Eleven Cities from the Caucasus to the Karakum

Start in Georgia on the Rioni River, 221 kilometers west of Tbilisi. Kutaisi was capital of the Kingdom of Imereti and, from October 2012 to December 2018, seat of the Parliament of Georgia.

Gyumri was Alexandropol in the 19th century and Leninakan under Soviet rule. In the First World War it housed around 22,000 orphaned children, and the 1988 Spitak earthquake cut its population, though its Kumayri historic district mostly survived.

Aktobe sits where the Kargala and Ilek rivers meet. It began in 1869 as a Russian military fort, was renamed from Aktyubinsk in 1999, and is now the largest city in western Kazakhstan.

Karaganda was incorporated as a village in 1931 and declared a city in 1934. Coal mining drove its growth in the Soviet era, and it had 497,777 residents at the 2020 census.

Almaty was Kazakhstan's capital from 1929 until 1997. It still generates about a fifth of national GDP and was named a UNESCO Creative City of Music in 2017.

Turkistan is centered on the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built by Timur in the 1390s. In 2021 the Organization of Turkic States named it the Spiritual Capital of the Turkic World.

Namangan grew after residents of the earthquake-damaged city of Akhsikat resettled there in 1610. It is now Uzbekistan's third-largest city, with light industry and food processing at its core.

Andijan lies at the southeastern edge of the Fergana Valley and is the birthplace of Babur, founder of the Mughal dynasty. It was rebuilt after a devastating 1902 earthquake.

Nukus was officially established in 1932 and became a planned Soviet city of broad avenues by the 1950s. Its Nukus Museum of Art holds an important collection of Russian avant-garde and Uzbek works from 1918 to 1935.

Known in antiquity as Amul, Turkmenabat lay at the junction of three Silk Road routes. Russian Cossacks founded New-Chardjuy here in 1886 to support the Trans-Caspian railway, and the city was briefly called Leninsk in the 1920s.

End on the Murgab River oasis in the Karakum Desert. Mary was founded in 1884 near the ruins of Merv, renamed Mary in 1937, and became a gas and cotton hub after large natural gas reserves were found nearby in 1968.