Etched In Memory At Botkin Cemetery

Uzbeks love to get graphic with their headstones. Black granite is best. Start with a shiny slab and start etching. You're going to want to use a special image, something that sums up everything about your loved one.

A portrait pose is nice, maybe feeling a bit casual?

Respect the mother, don't ruffle feathers in the family plot.

It's between the brothers.

More poses. Terrorize your ancestors who scolded you for smoking. Puff for eternity, no consequences! Group shot, tripping into etching styles found on money.

Wow. Worked to death? People are going to wonder what those funny objects are on the desk in about 50 years.

Seeing Statues In Tashkent, Part 1

They like their monuments in Tashkent. In a park, in front of an important building, maybe the Metro, a house museum. If there's room for a pedestal or a frieze, there's plenty of bronze to fill it.

Let's start with the most significant sculpture in the city, the grand statue of Amir Timur riding a horse, located in the central square in downtown Tashkent. He's kind of the George Washington of Uzbekistan, if George Washington had been born in the 1300s. Of course, the square saw the inevitable march of Lenin, Stalin and Marx statues before Uzbekistan gained independence and a homegrown hero was installed.

More heroes. How about the humbly titled Oath to the Motherland? You fight, mamma always looks down, watching. It's not all military conquest, figures from the Arts can also get a sculpture. Here's Ural Tansykbayev, a successful painter during the Communist era.

The Metro gets some good art, like this large frieze outside a downtown station.

A detail of the frieze, shirtless man banging an anvil. Get us a Diet Coke. Moving on from humans, storks are popular. Or some sort of fantastical bird that kind of looks like a stork. Anything is powerful atop a column.

Another Silk Road era big boy, the famed astronomer Ulugh Beg. He gets a chair and a celestial globe. And fresh flowers every week.

Connecting At The Museum Of Telecommunication

It's always fun to see old switching equipment, a brick cell phone and something called a radio. You can count your age like rings on a tree by the technology gone obsolete. Must need to visit a museum for confirmation.

The Telecommunication Museum in Tashkent is the perfect place to look at techie boat anchors. They kind of took the communications definition and ran with it.

The classic stuff, old switching, telex machines.

Old phones for every need. Does that phone come with dog tags? Been through basic dialing? A Soviet era pay phone. Comrades couldn't talk for free?

Branching out on the theme, how about model post office workers in their snazzy airline attendant uniforms? How does one become a member of the letter high club?

Rows of Soviet TVs. The helpful guide proudly proclaimed, "Black and white on the bottom, color on the top." OK. Don't forget audio. Somehow, Michael Jackson snuck behind the Iron Curtain. Of course he did.

The real reason for the museum, a nice outlet for mighty UCell to show that it is the bright future. Check out its technology reach in its model city layout. The same tour guide mentioned something about cell towers talking to greenhouses and then it all got fuzzy. 

The Sheikhantaur And Kaldyrgach Bey Mausoleums

Hidden in the modern metropolis of downtown Tashkent are a couple of cute mausoleums, tucked into the area that is now part of the International Islamic Academy campus. Seems about right.

Behold ancient architecture! Actually, a ceremonial gate to the academy. Looks the part.

Here's the mausoleum for Sheikh Hovendj Tahur, a 14th century Sufi saint. The tomb dates to about 1360. It's a small, simple design, the standard beige brick with a couple of iconic blue tiled domes.

The first room inside contains the grave of Sheikhantaur with a large, dead trunk of a Saur tree, supposedly placed there in the 1930s. Impressive.

Moving farther inside the mausoleum, there's a smaller room with two tombs, for Sheikhantaur's wife and son. Right behind the Sheikhantaur mausoleum is an equally small, humble building, dedicated to Kaldyrgach Bey. One unique feature is the 12-sided cone atop the structure.

Inside the nicely decorated (heavily restored after the 1966 earthquake) building is the tomb of Kaldyrgach Bey. Or is it? Some scholars argue that it's the tomb of Töle Biy. Thank god for the google and its endless clarity sorting out such matters.

Picturing Alisher Navoi At The Literature Museum

Alisher Navoi is one of the most famous figures in Uzbekistan, a Silk Road era poet, author, linguist, politician, mystic and gardener. OK, not sure about his gardening prowess. Seems possible.

Tashkent has a nice museum with a literature theme, most of it devoted to Navoi. Big props to the gentleman known as the father of Turkic literature. The museum is rooms and rooms with cases of books - about what one would expect in a place devoted to literature. What else to display?

Portraits of the esteemed Alisher Navoi. A lot of them. Here's a small selection, every pose, age imaginable.

Old Cars At The Tashkent Polytechnical Museum

Who knew there was Soviet automobile style beyond the ubiquitous Lada? Drive on down to the confusingly named Polytech Museum and you can check out some sweet Russian rides.

Looking a little bit like vintage 1950s USA. Bold choice, an orange sherbet colored chariot.

The Russians had their own military utility Jeep. Say hello to the GAZ-67 - 1957 model year. No door, just a flap and mounted tools flanking the opening. A shovel and a saw, ready to do damage.

Getting fancy, the Soviet Limo. The Chayka.

No matter what the material challenges are to producing a luxury car, one can always go fancy with a hood ornament. Stag and star proudly announce your arrival.

Another lineup of vintage vehicles, more for the everyman comrade. Cheery.

 

The Jewish Cemetery In Tashkent

Grim. There's a Jewish cemetery in Tashkent and it's a minor miracle it's still there, despite decades of Russian occupation and also in a Muslim dominated land. The cemetery isn't used anymore. The graves date through about WWII. Between death in that war and the establishment of Israel in 1948 offering emigration, Jews in Tashkent mostly disappeared.

The graveyard. Rough. Someone still does a casual maintenance job, sometimes burning away new brush growth, leaving behind a scorched earth and a hellish look to the place.

It's slowly dissolving back to the land. Graves are crumbling, plots are overgrown.

Occasionally one comes across a grave that has been restored, updated with a new plaque, stone.

A typical date of death, during WWII. Did Jews fight and die for Russia in the Great Patriotic War? Were they killed in-country? The Nazis did not make it to Uzbekistan. Many graves have photographs on their headstone.

A bit more elaborate, a grave marker with a life size bust of the person. An appropriate placement, looking over the cemetery.