One of my favorite activities when visiting a large city in the former Soviet Union is checking out the Metro system. The well-preserved Metro system in Tashkent, Uzbekistan did not disappoint.
I have visited Soviet Metro systems around the former CIS world, including Baku, Kiev, Moscow, Minsk, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi and Yerevan. I love the ornate attention to details and palatial grandeur of many of these stations. Surely, Metros are meant to be functional rapid transport systems but I love that Soviet metros are both functional and aesthetically pleasing.
The Metro is dirt cheap in Tashkent, about 20 cents for a ride (at black market rates). Each station has a manned booth in which you can purchase plastic blue tokens that are used to access the Metro system.
Ben and I spent about 30 minutes traveling to a handful of stations near our hotel. Each one was unique. The rail cars are old, but have been outfitted with security cameras…a small reminder of the authoritarian Uzbek state.
And all the stations had that smell, a sort of musty smell that anyone who has ridden a Soviet Metro can attest to. That’s one of the joys (and at times, horrors) of traveling — the smells of the world.
Here are some pictures–
The only station I regrettably missed was Kosmonavtlar, a station dedicated to Soviet space travel which included mosaics of Sputnik and Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.
Next time…
One of my favorite activities while traveling as well. Any city can only truly be explored via Metro. Those ex soviet stations are also deep. Kiev has some super deep stations
“The rail cars are old, but have been outfitted with security cameras…a small reminder of the authoritarian Uzbek state.”
So what does that make the United States? There is undoubtedly more CCTV surveillance in the US than anywhere else in the world. Land of the free? Not so much.
I never made that argument…
I don’t think he made any comparison here. No reason to be so critical!
And anyway, if you think the US has “undoubtably” more surveillance than anywhere else it’s probably time to do a little travellling, as this is objectively not true.
Although video capture has become so ubiquitous that the notion of a “world leader” probably doesn’t make sense any more, it’s certainly not true that the United States leads the world in this kind of surveillance. Britain, for instance, is and always has been ahead of us. Many shops their do not permit you to enter if you’re wearing a visored cap that hides your face from the surveillance cameras, for instance.
More photos please…
I notice that all the modern signage has changed from the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin. I know there are countries other than ex-Soviet ones that use Cyrillic (like Bulgaria and others nearby), but I’m interested to see what the central Asian ones have done.
Made in the USSR in 1984 of all years. Awesome!
These pictures are awesome! I’m going to Uzbekistan later this month. I was wondering how you managed to get these beautiful photos, since I heard it’s not allowed. Is there a permit you can buy (officially or “unofficially”), or do you just hope they don’t see you doing it? I take pictures everywhere I go -so sad they don’t allow it.
I just took them, though I was discreet about it.