namangan was a giant dusty mistake

i rolled into namangan on a busted bus that smelled like old bread and regret. the driver kept waving at me to jump on even though i clearly missed the last stop. i greeted the chaos with a half-empty bottle of water and a map that wouldn’t stop zooming around. nai nai, or whatever you call these place names, kept giving me directions in Uzbek that sounded like a dream.

i checked the weather app and it said 1.93°c. sure why not. it’s not like it’s 40 below or whatever. i just checked and it’s 1.93°c right now, hope you like that kind of thing. it’s also 90% humidity, which makes everything feel like a soup monster. i’m sweating through a jacket that doesn’t exist anymore.

naimaniy people are mostly farmers or something. i heard that somewhere. if you get bored, chust is a short drive and they’ve got those weird knife guys. chortoq’s a spa town, but i don’t have the energy to read about hot springs right now. the tea houses here are the only places with life. one old woman kept bringing me black tea with cinnamon and calling it a ‘drug fix for tourists.’ i thought she was crazy until i realized she meant painkillers.

someone told me that the madrassah where the ghosts supposedly whisper is closed for renovations. i don’t know if that’s true. maybe. i also heard that the central park’s fountain is now a construction zone. so i just sat on a bench with a baguette and watched a group of guys play football while a cat chased a sock. that was it. that was my adventure.

i saw a dog wearing a tiny scarf. a farmer selling watermelons by the side of the road. a kid selling oranges in a plastic bag. and a guy hitchhiking on a truck that looked like it belonged in a horror movie. all of this is worth writing about. or not. who knows.

here’s a map so you don’t accidentally end up in a field:

. trust me on this. otherwise you’ll miss the tea houses and probably get lost in a cornfield.

if you want to see the place, here are some ugly travel sites to check: TripAdvisor, Namangan tourism. ignore the reviews-they’re all in Arabic or something.

here are some ugly photos i took:

. this is the road i took to get to the town. it had a gate that looked like it was holding a secret.

. that truck still looks like it belongs in a post-apocalyptic movie.

i didn’t buy anything. except a bag of namangan tea. it was cute. and cheap. like 20 cents. i drank it at a crossroad while navigating my way out of the city. i regret nothing.

naimangan’s a city where the earth is alive. they grow grapes and make wine and pretend they’re not dealing with some weird Soviet history. the people are okay. the weather is weird. and the dust is everywhere. but at least there’s a cat. and a baguette. and a truck with a broken radio. that’s what matters.

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