CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Konimex it runs 400 km to Konimex; allow about 7 h 39 of riding. The stops in between: Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, Vardanze Settlement, Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex and Varakhsha Settlement. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 56 km this is Uzbekistan Silk Road Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
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.
Read the complete Rabati Malik Caravanserai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rabati Malik Caravanserai is where the day begins. Next is Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.
North of Bukhara, the green irrigated oasis of the Zarafshan river spreads out in a patchwork of cotton fields, orchards, mulberry trees and villages, and the point named Chasma-i Ayub Khazira lies in this landscape, near the village of Khazara, between Vobkent and Gijduvon. Chashma-i Ayub, the spring of Job, is a name given to several holy springs in Central Asia, linked to the legend that the prophet Job struck the ground with his staff and water gushed forth in a time of drought. The most famous is in Bukhara itself, a mausoleum over a spring, and this site near Khazara may be another shrine of the same tradition, listed as part of the Silk Roads corridor of the Zarafshan valley.
Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chasma-i Ayub Khazira comes up about 53 km into the recorded legs. Next is Vardanze Settlement.
North of Bukhara the irrigated land eventually runs into the sand, and on that edge lies Vardanze, the ruins of an ancient city that was once the capital of a local principality in the Bukhara oasis. Its mound of collapsed mud-brick walls and citadel rises above the fields near Shofirkon, and archaeologists have traced its history back more than two thousand years. It flourished as a trading post on the Silk Road and later declined, partly because the desert advanced and the water supply failed, and its ruins are part of the Zarafshan-Karakum corridor listed by UNESCO in 2023.
Read the complete Vardanze Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 92 km into the recorded legs you reach Vardanze Settlement. Next is Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex.
Bahauddin Naqshband died in 1389 in the village where he was born, a short ride from Bukhara, and the Sufi order that bears his name went on to spread across Central Asia, India, the Ottoman Empire and beyond. The Naqshbandi order emphasised silent remembrance of God and living a spiritual life within the everyday world, and its founder's tomb became one of the most important pilgrimage sites in Central Asia, so much so that locals sometimes call it the Mecca of Central Asia. The complex, with its mosques, minaret, courtyards and the tomb itself, was largely built in the sixteenth century under the Shaybanid rulers and restored in recent decades.
Read the complete Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex, about halfway. Next is Varakhsha Settlement.
Thirty kilometres or so west of Bukhara, beyond the last irrigated fields, the land turns to sand and salt crust at the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, and here a low mound of eroded mud brick rises from the flat ground. This is Varakhsha, once a flourishing town and the residence of the Bukhar Khudats, the pre-Islamic rulers of the Bukhara oasis. It thrived in the early medieval centuries, when the oasis extended further than it does today, and was abandoned around the eleventh century, probably as irrigation failed and the desert advanced.
Read the complete Varakhsha Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Varakhsha Settlement sits at 209 km, about halfway. Next is back through Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex comes up about 254 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Vardanze Settlement.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Vardanze Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 308 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Vardanze Settlement. Next is back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, late in the day. Next is Rabati Malik Caravanserai.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rabati Malik Caravanserai write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 400 km.
Rabati Malik Caravanserai → Chasma-i Ayub Khazira is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chasma-i Ayub Khazira → Vardanze Settlement is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Vardanze Settlement → Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex → Varakhsha Settlement is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Varakhsha Settlement → back through Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Bahouddin Naqshband Architectural Complex → back through Vardanze Settlement is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Vardanze Settlement → back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira → Rabati Malik Caravanserai is 54 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.