Uzbekistan

After the Soviet ‘carving-up’ of Central Asia into the states that we know today, the most famous of the Silk Road cities went to Uzbekistan.

Tashkent is the region’s metropolis. Although almost totally destroyed in the earthquake of 1966, its population is now over 2 million. Remnants of the city’s past remain – such as the oldest written Koran in the world which is housed there – but the city now looks forward rather than to the past.

Samarkand is perhaps the most famous of the Silk Road cities. In addition to the Registan the city also houses the Bibi-Khanym Mosque, Timur’s tomb and the Shah-i-Zinda complex alongside other monuments and bustling markets. However, it is also a modern growing town and the tourist potential of the city has been fully exploited, with the attractions being the most scrubbed, sanitised and touted in Central Asia.

Whilst Bukhara has changed dramatically since my first visit, with the growth of tourism it still retains some of the Silk Road mystery that Samarkand has lost. With a larger number of smaller monuments in a more intact town centre, it has far more charm than Samarkand, and its backstreets still evoke a different age when Bukhara was the centre of the world and trade, rather than the backwater it is today.

Khiva is another story again. After being absorbed into the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Soviet conservation programmes in the 1970s and 1980s have ensured that the old town is almost totally preserved. It is a wonderful site, however plans to forcibly remove the final few thousand inhabitants may mean the special atmosphere of this remote place is lost.

These photographs were taken in May and June 2006 and October 2011.