This is a police state This is a democracy This is rot-gut vodka This is $2 prostitutes This is Peace Corps This is good intentions This is Ramadan This is loyalty This is power outages This is corruption This is the Silk Route This is the former USSR This is Uzbekistan Tom Fleming went to Uzbekistan as a forty year old Peace Corps volunteer. He was a fish out of water, an infidel in a Muslim land, teaching AIDS prevention and sex education in the most conservative region of Central Asia. With humor and poignancyTaxi to Tashkentportrays a land little known in the West. Instead of a nation rife with Islamic extremists as portrayed in the Western media, Fleming discovers a land of Korean discos, where blue eyed Muslims listen to Shania Twain, and where shop owners break into applause at the mention of America. Fleming travels throughout Uzbekistan, from the ecological disaster site of the Aral Sea, to the ancient Silk Route cities of Bukhara and Samarkand.Taxi to Tashkentdescribes a little-known corner of the world where nothing appears as it seems.