is essential in Uzbekistan, and we were grateful for our adorable guide who had a story for each question asked. Even though it was an eight-day trip, it didn’t feel long enough, and there was so much more we wanted to see and have more time to explore.

When we got to Samarkand, it felt like the grand finale. This is the reason that people come to Uzbekistan, this city. The structures here were immensely large, and the mosaic ceilings were the most intense. The Registan Square was filled with people from all over the country and the world in a way we hadn’t seen until we got there. It didn’t matter if it was day or night, there were people taking videos on the 360-photo booth in the middle of the square, women dancing in traditional clothing, and sellers in the monuments that stood tall and were covered in blue mosaics. The city had a similar feel to modern and ancient feeling of Tashkent in a way that was different to Khiva and Bukhara.

The hotel we stayed in, The Savitsky Plaza, was modern and gorgeous, and it was a different experience from the other hotels we stayed in, which were much more traditional and cozier. All of this made this city the most impressive. I asked some family friends who had been to Uzbekistan before if I should go before. I said yes to the trip, and they asked, “Are you going to Samarkand?”. I said yes and they said, “Then you must go.” And I got it loud and clear when we arrived at Amir Temur’s, the country’s most famous leader, resting place in the night. It was quiet there and a balmy night that had the backdrop of one of the most amazing pieces of architecture I had ever seen in my life. They had floodlit the mausoleum, so you could see everything clearly compared to the silhouette we saw of the building the morning after. The Registan Square had the same flood lighting with a full light show for a period of time in the night.

I wasn’t ready for the flight home, which is usually a sign that I enjoyed the place I was visiting, but on the packed flight back swarming with little children running up and down the aisles, the man sitting next to me asked me, “How was your trip to Uzbekistan?” I didn’t know how to answer him. The trip was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. The culture was dramatically different. The way they drink their tea with the handleless cup filled halfway so you wouldn’t burn your hands while holding it. The trees are painted white at the root to protect from bugs. The glittering long dresses and hijabs the extremely fashionable women would wear. So, I told him it was unforgettable, and I would definitely come back and maybe make it another girls’ trip.