Very Important, or Very Naughty!

Over breakfast I meet Mehmet, the tour leader, and then Ingrid, the final guest in this rather select tour. After breakfast I decide to go out and explore the park in the centre of Tashkent, which isn’t far from our hotel.

Exiting the hotel and walking to the end of the block is uneventful, but then I get caught up in what feels like a major security operation with dozens of police holding the traffic, shouting at people, blowing whistles, marshalling pedestrians and so forth. Of course I don’t have enough common language to be sure what’s going on, but it becomes fairly apparent when an enormous number of police vehicles come through the junction at high speed. Now I’ve seen The Queen drive down The Strand (one Rolls Royce and a couple of police bikes), and when we were in Washington DC we saw President Obama’s motorcade (about 20 vehicles), but this one has that topped. The central characters are either very important, or very naughty, or possibly both! Based on the absence of limousines and presence of a couple of armoured vans I’m tending toward the "naughty" theory. Unfortunately I don’t get photos – when it’s apparent that I’m not going anywhere for a few minutes I take out my camera and long lens, but a very large and stern-looking policeman makes me put it away again…

Drama over I wander up to the park, which has at its centre an enormous statue of a bloke on a horse (Amur Timur, distant relative of Ghengis Khan, who’s Wikipeida entry can be summarised as "brutal and deadly patron of the arts"). The park is beautifully laid out and coiffed, and around it are a number of rather spectacular municipal edifices. Tashkent suffered a major earthquake in 1966, and in its wake the Soviets rebuilt with a large number of grandiose structures. The habit appears to have extended into the modern era.

So far my impression of food and drink prices is "quite cheap", but I discover that those are the inflated tourist prices! For lunch I grab a pasty and a bottle of coke from a café in the shopping centre. Total is 20 000 Uzbek Soms, which equates to about £1.20. My cash should go a long way here,

Back at the hotel we meet the final member of our party, local guide Ganisher. We head out for an afternoon’s shooting. First stop, the Chorus Bazar, a market area centred around an enormous domed structure. We have a happy hour photographing the fruits, nuts, spices and their vendors, and then a working bakery corner producing the delicious local "Non" bread.

After that, we head to the Khast Imam religious complex. This is built around two large squares, one of which houses an ancient mosque and madrassa, the other of which hosts a brand new (and not yet officially open) cultural centre. Both are dramatic, but difficult to photograph well. Both are full of other tourists. The madrassa complex is laid out in such a way that the old mosque to some extent obscures the other buildings. The cultural centre has slightly odd proportions, making it difficult to capture both the dramatic portals and the blue dome. However with a bit of effort I get acceptable results.

I have more success with a bit of brazen "model stealing". In front of the madrassa two attractive middle-aged Uzbek ladies are posing for photos in dresses with very long trains. They seem happy to include us in the photographic experience, and their official photographer tolerates it without complaint. We discover later that the two models are twin sisters, and the other lady managing the costumes, hair and makeup is a third sister, so it’s quite possible they paid the photographer rather than the other way around. Regardless we all have a nice chat and I come away with some great shots.

We take dinner just down the road, then return to the complex to make more photographs at blue hour, which has materialised in spite of the cloudy weather for much of the day. With fewer people around, and a bit of expert guidance from Mehmet, I capture a couple of my "must do shots" and retire happy.