The Heart of the Silk Road
A 1,000-kilometre odyssey across Uzbekistan by train.
By Peter Drennan
On the terrace of the Lyabi House Hotel in Bukhara—built in the late 19th century for merchant Mirza Davud and his family—it is already hot, and it is not yet 9am. Hushed servers clear breakfast plates from tables surrounded on three sides by towering walls covered with frescoes, geometric patterns, poetry, and muqarnas. The family home—now a guesthouse, but before that a school and a World War II hospital—exemplifies Bukharian architecture, defined by its use of earthen materials, courtyards and intricate woodwork.
Traditional houses are found throughout the historic centre of Bukhara. The most complete medieval city in Central Asia, littered with mosques, minarets and madrasas, Bukhara grew rich with the trade that once flowed along the Silk Road. But it was not only a hub for traders and travellers; it was a centre too of culture, scholarship and religion. During the Golden Age of Islam, from the 8th to the 14th century, Bukhara was the intellectual capital of the Islamic world.
For more than 1,500 years, the Silk Road connected the civilisations of east and west, carrying goods, but also ideas, cultures and religions. Camel caravans crossed the Gobi Desert and the Pamir Mountains, and dusty bazaars thrummed with the sale of silks, spices and slaves as settlements along its route—Bukhara, Kashgar, Samarkand and Palmyra—grew rich, multicultural, and sometimes violent, as trading posts along its 6,000-kilometre length.
The Silk Road—neither a road nor even a single route, but a term coined by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen for a vast network of trading arteries—shaped history. Silk, jade, porcelain, tea, spices, gunpowder, and, it is thought, the Black Death travelled west. Horses, textiles, glass, wool and precious metals went east.
The Kalyan Minaret (opening image), and the Poi Kalyan complex of which it is part, is a symbol of Bukhara. When Genghis Khan invaded the city in the 13th century, he was said to be so impressed by the minaret that he spared it from destruction. The Sher Dor Madrasa (above), on Samarkand’s Registan. The entrance portal is embellished with two roaring lions. Minaret photo: Julian Elliott; Madrasa: Peter Drennan.
Today, many points along its path are UNESCO World Heritage sites, including the Itchan Kala fortress in Khiva, the historical centres of Bukhara and Shakhrisabz, and Samarkand, once the most cosmopolitan city on the Silk Road. All of these are in modern Uzbekistan.
The country has embraced its Silk Road legacy. Vast—1,800 kilometres separate Uzbekistan’s verdant east and barren west—high-speed trains now connect its once-powerful trading cities. Silent trains, manned by gracious attendants in starched white shirts, link Samarkand with Bukhara in less than two hours—a perilous journey that would have taken a camel caravan two days.
Much of Uzbekistan’s railway was laid in the late 19th century as the Trans-Caspian, as Russia sought to secure its hold on its restive Turkestan province. The railway reached Samarkand in 1888; it took another 10 years to reach the capital, Tashkent. In 2011, a high-speed service was launched, the first of its kind in Central Asia.
Most journeys in Uzbekistan start and finish in Tashkent. Destroyed by an earthquake in 1966 that reduced much of the city to rubble, little remains of its Silk Road history. The Hazrati Imam complex, a cluster of mosques, mausoleums and madrasas built in the 16th to 20th centuries, is the city’s spiritual heart, but most wonders are modern.
Tashkent is littered with modernist buildings—a legacy of the Soviet bid to build a showcase city from the ruins of the earthquake. The imposing Hotel Uzbekistan, built in 1974 and 17 stories high, is Tashkent’s greatest landmark. Crowned by a giant green and blue dome, Chorsu Bazaar, a busy farmer’s market, embodies socialist modernism in Central Asia, where stark concrete frames are embellished with ornamental Islamic motifs. Other examples include the elegant State Museum of History, the futuristic State Circus, and the fluted Panoramic Cinema.
A cultural renaissance has seen old buildings given new purpose. A former diesel plant that generated power for Tashkent’s trams is now the fashionable Centre for Contemporary Art, with a cavernous central exhibition room. Precisely because of these juxtapositions—the old and the new, the Soviet and the Turkic, a place where the young speak English and the old prefer Russian or Uzbek—Tashkent is a place of communion between worlds.
The Ark of Bukhara (top), is a historic fortress dating back to the 5th century. Covering three hectares, it functioned as a self-contained city for Bukhara’s rulers and government. Tashkent (above), is a legacy of the Soviet bid to build a showcase city from the ruins of a devastating earthquake. Its palatial metro stations tell stories inspired by Uzbek and Soviet history. Ark photo: Wael Al Awar; Tashkent: Julian Elliott.
