I travelled 450 km to Tashkent this weekend by high speed rail, to hang out with the other American teachers. Then I got up early this morning and travelled back by high speed rail--the Afrosiyob--back to Qarshi. It takes about 3.5 hours.
It is roughly 12,000 km from San Diego to Qarshi, and I got here entirely by flying. I travel frequently on the weekends by train, so add a couple hundred more kilometers.
I get around my city by public bus and taxi. I prefer public busses, but they aren't always available exactly when I need them and they can get quite crowded. Busses are only 2,000 so'm for a journey though--a private taxi can top 16,000 so'm.
I quite enjoyed my weekend trip to Tashkent--it's a very different city from the rest of Uzbekistan, crammed with modernist Soviet architecture and much more Russian speaking. It has a beautiful metro, monumental civic buildings and best of all lots of history museums with interesting artifacts from Uzbekistan's history.
