Tashkent Vegan Food Tour

The Tashkent Vegan Food Tour is a guided plant-based route of about four hours through three of the city's main bazaars in Tashkent, Uzbekistan: Chorsu, Alay and Mirobod. It is offered through Visit Tashkent, the city's tourism website, at visittashkent.uz/en/tours/vegan-food-tour, and bookings are made through that site. The tour starts at Chorsu Bazaar on Beruniy Street in the Old City, the best known of the three markets, beneath its blue-domed main hall.

Uzbek cuisine is heavily meat-based, so a vegan itinerary is built around the produce halls rather than restaurants. The listed focus is fruit, nuts, bread and salads. At Chorsu the route covers dried fruit and nut stalls, fresh non bread from the bakers' rows and seasonal vegetables; Alay Bazaar and Mirobod Bazaar add different neighbourhood markets and the chance to compare produce and prices between them. The balance is savoury and fresh with natural sweetness from dried fruit and melons in season, rather than pastry-style desserts. The listing does not publish the exact number of tastings.

The Visit Tashkent page does not publish a price, and visitors are asked to request a quote through the website. Whether transport between the three bazaars, drinks or market purchases are covered is not stated, so these should be confirmed when requesting the quote, along with group size, guiding language and pace. Because the whole tour is built around vegan food, dietary substitutions are the point of the route, though visitors with nut or gluten allergies should say so in advance. Visitors who also eat dairy or eggs should check whether the stops include such items so that the tour matches their diet.

The tour suits travellers who want to experience Tashkent's markets without eating meat, and it works as a morning activity before the heat of the day.