Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan and Central Asia's premier metropolis, betrays little of its 2,000-year history as a crossroads of ancient trade routes. This modern city of 2.5 million people, the fourth largest in the CIS after Moscow, St. Peterburg and Kiev, holds much to arrest the curious traveller, from imposing squares, monumental architecture …
Samarkand is The Mirror of the World, the Garden of the Soul, the Jewel of Islam, the Pearl of the East, the Centre of the Universe. Lying in the river valley of Zeravshan (gold - strewer) and flanked by Pamir-Alai mountains spurs, this fabled oasis at the fingers of the Kyzyl Kum desert has never lacked breathless admirers. Another name, City of Famous …
Bukhara the Holy, Bukhara the Noble, the Dome of Islam, the Pillar of Religion, the most intact city in the hoary East, the most interesting city in the worldCentral Asia's holiest city, Bukhara has buildings spanning a thousand years of history, and a throughly lived-in old centre that probably hasn't changed much in two centuries. It is one …
Khiva is the most intact and most remote of Central Asia's Silk Road cities, the final destination of a trip back through the centuries from socialist Tashkent to medieval slave town. Where Samarkand leaves the imagination exhausted, Khiva's khanate romance is plain to see and where Urgench lies restricted to two dimensions, Khiva revels in …
Just as Uzbekistan is the heart of Central Asia, the Fergana Valley is the heart of Uzbekistan. Over seven million people, about a third of the population, live in this fertile flood plain of the Syr Darya. The river sweeps down from the Pamirs into a valley approximately 300 kilometres (190 miles) long and 170 kilometres (105 miles) wide, surrounded …
The home town of Central Asia's foremost conqueror was the Sogdian twon of Kesh when Chinese Buddhist traveller Xuan Zang passed through in the early seventh century. After the Arab invasion, it assumed the Muslim urban pattern, but fell into semi-dereliction during the Samanid period as Bukhara and Samarkand prospered. The Mongols faced little …
Once known as Nur, this ancient town held a strategic position on the frontier between the cultivated lands and the steppe. It lends its name to the nearby mountain range, the westernmost spur of the Gissaro Alai, soon expiring in Kyzyl Kum wasteland. Nurata has retained some of the holy sites that attracted pilgrims from all over Central Asia. The …
For the last 80 years Termez has been one of the furthest and most sensitively sealed outpost of the Soviet empire, enforcing an unnatural religious cutoff point between Islam and atheism. The modern traveler who comes to taste the sheer variety of its of excitement that comes from such proximity to the Oxus and Afghan border can rest assured that …
