DESTINATIONS
UZBEKISTAN
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Uzbekistan is the most historically fascinating of the Central Asian republics. Located between the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers, Uzbekistan occupies the heartland of Central Asia, sharing a border with all the other 'Stans'. The ancient towns of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva used to be the Silk Road's main centres and contain most of the region's architectural splendors.
Embedded in the heart of Asia, surrounded by harsh deserts and high mountains, Uzbekistan is the land where three awkward khanates mystified and exasperated the two greatest empires of the 19th century. It is the proud, unpredictable heir to Central Asia's richest inheritance, the legendary Silk Route cities of Samarkand, Khiva and Bukhara. One is a fabulous monument to the megalomania of Tamerlane; the others are citadels of Islam, conjured from fragile oases and preserved by aridity and isolation. All three were once imperial metropolises, and they can still work the magic. The luminous, lowering Registan at Samarkand is nothing less than awesome. And if Bukhara's Kalyan minaret stops you in your tracks, be assured it did the same to Genghis Khan.
But Uzbekistan does more than take you back in time. Every street corner and chai-khana bears witness to one of this century's most fascinating cultural collisions. This is the country where Lenin and the Prophet had their high noon, and Lenin lost his nerve; where Uzbeks have always preferred skull caps and silk sashes to cheap grey European suits; soft, unleavened lepeshka to brick-shaped Russian loaves; mutton shashlyk to beef stroganoff and green tea to brown. Despite a cotton cash-crop fetish in the corridors of power, the bazaars groan with melons, grapes and pomegranates, and private tobacco crops hang out to dry along the roads of the Fergana valley. Modern Uzbekistan may be a 20th-century Soviet invention with an awkward name and an extraordinary shape, but it is without doubt the heart of Central Asia. Remove it, and the region would implode. Uzbekistan is the only country in the region which borders on all the others. It is also the most populous, with 20 million people, the most ethnically diverse, with 120 different nationalities and—in desert terms—the richest, since it has all the big oases.
The people and wealth of the nation are concentrated at its southeast end, near the grand junction of the Tian Shan and Pamir mountain systems. Closest to China, the Fergana valley is an Uzbek peninsula hemmed in by Kyrgyz highlands, and an agro-industrial powerhouse.
Further west, Samarkand and Bukhara soak up most of the Zerafshan River, which runs out of the western Pamirs into the Kizyl-Kum desert. These rival provinces pivot about the capital, Tashkent, rebuilt as a showcase of Soviet development after a catastrophic earthquake in 1966. The rest of Uzbekistan is desert. In satellite pictures the only green smudge in the featureless brown of the Kizyl-Kum is the delta of the Amu Darya river, 1000km northwest of Tashkent. The delta and the salt-caked littoral of the shrinking Aral Sea are actually part of Karakalpakstan, an autonomous republic' within Uzbekistan whose extreme northwestern tip is a mere 300km from Russia.
The independent Uzbekistan that has emerged from the wreckage of the Soviet Union is a confused place. Nowhere is Russian domination of the recent past so resented, yet nowhere is there such nostalgia for the stability that went with membership of the Soviet Union. President Islam Karimov is a thinly-disguised Brezhnevite, and there are many who applaud him for it. The Uzbek Communist Party, renamed the Popular Democratic Party, still runs the country; the KGB, now the National Security Committee, is still fully operational; the press is censored and the democratic opposition, Birlik, is banned. In common with Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, a referendum has confirmed the president in office until the next century. Economic reform is cautious. From 1994, the auctioning of small shops and service enterprises was given the go-ahead. Loans necessary to set up private business are, however, not easy to come by. And the actual privatization of land, according to Karimov, would exhaust the country's dangerously limited water supply.
Pulled every which way by contradictory trends, Uzbekistan is still trying to forge a new, post-Soviet identity. While a sleek new business class fills the hotel car parks in Tashkent with BMWs, the mullahs of the Fergana Valley call for Islamic rule. MTV, CNN and the Playboy channel are beamed into private apartments while waiting lists lengthen for madrasas re-opened after 70 years. The Uzbek government, meanwhile, lags behind those of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in opening up the country to badly needed foreign investors, but has formed a free customs union with these two republics.
The stakes are high. If Uzbekistan finds a path to real democracy and a niche in world markets, there is hope for its neighbours. If not, tourism may be the least of the casualties. Meanwhile, Uzbekistan's extraordinary past, and the way that it keeps resurfacing in the present, make it the most engrossing of the independent Central Asian republics.
