On April 26, 1966, an earthquake flattened much of old Tashkent, leaving tens of thousands homeless, and the Soviet Union responded by turning the city into a showcase. Architects and builders came from across the republics to rebuild, and the result was a capital of wide avenues, big squares and concrete modernism, with buildings that mixed Soviet geometry with Central Asian patterns, blue tiles, carved screens and domes. The Central Exhibition Hall of the Academy of Arts belongs to that world, a hall for displays of painting and sculpture, standing in a city that has since added glass towers and new mosques but keeps these older shapes as part of its character.
Tashkent is a city of about two million, built on a flat plain where the Chirchik river comes down out of the Tien Shan mountains, and it is much greener than first impressions suggest, with plane trees, canals and shaded parks. Once the Russian colonial capital of Turkestan, it became the fourth biggest city of the Soviet Union, and it still has the broad, orderly grid of a planned city. Underneath the modern surface lies the old quarter, a maze of low mud-brick houses and courtyards near Chorsu, where people still live in the traditional way.
For a rider, this is a start and finish point, a place for a hotel and a restaurant before the mountains. City traffic is dense and quick, lanes are suggestions, and drivers do not always signal, so ride defensively and expect police checks. Petrol availability has been uneven in Uzbekistan for some years, with many vehicles running on compressed gas, so check where you can fill up before a long leg, and carry a little extra. The ride from here goes to Besh-Aral, a state nature reserve, on the roads that head out across the steppe and desert fringe, with long views and little traffic outside the towns.
The best time for riding is spring, in April and May, when the steppe is green, and autumn, in September and October, when the heat has gone. Summer in Tashkent is very hot, with temperatures that often pass forty degrees, and winters can be cold and grey. In the evenings, the cafes serve plov, the rice and meat pilaf that is the national dish, with flat bread, green tea and sweet melons. Take time for a walk through the city's metro, which is a remarkable underground gallery, and where rules on photography have recently relaxed.