From a bird’s eye perspective, Itchan Kala – the old walled city of Khiva – looked absolutely amazing. Minarets, madrasahs, green and turquoise domes, and sand-colored structures stretched as far as the eyes could see. However, one has to leave the sky and return to […]
I woke up from my slumber. And as my eyes squinted, trying to focus on the things around me, I was reminded that this was neither my bedroom in Jakarta, nor any of the familiar-looking hotel rooms I had stayed at before. It felt almost… […]
Bukhara had been immensely charming. We were fascinated by the relatively intact core area of its historic center where madrasahs and trading domes that were built centuries ago sit side by side with row after row of old houses and former caravanserais. What made it […]
The ancient trading posts along the fabled Silk Road have captured our imagination for centuries, thanks to not only countless stories about their grand monuments and lively bazaars, but also the cultural and intellectual exchanges between the East and the West that shaped people’s lives. […]
The taxi that took us from the train station weaved through the streets of Samarkand. We had just arrived from Tashkent on a two-hour journey now made possible thanks to the Afrosiyob, the first high-speed rail system in Central Asia which was named after an […]
When one strolls around the downtown area of Samarkand, the Registan will undoubtedly take the spotlight. It is to Uzbekistan what Machu Picchu is to Peru, the Great Pyramid of Giza is to Egypt, or the Great Wall is to China. Simply put, they all […]
Please forgive my absence in the past two weeks as I have just returned from a trip to one of the countries I most want to see. Uzbekistan had been on my wish list for more than a decade. One of the first things that […]
What an Amazing World! 