The Uzbek capital, once the fourth largest city in the former USSR, is Central Asia's hub and has better international flight connections than any other city in the region. That said, it's not a picture-postcard destination; a 1966 earthquake and subsequent harsh Soviet planning has seen to that.
It's worth taking a stroll around the remnants of the old town, eski shakhar. This maze of narrow dusty streets lined by low, mudbrick houses, mosques and medressas (Islamic academies) have been spared by Soviet planners to show what things would have been like without the glories of socialism.
© 2005 Lonely Planet Publications