The Silk Road
In 2024
The Silk Road is still a thing. Not a museum piece or a metaphor — an actual route through five countries that connects the remnants of one of history's great trading networks to the political realities of the present day. Soviet mosaics and cosmonaut history. Yurt camps at 3,000 metres. A crater in the Karakum desert that has been on fire for decades. Nomadic culture that never quite went away and an Islam that is finding its feet again after seventy years of state atheism. This is Central Asia on its own terms — complicated, absorbing, and considerably less visited than it deserves to be.
Twenty-six days. Bishkek to Ashgabat. Five countries, one road.
Kyrgyzstan
Bishkek
The capital sits at the foot of the Tian Shan with the unself-conscious energy of a city that isn't trying to impress you. Soviet boulevards, a relocated Lenin, a Turkey-funded mosque, and a national epic that runs to over a million lines of verse.
Chong-Kemin
The first real exhale after Bishkek. A valley guesthouse, a morning hike through wildflowers and herbs, and a Steppe Eagle working the thermals above.
Tokmok
A lone minaret in open steppe, all that remains of the ninth-century city of Balasagun. Lunch at a Dungan family home afterwards — Chinese Muslim cooking, halal, and genuinely excellent.
Kochkor
A small town on the road to Song Köl, best known locally for Golden Eagle hunting and, on this visit, a supermarket with untrustworthy cakes.
Orto Tokoy
A reservoir that sells its water to Kazakhstan and drains almost completely by late summer. Horses at the water's edge, flooded roads, hail, and a rockfall that sounded more dramatic than it was.
Cholok
A pull-off above the Chu River canyon with views that justify the stop completely. The surrounding land is green and fast-watered in a way that confounds expectations of Central Asia.
Krasnyy Most
A canteen stop in the shadow of the Celestial Mountains, where million-year-old fissures in the rock mark where the earth shifted and settled long before anyone was there to notice.
Tong
A village on the southern shore of Issyk-Kul with a yurt guesthouse, a beach cold enough to chill watermelon in, and more litter than it deserves.
Kaji-Say
Red rock formations, golden eagles on the thermals, a large statue of the man who wrote down the Manas epic for the first time, and a mural about the 2010 revolution that doesn't leave much open to interpretation.
Tosor
The entrance to Skazka Canyon — fairytale in Russian, and not an exaggeration. Also: a full suit of armour for sale at a thousand dollars. They were not negotiating.
Barskoon
A yurt workshop that employs twenty people, has invented its own felt-cutting machinery, and serves the best dumplings of the trip. There is also an exceptional dog.
Jety-Ögüz
Seven red sandstone pillars, two origin stories, a canyon, a frozen girl holding edelweiss, and children with golden eagles who appeared to be operating a coordinated photo union.
Tamga
A Soviet-era military sanatorium where cosmonauts recovered from space flights, Japanese POWs built a staircase, and the mosaics have outlasted everything else.
Karakol
Kyrgyzstan's fourth city, founded by the Russians in 1869 at a Silk Road crossroads. A wooden Orthodox cathedral that survived an earthquake, a pagoda-style mosque, a memorial to an explorer who asked for a simple headstone and got a monument, and some of the best live music of the trip.
Tyup
A photo stop at the eastern tip of Issyk-Kul where the Kazakh border mountains are visible on the horizon.
Kegen Border Crossing
Named for the cranes that nest in the nearby village. Remote, occasionally subject to power cuts, and flanked by a 7,000-metre peak known as the Ruler of the Sky. The crossing is easier than it sounds.
Kazakhstan
Almaty
A Bronze Age settlement that Genghis Khan needed three attempts to take, now Kazakhstan's largest city. A Soviet memorial park, a nail-free wooden cathedral, the Green Bazaar, and a flight out to Tajikistan on seats with no legroom.
Tajikistan
Dushanbe
The capital on the Varzob River — monuments, mosques, a state flag pole, and an afternoon free to work out what the city is.
Sarytag
Quiet hills near Iskanderkul — nomadic traces, silt-heavy rivers, a string roadblock, and a walk to the viewpoint above Alexander's lake.
Ghazza Village
A Fann Mountains valley village where the guesthouse runs the show, the pace drops after the cities, and Tajik television may film your hike without warning.
Voru Village
One of the oldest villages in the Fann Mountains, reached on foot from Ghazza — a working settlement, a blacksmith's workshop, and tea with the village French teacher.
Istaravshan
One of the oldest cities in Central Asia — Mug Tepe, the Khazrati Shokh mausoleum complex and its holy spring, the national emblem monument, and a Central Asian lunch that earns the afternoon's walking.
Khujand
Second city on the Syr Darya — Alexander's garrison, a regional museum with unusual candour, the fortress, and Panjshanbe Bozor before the hop into Uzbekistan.
Uzbekistan
Tashkent
The capital where Soviet architecture meets modern Uzbekistan. Skyscrapers, mosaic mausoleums, a tower with an observation deck, and a bazaar.
Samarkand
The Silk Road city that delivers — Timurid Registan and Bibi-Khanum, the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, Karimov's mausoleum, Ulugh Beg's observatory, and dusk on the terrace at Emirhan.
Nurota & Aydar Kul
Pilgrimage town in the Kyzylkum — Chashma spring and sacred fish, fortress views with honest provenance, then east to Aydar Kul for yurts under a dark desert sky.
Bukhara
One of the great Silk Road cities — carpet shops, covered trading domes, a pool of water surrounded by mulberry trees, and a guided walk through mosques and madrassas that have been standing for centuries.
Khiva
A walled city that feels like a museum in the best possible sense. Mudbrick alleyways, blue mosaic domes, minarets to climb, and dungeons the city was infamous for in the tenth century.
Turkmenistan
Dashoguz
The entry point into Turkmenistan and the base for a visit to Kunya-Urgench, a UNESCO World Heritage Site abandoned in the 1700s and largely untouched since.
Darvaza
A gas crater in the Karakum desert that has been burning since the Soviet era and shows no sign of stopping. Camp overnight. Look into it carefully.
Ashgabat
The Turkmen capital, white marble, golden domes, and a city that has been rebuilt from scratch since independence into something that doesn't quite resemble anywhere else. The ancient Parthian ruins of Nisa are on the outskirts. The internet mostly isn't available.