Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries in the world, surrounded entirely by countries with no coast either. The west is mostly the Kyzylkum desert, the Ustyurt plateau and the dry bed of the Aral Sea, which shrank after its rivers were diverted to grow cotton. In the east the foothills of the Tian Shan frame the Fergana Valley, the most intensively farmed land in Central Asia, and the Amu Darya and Syr Darya carry snowmelt across the plains.

Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva grew rich on the Silk Road. Islam reached the oases in the eighth century, and scholars such as Ibn Sina and al-Khwarizmi, whose name gave the world the word algorithm, came from these lands. Timur built his empire from Samarkand in the fourteenth century, and his grandson Ulugh Beg raised an observatory there. Russia conquered the khanates in the 1860s and 1870s, and after Soviet rule Uzbekistan became independent in 1991.

Plov, rice with mutton, carrots and cumin in a great iron kazan, is made for every wedding and holiday. Silk ikat from Margilan, suzani embroidery and the blue-tiled domes of the old madrasas are the country’s signatures, and neighbourhood councils called mahallas organise much of family life. Cotton, gold from the vast open pit at Muruntau, natural gas, copper and uranium account for much of the economy, alongside melons, grapes and apricots from Fergana.