TASHKENT
The capital of Uzbekistan is the biggest, most modern, most cosmopolitan city in Central Asia. People have been living here, where the western tip of the Tian Shan pans out into the Kyzyl-Kum desert, for two thousand years—though there is not much to show for this history.
In April 1966, a major earthquake shook Tashkent. Another quake struck in May, and in the two years that followed a further 800 earth tremors left the city virtually levelled. The big ones hit the city from directly underneath, paradoxically saving some buildings by making them bounce rather than topple sideways. The rebuilding of the city by architects and 30,000 'volunteers' (labour gangs) from all over the Soviet Union passed quickly into official legend: 'The whole country helped to build a new Tashkent. Now the right ones, considers it of the most beautiful cities...
For unlabelled visitors this is also the Central Asian city, which most generously rewards curiosity and stamina. It has museums and restaurants unheard of by Intourist. There are suburbs big enough to have their own bazaars and ambience. There is opera for a dollar, horse racing on Sundays, exquisite autumn foliage, and an intoxicating whiff of chutzpah on the streets; a strong sense that with or without the mafia, with or without the dead hand of Karimov's government, this city, perhaps alone among those of ex-Soviet Central Asia, has the momentum to ride out hard times and capitalize on new ones. In the years since Independence it has done just that.
There has been a settlement at the Tashkent oasis on the Chirchik River since the 1st century AD, though it was called Chach or Shash or Dzhadzh until the 8th. It was called Binkent (cousin of nearby Chimkent) in the 8th and 9th centuries, and Tashkent, meaning 'stone village', from the 1 lth. By then it had passed from Samanid to Karakhanid control, and early in the 13th century it was taken by Mohammed Ala'-al-din, Shah of Khorezm, who, fearing it might become a rival centre of power, destroyed it in 1214. Genghis Khan, Tamer¬lane and Bukhara's khans and emirs ruled Tashkent from their more famous oases from the 13th century until 1809, when it became part of the Khanate of Kokand. From the beginning of their advance south of the Syr Darya in the mid-19th century, the Russians regarded Tashkent as the strategic key to Central Asia. They probably over-rated its importance—but it was rich, populous (70,000) and because of its position at the end of the line of garrison towns the Russians had built along the edge of the Tian Shan, it was already trading heavily with Russia.
KHIVA
A long time ago, when men were men and gods took a practical interest in their affairs, Shem, son of Noah, was roaming the Kara-Kum desert with his tribe. He dreamed he saw a thousand soldiers marching over the dunes bearing torches, and told his people to build a hill of sand to mark where he had dreamed. His people became thirsty. Being a full day's walk from the river they dug a hole, and struck water, and the water was sweet.'Khei-vakh!' they cried. 'What wonderful water is in the well!'
The city that grew up round the Kheivak Well was named 'Khiva' after it; the well itself can be found at Ulitsa Abdullah a-Baltal 107, in the northwest corner of the old town.
Step right up to the strangest little time-capsule in Central Asia. Khiva's mud streets and inward-looking squares are so well-preserved they sometimes feel like a film set (which they were, for Orlando). But Khiva is an upstart; although it looks like medieval Bukhara it is mostly no older than New York. The object of some of the most intrepid overland expeditions of the 18th and 19th centuries, Khiva was then the most remote and is now the most complete of the old Silk Route's oasis cities. Its walls are intact. The Tash Khauli palace has the finest painted ceilings in Central Asia. The Friday mosque is the strangest and most alluring in Uzbekistan.
Rarely do myth and reality merge so happily. Siyavush, the runaway city-founder usually associated with Bukhara, is also mentioned in connection with Khiva. The Arab historian Al-Biruni said he turned up here around 1200 BC, but there is no archaeological evidence that old, of the man or the place.
BUKHARA
Bukhara was once 'the Noble", 'the most interesting city in the world', according to Curzon, generous as ever with superlatives. The holiest city in Central Asia, it had 360 mosques and 80 madrasas, from which the sun shone upwards while on ordinary cities it shone down.
Now it is a medium-sized city (population 250,000) in the middle of the Kizyl-Kum desert, with Central Asia's only inhabited intact historic core. To paint a rosier picture might lead to disappointment. Where Samarkand is bright blue Bukhara is an exhausted shade of khaki; where Bukhara was holy, Islam is now having to be re-learned; where its famous domed bazaars once teemed with people from every corner of Asia and smelt of their wares, nowadays there are only carpets and reproduction silverware for tourists. Still, historic monuments are strewn more densely here than in Samarkand and they illus¬trate 1000 years of history, not just two centuries of intensive building by outrageous exhibitionists. And among them, down mud-walled streets, walk people who live and work here. They outnumber the tourists, unlike the inhabitants of old Khiva. They take tea by the sacred pool at Lyab-i-Khauz and wash in the 16th-century public baths exactly as they have for centuries.
