Silk Road Travelogue

Link to Photo Album #1

This trip happened because you could fly to Tashkent from Kuala Lumpur for cheap, starting late 2025. It was about 3/4 solo and 1/4 day tours. By default, an intrepid traveller would come here to plow the Silk Road and hit Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand, and Tashkent (in this order or the reverse). However, I went for variety, because these two countries have something in them for everyone

• Modern city with abundant amenities, cute metro stations, Korean food, some Silk Road stuff: Tashkent
• Nature + ski / hiking: Amirsoy, Chimgan, Shing Valley
• Silk Road stuff: Samarkand, (Bukhara and Khiva)
• Aral Sea ecological disaster-tourism, the second largest art collection in the former Soviet Union, fashion shopping: Nukus

The most useful languages to learn here are Uzbek, Tajik and Russian (as lingua franca). People in Nukus, Karakalpakstan speak Karakalpak, and people living around Chimgan speak Kazakh. A sizeable Korean community gathers at Sacred Heart Tashkent on Sunday evenings. When the usher found out that my Korean was dogwater, she switched to Mandarin for my benefit. These plus English makes 8 languages in total encountered on this trip

Part 1: Cities

Tashkent

TASHKENT: Cushy city I would describe as a mix between Paris and Seoul. You can tap into any bus and metro station with a credit card. I had thought Magic City was a tourist trap until I visited and realised it was really an Uzbek trap. Uzbekistan Ovozi Street is nice and leafy and posh. There are little corners around town where you can hide in and pretend you are in Korea; The restaurant "Makkeoli" served one of the best makkeoli that I have ever tasted

Nukus

NUKUS: Town at the edge of the desert in the Khwarezmian delta reminded me of Lincoln, Nebraska because the buildings were short, streets are in a nice grid and the airport is within walking distance to everywhere. I was here to see the famous art museum and buy clothes at Inddi Fry (they take online orders, so I probably didn't have to go in person, but I did anyway for the sheer hell of it)

Part 2: Mountains

Link to Photo Album #2

Chimgan

Here was where I first tried riding a horse unassisted. It started when I spied a posse of tourists on horseback riding to the mountain. Among them was a lady in a beige trenchcoat, the sort that every fancy urbane woman in Tashkent has on during the Autumn, but she steered her steed with ease, as if she had spent all her life on the steppe; her hair was blown about by the stiff breeze; she had the likeness of Siranush Harutyunyan; I was so awestruck that I found the next rider that came along and asked for a ride on his horse. The rider's name is Isobek, a Kazakh, and his horse is called Vasily. After some time messing about, Isobek gave me a crash course on horse controls and let me loose. I had been on many guided horseback tours where the horses were strung along by the guide and never got to steer the horse myself, so I thank this duo here for pushing me one step up!

Seven Lakes (Haftkul, Shing Valley)

Seven lakes lie along the Shing River. They are pretty as heck and are visited daily by daytrippers from Samarkand across the border. The village of Padrud was one of our stops. They are blessed with electricity 12 whole hours per day. The roads are perilously paved over scree and should be attempted only by donkeys or the pluckiest drivers

Part 3: Silk Road

Link to Photo Album #3

The Heavenly Horses

This was the 4th Century BCE. Alexander the Great had a fit and tore through Asia building cities named "Alexandria" instead of going to therapy like a normal person. On the ruins of Cyropolis he built Alexandria Eschate, the "Furthest Alexandria" (modern Khujand). The garrison installed here would grow into a network of Hellenic city states in the Ferghana Valley. These were known to the Han as Dayuan 大宛, meaning "Great Ionia"

It is now 104 BCE, in the reign of Han Wudi. The Great Ionians had developed a reputation for breeding the Heavenly Horses: absolute units, sturdier and hardier than any variety known either to the Chinese or to their frenemies to the north, the Xiongnu. (They allegedly also sweat blood out of their pores, but I have no idea what to do witu this information)

Emperor Wudi, who craved violence* and anticipated war with Xiongnu in the near future, sent an envoy to Alexandria Eschate asking to buy some sweet sweet Heavenly Horse. The court of Alexandria Eschate convened.

One said, "It's been nice doing business with the Han, but the Heavenly Horses are our only edge over everyone else. Should we really let them have it?" Another scoffed, "Let's not entertain these weaklings. They are too far away! Even if they send an army here, the Taklamakan Desert will claim them before they reach us"

So they roughed up the delegation, robbed them of all their treausres, and replied: "Come And Take Them"**

Naturally Emperor Wudi went apesh1t and sent forth General Li Guangli who slapped together a comically large army of riffraff and they crossed the Taklamakan Desert and ransacked the cities of Great Ionia and replaced the king of Alexandria Eschate with a new king and grabbed 3000 Heavenly Horses and went back to China through the Taklamakan Desert again, in the process losing 20,000 out of 30,000 men and also 2000 of the looted horses.

Reference: Book of the Later Han 《后汉书》; artistic license

*Note 1: "Wudi 武帝" is a posthumous regnal name; the character 武 was chosen to reflect the fact that this emperor habitually craved violence

**Note 2: Whether any Spartan individual was involved in the conversation is left to the reader's imagination

Clans of Zhaowu

The Sogdians had become overlords of the Central Asian Silk Road by the 8th Century CE. In the Chinese Annals (e.g. in the Books of Tang) they were known by their Chinese clan names (tied to the places of their origin) and collectively as the Nine Clans of Zhaowu 昭武九姓. Sogdians enjoyed a high level of prestige in Tang society and were often made governors of the northwestern commanderies. Unfortunately, the most famous Sogdian individual in Chinese history was An Lushan. He was very bad news (c.f. An Lushan Rebellion)

The Sogdian identity lives on today in the region of Sughd, the language of the Yaghnobi, the nation of Tajikistan, and every business in Samarkand who puts "Sogdiana" in their name for style points