Lesley Downer Lesley Downer first went to Japan as an English teacher in the late 1970s. She immersed herself in the language and culture and developed a keen interest in the Edo period, especially the poetry of Matsuo Basho. Years later, she returned to Japan to follow the same route the poet had written about in his 17th century book Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)...
The Narrow Smile by Peter Mayne Peter Mayne was a Royal Air Force liaison officer with the Pathan tribes of India’s turbulent North-West Frontier in 1941. This harsh and barren region is home to the Pathans (or Pakhtuns), an ethnic group split into mutually hostile and often warring tribes ruled by an inviolable code of honour, who controlled the mountain passes that were the sole means of...
Andrew Finkel In the late 1800s, during the Victorian era, a moderately successful doctor in Southsea created a fictional character so compelling that people wrote letters to him asking for help. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the novel A Study in Scarlet at age 27, in less than three weeks. The book didn’t attract much interest, but he went on to write a second novel with a little nudge from Oscar...
Bill Colegrave The Amu Darya River forms a natural barrier between the lands of Central Asia to the north and the Afghan and Indian worlds to the south. Ancient writers called it the Oxus. It was the nucleus of Bactrian civilizations, the target of conquerors like Alexander the Great, and the destination of intrepid 19th and 20th century travelers. The exact location of the river’s source...
I’ve never been approached by so many people for group photos. People in Uzbekistan were incredibly friendly, and very curious. So many approached me because they were learning English and wanted to talk. But just as many spoke only Uzbek and Russian. They stopped me randomly on the street because they wanted to take a photo. That’s happened to me once or twice on other trips. But in...
Justin Marozzi I’d always thought of Temur as a cut-rate Genghis Khan who burst out of the Asian steppe, conquered a sizeable chunk of territory, and then failed to hold his empire together. It was only when researching a trip to Uzbekistan that I discovered Temur — or Tamerlane, as he was known in the West — was one of the world’s greatest conquerors. He was a strategist on a par with Alexander...
Gūr-i Amīr Mausoleum My interest in Bukhara and Khiva centred on the Great Game. Samarkand is all about Timur. The great Central Asian conqueror is known as Tamerlane in the West but he’s hardly a household name like Genghis Khan or Alexander. I’ll have more to say about him next week. Today I’d like to tell you about the rich architectural legacy he left behind. Timur was born near Samarkand in...
Alex Kerr I’ve often thought of Japan as one of the world’s most misunderstood countries, not because it is uniquely inscrutable but because it’s so beset by stereotypes. The casual visitor rarely sees beyond their image of geisha, Buddhist temples, hyper-modern electronics and anime. This exotic projection seems especially prevalent here in Germany and in France. The truth is more...
The next afternoon we took the golden road to Samarkand. It wasn’t golden and it wasn’t a road. It was steel, and they were rails. We rode the Afrosiyob, Uzbekistan’s high speed showcase, built by the Spanish company Talgo and capable of flinging us across the desert at up to 250 km/h. It wasn’t as smooth as a Japanese shinkansen but it provided a level of comfort and speed I hadn’t expected in...
Toqi Zargaron trading dome bazaar complex (ca.1569) Bukhara felt more lived in than Khiva’s heavily restored old town centre, with regular homes in a winding maze of medieval streets, and unrestored madrassa in various stages of dereliction. Backstreets of Bukhara Backstreets of Bukhara The sheer number of these schools serves as a reminder of a time when Bukhara wasn’t a byword for cruelty under...