Editor’s Note: What follows is part of a cross-blog survey that explores minorities in Central Asia. This article was originally published on Thinking-East in 2005.
Nafisa Hasanova (22, from Uzbekistan) dares to violate taboo: she visits the Luli, Central Asian Romas, whose community has been marginalised in her hometown of Samarkand. However, in a tragic […]

All Photographs copyright by Thomas Grabka

LJ user aqua_snezhok posted photos of cotton picking in Uzbekistan. The country is one of the five leading exporters of cotton in the world, and cotton is major export production in the country. Most cotton in the United States, Europe and Australia is harvested mechanically, either by a cotton picker, […]

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston has been kidnapped in Gaza in the Palestinian Territories, and so the BBC has been rebroadcasting some of his reports for the foreign affairs programme From Our Own Correspendent. One of the reports recounts a meeting with the Uzbek warlord Rashid Dostum in Afghanistan.
It’s a fascinating account, though parts of […]

This is a translation of the post by Girl of the Sands, that originally appeared on the russian version of neweurasia.
Mahalla is a very Uzbek phenomenon. No, I would say that it is more likely Eastern. The community in the east is a society. The concept of “mahalla” is a very multilayered notion.
First, its concept […]

This is a translation of the post by Girl of the Sands, that originally appeared on the russian version of neweurasia.
So, my first post will be about how people drink tea in Uzbekistan. Uzbekistani people drink tea a lot, all the time, and for long periods of time – with emotion, with appreciation, […]