If you had been herding a string of stinky smelly ornery camels over the desolate nearly impossible high passes of the Pamir Mountains through Tajikistan, or the Qurama Mountains out of Kyrgyzstan, the fertile Ferghana Valley would have been a welcome sight. Silk Road caravans would find ample grazing for their animals across the flood […]

While we had been fascinated by the temples, minarets, mausoleums and madrassahs in Samarkand, back in the 8th century the area that is today’s central market was the center of activity. Merchants from China, India and Iran congregated here to buy and exchange goods. There were craft workshops, trading stalls, warehouses and caravanserais, chai-khanas, (pavilions […]

Samarqand, Mirror of the World, the Garden of the Soul, the Jewel of Islam, the Pearl of the East, the Center of the Universe. Lying in the river valley of the Zerafshan, and flanked by spurs of the Pamir-Alai mountains, this fabled oasis at the fringes of the Kyzyl Kum desert has never failed to […]

Finally, we are back on track. We apologize for the delay in our blogs, but a three-and-a-half-month trip to Thailand, Myanmar, Laos and Singapore, places where we may not want to drive our expedition truck, in combination with a problem with the plug-in that was transferring our blogs to Facebook and Twitter, well —let’s just […]

Escaping from Turkmenistan with full tanks of $1.00-per-gallon diesel, we entered Uzbekistan. Of all the countries we would visit following the Silk Road, Uzbekistan was certainly one of the most anticipated. Along with Samarkand and Bukhara, Khiva was an important trading point on the historical Silk Road. It was also famous for its long and […]