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There we made our way through a greatest-hits of Central Asian cuisine, which was shaped by diverse culinary cultures, from East Asia to the Mongolian steppe to the Persian Gulf.Ī salad of Chinese cabbage, cucumber, onion and beef in a soy-sesame chile dressing was followed by plov, or rice pilaf, the Persian-influenced Central Asian staple that probably originated in the culinary methods of the Islamic golden age, pollinating national rice dishes from Spanish paella to Indian biryani. Then we decamped to the 350-year-old Bozori Kord Hammam to be steamed, scrubbed, massaged and rubbed with honey and ginger by various members of the Iranian-Uzbek family that now owns it.īy sunset we had a table on the terrace of a restaurant called Minzifa, overlooking the sun-bleached domes and rooftops of Bukhara. Between two domed bazaars, where locals now hock handicrafts of variable quality and authenticity, we visited the Maghok-i-Attar, Central Asia’s oldest mosque and a palimpsest of Bukharan religious history: a 16th-century reconstruction of a ninth-century mosque built atop the remains of a fifth-century Zoroastrian fire temple, which was itself built on top of an earlier Buddhist temple. In a kind of trance we walked the town’s maze of blue-domed mosques, mosaic-tiled courtyards and former caravanserais (essentially inns where travelers could rest with their animals), all threaded together by ancient arcades only partially defiled by tacky tourist development. Only the tightly controlled police state of Turkmenistan remains closed-off. Regional transportation has improved, in part because of China’s controversial, trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, also known as the New Silk Road, a colossal infrastructure project stretching from East Asia to Europe that aims to expand China’s political and economic influence and which critics worry could lead to a debt crisis across the region. There are even plans for a “silk visa,” offering access to five Central Asian countries. Borders are opening and visa restrictions are lifting: As of 2018, citizens from more than 100 countries, including the United States, can travel visa-free through Uzbekistan for up to five days with proof of an onward flight, and a new e-visa system makes longer stays relatively easy. Tajikistan has undergone remarkable reconstruction since the end in 1997 of its devastating six-year civil war, and the rioting and unrest that plagued Kyrgyzstan a decade ago are fading into the rear view. Omurbek pointed out another checkpoint, built, he said, on the site of a mass grave of Basmachis, anti-Bolshevik Muslim guerrilla fighters who rebelled against Soviet rule early in the 20th century. The sheep are called Marco Polos, named for the Venetian explorer who passed this way when it was part of the ancient Silk Road, a vast network of trade routes running from China to the Mediterranean, spreading not only silk and other goods, but art, technologies, ideas and belief systems across the globe. He pointed out places of intrigue: the site of what was once a clandestine Soviet biological laboratory a mountain laced with gold deposits that the Tajik government recently traded away in a “secret deal” with China a cliffside Russian Empire checkpoint built in 1912 and held together with a paste of mud and camel fur a flock of spiral-horned sheep running across a rock face. “On a clear day, you can see 7,000 mountains from here,” said Omurbek Satarov, our 38-year-old Pamiri driver, gesturing toward the Himalayas. Now the road stretched out, empty and endless, over a glaciated, monochrome terrain of ridges, gorges and craters. We had just crossed the highest pass yet: nearly 15,000 feet above sea level with views to the Hindu Kush.
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For days we had been driving one of the world’s most treacherous roads, the Pamir Highway, which snakes through the highlands of Tajikistan before turning north toward Kyrgyzstan along the border with China. The sky over Tajikistan was a deep deoxygenated blue as we sped through the desolate mountain landscape of the eastern Pamirs.