See the Silk Road Through the Eyes Of the World's Fastest Snowboarder

Four countries, 22 days and one ancient trade route. Record-breaking British snowboarder Jamie Barrow travels by train, snowcat and horse from Uzbekistan to western China, where a growing number of ski resorts along the historic Silk Road are reshaping mountain tourism

A male snowboarder looking out across a mountain landscape.
British snowboarder Jamie Barrow has toured the powdery pistes of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and western China.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
ByJamie Barrow
Published October 27, 2026
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).

For over 2,000 years, Silk Road trade routes saw spices, silk and numerous other precious goods journey between China and the West. Today, along its mountain stretches through Central Asia, a new kind of traveller is arriving. Ski resorts are emerging where a few seasons ago there were only fields, and gondolas are carrying winter sports enthusiasts over valleys once crossed by traders’ caravans. Alpine towns that previously welcomed just a handful of visitors are opening guesthouses, ski shops and apres bars.

Jamie Barrow, the world's fastest snowboarder, explored the region accompanied by photographers Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde. The trio spent 22 days travelling from Samarkand in Uzbekistan through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to the Altai Mountains of western China. With support from Ryce Travel, a nonprofit tour operator that invests in local communities, they travelled on an overnight train, a snowcat, a 4WD and on horseback. And, of course, on snowboards, which they used at every opportunity.

Along the way, the group found some of the best powder snow they’ve ever encountered, but what stayed with them most were the local communities, culture and landscapes of these remote mountains.

