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 he is one of the first.

As with half the cities of Central Asia, the founding of the ancient city of Termez is traditionally attributed to the ubiquitos Alexander the Great. Greek troops did indeed conquer this former Achaemenid satrapy in 320-327 BC and soon set about building a line of fortresses to defend their distant and tenuous outposts, but there is little hard evidence to show that Alexander himself ever set foot in Termez. The settlement's more prosaic origins are more likely to lie instead on the banks of the Oxus, where a large island and shallows offered a convenient crossing of the mile-wide river.

In 1333 the Arab traveller ibn-Battuta visited new Termez and the burgeoning city he saw had a place, canal, prison, city wall with nine gates and a famous river market where Termez's famous soaps, perfume, clothes and metalwork were in high demand. Soap however seemed destined for export only, for Battuta describes how the local women washed their hair only in sour milk, kept in plentiful supply in all good Termez bathhouses. Tamerlane rested here in 1399 on his Indian campaign and, not content with control of the Iron Gates, he set up a series of pontoons across the Oxus to control and tax the human and mercantile traffic entering and exiting his glittering capital. The city's reconstruction continued apace, so much so that in 1404 the Spanish envoy Clavijo complained that the city was so noisy that it could be heard in Balkh 100 kilometres (60 miles) away.

"As a guest in Uzbekistan you will be accorded much respect and shown great hospitality, for local families gladly seize the chance to welcome new friends from abroad"