The best estimate of Bukhara's age is about 20m, the depth of the archaeological remains under some of its fortifications. Years are more problematical. Textbooks say the city is 2000 years old; Bokhariots themselves say 3000. There was certainly something for Alexander to conquer in 329 bc: 'He overcame a lion in single combat, extorting from the Spartan envoy the exclamation, "Well done Alexander, nobly hast thou won the prize of kingship from the king of the woods!'" (Curzon). There was human settlement too, but probably nothing as big as a city. The name Bukhara dates from the 1 st century ad and may come from
vihara, Sanskrit for monastery, or
bukhar, a Farsi word for 'source of knowledge'. Either way, Bukhara would clearly like to be known as a place of prayer and learning from the very beginning. Like the rest of Sogdiana, it fell successively within the Achaemenid, Greek, Seleucid, Parthian, Kushan and Sassanian empires before the Arabs arrived. It was capital city for none of them, although the Hephthalite capital was only 40km away at Paikend.
By 712 it was a wealthy trading centre, but then three years of resistance led by a princess with expensive taste in slippers failed to deter Qutaiba ibn-Abbas and his army, and Bukhara's 700 richest families left town rather than submit to Arab rule. Soviet history, as ever, puts a different gloss on things: the invasion prompted in the 770s the first of several 'large scale anti-feudal risings' that came to nothing. The authority of the Caliph of Baghdad prevailed. Islam gradually eclipsed the competition: Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and various fringe cults. And when Bukhara broke from the Caliphate under Ismail Samani in 873, it was as capital of Central Asia's first independent Muslim state.
SAMARKAND
Everything I have heard about the beauty of Samarkand is true— except that it is even more beautiful than I could have imagined. Alexander the Great, 329 BC ...Crumbling sun-baked bricks, decorated with glazed tiles of deep blue and vivid turquoise that sparkle in the sun... a walled stairway with, on either side, a row of small mosques of the most exquisite beauty... wainscoted with alabaster and adorned with jasper... glimpses of courtyards and gardens... and in the open bazaars great heaps of fruit...
It's still there, still inspiring sentences of great earnestness and wonder from every writer who beholds it. But besides being Central Asia's premier tourist attraction, Samarkand is Uzbekistan's second city, with a population of 600,000, a major university, five other institutes of higher education, 15 'vocational colleges', a cannery producing 200 million jars of fruit and vegetables a year and a porcelain factory producing 22 million items of porcelain a year. All of which affects the general feel of the place quite as much as its ancient monuments do.
Samarkand is an oasis, but not the kind where human life stops beyond an outer ring of palm trees. Set on the edge of the Kizyl-Kum desert within sight of two mountain ranges, it is watered by the river that runs between them, the Zerafshan. For at least 10,000 years and possibly as many as 40,000,
homo sapiens has found this an amenable spot. If Silk Route trade made it rich in historic times, nature was the provider in prehistoric ones: mountain streams running off the northern slopes of the Zerafshan range supported trees which grew nuts and berries which in turn supported wild fowl and other animals. Everything that Palaeolithic man could wish for was here, and his (or rather her, for they were women's) jaw and thighbones were discovered in a former children's park in Samarkand in 1937.
Neolithic man was altogether more settled and sophisticated, hunting gazelles and wild bulls with bows and arrows, but also breeding sheep and goats on wide terraces above the Sazagan river south-west of modern Samarkand. Fine stone arrow-heads and other items dating from between 6000 and 4000 BC were discovered at four sites along the river between 1966 and 1972. The oldest evidence of urban settlement on the territory of Samarkand is a collection of jewellery from a Bronze-Age burial ground beside the River Siab, which still runs grubbily along the eastern edge of the Afrasiab site. The remains of an outer city wall here have been dated around 1500 BC, but Samarkand proper is gener¬ally accepted to be 2500 years old, and Afrasiab was its first name.
Afrasiab may have been the first Sogdian king, Sogdiana being the land between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, or he may have existed only in an epic poem called 'Shakhname', as king of what became the northern Persian satrapy of Turan. Alter¬natively the word may not refer to a person at all and be derived instead from the Tajik word parsiab, meaning 'over the Siab (black river)'. Either way, Afrasiab the place is a short walk east of the centre of modern Samarkand. In its heyday it covered 800 hectares. The modern site covers 300 hectares, 96 per cent of which have not been touched by builders or archaeologists since they were trampled and torched by Genghis Khan's horsemen in 1220.
