What Samarkand doesn't tell you
You arrive in Samarkand and the architecture does its work on you. The Registan is genuinely overwhelming. The tilework at Shah-i-Zinda is the most concentrated beauty you may ever stand inside. But after two days, you begin to notice that Uzbekistan's monument cities have been curated for arrival. The experience has been smoothed into a sequence: arrive, photograph, move. The city exists, increasingly, as a backdrop for the photo that proves you were there.
