Tash-Rabat Caravanserai
A 15th-century stone caravanserai in a side valley off the road to the Torugart pass — the best-preserved Silk Road building in Kyrgyzstan.
Tash-Rabat is a squat domed building of dressed stone, half-sunk into a grassy valley at around 3,200 metres. It was a fortified stop on the branch of the Silk Road that ran from the Fergana valley over the Tian Shan into what is now China.
Inside
Thirty-odd chambers open off a central corridor under the dome — rooms for merchants, stables for animals, and a few cells whose purpose is still argued about. It takes twenty minutes to walk through and rather longer to stop imagining who slept there.
Staying the night
There is a yurt camp a few hundred metres down the valley. Staying overnight is worth it: the site empties after the day traffic leaves, and the valley above the caravanserai is good walking and riding country.