By the 4th century bc Afrasiab was the major urban centre of Sogdiana, famous for its size and general magnificence. Marauders were for the most part kept at bay by a city wall 14km long and, in one surviving section, 13m high. But in 329 bc the city faced the greatest marauder of his and possibly of all time. Alexander the Great crossed the Hindu Kush in the spring of that year and took Samarkand without a struggle. But Spitamen, the local Sogdian ruler, led a spirited rebellion that delayed the Greek conquest by 18 frustrating months, and ended only with Spitamen's assassination by his own followers. Having finally taken the city Alexander became arrogant. On the feast of Dionysus he made sacrifices to Castor and Pollux, and claimed to be descended, like them, from Zeus. Some courtiers took this as a cue for flattery and likened him to Hercules, but his old friend Cleitus decided to cut him down to size. Emboldened by drink, he told Alexander he was not the equal of his own father Philip, let alone of Hercules. Alexander ran him through with a spear -and was filled with remorse for the remaining five years of his life.
KYRGYZTAN
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Kyrgyzstan is located at the juncture of two great Central Asian mountain systems (the Tian-Shan and the Pamirs). These two systems are geologically separated from each other in southern Kyrgyzstan, between the Alai Mountains of the Tian-Shan and the Trans-Alai Range (Qatorkuhi Pasi Oloy) of the Pamirs. The Trans-Alai Range, which is the northernmost part of the Pamirs, forms part of Kyrgyzstan's southern border with Tajikistan. The main ridge of the Tian-Shan extends along Kyrgyzstan's eastern border with China, on a northeastern axis. Victory Peak (known as Pik Pobedy in Russian and Jenish Chokosu in Kyrgyz) is the highest peak in the Tian-Shan system at an elevation of 7,439 m (24,406 ft). Located on the Kyrgyz-China border in northeastern Kyrgyzstan, Victory Peak is also the highest point in Kyrgyzstan and the second highest peak in the former USSR. A series of mountain chains that are part of the Tian-Shan system, including the Alatau ranges, spur off into Kyrgyzstan. Most of these ranges run generally east to west, but the Fergana Mountains in the central portion of the country run southeast to northwest. The Fergana Valley in the west and the Chu Valley in the north are among the few significant lowland areas in Kyrgyzstan.
The Naryn River, Kyrgyzstan's largest river, originates in the mountains in the northeast and flows westward through the middle of the country. The Naryn then enters the Fergana Valley and crosses into Uzbekistan, where it joins with another river to form the Syr Darya, one of Central Asia's principal rivers. The Chu River, in northern Kyrgyzstan, flows northward into southern Kazakhstan. Yssyk-Kul, the largest lake in Kyrgyzstan and one of the largest mountain lakes in the world, is located at an altitude of 1,607 m (5,273 ft) above sea level in the northeastern portion of the country.
Forests occupy 4 percent of the country's land area. Coniferous trees such as the Tian-Shan white spruce grow along lower valleys and on north-facing mountain slopes. Many rare animal species inhabit the woodlands, including the Tian-Shan bear, the red wolf, and the snow leopard, which are protected by government decree. Other animals in Kyrgyzstan include deer, mountain goats, and mountain sheep. Kyrgyzstan's mountain lakes are an annual refuge for thousands of migrating birds, including the mountain goose and other rare species. Kyrgyzstan's natural resources include significant deposits of gold and other minerals. Also present are deposits of coal, uranium, mercury, antimony, nepheline, bismuth, lead, and zinc. Exploitable but small reserves of oil and natural gas also exist. The country's fast-flowing rivers provide hydroelectric power. Only 7 percent of the total land area is cultivated. The country's climate varies by region. The climate is subtropical in the Fergana Valley and temperate in the northern foothill zone. The lower mountain slopes have a dry continental climate, as they receive desert-warmed winds from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, whereas the highest mountain elevations have a polar climate. In the valleys, the average daily temperature in July is 28° C (82° F). In January daily averages are as low as -14° C (7° F). Conditions are much colder at high elevations, where in July the average daily temperature is 5° C (41° F) and in January, -28° C (-18° F). Precipitation is between 100 and 500 mm (4 and 20 in) in the valleys and from 180 to 1,000 mm (7 to 40 in) in the mountains.
