Chimgan, Perfect Getaway in Uzbekistan

The capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, is the city where we landed for the first time, the airport named after the 1st president of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov Tashkent International Airport. We landed very early that day, around 4AM, the airport is not that big, there are 3 flights that arrived around the same time, but the queue are managable, It wasn't took a long time for us to exit the immigration and proceed to baggage claim.

Hubby bought Uz cell simcard in the airport, and get the internet package, that will be used for 4 of us to connect to the internet during our trip.

5AM we out of the airport, sunrise will be around 7.30 AM, so it's completely dark and cold outside. Our first destination is Chimgan, it's a small village 85km from Tashkent, there is a new ski resort around the area, less fortunate for us, the snow isn't thick enough for skiing, but still it was great to be there, enjoying fresh air.

We should have wait until the sunrise before we took taxi to Chimgan, the driver was ripped us by twice of the normal price. It's very dark along the way to Chimgan, not many lamppost on the road. My imagination going wild, I imagine a border post during Soviet era, we drove there for 2 hours, and reached our 1st guest house even before sunrise. It's very cold and the gate is still closed. We wait around 30 minutes outside, but got entertained with the beautiful view, sunrise over snowy mountain.

A young man was passing by, and helped us calling the guard, that finally took us to our guest house. It was a warm wooden hut, clean and comfy. We had breakfast, try to adapt to read the menu that written in cyrillic, try few apps to translate it. Nobody speaks English there, and the experience using translation apps is the greatest ice breaker. It's our first time to try milk porridge, it's local breakfast, and the one that we ate in the guest house was so far the best one during our trip.

After short rest, the guest house arrange taxi for us to go to Amirsoy, the new ski resort. It's a brand new resort, everything still shine bright, eventhough the ski season hasn't started yet, we can go to the top using the cable car. Different view, ambience, and also people that we met, we officially start our holiday 😎. 

On the way back, Max, our driver told us about Charvax Lake, that has spectacular view too, with the pyramid resorts, looks like it was legacy from Soviet era. In Charvax you could do paragliding, but not on winter days. We came almost at the end of the day, 5PM, when the sun will set soon, the wind blows so strong, it increase dramatic ambience of the place.

The next day,  we plan to head back to Tashkent, for a night transit, before we continue our journey to Samarkand. Early in the morning, I take a walk around our guest house. tried to capture morning life in this small village.