Fortresses of the Silk Road

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Ah! THIS is why I wanted to see to Uzbekistan! Forget those towering minarets and arched madressahs with their colored tiles and Arabic script.

Let me climb atop a sacred Zorastrian mesa where the bodies of followers were left to desiccate!

Give me crumbling, beige-bricked walls of ancient fortresses where I can hear echoes of the past in the wind!

I want to wander among the ruins of an ancient trading post, littered with colorful fragments of the past: the ochre of a Chinese plate, the black handle of a jug, the lapis blue of a drinking vessel.