Uzbekistan is not a distant country

Assalam-o-Alaikum.

For twenty-five years this office has carried one message across Pakistan: Uzbekistan is not a foreign land to us. It is family.

Our two nations share faith, food, language and a history written along the same Silk Road. The names our children grow up with — Imam al-Bukhari, Amir Temur, Bahauddin Naqshband — belong to the soil of Samarkand and Bukhara. To travel there is not to visit somewhere new. It is to return to a part of our own story.

In these years I have watched the journey become easier: direct flights, a simpler visa, new hotels, fast trains between the great cities. What has never needed improving is the welcome at the other end.

I have walked Pakistani families through the gate at Khiva at sunset, sat with delegations over tea in Bukhara, and stood with pilgrims at the maqam of Imam al-Bukhari outside Samarkand. In twenty-five years I have not once seen a guest come home indifferent.

Whatever takes you there — faith, business, study, or plain curiosity — my team and I are here in Islamabad to make the way straight. Come and see us. The tea is already on.