CENTRAL ASIA: SAMARKAND 2018

"Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir . . . Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures."  

~ Arthur C. Clarke 

I have always been a sucker for old maps and accounts of travellers in bygone days. For Daguerreotypes and monochromes of far away people and lands. I have been fortunate to make it to many places that once seemed impossibly exotic to me. Kathmandu. Lhasa. Marakesh. Shibbam. Addis Ababa. And now Samarkand. I was not disappointed by any of these places, but Samarkand really took my breath away.