Traveling around Uzbekistan

I stood in front of the Rukhobod Mausoleum on a dusty Thursday afternoon, and honestly, I almost walked past it. The thing about Samarkand is that it punches

I used to think getting a visa was this bureaucratic nightmare that required weeks of planning and a stack of documents thick enough to kill a small tree.

I used to think responsible travel was just about not littering. Then I spent three weeks in Uzbekistan, watching a German tourist argue with a ceramics

I used to think calligraphy was just fancy handwriting until I watched someone’s hand tremble over a single curve for twenty minutes.

I used to think hot air balloons were mostly for retirement parties and proposal photos. Then I found myself at dawn outside Samarkand, watching a dozen

I used to think silk roads were just metaphors until I stood in Margilan watching a woman coax crimson dye from pomegranate rinds. The thing about Margilan—and

The first time I saw the National Library of Uzbekistan in Tashkent, I thought someone had dropped a spaceship in the middle of Central Asia. And honestly, that’

I used to think city gates were just, you know, doors. Until I stood in front of Khiva’s western gate—Ata Darvaza—on a May morning in 2019, watching

I used to think learning a few phrases in Uzbek would be this quaint little exercise—print out a list, practice on the plane, maybe impress a taxi driver.

I’ve walked through dozens of Central Asian merchant houses, but the Khodjaev mansion hit different. The Courtyard Where Bolsheviks and Bukharans