Bukhara

Historically the holiest city of Central Asia, Bukhara is the fifth largest city in Uzbekistan, populated mainly by Tajiks. If you only go to one place on the Silk Road, it has to be the top of the Kalyan Minaret (Tower of Death) to gaze down on this mesmerizing city of subdued desert hues and sublime blue domes.

Bukhara has perhaps the most romantic past of any city of Central Asia. Originally founded in 500 BC, conquered by Alexander the Great, destroyed by Ghengis Khan, rebuilt by Tamerlane, and admired by Marco Polo, it became the intellectual and cultural heart of the Silk Road. Bukhara produced many of the world's greatest historians, scientists, writers and thinkers, including the great mystic Bahautdin Nakshbandi - the founder of the esoteric Sufi philosophy.






The city also has a history of violence - during the 19th century "Great Game" between Russia and Britain, Colonel Stoddart and Captain Conolly were forced to dig their own graves at the foot of the massive walls of the Ark Citadel brfore being executed as spies of the British Empire in 1842.

The winding mud streets of Bukhara were built around open pools which provided the water supply for both drinking and public washing. These were a terrible health hazard and most of them were filled in during the Soviet era. But Lyab-i Hauz has survived, a wonderfully romantic spot surrounded by mulberry trees, with a khanaka (Sufi lodging house), and madrassahs (school) at either end. Nearby is the 14th century Kukeldash madrassah - the largest Islamic centre of learning in Central Asia.

This city of browns and blues, with its dazzling markets and mosaics, has an unhurried, dreamy atmosphere about it, the new has been assimilated into the old with the relaxed ease of a city confident of its place in history.

The region around Bukhara has been inhabited for at least five millennia and the city itself has existed for half that time. Located on the Silk Road, the city has long been a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion.