The Silk Road in a week: Samarkand to Khiva

Uzbekistan hands you the Silk Road in a straight line, and a week is enough to drive it properly. Three great desert cities, each entirely distinct, plus a detour to one of the strangest places on earth. It is one of the best-value weeks of travel anywhere.

Samarkand is the one you have seen in photographs, and it does not disappoint. Its great square is a wall of turquoise and gold tilework, and in the early morning, before the tour groups, you can have the whole thing almost to yourself. Nearby, the mausoleum of the old conqueror is a jewellery box of colour.

Bukhara is quieter and older-feeling, a low, sand-coloured town of madrasas, minarets and a great fortress, still wrapped in its ancient walls. Where Samarkand overwhelms, Bukhara lets you wander. It is the city I would give an extra day.

Khiva is the fortress itself: an entire walled town, compact and complete, that you climb a tower to look down on. It is smaller and more of a museum piece than the others, but at dusk, when the day-trippers have gone, it is magnificent.

Then go north to Moynaq, where the Aral Sea used to be. Rusting fishing ships sit stranded on dry sand, kilometres from any water, in what is left of one of the great environmental disasters. It is haunting, and it is worth the long drive.

The bonus is the cost. Everything here is extraordinarily cheap, the food is excellent, and the people will pull you into whatever is happening.

Samarkand for the tiles. Bukhara for the calm.