Central Asia and the Caucasus have arrived for Indian travellers with unusual speed. Georgia went from unknown to one of the most booked destinations in three years — the year-long visa-free entry, the wine, the mountains, the wooden-balcony old town in Tbilisi — and it has done so on its own terms rather than through any marketing campaign. Uzbekistan has been on the list longer, and for good reason: the Registan in Samarkand is one of the most composed human-made spaces on earth, and the Silk Road cities of Bukhara and Samarkand can be covered in a week on the Afrosiyob high-speed train.
The region sits at a price point significantly below Western Europe for a similar or greater density of historical and cultural experience, which is one of the reasons it is growing so fast among Indian travellers who have already done the European circuit and are looking for the register it cannot provide. The flights are short — three to four hours from India to both destinations — and the visa positions are among the most generous in the world for Indian passport holders.
