Great Central Asian Railway Journeys Q&A with Michael Portillo
Great Central Asian Railway Journeys Q&A with Michael Portillo
The brand-new Great Central Asian Railway Journeys starts on Monday 11th May at 6:30pm on BBC Two and iPlayer.
Michael Portillo embarks on a thrilling new railway adventure following the Silk Road through the most populous country of Central Asia, Uzbekistan.
In episode 1 Michael starts at the meeting point of East and West this region has been home to some of the world’s greatest empires: ruled by the Mongols; the ferocious conqueror, Tamerlane; Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Michael begins in the capital, Tashkent, where he takes in its vast, vibrant market and samples popular Uzbek delicacies. He travels on the lavishly decorated Soviet-era metro, which was hidden from the outside world until 2018 when a ban on photographing it was lifted. Michael hears how an earthquake resulted in Tashkent becoming the capital of Soviet modernist architecture and makes his TikTok debut with a globally famous Uzbek social media star.
Uzbekistan sits at the heart of the ancient Silk Road. Does travelling there by modern rail, change or alter your perception of that particular history?
Being able to travel by high-speed rail now along the old Silk Road, I think, deepened one’s sense of history. The fact that after so many centuries, we're still going along the same line between Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara, which just emphasises the depth of history that's involved there. For so many centuries, merchants and travellers had been going along this road, stopping at the inns and towns along the way. Bringing goods from one civilisation to another, bringing their silks and their spices. But also bringing their religions, bringing their technology, their inventions. So, this has been the way by which civilisations cross fertilised. And to me, to travel that line in the modern day was absolutely thrilling.
Did you learn anything about Central Asia that British audiences may not already know?
Central Asia is maybe a region that many of us never think about at all. It is for many of us simply a flyover zone. You know, we may be aware that on our way to Japan or to Australia we're going over Uzbekistan or Kazakhstan. But these places, since the end of the Soviet Union, because they were Republics in the Soviet Union, have developed very strongly.
Tashkent is a modern looking city of 3,000,000 people. It is also in a very important strategic position. A landlocked country that has to maintain good relations with all its neighbours, who are incredibly diverse.