W. Rickmer Rickmers (1873–1965) was a German explorer and mountaineer who visited and explored central Asia five times between 1894 and 1906. This book provides an account of his travels in the area he calls Turkestan, which incorporates modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and south-west Kazakhstan, and was first published in 1913. The region, which contains the ancient cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, had not been previously described in so much detail by a western European traveller. Rickmers includes accounts of both these historic cities as well as describing the social life of the indigenous people, with a comprehensive survey of the geography of the region. Richly illustrated with 207 maps and photographs, this volume provides an insight into the everyday life of the area before the upheavals of the Soviet era.