2020 GeoEx Catalog

GAVIN HELLIER / ROBERT HARDING

The Silk Road

A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME

TOURING | 20 DAYS · GROUP

W  e take joy and pride in creating thematically booming trips like this. (In fact, GeoEx pioneered the pivotal crossing of the Turugart Pass more than two decades ago.) The Silk Road:A JourneyThroughTime ties together whole passels of civilizations, epochs, and scen­ eries. And it tells the grand tale of one of humankind’s most important arteries of trade and culture. Like other GeoEx classics, it’s the kind of journey generations of far-fetchers would have mortgaged their souls to make. Anchored at its ends by Xian and Tashkent, capi- tal of what used to be Soviet (and before that, Russian) Central Asia, this adventure traverses the heart of Asia, following one of the Silk Road’s major branches. It skirts deserts (the Taklamakan is the world’s second-largest shifting-sand desert), lopes over great mountains (cutting the Pamir Knot’s northern strand, the Tien Shan Moun- tains), and crosses rare borders (the Sino-Kyrgyz frontier, at 12,300-foot Turugart Pass). The compilation of cities and sights we visit is soul- mortgagingly enticing: Xian’s Terracotta Warriors, who look like they’re ready to shake off a little dust and get

marching; Dunhuang’s Caves of the Thousand Bud- dhas, a bastion of Greco-Buddhist art; Urumchi, the most landlocked place on earth; magnificent Samarkand and Bukhara; the still-little-visited Kyrgyz Republic; and Kashgar, address of Central Asia’s largest bazaar. Interwo- ven throughout are visits with potters and weavers, meals in local homes, and other personal interactions that bring these fabled places fully to life. sept. 5–24 from $12,875 Day 1  arrive in Xian, China ✦  2 & 3  Xian, with Terracotta Warriors ✦  4  fly to Dunhuang ✦  5  Caves of the Thousand Buddhas, Singing Sands ✦  6  Dunhuang Caves, fly to Urumchi ✦  7  Xinjiang Museum ✦  8  fly to Kashgar, explore ✦  9  Kashgar Sunday bazaar ✦  10  Turugart Pass into Kyrgyzstan ✦  11  on to Bishkek via Issyk Kul ✦  12  Ala Archa Gorge, explore Bishkek ✦  13  Bishkek; fly to Uzbekistan ✦  14  Tashkent; fly to Bukhara ✦ 15 & 16  Bukhara exploring ✦  17  Bukhara, on to Samarkand ✦  18  discover Samarkand ✦  19  return to Tashkent ✦  20  depart.

ABOVE  Some 8,000 Terracotta Warriors were buried with Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, around 210 BCE to guard him in his afterlife.

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THE SILK ROAD