en route to one of the region’s pearls: the oasis of Khiva.
Image
The vast clay desert of the Ustyurt Plateau, Kazakhstan.Credit...Paul Salopek
A sandstone confection of courtyards, minarets and mosques, Khiva is a triumph of Central Asian architecture. The high-ceilinged verandas of its palaces face north, catching the cooling desert winds of summer. Tiny living rooms kept residents warm in winter. Its urban design was a masterpiece of thermodynamics. Scholars labored at a royal academy between the 10th and 12th centuries, translating classical Greek texts to Arabic, adopting Chinese technological innovations, improving on Persian and Indian mathematics. It was a melting pot of globalized knowledge.