BISHKEK
Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, is situated at an altitude of 750 meters above sea level. It has area of 124 square km and a population of approximately 670,000 people. The city was constructed on the site of a fort (called Pishpek) built by the Khan of Kokand in 1825 and destroyed by the Russians in 1862. Russians and Ukrainians began to settle here in the latter decades of the 19th century, planting beets, wheat and potatoes in the fertile valleys. Known briefly as Bishkek (the word bishkek means a churn used to make fermented mare's milk) after the Soviet takeover, the city was renamed Frunze in 1926, in honour of Mikhail Frunze, the Soviet general who won Central Asia for the Bolsheviks in the Civil War. The city was again renamed Bishkek when Kyrgyzstan declared its independence in 1991.
ALA-ARCHA CANYON
The Ala-Archa canyon is located in the highest, central part of the Kyrgyz Ridge which is famous for its eternal snow-stretching for almost 200 km - and such peaks as Dvurogaya (4,380 m), Korona (4,860 m), Baylyanbaish (4,700 m), and the highest peak of the Kyrgyz ridge - Semenov-Tian-Shansky (4,875 m). The Ala-Archa canyon is the center of the Ala-Archa National Park, one of the main tourist attractions in Kyrgystan. The national park (at the height from 1600 m to 4860m) is situated 45 km from the capital of Kyrgystan - Bishkek. The total area of the Park is 19,500 square kilometres.
The name of the national park, Ala-Archa, means many-coloured juniper?, which testifies to the abundance of this tree here. A river with the same name crosses the canyon. This river, like all rivers in Kyrgyzstan, originates from mountain glaciers. The Ala-Archa, the Adygene, and the Ak-Sai are the largest rivers in the national park.
There are 160 species of birds in Ala-Archa. Local fauna also includes the snow leopard, a butterfly called the Night Peacock Eye, wolves, snakes, owls, and many others. The Ala-Archa canyon has about 1,100 species of plants: wormwood in the steppe zone at the mountain foot, different grasses, bushes, and juniper forests on mountain slopes that are replaced with alpine meadows. This grand, rugged but very accessible gorge is offering dozens of walking and trekking possibilities, including hikes to glaciers and, for the serious mountaineer, treks to the region's highest peak. There are basic shelters scattered throughout the park but the best way to enjoy the area is to bring your own tent and supplies. You can use the Upper Ala-Archa Mountain Ski Base (2100 m) as a starting point from which to ski on glaciers, even in summer.
LAKE ISSYKUL
Issyk-Kul means ?hot lake? in Kyrgyz and confirms its name by not freezing in winter. It sits 1609m above the sea level and has an area of 6206 square km (179 km long and 60 km wide), making it the second largest alpine lake in the world after Lake Titicaca in South America. About 134 rivers flow into the lake. No river flow out of Issyk-Kul so the lake accumulates all mineral substances carried here by the rivers and rains. The water is very light and transparent, in clear weather one can see the lake?s bottom. Since ancient times, Issyk-Kul has been famous for its curative mineralised water, hot springs and medicinal mud used for treating many diseases.
The lake is encircled with high mountains. The powerful ranges of the Kungei Ala-Too and Terskei Ala-Too round the lake from the South and North and form a hallow 2-3.5 km deep, which extends for 240 km west to east. This offers excellent opportunities for developing mountain tourism, mountaineering, and mountain skiing.
Thanks to the mixture of mountainous and marine climate it is not extremely hot at the lake in summer and nights are always cool. The average monthly temperature is 20?C (?F) and in January it?s not less than -5?C (?F). During the summer season, between June and September, the average waster temperature is +22-24?C (?F). The area of Lake Issyk-Kul keeps a lot of secrets. At present at the bottom of the lake archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an ancient city, Chigu, which sank many centuries ago. It was a capital of the Usuni State since the 2nd century BC, and the trade centre of the Tian Shan on the Great Silk Road.
Attractions in the lake region include the Altyn Arashan hot spring development, set in a 3000m (9840ft) high alpine valley; the immense, silent summer pasture of the Karkara valley; the extraordinary red sandstone cliffs of the Jeti-Oghuz canyon; and the excellent hiking trails into the Terskey Alatau, south of Karakol. The best time to visit is September, though trekking in the mountains is best between July and August.
Karakol is situated at an altitude of 1700 meters near the eastern end of Lake Issyk-Kul and near the highest mountains - Peak Pobedy (7439 m) and Khan-Tengry (7010 m). It is the principal town in the region with population of 70,000 people, and the best base from which to explore the lakeshore. It?s a low-rise town, famous for its apple orchards and Sunday market (one of the best in Central Asia).
The city of Karakol (?Black Lake in KyrgyzKyrgyz) was founded in 1869 as a military and trade point on the trade road from the Chu valley to Kashgar.
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