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Central Asia: on the Silk Road

23.05.13

The sun was setting behind distant mountains as I reached “Golden Samarkand”, capital of the 14th-century warrior Timur. The soaring indigo and turquoise tiled madrasas around the Registan Square and the gorgeously decorated Shah-i-Zinda necropolis testify to his dynasty’s power. In Timur’s own mausoleum, the rib-domed Gur Amir, Uzbeks prayed quietly.

Timur’s Western name, Tamburlaine, derived from a corruption of Timur-i-Leng, “Timur the Lame”, because he was reputed to limp from an injured leg. In 1941 Russian scientists broke into his jade coffin and found the skeleton of a tall, red-haired man, with signs that he had indeed been lame. According to my guide, they also discovered engraved on the casket a warning: “Who ever opens my tomb shall unleash an invader more terrible than me.” Two days later, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union.

Continuing through Bishkek, the capital of neighbouring Kyrgyzstan, and with the Tian Shan mountains glittering on the horizon, I followed the silk route south-east towards China. Mares and their foals grazed the rich grass of the flower-dotted hillsides under the eye of felt-hatted nomads. For a few pence one let me taste the bitter and slightly fizzy kumis, the fermented mare’s milk that fuelled Genghis Khan’s Mongols.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk