Bukhara is a city made of brick and memory, a trading hub on the Silk Road with a history of more than two thousand years, and its old centre is one of the best preserved in Central Asia. The Zeravshan River once watered the oasis around it, and the town's wealth came from carpets, silk, gold embroidery and its position between east and west. Genghis Khan's army burned much of it in 1220, but the city recovered and became a great centre of Islamic learning, with scores of madrasas and mosques.
The Kalon Minaret, a tapering tower of patterned brick about forty-five metres high, was built in 1127 and has dominated the skyline ever since. It is said that Genghis Khan, struck by its beauty, ordered it spared when his troops razed the city. Beside it stand a great mosque and a madrasa, and at night the minaret is lit golden against the dark sky. Nearby, the mausoleum of Ismail Samani, built in the tenth century, is a small, perfect cube of woven brick that stood buried in sand for centuries and so survived.
The Ark, a fortress-palace on a high mound, was the residence of the emirs of Bukhara for more than a thousand years. In 1842, two British officers, Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, were executed in the square in front of it by order of the emir, an episode in the Great Game between Britain and Russia. The pool of Lyab-i Hauz, shaded by old mulberry trees, is the heart of the old town, with tea houses around the edge where you can sit and watch the evening. Covered trading domes, built to shelter merchants, still house craft shops.
Riding here, the road from Samarkand crosses the flat, dusty plain, with irrigated fields, cotton and orchards giving way to desert. The surface is variable, with patches of damaged asphalt and sudden potholes, and heat in summer is intense, so start early and carry water. Fuel stations are not always supplied with petrol, so fill up when you can. In the city, the old quarter has narrow lanes and little parking, and a hotel with a courtyard where bikes can be locked is a sensible choice. Spring and autumn are the best times to visit, and the golden light on the brick at sunset is one of the sights of Central Asia.