Enigmatic. Uncharted. Historic.
The names resound with the poetry of a bygone era and fire the imagination: Kashgar, Samarkand, Ashgabat, Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara. Epic history is strewn across mountain range, desert and steppe, where ancient ruins and sublime minarets recall the great exploits of empire, from Alexander the Great to Tamerlane. Some of the world's greatest centers of civilization flourished in this area for centuries, and perhaps would be counted among the great cities today, were it not for the ravages of Genghis Khan.
Once Silk Road epicenters, the capitals of ancient empires, coveted chess pieces of the colonial Great Game and Iron-Curtain captives, the independent nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are some of the most mysterious and isolated, yet culturally rich and historically significant, places on Earth. Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkand, Tashkent, Ashgabat, Kashgar—the very names resound with the poetry of bygone empires. The cultural interchange from Macedonia, Arabia, Iran, Mongolia, China and Russia still reverberates throughout the region creating a living palimpsest of humanity’s history.
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