Post Soviet Journal | Uzbekistan | May 2024
The Yangiabad Uranium Mine
Nestled away in the mountains above Angren, sits Yangiabad, a green refuge from the sand, dusty grassland, and noisy metropolis of Tashkent. An oasis in the clouds as such, where the air carries moisture and the trees and shrubs resemble that of the black seacoast. The road up acts as a time machine taking you back to the Soviet Union as the endless waves of Uzbekistan’s white Chevrolets and new Latin signposts revert back to the humble Ladas and Cyrillic. I first came across Yangiabad by chance, with no plan in mind I had jumped off the train leaving Tashkent for Tajikistan in Angren, a small dated industrial city around a hundred kilometres from Tashkent. By the time I had arrived, the sun was almost set, and the streets were deserted, I decided the best action was to just walk down the main boulevard, my usual tactic in navigating former soviet cities, as it would almost always lead to the main square or at least a statue of Vladimir Lenin. Within a few minutes of walking, I found a taxi, and a rather scruffy looking man asleep with his feet across the front seats. The desire to find a hotel at this hour had overcome the part of me that would let than man sleep, and with a gentle ‘Hello’ the man had jumped from a slumber to an upright, bright chap eager for my custom. I jumped in the front seat to which his hand was waiting for me to shake and shake it he did. “Hello, my friend, my name is Islam! What is yours?” to which I gave him mine. Islam was a funny man, he was slim, wore about four jackets in mid-May and sat far too close to the dashboard for someone who was easily pushing six feet. His English was very limited, I struggled to understand what he was trying to say, but noticed one word he kept saying when I said hotel, which was ‘Yangiabad’ I came to realise. I said sure, assuming this was going to be the name of the hotel, I had spent much of the last few days sleeping on old Soviet trains coming across the western desert, so naturally was dying to sleep in a comfy bed. My doubts started to set in however when the road through the city quickly turned into windy mountain roads, and Angren turned into just some distant lights in the rear-view mirror. Without any reception I decided to just see where Islam and the road would take me.
Mosque in Angren.
About twenty or so minutes later we arrived in the main street of Yangiabad, I had soon come to realise he meant a place when I saw the old Cyrillic sign as the road bent up the side of the mountain into the town. The roads had also gotten considerably worse, and Islam had seemed to hit almost every pothole and dent in the road up. There were no lights in Yangiabad, from the well-lit streets of Angren we had ascended up into the darkness where the only lights now were from the few buildings that had theirs on, along with the headlights of Islam’s car. The first thing that surprised me about Yangiabad however was the number of people out on the street in the pitch black. Opening the car door was met with the sound that would come from a school playground at lunchtime, with children out playing ball in the street, to teens hanging out the front of one of the only shops. I paid Islam the total of forty thousand Som, about three US dollars, left the taxi and continued on my journey to find a hotel. After walking back down the hill the main road was on, I found an illuminated building that was open, it said café on the front, but turned out to have rooms for the night. I ventured in and after back-and-forth gesturing numbers at the woman on the desk for the price of the room, I had found base for the night and was able to drop my bag off. Back out to find a beer, the air was cold to the point I put my jacket on, something I had yet to experience in Uzbekistan, as most nights had been warm and dry, so creased and flattened it was at the depths of my rucksack. The noise of what sounded like a rapid river, or a waterfall could be heard everywhere walking around the streets, it was still pitch black and I had no bearings of the place yet, I was unsure if it was near or far. Eventually I found a shop selling beer where I bought some food for dinner, the young man sat at the till was chatting Russian to another man stacking the cramped shelves, but instantly knew to talk English to me when I came to pay. “Ah yes Baltika, one of my favourites” when picking up the beer, I asked him how he knew I was British, to which he tells me “It is a small town, I know you are foreign, its only Uzbeks who come here”. I asked him where he was from as he looked as European as I did, “I am from Yangiabad, but I am Russian”. He had lived in the town all his life; his parents had come from Russia to work in the mine. I questioned him when he said that. “Yes, Yangiabad is an old mining town. There is the old uranium mine up the end”. I began to ask every question that came into my head, I wanted to know where exactly it was, it’s not every day you wander spontaneously to a uranium mine.
