Chorsu at eight in the morning

At eight in the morning it is still cool under the Chorsu dome. The light comes from above, through the windows in the vault, and falls across the counters in stripes. The dairy row is already working: women set out bowls of suzma, sort the balls of kurt by size, and the first customer tastes a piece off the knife without asking.

Chorsu is not a market in the European sense. It is several markets nested inside one another. Under the dome: milk, meat, spices. Outside, in a ring: vegetables, fruit and the bread rows. Beyond them, everything else — dishes, fabrics, knives. In one morning you can get round only the first two rings, and that is enough.

Start with bread. The flatbreads come from the bakeries in stacks, still hot, and go onto the counter patterned side up. The Tashkent loaf is thicker and softer, the Samarkand one denser — that is the one people take on the road. The seller passes it across the counter with both hands and will not let you lay it face down; if you do, he will turn it back.

Then the dairy row. Suzma is tasted with bread; kurt one ball at a time, to work out whether it is your kind of thing. Usually it is not, but it is worth trying: this is shepherds' food, and it explains why sour flavours are loved so much here.

The spices are a row of their own, and it is worth lingering there. Cumin for plov comes in two kinds, black and ordinary, and the seller will explain the difference if you ask. Beside it: barberries, dried dill, whole dried chillies and blends that every trader mixes himself. A bag of cumin costs less than a dollar and is the best souvenir there is, because it takes up no room.

Finish with fruit, whatever is in season. In summer, melon: the seller will cut one open and let you try it without expecting you to buy. In autumn pomegranates and persimmons, in winter dried fruit, in spring the first strawberries and the sweet cherries that here are called 'gilos'.

By eleven it gets crowded under the dome, the best bread has gone, and nobody offers you a taste any more. You want to be leaving before that.