The discovery of hidden marvels awaits you in the bazaars of Uzbekistan
Most people visit Uzbekistan for its unmatched treasure of centuries-old Islamic architecture in the shapes of turquoise and blue-coloured mosques, madrassahs and mausoleums. However, any tour of this Central Asian country is incomplete without visiting its fabulous bazaars located on the legendary Silk Road.
In fact, the bazaar is the heart of every oriental city, the centre of public life, and the breadwinner of the whole city. Since the dawn of time, bazaars appeared on the intersections of trade roads, and on big squares of cities.
On our recent trip to Uzbekistan, we spent a disproportionate amount of time in the grand bazaars of Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara and were impressed by their scale and organised display of produce and merchandise.
I was accompanied by my wife and daughter, who pride themselves for being discriminating shoppers. They have practiced their craft over years of rummaging through all kinds of merchandise in stores and malls of various countries. In the process, they claim to have acquired not only an eye for discovering hidden gems reflecting local culture, history and tastes, but also a sense of proper valuation that can be attributed to the purchase.
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Confident of their ability to haggle over price, they are never bothered by the occasional failure to consummate a deal.
The bazaars of Uzbekistan offer ample opportunities to satisfy the cravings of the die-hard shopaholics as well as onlookers like me.
Tashkent’s Chorsu Bazaar, the age of which is more than a hundred years, is located on the main square of the city.
The central part of the bazaar is the main, magnificent domed construction, patterned with oriental ornaments, with a diameter of nearly 300-350 metres.
On the counters there, we found fresh fruits, amber-coloured dried fruits, toasted bread, cookies, pastries, freshly-killed meat, horse meat sausages, and other common and exotic produce.
The vast meat section had every conceivable type of meats and cuts with no trace of waste in inappropriate places. I didn’t even see flies on the meats or vegetables and fruits.