The Silk road and low budget Kazakhstan

2008-05

These pictures tell the story of a four week trip through part of the Great Silk Road in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and a bit in Kazakhstan.

I passed through mythical places like Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. Almost all of them have a history that starts centuries before any more or less organized form of civilization existed in the West. They were the stage of intense commercial, cultural and intellectual exchange and their importance only started to wane with the discovery by the Portuguese of the maritime route to the East.

The Soviet era couldn't have been more different. Typical grey urbanistic planning and personality cult of leaders left their marks. It's to a great extent this contrast that's worth showing.

Central Asia is a region little known to the rest of the world and its discovery is essential.

Text: Joost de Raeymaeker
Translation: Joost de Raeymaeker