Central Asia

Once Silk Road epicenters, the capitals of ancient empires, coveted chess pieces of the colonial Great Game and Iron-Curtain captives, the independent nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are some of the most mysterious and isolated, yet culturally rich and historically significant, places on Earth. Bukhara, Khiva, Samarkand, Tashkent, Ashgabat, Kashgar—the very names resound with the poetry of bygone empires. The cultural interchange from Macedonia, Arabia, Iran, Mongolia, China and Russia still reverberates throughout the region creating a living palimpsest of humanity’s history.