Grand Silk Road
Major cities, desert and the Ferghana Valley in fourteen days.
Plan before departure
Itchan Kala: an entire city that fits behind a single wall
Less than a square kilometre of clay streets, minarets and madrasahs — and yet the first UNESCO site in Central Asia. Behind these walls a khan once ruled, scholars prayed, and slaves were sold.
The Ark: The City-Within-a-City Where Power Lived for Fifteen Centuries
Clay walls on a twenty-meter mound, where Bukhara began. Behind them emirs were crowned, the treasury and the prison were kept — until one morning in 1920, aircraft appeared over the fortress.
The Registan: How to Read the Square People Travel to Samarkand For
Three madrasas, two centuries between them, and one tiger that was never supposed to be there. Here's how to see Uzbekistan's most famous square as a design — not just a backdrop.
The Savitsky Museum: The "Louvre in the Desert"
In a far-off city on the edge of a dried-up sea is kept the world's second-largest collection of Russian avant-garde. It was assembled by one man — an artist who drove around the villages, bought up forbidden paintings and hid them where Moscow wouldn't...
Uzbek Plov: How One Dish Became a Map of the Country
In Uzbekistan there's no such thing as "just plov." From whether it's light or dark, the vegetables fried or steamed, whether there are raisins in it, a local will tell you unerringly which city you're from. Plov here isn't a recipe — it's a way of reading...
Uzbek Non: The Bread You Can't Turn Over
A round flatbread with a pattern in the center looks like simple bread — until you lay it upside down. In Uzbekistan the non has a code of rules: it isn't cut with a knife, isn't laid bottom up on the table, and is broken by hand. Bread here is almost a...