View of the valley from Yangiabad.
The town of Yangiabad itself began in the 1950s in the Uzbek SSR after Uranium was discovered in the ground. It was kept a secret and access to the town was strictly limited to only those with permission. The town was almost an exclave in the republic, being directly controlled by Moscow, and housing some of the best Soviet mining engineers and scientists in the country, most of whom were from Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarussian SSRs. Along with them were prisoners who were forced to work in the mines who were stationed in the town, many of which became sick from the radiation and hard labour. The mines themselves were in operation for thirty years, with most of the uranium suspected being removed by today.
The Yangiabad I awoke to the following morning was not what I had imagined when walking around in the pitch black the night before. I had likely the best sleep so far in Uzbekistan, helped by the cooler mountain air and comfy beds at the hotel, and lack of snoring men and loud carriages. What struck me when leaving the hotel into the street was the lush greenery, overgrown and covering roofs, sidewalks, and the hills adjacent. It was lightly raining, and the temperature had barely changed since last night, the place however seemed quieter on this Tuesday morning than it did the night before, with the sound of children chatting and playing replaced with the sound of rain in the trees. I noticed very few people out in the streets, a few elderly residents and only the occasional car driving past. I proceeded to venture to the main road of the town.
Children in the streets, yangiabad.
I was thrown back whilst walking through the run down and overgrown streets to my time in Abkhazia, the breakaway republic in western Georgia. Maybe it was the greenery, the weather or the way plants seemed relentless in their effort to grow through the old Soviet pavement tiles. Both Yangiabad and Abkhazia gave the impression of forgotten places, as if the Soviet Union had remained intact in these slithers of land whilst the rest of the world changed and modernised, leaving a collection of abandoned buildings, rusty Ladas and those who reminisce of old times. The river ran through the edge of the town at the bottom of the valley, the water was white and fast, and pieces of rusted metal debris could be seen along the rocky banks, presumably from the mines.
The river through Yangiabad.
The buildings that lined the streets were some of the most out of place, peculiar and interesting I had seen so far in Uzbekistan. They resembled that of what you would find in an old German town, two to three stories tall and likely Stalinkas (Built in Stalin’s time and style) they were colourful and furthered pushed the European feel of Yangiabad. Many of these buildings were run down, or even abandoned, with some having windows boarded up, and others with washing hanging out of them or jars of preserved vegetables on the window ledge. I noticed a few elderly people would watch me from their windows or gardens as I walked past. As I continued walking down the town, I noticed among all the overgrowth and old buildings, some new houses were either built or being built, these were the properties of wealthy Uzbeks, likely from Tashkent, who wanted a quiet place to relax away from the city in the mountains. One man I spoke to in broken English told me that they bring money and have helped the town, even a few new lodges have opened up for those who want to hike the mountains. As I was making my way further up the hill of the town, I began to hear what sounded like a stampede, and sure enough as I turned my head, about a hundred or so children, aged likely between twelve to eighteen, ran past me in their sports gear. I assumed they were from a local school but decided to head the direction they were heading, on a road leading out of the town. After walking about ten minutes or so, I came to an old gate with a big metal nuclear sign posted next to it.
Stalinka buildings in Yangiabad.
The entrance to the mines displayed keep out signs along with some other writing in Russian, however there was nothing stopping one from walking down to the site, which I could see situated right at the bank of the river, a large muddy platform. I passed the first gate and walked along the gravel track down to the first ledge where a series of abandoned sheds sat with ‘Flammable No Smoking!’ painted on the door in Russian. The ground had changed from gravel to mud, and as I descended further down to the platform, my boots picked up more and more mud making the walk harder. On the way down there were few more open gates and fences with radiation warnings, mostly rusted and collapsing with nothing stopping me from walking further. The platform itself hosted nothing but mud and bits of debris, but along the cliff face I had just come down from where the entrances into the mines themselves. All but one had been visibly sealed up with bricks and concrete, but one at the edge of the platform was still open, with water running out of it. I began to walk inside, where the sound of the water flowing through sounded like a waterfall. The mine was just a long concrete tunnel, I had walked about 3 minutes in and decided to turn back as the light of the mouth of the mine grew smaller and smaller. The mine had a bizarre smell to it, that of rusted metal and compost almost.
