Empires of the Silk Road — intelligenttravel.nationalgeographic.com

I had only walked three minutes from my hotel in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s capital, when I stumbled upon a former empire. Coming to Kyrgyzstan last fall, I wanted to see what remained of the Silk Road that snaked through that spiky Central Asian country for centuries, bridging the vastness of Asia and the West with caravans bearing silk, gems, and spices. In the ancient city of Osh in the south, for instance, remnants of Asian, Russian, and Persian realms still weave together in surprising ways.

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