Excursions to Uzbekistan

As soon as he regained consciousness, he heard stories of Tashkent, Samarqand, Bukhara, Transoxiana and Timur Ling. A long and glorious period passed, which lasted for almost two centuries. The last ruler Bahadur Shah Zafar was deposed during the British rule.

In Uzbekistan, Timur Ling, the 'Amir of Timur', their hero is their victorious ruler whose empire of Transoxiana stretched from present-day Uzbekistan in the west to Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, but also in western India.

And in the East, Central Asia, Mongolia, and China, his descendants ruled over Central Asia for almost two centuries. His grandson Mirzaoo Log Beg was a famous scientist and astronomer of his time who ruled and built an astronomical observatory and laboratory. His observatory was destroyed in the enmity and war. Archaeologists have found some of his artifacts which are preserved and which we photographed.

Zaheer-ud-Din Babar was mentioned by our guide Nesser Siri and said that his grandson Shah Jahan built the Taj Mahal which is still very popular among tourists and UNESCO is the guarantor of its maintenance. The reason for this is that Babar migrated from his land and came to India and this is what is happening here.

At the same time, when the Pakistan Travel Forum (of which I have been a member of WhatsApp group for some time) announced an exclusive tour of Uzbekistan, I was thinking of coming to Pakistan and I had the best opportunity to join this tour. So I decided to join the tour. Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara were once the abodes of knowledge and grace. The status of his schools at that time was the same as that of Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Oxford today. Students from all over the world and from the Islamic world would flock here to benefit from the knowledge of the universities here.

Elementary education is still 5%. People are very polite and friendly

Our flight from Lahore reached Tashkent in two and a half hours, the same time and the weather was the same.

Our group of 50 people took the bus from Tashkent airport to the airport after taking pictures of the immigration process. Traffic was flowing in a clean, tidy city. I spent most of the night awake because we left Islamabad in a van at 12:30 pm, then arrived at Lahore Airport at 5:30 pm and after going through all the stages we were now heading towards the hotel in Tashkent. Our bus or coach was also of international standard in which tourists usually travel nowadays. Here our guide Naila was a handsome smart Uzbek girl who welcomed us in English and started telling us about Uzbekistan and Tashkent.

The Uzbek language of Uzbek is Latin. The second language here is Russian. People in the public relations department especially learn English. These include hospitality staff, tour guides, hotel staff, and more. Therefore, the process of sign language was involved in our common speech. Prices are usually written down and if there is any deduction, it is a privilege to write the numbers in English.

Major Tariq Sahib and one of his comrades Tariq Khawaja spoke and understood Russian and some other things.

Before the Russian occupation, their alphabet was Arabic. Many words are still similar to Urdu, Arabic and Persian, but an estimated 400 words are found in Urdu and Uzbek. In so many days, it has been estimated that where we speak A, they speak it like four thieves, Afrasiab to Afrosiob, Bukhara to Bukhara, Juma Masjid Jamia Masjid, and so on.

The currency here is called Som. There was a currency exchange booth in the hotel, where we lined up and found notes of one hundred dollars, about nine hundred and thirty-nine thousand Som. When the drinking water in his room ran out, his companion called the receptionist and told him that the price of a bottle was ten thousand three hundred. After some consideration, it was estimated that ten thousand and three is equal to one dollar and then the calculation continued in the same way. ...

At three-thirty we had to leave for Tashkent, got ready and came down. We found water bottles in the bus. Major Tariq was also with his wife. In this group we also had some young boys and girls with their parents. Distinguished people belonging to different schools of thought of Pakistan, women outnumbered men. Our guide kept us informed of the various buildings and their backgrounds. We landed at Tashkent Central Park with wide, clean, colorful and changingly shaped fountains, descending stairs to the bottom where there was a beautiful canal and various swings along its banks as if it were an amusement park but at that time the swings were silent. The spring of colors and lights was all around us. The use of colors and designs in the lights is a specialty here. Almost all the roads are made of similar decorative colored lights.