Sign above the platform. Uranium mine opening.
I left the tunnel and hiked back up the other side, again littered with radiation and keep out signs and a few broken fences, the track back up joined onto the same road I had departed from earlier. I continued to walk along the track, now getting narrower as the mountains got higher, until I came to a large, rusted bridge, connecting one side of the mountain to the other with the river, more rapid here, flowing underneath. The bridge looked old, it was rusted, and the walkway was just a metal grate, letting you see the height you were at when crossing. The other side hosted a few houses and dense greenery, as the fog descended down and the rain became stronger, one looking at the scenery would think they are in the Amazon. I followed the track up past the houses and few old vehicles to see the remains of some sort of industrial building, likely linked to the mines. The building was sat in a muddy yard, littered with all sorts of junk, old machines and vehicles, no doors or windows were present, and it was visibly abandoned. I ventured into the building, the wind and rain were causing all sorts of noises in the roof, and the water trickled down to the floor. Large machines, ones that I can only guess were for processing ore, stood meters tall in a dilapidated state frozen in time. There were considerable amounts of metal waste piled up next to some of them, presumably from salvagers looking for expensive metals or components after the site closed. My adventure into the building ended swiftly however when I was met with a dog growling at me from a few meters away after appearing from behind one of the machines. Fairly large, grey and scruffy, it wasn’t showing teeth but had its tail down and was visibly threatened. I noticed she was female and had puppies sheltering in one of the piles. As she slowly began to approach me closer, I backed out of her territory I was intruding in and left through the door I had entered by. As I left the building and walked back across the mud to the track, I kept looking back to see her eyes still locked onto me from the door, making sure I left the site. The rain had picked up considerably by now, so I flagged down a passing Lada 1200 which gave me a lift back to the town.
Abandoned building at the mine.
Bridge over the river.
The man in the Lada dropped me back off in the town, just around the corner from the hotel I was staying at. By now the old wipers of his Lada were barely clearing the water of his windshield. I got out and tried to scrape as much mud off my shoes as I could on the pavement edge before entering the hotel. In the reception I got into conversation with the owner, a plump smiley gentleman in his 50s who spoke decent English. I told him I had just gone and had a look at the mines and asked him about his life in Yangiabad. His name was Bogdan, his mother was Uzbek and his father had come to the mines from Russia, and he had lived there all his life. Life was good in Yangiabad for him, he enjoyed the peace and wouldn’t ever want to leave and had many friends in the town. That evening after exploring some more of the town and mountains, I would drink vodka with him and a friend in the small garden of the hotel, both still surprised an English person was in the town. One comment he translated on his phone from his friend that surprised me when talking about the mine was: ‘Uranium is good for human consumption’. He seemed shocked when I laughed assuming it was a joke, he went on to translate that it cleans the body out and its why Yangiabad is so green. I’ll leave that one for the science.
The Lada.
The next morning, I gave Islam a call to grab a lift back to Angren, I had enjoyed my Sojourn in this little green pocket in the mountains but my adventure across the rest of Uzbekistan had to continue. Yangiabad remains one of the strangest places I have come across in Central Asia and stumbling on a place as such highlights the joy of spontaneous adventure. I am sure within a few years, Yangiabad will become more of a resort town and lose the old soviet feel to it. The mine itself is going through remediation and has received nine million Euros from the EU to help the effort. Full remediation of the site is expected to be finished in a few years and with that will only increase investment and development into tourist infrastructure, creating a green refuge for those in Tashkent and create a new local economy.
New buildings under construction in Yangiabad.