Only the portal of Rabati Malik is left standing, but what a portal it is: a tall brick façade with a great arch, framed by fluted columns and decorated with intricate brick patterns, rising beside the road between Bukhara and Samarkand in the steppe of central Uzbekistan. It was built in the eleventh century by the Karakhanid rulers as a royal caravanserai, a fortified palace and rest stop on the Silk Road, and travellers once found shelter, water and protection here behind its massive walls. The rest of the building was destroyed over the centuries, but archaeologists have traced its plan, and the portal itself has been restored. Across the road, a sardoba, a domed brick reservoir, collected water for the caravans and is still in good condition.
This was the main road of Transoxiana, the land beyond the Oxus, where great cities such as Bukhara and Samarkand grew rich from trade between China, Persia and the Mediterranean. Navoi, the nearest city today, is a modern industrial town named after the fifteenth-century poet Alisher Navoi, and the area around is mainly agricultural, with cotton fields, orchards and villages, with the Nuratau mountains rising to the north.
The road between Bukhara and Samarkand, which passes right by the caravanserai, is the main highway of the region and has been largely modernised, with long straight stretches across flat land and plenty of traffic, including trucks and buses. Driving in Uzbekistan can be erratic, police checkpoints are common, and speed limits are enforced with cameras. An unusual feature of the country is that many cars run on methane gas, and petrol of the higher grades can sometimes be hard to find, especially outside the cities, so fill up whenever you see a good station. The heat in summer is intense, and the best seasons for riding are spring and autumn.
Navoi, about twenty kilometres away, has fuel, hotels and restaurants, and Bukhara and Samarkand, each a couple of hours away, have everything a traveller could need and some of the most beautiful architecture in the world. Stop at a roadside chaikhana, a teahouse, for green tea, bread and a plate of plov, the national dish, and enjoy a rest on the raised wooden platforms covered with carpets, where travellers have been resting for centuries.