Experience the best of Fergana

The Russians laid out Fergana in the late nineteenth century as a garrison town, and its wide, tree-lined boulevards and its low colonial buildings still look unlike the old Silk Road cities. The city lies in the Fergana Valley, a fertile basin of cotton, orchards and mulberry trees ringed by high mountains.

Margilan, a short drive north, is famed for its silk weaving and its bazaar; Rishton, to the west, is known for blue-glazed pottery; and Kokand, farther west, has an ornate khan's palace. The valley is shared with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and the foothills of the Tian Shan and Alay ranges rise around it.

Plov, the festive rice dish, is cooked in huge cauldrons here, alongside samsa pastries, manti dumplings and lagman noodles, and the bazaars sell dried apricots, pomegranates and melons by the pile. Heat peaks in July and August, winters are brief and cold, and orchards bloom in April, with the fruit harvest filling the stalls in autumn.