Author Archive for admin

Ancient Castles of Khiva

www.PilgrimsOnTheSilkRoad.com The World Monuments Fund recently released their list of endangered places for 2010. Among them are the Ancient Desert Castles of Khorezm, the medieval name of Khiva when the kingdom was at its height. The ruins date from the golden age of the…

Christians on trial in Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan remains on the list of “Countries of Particular Concern” issued by the the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. In the 1880’s, Mennonites fled the Russian empire to this region in search of religious liberty. Below is an interesting…

Star Trek and the Ten Commandments

http://www.pilgrimsonthesilkroad.com/ Speaking of great Treks…. Gene Roddenberry was no fan of religion, but the folks at Beliefnet just parsed his Star Trek franchise for parallels to the Ten Commandments. Very entertaining. Now someone needs to write about seeing the Beatitudes…

Uzbek Film Industry Flourishes

Here’s an article you might enjoy about the rebirth of the Uzbek film industry. Like many countries in the region, piracy remains a problem. Nevertheless, small film studios are beginning to crank out films for Uzbek audiences. What should this industry…

Interlude in Bukhara

View Bukhara in a larger map (June 4, 2007) We spent most of the day visiting many of the historic sites in this Silk Road city. At the museum in the city’s main fortress, we found a photo of the…

Back to Serabulak

View Larger Map (June 3, 2007) Today we made the journey from Samarkand to Bukhara, with one very important stop along the way. About two hours into our bus ride, we took a detour to see the village of Serabulak.…

The Road to Samarkand

View Larger Map (June 2, 2007) We spent all day Wednesday in transit from Ukraine to Uzbekistan. We spent the day Thursday touring Tashkent. An earthquake in 1966 destroyed much of the old city. This meant that many structures of…

The Last Mennonite in Molotschna

View Larger Map (May 30, 2007) 11:00am – On Tuesday we visited the Molotschna villages southeast of Zaporozhe. The Mennonite colonies here covered a couple of hundred of square miles with dozens of villages. A majority of the participants had…

Zipping through Zaporozhye

View Larger Map (May 28, 2007) 9:00am – This is the second full day of the journey. We are visiting sites in Zap, as well in in the former Mennonite colonies of Chortitza and Rosenthal on the Dnieper River. The…