Uzbekistan: Silk Road Tourism

Filed in archive Destination: Asia & the Pacific on July 19, 2009

Believe it or not, Uzbekistan may be one of the next great tourist destinations. And a recent piece in the Wall Street Journal tells why.

Walking at dusk through the stone alleyways of this legendary Silk Road city, it's difficult to tell which country, or century, you're in. Minarets and 17th-century mosques tower overhead. Battered Soviet-era taxis wait for passengers. Signs in Russian hawk meat dumplings to men in robes and shaggy sheep's-hair hats. It could be an Arabian Nights caravan town-or the Soviet Union, circa 1962.

Since the break up of the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan has been building tourism infrastructure. It's not the destination that Afghanistan was on the old hippie trail, but it does give visitors insight into the Islamic World of the Ottoman Empire and the Silk Road.

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