I Came Looking for Beauty. I Found a Home Away From Home.

Today I am returning to England after my trip to Uzbekistan, and I have never felt such a strong urge to write about my experiences right after a trip like this. So I'm writing this first part while I am still on the plane.

Before I arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, all I expected was food and scenery (or architecture, to be exact). Ever since the first time I tried Uzbek food in London thanks to my Uzbek friend's recommendation, I had decided that it would stay firmly in second place in my heart. Number one is, without fail, my home country's cuisine, Vietnamese food. Anyway, I would love to say that I really enjoyed all of the dishes I had a chance to try there: plov (or osh, as they call it, which is Uzbekistan’s national dish), manti (my favourite), somsa and more! So please make sure you give them all a try when you are there.

But honestly, some of my favourite things I ate in Uzbekistan weren’t even the dishes I saw when I looked up “Uzbek food”. My friend’s mom prepared some dishes that I had never heard of before, and somehow those meals ended up being some of the most memorable meals of my entire trip. They were simple, comforting and felt completely different from eating at a restaurant, which made me feel like a tourist every time (well I am, but I don’t want to admit it because it felt so much like home here). Seeing my friend's mom reminded me so much of my mom who is also an incredible cook too. She could just take one look at something, taste it once, and somehow recreated exactly the same thing in her own kitchen. I especially loved eating them in my friend’s family’s cosy kitchen, where everything felt warm and relaxed, and where everyone chatted while eating instead of being on their phone the entire time. The trip also made me realise that Uzbek cuisine is much more than just plov or manti. There are so many different dishes and flavours of this country’s cuisine which I probably only scratched the surface during my trip. And now I’m already missing the food before I’ve even properly left the country.

I’m back in England now, and you know what? It would be a disrespect not to mention the architecture of this beautiful country. Before my trip, I watched countless videos about the buildings in Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, and I knew I was going to be impressed. But being in these places in person was something else entirely. What caught my attention the most was the symmetry. The kind of symmetry that made me stop walking, stare at a building for a few seconds, and start wondering how people could have designed something this beautiful hundreds of years ago. The intricate patterns, the blue tiles, the arches, and the little details - all of them made me feel like I was walking straight into a photoshoot where literally every corner was worth a photo, and every photo looked like it could be worth thousands of pounds.

As I mentioned, I think I came to Uzbekistan expecting to be impressed by its architecture, and delighted by its cuisine, and indeed I was. But interestingly, no matter how beautiful the buildings were and how scrumptious the food was, they weren’t the most beautiful thing I found here. I know I’ve said this many times, and I will always say it again: the real beauty I found in this country was the people.

One of the first things I noticed about Uzbekistan was how kind people were to me, even when we could barely communicate sometimes.

I remember one particular taxi ride quite clearly. I had booked a taxi to somewhere far from the city centre to buy some gifts, but when I arrived, I realised that the place I had found online wasn’t a shop at all, but the address of a legal office. The driver only spoke a few words of English, while my Russian was still very much at beginner level and I didn’t know Uzbek, so our communication was quite confusing and, looking back, quite funny. But instead of simply leaving me there, he tried to help me find the place, even asking a local nearby for help. We waited for around ten minutes before giving up, and he took me back to my hotel without charging me for the waiting time. Then, when I needed to get to my friend’s nearby address, he drove me there too without charging me anything extra. I was honestly touched by his kindness.

And then there was the hugging. Apparently, Uzbek people, especially women, just hug. When they meet, they hug, and then when they say goodbye, they hug again. And as someone who is quite introverted and comes from a country where hugging isn’t necessarily the first way we show affection, I was honestly surprised by this little gesture of greeting. At first, I wasn’t quite sure how to react to it but I just followed along. After a few times, I started to love it. There was something incredibly comforting about being greeted with a hug, especially from people I had only just met. It was such a simple gesture, but somehow it made me feel welcomed and cared for without requiring a single word. To be honest with you, I never expected such a cultural difference that initially surprised me so much to become one of the things I would miss the most. And I know this might sound exaggerated, but those hugs genuinely felt like they healed me to the core.

I was also lucky enough to be invited to a traditional Uzbek wedding, which gave me another glimpse into how warmly people celebrate together. Everything was beautiful: the venue, the food, the clothes, the atmosphere. But what really caught my attention was the dancing. I repeat: Uzbek people are dancers by nature. In Vietnam, people at weddings mostly sing. In Uzbekistan, they dance. I had never seen so many people dance at a wedding, like children, women, men, and especially the women. They dressed so elegantly and danced like absolute divas. It was one of those moments when I realised that I wasn’t simply looking at another country’s wedding but was being given a chance to look into how people here celebrate, connect, and enjoy being together.

But if you ask me which place I loved the most throughout the whole trip, I’d have to say it was my friend Mumtozbegim’s home where I felt the hospitality most deeply. When I landed in Tashkent at 5 in the morning, Mumtoz and her sister picked me up from the airport, and they greeted me with flowers. Yeah, a lovely little bouquet of flowers. They absolutely did not have to do that, but they did. After a long journey, walking out and seeing my friend and her sister waiting for me with flowers was one of the warmest welcomes I could have asked for. I just wish I had shown more joy when I saw them but since I couldn’t sleep on the plane, my brain was not functioning very well.

Then I met her mother and had my first breakfast at their home. There was, of course, a language barrier. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to practice some basic Uzbek before my trip. And even though they knew Russian, my level was nowhere near good enough to have a proper conversation, and she didn’t speak much English. Most of the time, my friend and her sister had to translate for us. But somehow, I never felt like the language barrier was keeping us apart. Her mother kept trying to talk to me, asking me questions to get to know me, and always checking on me. I could tell that she was making an effort even when communication wasn’t easy. And because her parents knew how much I love coffee (I wouldn’t say I’m addicted, but… well, you know me), they would always ask me if I wanted a coffee whether it's at their home or outside. And honestly, for someone who loves coffee like me, that is basically love. From my side, I felt quite guilty about not being able to hold even basic conversations in their language because I can’t just ask them to speak with me in English (I mean I’m visiting them in their country, right?). So I told myself that I needed to try harder for my next visit.

Then I met her father and brother. They were incredibly polite, and I noticed another cultural detail: while women often greeted each other with hugs, men would greet women by placing their right hand over their chest with a slight nod of the head. At one point, her father was trying to tell me something and showing four fingers. I didn’t understand a word, so once again, my friend translated. And honestly, I wasn’t prepared for what he said. Can you guess what he told me? He wanted to say that he already had three daughters, and now, with me, he had four. I mean, I had barely arrived in Uzbekistan, had known his family for only a short time, and yet he had already made room for me in his family. That was when I really understood what hospitality meant here. It wasn’t simply someone being polite to a guest, but making a stranger feel like they belonged. Maybe that was why his words touched me so much. He just reminded me of my father. Whenever we have friends or guests coming over, my dad has always been the kind of person who makes them feel like they belong in our home. Seeing the same warmth in someone I had only just met, thousands of miles away from my own home, just felt strangely familiar.

I think that’s when I realised what made this trip so special to me. I came to Uzbekistan expecting to be impressed by its architecture and delighted by its cuisine, and I was. But somehow, the thing I will carry home with me isn’t a building or a dish. It’s the feeling of being welcomed somewhere I had never been before.