To get from Tashkent to Samarkand, and Uzbekistan’s troika of Silk Road cities, trains leave from Tashkent North station. High-speed “Afrosiyob” trains—named after the ancient settlement on the site of modern Samarkand—cover the 250 kilometres in just over two hours.
Few places are as synonymous with the Silk Road as Samarkand. A melting pot of cultures, the city’s history spans two and a half millennia. The Registan, a vast plaza framed on three sides by majestic, majolica-covered madrasas, was its medieval epicentre. It remains one of the world’s grandest squares and the greatest draw in Central Asia. The monumental madrasas have been rocked by earthquakes—a fascinating photo exhibition in the Tilla-Kari Madrasa shows how close the complex came to being lost forever at the start of the 20th century—but have been beautifully restored.
Surrounded by mosaics and intricate, coloured domes, it is almost impossible to take it all in. We slow the pace, sitting for a moment in each stone-tiled courtyard, shaded by trees, to better absorb the ornamentation.
But there is more to Samarkand than the Registan. The Bibi Khanum Mosque, a 10-minute walk northeast, was built from the spoils of local legend Timur’s invasion of India. Once one of the largest mosques in the Islamic world—with a 41-metre cupola and a soaring entrance portal—it pushed the boundaries of 15th-century construction. Nearby, the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis, on a hill with a whisper of breeze, is a narrow avenue of mausoleums featuring spectacular Timurid-era tilework from the 14th and 15th centuries. The complex centres on the shrine of Qusam Ibn Abbas, who, it is said, brought Islam here in the seventh century.
The Kalta Minor minaret in Khiva. Ruler Muhammed Amin Khan wanted a tower so high he could see all the way to Bukhara. Work began in 1851 but halted on his death in 1855, leaving it unfinished. Photo: Henry Wu @ Humminglion.
Almost 300km west, Bukhara’s location at the edge of deserts and empires and surrounded by rich agricultural lands made it a vital stopping point for merchants. Locally produced goods—textiles, gold embroidery and metalwork—enriched Silk Road trade.
Bukhara has many beautiful 17th century madrasas and mosques but also much older historical sites, including the Ismail Samani mausoleum, a masterpiece of 10th-century Islamic architecture. Its walls, two metres thick, have survived without restoration for 11 centuries. The Kalyan Minaret, and the Poi Kalyan complex of which is it part, is a symbol of Bukhara. Built in 1127, and 47 metres high, it was once the tallest structure in Central Asia. When Genghis Khan invaded the city in the 13th century, he was said to be so impressed by the minaret that he left it standing.
Our next destination is Khiva, once an oasis for weary travellers and a brutal slave market, it was the last stop on the Silk Road before crossing the unforgiving desert to Persia. We take the sleeper train from Bukhara, which leaves in the dead of night. The train is so long that we leave the platform behind, walking along the tracks beside battered red carriages. Our accommodation is closest to the engine, but it’s so late that our attendant is asleep, the door to our carriage firmly closed. Another attendant runs to help, banging theatrically on the carriage, and soon the door opens and our sleepy attendant pushes out some steps. He gestures to the room beside his; functional yet ornamental it is the same curious blend of Soviet and Turkic. We settle down to sleep on beds that are shorter than we are.
When we wake, our teapot filled from the samovar in the corridor, the landscape is arid. Ochre sand that stetches to the horizon is interrupted only by isolated stations. From time to time, we weave close to the Amu Darya, the river incongruous in this parched landscape. As we approach Khiva, the scenery turns greener again, the wide river valley a fertile smudge pinched between the Karakum and Kyzylkum deserts.
Today, the Itchan Kala, Khiva’s well-preserved citadel enveloped by beautifully curved mud walls, is a living museum enclosing more than 50 cultural sites including mosques, palaces, museums, and madrasas. Its labyrinth of alleyways is full of traders selling traditional ikat-print coats and scarves, sheepskin hats, and ceramics.
The squat Kalta Minor minaret is a city motif. Intended by Muhammad Amin Khan, ruler of the Khiva Khanate, to be the largest and tallest in the Muslim world, construction stopped in 1855, on his death, with only 29 metres of its planned 80 built. The white, green, and turquoise tiles contrast with the earth tones of the city.
Because of the sparse rail schedule, and the distance, most visitors who arrive in Khiva by train fly back to Tashkent for onward travel. We opt for forward momentum, however, and the early flight to Istanbul. Constantinople, with its thriving bazaars and burgeoning population, was one of the great termini on the Silk Road. It is here that our Silk Road journey ends, too.
