Uzbekistan

This ensemble of majestic, tilting medressas – a near-overload of majolica, azure mosaics and vast, well-proportioned spaces – is the centrepiece of the city, and arguably the most awesome single sight in Central Asia. The three grand edifices here are among the world’s oldest preserved medressas, anything older having been destroyed by Chinggis Khan.

Central Asia’s holiest city, Bukhara (Buxoro) has buildings spanning a thousand years of history, and a thoroughly lived-in and cohesive old centre that hasn’t changed too much in two centuries. It is one of the best places in Central Asia for a glimpse of pre-Russian Turkestan.

Most of the centre is an architectural preserve, full of medressas and minarets, a massive royal fortress and the remnants of a once-vast market complex. Government restoration efforts have been more subtle and less indiscriminate than in flashier Samarkand. The city’s accommodation options are by far the best and most atmospheric in the country.

You’ll need at least two days to see the main sights. Try to allow time to lose yourself in the old town; it’s easy to overdose on the 140-odd protected buildings and miss the whole for its many parts.

Khiva’s name, redolent of slave caravans, barbaric cruelty, terrible desert journeys and steppes infested with raiding Turkmen tribesmen, struck fear into all but the boldest 19th-century hearts. Nowadays it’s a friendly and welcoming Silk Road old town that's well set up for tourism.

The historic heart of Khiva (Xiva) has been so well preserved that it’s sometimes criticised as lifeless – a ‘museum city’. But walk through the city gates and wander the fabled Ichon-Qala (inner walled city) in all its monotone, mud-walled glory and it's hard not to feel like you are stepping into another era.

Try to spend at least one night in Khiva. The old town is at its best at dawn, sunset and by night, when the moonlit silhouettes of the tilting minarets and medressas, viewed from twisting alleyways, work their real magic.

The Savitsky Museum houses one of the most remarkable art collections in the former Soviet Union. About half of the paintings were brought here in Soviet times by artist and ethnographer Igor Savitsky, who managed to preserve an entire generation of avant-garde work that was proscribed and destroyed elsewhere in the country for not conforming to the socialist realism of the times.

If you’ve been travelling along the Silk Road seeking answers to where, in fact, this highly touted fabric comes from, Margilon (Marg'ilan), 16km from Fergana, will be your answer. Uzbekistan is the world’s third-largest silk producer, and Margilon is the traditional centre of the industry, boasting the large Yodgorlik Silk Factory and several smaller, family-run silk workshops.

Although there is little to show for it, Margilon has been around for a long time, probably since the 1st century BC. For centuries its merchant clans, key players in Central Asia’s commerce and silk trade, were said to be a law unto themselves; even in the closing decades of Soviet rule, this was the heart of Uzbekistan’s black-market economy. Margilon is also one of the country’s most devoutly Islamic cities.