OUZBEKISTAN
In Uzbekistan, we foully entered Central Asia and its taste had to be discovered in the daily nuances.
We alternated between barren zones, where the heat was suffocating in this universe of yellow and red land and where we could sometimes hear the vibrations of valuators’ wings; and the excitement of a population that only lives in community and that we constantly met walking along our road…
We saw a cyclist with a white beard, which gave him a tone of wisdom. The feature of his face were deeply embedded and his wrinkles gave him some sort of charisma, that was accented by the contrast between his brown skin and the whiteness of his beard. He wore a traditional Uzbek hat, like so many men around there. The hat is square and black with some white hand-made designs; the people, here, wear it on the back of the head, leaving the forehead visible. He greeted us with a radiant smile and following the tradition, placed his hand on his heart.
A bit further, we passed a young boy. The sun had already tanned his skin. He walked with his unique cow, a rope between them. He was going to take it to a place it could pasture, fixing the rope on a small wooden stick.
Then, we saw women working in the field, making the same gesture again and again under a suffocating heat. They wore long colourful dresses and scarves they would fasten around the head, in a way that we could only distinguished their eyes. They seemed to be caged in their multiple cloths with dissonant colours, but it is a mean to protect them against the sun.
A man on a motorbike passed us, he wore a long dark blue dress, fixed with a embroider belt. The cloths seemed quite thick but gave him a kind of grandeur. In this region, a couple of men wore the same outfit, giving them the appearance of fantastic Eastern Horseriders. Even if the Uzbek population is sedentary and lives from its agriculture.