Our first stop in Uzbekistan was Shahrisabz, the 14th-century birthplace of Emir Timur, the nomadic conqueror and national hero also known as Tamerlane. He founded the Timurid Empire and, over a period of 32 years, invaded an area now divided into 25 countries. At Timur’s Ak-Saray Palace, we craned our necks first at the towering blue-tiled ruins of the entrance portal (125 feet high, though centuries ago such edifices were twice that) and then up at a colossal bronze statue of Timur himself, who died of pneumonia in 1405 on his way to invade China. Under that blazing sun in Shahrisabz, with the flat landscape sloping away unbounded over the horizon, I could imagine how an ambitious and ruthless ruler might believe the whole world lay open to him there.
And, to be fair, Timur did in fact usher in a period of rebirth after 150 years of Mongol rule. Samarkand, which we reached two days later, was the center of this Timurid renaissance. At least 2,500 years old, with a current population of 600,000, Samarkand is one of the most iconic cities of the Silk Road, and its most iconic site is Registan Square, where the awe that had eluded me at the Navruz Palace hit with full force. Three spectacular madrasas dating from the 15th and 17th centuries loomed over a vast plaza like a vision from One Thousand and One Nights. “Registan is our heart, our blood, and our soul,” said our local guide, Armida Nazaryan.
While I would not describe anywhere we went as a beaten track, the way in which Golden Eagle conducted its tours had plenty of hallmarks of conventional tourism. When our train arrived somewhere, a bus would be waiting, and we would zip from site to site, following a flag-toting local guide who spoke to us through earpieces connected to receivers we wore around our necks. This model might not suit the most rugged individualists, but I will say it helped us see a lot of stuff, particularly in a region where overland travel between countries is logistically challenging. Traveling this way can be hard work. You are always on the go, listening and looking and trying to synthesize a deluge of new information. At 41, I was a couple decades younger than the average passenger, but at the end of every day, while my elders were still carousing in the bar car, I was happy to collapse into bed.
By the time we got to Tashkent, Uzbekistan’s capital, I’d begun to get a better handle on some of the region’s history, which mostly boils down to centuries-long cycles of a formidable conqueror being succeeded by rivalrous successors, whose conflicts bring about a fragmenting of territory and a decline of empire, followed by the eventual rise of a new strongman. One day we dipped into the radiant Kosmonavtlar stop of the Tashkent Metro. Trains came and went, disgorging people, and in their faces I thought I could see traces of the waves of ancestors that washed across this country’s deserts and steppes from all points of the compass. Then: back on the bus, back on the train.