The jewel of the ancient Silk Road and one of the world’s most extraordinarily beautiful and historically significant travel destinations — where Samarkand’s three magnificent Registan madrasas glow in turquoise-tiled splendour as the most breathtaking public square in the Islamic world, the ancient mud-brick city of Khiva’s perfectly preserved Ichon-Qala inner city offers the most complete and authentic window into Silk Road urban life anywhere on earth, and Bukhara’s Kalon Minaret has called the faithful to prayer from the same extraordinary spot for over nine hundred years.