← All articles · 2026-07-26

Turkistan

Turkistan in June 2016: the tiled mass of the Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum under its turquoise domes, plus one very patient camel in the rose garden.

The road north from Otrar ends at the big one: the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi in Turkistan, raised on the orders of Timur at the end of the fourteenth century and never quite finished. We stood in front of it in June 2016 and felt correctly small.

Inga in a red headscarf and Dileep in front of the Khoja Ahmed Yasawi Mausoleum, walls of geometric blue tilework with Kufic script beneath a ribbed turquoise dome — The Yasawi Mausoleum, June 2016. Six centuries old and still the loudest thing on the horizon.

Walk around it and the story is written in the walls: two great turquoise domes, whole facades of geometric tile, and bare brick where the work simply stopped when Timur died. Nobody ever dared finish it.

The grounds run to rose beds, orchards, and staff with four legs.

Dileep patting a pale shaggy Bactrian camel in a red tasselled cover, sitting by rose bushes with a brick tower of the mausoleum complex in the distance — The resident Bactrian camel accepting compliments in the rose garden, June 2016.

If you are down this way, do the full southern run: base yourself in Shymkent and give Otrar its own day.