Cultural Heritage

Arrival. Transfer to the hotel. Tea at a chaikhana in Chorsu, where the city wakes up. A light dinner with the guide, who lays out the journey ahead.

Hazrati Imom complex and the world's oldest Quran. The Museum of Applied Arts. Private lunch with a third-generation ceramic family in the old town. In the late afternoon we fly west to Nukus, capital of Karakalpakstan. Rest at the hotel, an early dinner.

A full day in the remote village of Chimbay, in the heart of Karakalpakstan, where the steppe runs to the horizon and the old Aral wind still moves over the houses. Our host, a friend who has lived here all his life, walks us through the lanes himself. He opens the doors that do not open to strangers. We sit with felt-makers and bread-bakers. We meet the elders who still remember the Aral when it was a sea. We eat at the family table.

Morning at the Savitsky Museum, the second-largest collection of Soviet avant-garde painting in the world, kept alive in the desert by a man who hid the canvases the state wanted destroyed. After lunch we drive south along the Amu Darya, with a stop at Chilpyk Kala, the Zoroastrian tower of silence above the river, and a brief pause among the desert fortresses of ancient Khwarezm. Arrival in Khiva by evening, into the lamplight of Ichan-Qala.

A slow morning in the Juma Mosque, where two hundred and twelve carved wooden columns hold the ceiling. Visit to a suzani embroiderer who works for the museum. An afternoon for tea and walking the old city at your own pace. Evening with a local musician playing dutar in his courtyard, by lamplight.

We take the new high-speed train across the Kyzylkum desert, the same crossing the camel caravans made in fourteen days and that we now make in a single ride. Tea on board. The window framing the long view of the steppe. Arrival in Bukhara in the afternoon, with time for a first slow walk through the old town before dinner.

Dawn walk through Lyabi-Hauz before the bazaar opens. Poi Kalon ensemble at the soft hour. Lunch in the studio of our friend Zarnigor, a calligrapher's daughter. In the afternoon, a slow walk through the trading domes of Bukhara, where the silk merchants, the jewellers, and the hat-makers have kept their stalls for five hundred years.

The Ark and the Bolo-Hauz mosque in the morning. Chor-Bakr necropolis in the afternoon, where four Sufi sheikhs lie under a sky of swallows. Evening at leisure.

A late morning coffee with a friend who teaches at the local university. If the timing allows, we walk the campus together, and he speaks honestly about what education in this country has been, and what it is becoming. After lunch, the high-speed train carries us east to Samarkand. Evening arrival, settling in at our family hotel.

Registan in the morning, when the light is still cold. Shah-i-Zinda before the heat. Lunch in the Jewish quarter, in the home of a family whose grandparents have lived in this lane since the war. Afternoon at Ulugbek's observatory. Evening tea at Siyob bazaar with a bread baker who has worked the same tandyr for forty years.

A thirty-minute drive out of the city brings us to Ohalik, the village that gave our company its name. The morning belongs to Mahbuba, who has the lightest hand with patir bread that we know. We knead the dough on the wooden board on the floor. We light the tandyr with grapevine cuttings, the way her mother taught her. We slap the dough against the inner wall and pull the bread out twelve minutes later, hot enough to burn the fingers. Then we fold samsa together: lamb, onion, and the herbs from her garden. Lunch is plov cooked outdoors over a wood fire by Bobur-aka, whose grandmother taught him the Samarkand cut of carrot.

We return to the city in the afternoon for the Gur-e-Amir, the mausoleum of Tamerlane, where the blue of the dome at dusk is a colour we have no other word for. After dinner we walk back to the Registan, when the floodlights come on and the three madrasahs turn gold against the dark.

A slow walk at dawn through the lanes around our family home. A wellness hour on the terrace at Amira Boutique Hotel. Farewell breakfast in the courtyard.

For travellers flying out of Samarkand, the airport is twenty minutes away. For those flying out of Tashkent, a late afternoon high-speed train carries you there in two hours.