An elderly calligrapher sitting at a market stall in Uzbekistan.
The journey began in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, where the group met bazaar vendors and calligraphers, bakers and street stall holders who trade in sites that have remained unchanged for centuries. Landing just before dawn, the group had the city’s regal Registan Square to themselves for sunrise, then caught an afternoon train to Tashkent.
Gwilym Thomas & Yente Van Eynde
A group of skiers and snowboarders catching up on the side of a piste.
Two hours from the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, the modern Amirsoy Mountain Resort gave the group its first taste of snow. Everything appeared newly built, from the gondola to the hotels and Swiss-style ski lodges. Opened in 2019, the ski resort is something of a blueprint for development in the region’s mountain resorts.
Gwilym Thomas & Yente Van Eynde
A futuristic train station with an arched, diamond-shaped ceiling.
Back in Tashkent, each of the city’s ornate metro stations has its own decorative theme. The group rode the subway to Chorsu Bazaar, where Jamie was invited to assist a butcher at a stall selling horse meat, a local staple.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
An 18-hour sleeper train took the group across the border to Almaty, in Kazakhstan. From the train platform they headed straight up to Shymbulak Ski Resort, where gondolas glide through snowy forest.
A straight road cutting through a winter forest.
Snow lined the road all the way up to Shymbulak, getting deeper with every bend. The group had no idea what to expect from snowboarding in Kazakhstan. They were about to be stunned.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A snowboarder looking up at a mountain with his glasses on.
The snow at Shymbulak was light, dry and bottomless, just like famed powder snow in Japan. Avalanche risk ruled out the steeper descents, but even the piste edges gave ‘face shots’ — explosive sprays of fluffy snow that shower riders from head to foot.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A ski lift carrying gondolas up a snowy mountain.
Home to cutting-edge lifts and sleek hotels, Shymbulak would hold its own against many resorts in Europe. Kazakhstan's mountains, it turns out, are very much open for business. The country is investing in the expansion and modernisation of its ski resorts ahead of its role as host of the 2029 Asian Winter Games.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A snowboarder taking a powdery curve in a snowed in forest.
Next came Aqtas, a Kazakhstani resort so new the gondolas still smelled of the factory. Local guide Almas, a three-times Russian wakeboarding champion, led the way through powdery birch forest all the way down to the road.
Gwilym Thomas & Yente Van Eynde
Two snowboarders discussing something with a snowy, mountain landscape in the back.
A puncture followed by an hour by snowcat through pitch darkness brought the group to the high alpine hub of Karkara, a handful of huts on the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan border. Ruslan Asanaliyev, who runs the camp, said that Chinese caravans plying the Silk Route once rested here.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A barren, snowed-in landscape with a pack of horses making their way across.
The group then travelled through the Valley of a Thousand Horses, previously Silk Road traders’ only route to Kyrgyzstan through this mountainous landscape. They crossed the border on foot, after guards had searched every bag and pocket.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A lone man on a horse looking out across a high-altitude landscape with snowy mountains in the distance.
Horses are still integral to everyday life in Kyrgyzstan. On the road to the city of Karakol in the country’s north east, kids playing the horseback game of Kok Boru made an impressive display, getting their mounts to rear up onto their hind legs.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A stone valley with two hikers walking past a textured wall in the snow.
We were guided around the Red Rocks of Jeti Oguz by Peter, who founded Ryce Travel. Here the rust red cliffs rise from brilliant white snow and the contrast was so striking it hardly looked real.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
The close-up of a horse feeding on pine trees.
Next, the group rode up the mountain with boards on their backs. At the snowline, their guide towed Jamie through the forest behind his horse, a first for the snowboarder, who holds a world record for being towed by a car.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A mountain landscape with unique rock formations.
After cat skiing in the Kyrgyzstani region of Jyrgalan, where Ryce Travel funds a free ski school for local kids, the team crossed back into Kazakhstan. Here, they explored Charyn Canyon, which is like the Grand Canyon minus the crowds: huge, layered and silent.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
An aerial shot of a rocky mountain range.
The group pushed east towards western China through land carved into endless ridges by wind and water, ending the day beside the Kazakhstan China border soaking in thermal pools fed by natural springs.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A network of ski lifts and tracks in a snowy mountain scene.
They next caught the last direct train of the day to the Chinese city of Ürümqi. An hour away, the Silk Road Ski Resort, which is hugely popular with Chinese winter sports enthusiasts, with new slopes and lifts being added resort wide.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A snowboarder reading a board of announcements in a train station.
The vast majority of riders at the resort were snowboarders, some even laying down perfect ‘Euro carves’ — turns where the body is extended very low and parallel over the slope. It was so infectious that Jamie changed his own boarding style to join in. China, it turns out, is snowboard country.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A group of snowboarders holding up their neon-lit boards outside a chalet at night.
An eight-hour drive across the desert — camels wandering alongside the road — brought the trio to northwest China’s Altay Resort where night skiing runs as late as 11pm. Riders carrying LED snowboards wanted to know where the group was from.
Gwilym Thomas & Yente Van Eynde
A few pairs of rustic and simple wooden skis leaning against a wooden wall.
Altay claims to be the birthplace of skiing. Chinese archaeologists believe cave paintings found here that apparently depict a primitive form of the winer sport date back 13,000 years. A local family still handmakes traditional wooden skis, complete with horsehair bases for better traction on the snow.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A mountain road running along a snowed-in mountain ridge.
The final stop was the Hemu Village, deep inside the Xingjiang Kanas National Geopark. A standard bus couldn't navigate the terrain, so the team transferred to a 4WD to travel five hours through snowy dunes and remote mountains.
Gwilym Thomas & Yente Van Eynde
A half-frozen river with bushes on the banks and a snow-capped mountain in the back.
Hemu Village is a cluster of traditional wooden huts, many now guesthouses. The group ate hot pot, the local speciality — perfect fuel, given that the temperature plummeted to minus 24C overnight.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A local woman wearing traditional clothing and a fur vest.
In Hemu, the old ways of life sit alongside dramatic change. At the nearby ski resort, the group counted more than 25 cranes. Some locals noted that last season there were none.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
A snowboarder sliding down a slope with powder rising behind.
The riding at Hemu was spectacular, with runs reportedly up to 11km long. A thrilling experience tempered by an encounter with a couple who told the group that their little hut homestead is being squeezed out by the resort — a place they’d helped to build.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde
An areal view over a snowy ski resort at night with houses illuminating late dusk.
The group spent the final night back at Altay Resort, its floodlit slopes running down towards the city lights below; a good place for reflection.
Gwil Thomas and Yente Vaneynde

During the 22-day trip, they’d visited resorts that hadn't existed a season earlier. Almost everyone they’d encountered said they welcomed the jobs, the investment and the chance for the world to know their culture and landscapes.

But the most honest conversations carried a caveat. What makes these mountains special isn't just the snow — it's the culture, the hospitality and the sense of being somewhere unique in the skiing world. Growth and change bring the risk of losing the very things visitors come to find. Travelling as the group did, with a tour operator that puts money back into local communities, helps make development more sustainable.

While the region’s powder was among the best snow Jamie and the group had ever ridden, their enduring memory is one of warmth: beers with strangers on a night train, a laughing butcher in Tashkent, plum wine in a wooden hut at Hemu. The thread that runs throughout the Silk Road, they note, isn't silk at all. It's people.

Published in the Winter Sports guide, available with the December 2026 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).

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