Samarkand is one of the oldest cities in Central Asia, and a name that has meant romance to travellers for two and a half thousand years. It sits in the green valley of the Zeravshan River, with the Pamir-Alay mountains rising to the south, on the great trade route that carried silk, paper, spices and ideas between China and the Mediterranean. Alexander the Great took the city, then called Marakanda, in 329 BC, and the mound of its ancient site, Afrasiab, still lies on the northern edge of the modern town. The paper trade is said to have reached the Islamic world here in the eighth century, when Chinese prisoners taught the craft after a battle on the Talas River.
What you see today, though, is mostly the work of Timur, the conqueror known in the West as Tamerlane, who made Samarkand his capital in the late fourteenth century and filled it with craftsmen seized from the lands he conquered. The Registan, a great square framed by three madrasas faced in blue, turquoise and gold tilework, was built over two centuries, with the earliest, the madrasa of Ulugh Beg, dating from the 1420s. Ulugh Beg, Timur's grandson, was an astronomer-king, and the ruins of his observatory, with a giant underground sextant, lie on a hill outside town. His star catalogue was the finest of its age.
Other sights are almost as good. The Gur-e-Amir, the mausoleum where Timur is buried, has a ribbed turquoise dome and a dark jade slab over his tomb. The Shah-i-Zinda, a lane of tombs climbing a hillside, is a dazzling run of blue tile that is among the most beautiful places in the Islamic world, and the Bibi-Khanym mosque, huge and partly ruined, speaks of Timur's ambitions. Samarkand's bread, round, thick and stamped with patterns, is sold in the Siyob bazaar and is superb with the local grapes and melons.
For riders, the city is the start of the road west toward Bukhara, around 270 kilometres across a flat plain on a well-used highway. Traffic in the city is chaotic, and driving habits are hard to predict, so ride defensively. Summers are very hot, often above forty degrees, and the best seasons are spring and autumn. Fuel can be unpredictable in Uzbekistan, since many vehicles run on gas and supplies of higher-octane petrol are not always reliable, so top up whenever you see a working station and carry a little extra if you can. A city of over three hundred thousand people has plenty of hotels and restaurants, and plov, the local rice and lamb dish, is the thing to order.