Guide to Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous country and the heart of the historic Silk Road.

Uzbekistan Travel Guide - Expert advice and holiday tips including Tashkent architecture and hotels, Silk Road history, Islamic art and textiles, museums and culture. Also included are detailed maps, trekking and hiking routes, touring by bike, public transport, archaeological sites like Samarkand and Bukara, Fergana Valley and Kyzylkum Desert.

Culture Smart! Uzbekistan will take you beyond the standard descriptions of minarets, kebabs with vodka, embroidered skullcaps, and Soviet-style bureaucracy. It will make you aware of the value systems, attitudes, and behaviors of the different cultural groups in the country, and offer an insider's view of Uzbekistan's fascinating history, national traditions, various cuisines, and cultural scene. It will tell you what the peoples of Uzbekistan are like at home, at play, and in business, and give practical advice on how to behave in different situations so as to make the most out of your visit. Uzbekistan is a land of paradoxes, both enjoyable and surprising for foreign visitors. It is famous for its fabulous architectural monuments and the exotic spirit of the Great Silk Road, the ancient trade route connecting East and West. Uzbekistan is a multicultural society where old and revived traditions coexist with modernity.

Red Odyssey is a travel book written by Marat Akchurin for those who have a passion for reading good adventure and historical fiction. Through a kaleidoscope of individual perspectives, the author explores and describes the collective historical experience of a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional nation living in a crumbling totalitarian state. Red Odyssey is not a political treatise, sociological analysis, or history book about Central Asia during the former Soviet Union. It is rather a tale of adventures of a time traveler trying to survive in a surrealistic society permeated with hypocrisy. The ruling regime is captive to its own lies. So it falsifies the past, it falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. Imperial propaganda transforms reality into fiction. The goal of Red Odyssey is to reverse the fabricated verisimilitude of their false utopia into the harsh truth of reality. Akchurin's keen, perceptive eye, his taste for adventure, and his intimate knowledge of this fractured superpower—its history, cultures, legends, folklores, politics, and ethnicities—leave no stone unturned in his relentless exploration of places long ignored and misunderstood by the West.

The 27th edition of this reference on the Middle East additionally includes all the Central Asian states and provides both an analytical overview of the region and specific data for each of the 32 countries. Introductory chapters cover regional issues, such as: the growth of Islamic banking and its implications for the wider economy; the impact of ex-Soviet countries on international oil and gas production; and the significance of the Middle East's contribution to international terrorism.;Comprehensive economic and business reports for each country include: political and economic surveys identifying the trends, developments, problems and solutions; country profiles, including information on economic sectors, political parties and systems, demographics and languages; key facts and analysis of vital statistics; a business guide offering practical information for visitors to the country, including local contact addresses; and key indicators setting out the country's key economic indicators between 1998 and 2003.