×
AWESOME tour - I learned so much about history, culture, religion, tiny bit about buildings / architecture. As there were only two people including myself on the tour, I asked a ton of questions and had pretty good in-depth conversations so I could understand the place a bit deeper. Super patient and friendly guide, really enjoyed the tour. I appreciated that the tour was at 5:30PM so it wasn't as hot, and we went in and out of air conditioned places throughout the tour which was great. Highly recommend, thank you so much Hesham :)
The city tour and the metro tour is the same tour, about 3 hours total, run by the same tour guide. I don't know why they're listed as separate tours, because other comments have said this about their tour as well. The route was fine, saw the main places in Uzbekistan and a few metro stops. The information wasn't connected together and didn't give an overview of Tashkent nor Uzbekistan's history, tour mostly seemed like random tidbits of information. At one point, I asked a question ("Why did they want to kill everyone in the house?") and he said "What do you think?". Well, I don't know, that's why I asked the question. His response was an inappropriate response to my question, and in his answer, he said it's a very basic reason. Your job as a tour guide is to explain, not assume I know - and not be rude about it when I ask a question. General tour was pretty boring, not a lot of information. Probably better to just research online for information than go on the tour, especially towards the end where it seemed to drone on and on.
Tour goes to the main spots of Samarkand, which is great! After taking the tour, there's not much more to see in Samarkand unless you want to go inside any of the buildings. The tour was extremely long because half of it was giving time for photos, but the amount of information given wasn't a lot. Tour guide didn't give an overview of Uzbekistan's history and the tour mostly concentrated on Amir Temur (which is fine, I would've just liked to know how everything he did fit in with the rest of Uzbekistan / Samarkand's history). I also didn't like that at the very beginning, the guide essentially told us it's mandatory to pay at least $10 because of Guruwalk fees and running the company - if that's the case, don't brand it as a free walking tour. At the end, he talked for about five minutes about how one of his clients gave him 3 stars even though he did xyz, didn't seem professional. During the tour, he called general people lazy for watching Instagram reels and not researching the information received from watching them, which then led to him defending his religion. Didn't think that was necessary nor professional either. Overall, didn't really get good vibes nor good information from the guide, tour was also unnecessarily long. If people want to return back after the tour to take photos, they can. They shouldn't be given the option of 20 minutes to do so at each location in the tour.
As the only free walking tour in Bukhara, I came to it. Hamza definitely covered a lot of areas in Bukhara in the 3 hours of the tour, but I feel like there was more information that could've been shared. I also really didn't like his style. He asked multiple times throughout the tour: "You know what xyz is, yes?" and didn't explain what xyz is. Isn't your job as a tour guide to explain everything with full context? For example, he assumed everyone knew who Genghis Khan is, and when he asked that question, I saw people shake their head. He never explained who they are. He did this multiple times throughout the tour and it was really irritating. I found out during the tour that he's not from Bukhara nor Uzbekistan and is from Pakistan, and he has lived here for 5 years. He didn't make that clear in the beginning, and it sounds like he speaks for Uzbeks. For example, he was saying that in the past, it was standard for people to have families of 16, and now like his parents, they have x number. Well the thing is, his parents are in Pakistan, not here, and it's probably important to make that distinction. Generally, the tour wasn't very engaging nor interesting, and he grazed over a lot of the history.
Didn't show up and then lied about it? I showed up ~10 mins before the tour start time and stayed ~10 mins after, but nobody was there. I was at the location the tour guide sent in the message. I messaged the tour guide later after I got back to my hostel asking if the tour happened, and I was responded to with: the tour happened and the guide tried to message me but couldn't. There was no message in my inbox from them about the tour. How did they try to message me? Skeptical that they tried. I think it's extremely unprofessional of them to a) not tell a customer that the tour isn't happening, b) to lie about it happening when asked by said customer, and c) lie about trying to contact the customer. Also, Urban Tours has their own website, and their own website doesn't show the Providencia tour, which leads me to believe they're not running this tour anymore, yet it's still on Guruwalk. Super suspicious.
