Traveling around Uzbekistan

I’ve walked past a lot of mosques in my life, but the Minor Mosque in Tashkent stopped me cold. It’s not ancient—that’

I used to think candles were just wax and string until I watched Rustam Karimov’s hands move through the steps his grandfather taught him in a cramped

I never thought I’d spend a Tuesday afternoon watching an 87-year-old woman’s hands move through hazel branches like they were reading braille.

I’ve walked past war memorials in dozens of cities, but Memory Square in Tashkent does something different—it doesn’t let you look away.

Kirk Kiz sits about 3 kilometers west of Termez, and honestly, the first time you see it rising from the scrubby desert, it doesn’

I used to think the Kokand Khanate was just another Central Asian footnote—until I stood in Khudayar Khan’s palace courtyard, staring at those ceramic

I never expected a textile to make me question everything I thought I knew about shopping. Traditional Uzbek suzani embroidery—those sprawling, hand-stitched

I used to think marble was just marble—you know, that cold expensive stuff rich people put in their bathrooms. Then I descended into Oybek station on the

I used to think UNESCO World Heritage sites were basically museums—frozen in time, untouchable, preserved under glass like some kind of architectural taxidermy.

The turquoise dome hits you first—this brilliant, almost unsettling blue against Samarkand’s dusty sky that makes you wonder if someone cranked up