Before the Bolsheviks dragooned them into the Soviet Union in the 1920s, the khanates of Central Asia were some of the most despotic, hidden, and utterly fascinating parts of the planet. People were driven half mad with desire to see places like Samarkand and Bukhara, which still reverberate to the harsh but compelling music of their history, and visiting their gorgeous mosques, madra­sas, and tombs (not to mention their folk) should rank high on any traveler’s life list.

The Epic of Central Asia packs in a tremendous lot of old-fashioned travel romance in just three weeks. We’re reminded once more of William Hazlitt’s insight: “In traveling we visit names as well as places.” And so to names that quicken the blood: Ashgabat, Khiva, Tashkent, Ferghana, and on and on. But we can’t forgo short tributes to just a few of our favorite earthly spots: Samarkand—whose Registan Lord Curzon called “the noblest public square in the world,” and to which we travel, in the words of James Elroy Flecker, “on a golden road . . . for lust of knowing what should not be known.” Glorious Bukhara, from which, the old saying goes, “the light ascends to heaven.” Mile-high Lake Issyk Kul, a larger Lake Tahoe, surrounded by the snowcapped peaks of the Tien Shan. Karakol, with its fanciful Russian Orthodox Holy Trinity Cathedral. And the gorgeous Ferghana Valley, whose Heavenly Horses more than 2,000 years ago inspired the Emperor Wu-ti to become, as the great Bruce Chatwin wrote, “the most spectacular horse-rustler in history. He craved posses­sion of a few mares and stallions which belonged to an obscure ruler at the end of the known world [our Ferghana], and in get­ting them he nearly engineered the collapse of China.”