Central Asia
5 curated road trips
- Pamir HighwayThe M41, the Roof of the World. From Dushanbe through the Wakhan Corridor to Osh, the Pamir Highway crosses four passes above 4,000m, traces the Afghan border along the Panj River, and reaches the highest navigable plateau on Earth.
- Kyrgyzstan LoopThe great Kyrgyz circuit from Bishkek through the nomad heartland, over the Tian Shan to Song-Kul's high-altitude lake (3,016m), through the Naryn canyon to Karakol, along the blue shore of Issyk-Kul, and back. A route of yurt camps, eagle hunters, and passes above 3,500m with almost no tarmac for 300 km at a stretch.
- Uzbekistan's Silk RoadThe original Silk Road through Uzbekistan's four great cities, Tashkent, Samarkand's Registan, Tamerlane's birthplace at Shakhrisabz, Bukhara's medressehs, and Khiva's walled Itchan Kala. Three UNESCO World Heritage sites in 1,100 km through a landscape that has barely changed since the caravans came through.
- Kazakhstan Steppe HighwayAcross the world's largest landlocked country from the former capital Almaty to the space-age new capital Astana, through the Kazakh steppe's infinite flatness, past Lake Balkhash's bisected chemistry (fresh water in the west, salt in the east), and the Soviet-era coal city of Karaganda with its extraordinary Gulag history.
- Turkmenistan: Gates of HellThrough the Karakum Desert from Ashgabat, the world's most surreal capital of white marble and golden statues, north to the Darvaza gas crater (the Gates of Hell), a 69-metre burning pit ignited by Soviet drillers in 1971 and still flaming today, before continuing to Dashoguz on the Uzbek border. One of the most extraordinary drives on earth.