Among Uzbeks, food is never just food—it is affection served in abundance. “Our day begins and ends with choy,” locals like to say, and every cup seems to confirm it. Yet what they truly excel at is picnicking. Theirs is an art of generosity: food appears at any moment, enough for everyone and always shared. Travelling through the desert hungry, a passerby might suddenly fill your car with heaps of grapes, or women resting by the roadside might offer you ayrom, their local buttermilk, with easy kindness. At every table, bread is broken first for the guest, offered hastily but with a warmth that needs no words.
Everywhere, people lounge on the ground, tucking into lavish spreads. The Europeans may pride themselves on their tartan rugs and wicker baskets, but “you haven’t really seen a picnic until you’ve seen an Uzbek one.” Their picnics revolve around the tapchan—a raised wooden divan with a low table at the centre, dressed with Persian rugs, floral quilts, cushions, and bolsters. Meals here unfold like ceremonies. Plates fill with somsa, towers of fruit, jam, cakes, nuts, sweets, even sheesha pipes making their rounds. Strangers are waved over and served without hesitation. To a visitor, the kindness feels boundless.
In the Jizzakh region, the desert gives way to the pine-green forests of Zaamin. The picnic spirit thrives here too, with tapchans scattered beneath trees and along glistening streams. Driving through, one might see a modest sign that simply says “Picnic Zone.” Beneath it, eight or ten tapchans are perfectly arranged along the water, each laid with bread, jam, and tea. Sunlight flickers on the surface, laughter floats in the air, and the quiet is so deep it almost hums. For people from Tashkent or Samarkand, Zaamin is the summer refuge—a place to slow down, sip tea, and “simply exist among the green trees.”
