In my teens I read 3 books that inspired a deep desire to experience travelling in Central Asia.
The first was The Travels of Marco Polo by Rustichello da Pisa. Based on the stories Marco Polo shared with him when they were in prison together in Genoa, it chronicles the former’s travels between 1271 and 1295, including his experiences at the court of Kublai Khan.
A very early example of travelogue, it impressed me greatly. Rustichello’s use of a flashback narrative structure and leisurely conversational style opened me up to all sorts of literary possibilities in which good travel writing might be framed. I had yet to read Graham Greene or Bruce Chetwin.
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I sought to affect Marco Polo’s sense of curiosity and tolerance, qualities which (subsequently) corporate life, with its favouring of fools and stupidity, came to challenge. But I digress …
The second was Kim by Rudyard Kipling, a “boys-own story” (on my reading at least) set against the backdrop of the conflict and intrigue between Russia and Britain in Central Asia known as the Great Game.
And the third was the autobiographical ripping yarn Eastern Approaches by the British diplomat, spy and SAS soldier Fitzroy MacClean. While assigned to the British delegation in Moscow in the 1920s, MacClean requested permission from Soviet officials to visit the Central Asian Republics - and when he was denied, set off anyway. He soon noticed he had a KGB escort but they made no moves to stop or arrest him and he eventually struck up conversation with his black suited travel companions, who were hopelessly equipped for crossing mountains and deserts.
How I longed to see Baku on the shores of the Caspian, the Oxus River, the ancient Silk Road cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, the Tian Shan and Pamir mountains and the Karakum desert.
A local historian confers 2 fun facts. Firstly, the Silk Road was coined by Ferdinand Richthofen, the German historian and brother of Manfred Richthofen, aka the Red Baron of red Fokker triplane fame.
Secondly, it would be more accurate to call it the Paper Road as the arrival of paper in Europe from China and via the Arabs was of far greater historical significance. Paper was vastly cheaper than parchment, which kicked off an information technology revolution centuries before the Gutenberg press.
The Silk Road was not so much a road or route as an emergent network, continually evolving in response to disease, climate, wars and shifting alliances.
Cities like Bukhara and Samarkand grew because enterprising citizens provided services to passing traders, including caravanserai, water, money exchange, etc.
Sadly, the Oxus - mighty river of antiquity, navigable from the Pamir mountains near the Hindu Kush to the Aral Sea - is all but spent today on irrigation for cotton. It reduces to a trickle before disappearing into the desert sand.
In Bukhara you can still gaze upon the same city walls as Alexander the Great did in 329 BCE.
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Samarkand is 2,750 years old …at least. New archeological discoveries keep pushing its foundation back.
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The use of turquoise, lapis lazuli and gold is exquisite. The best examples are the tomb of the 13th century conqueror Timur Tamerlane, the 3 madrasahs on Registan Square and the Shakhi Zinda Complex.
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Tashkent is different. There have been a number of cities on this site for 2,300 years, each destroyed - by Arabs in 8th century, Mongols in the 13th century, and earthquake in 1966.
The rebuild by the Soviets after the 1966 earthquake has left the most enduring mark. As the imposing welcome to the Hotel Uzbekistan shows, the USSR may have checked out but did it ever leave?
My Tashkent walking tour guide quotes the diplomat Rodric Braithwaite - “Russia is a country with an unpredictable past” - as we encounter a memorial to former First Secretary of the Communist Party of Uzbekistan, Sharof Rashidiv:
“For the moment he was a pretty good guy.”
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