金三角路线
Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva in seven days.
Plan before departure
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 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.
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.
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...
The Chaikhana: Why Everything in Uzbekistan Is Settled Over a Bowl of Tea
Pour someone a full bowl of tea and you're politely asking them to leave. Pour a third, and you're glad of them and want them to stay. In the Uzbek chaikhana, tea long ago stopped being a drink: it's the language in which hospitality, respect and...