How long would it take to walk the Silk Road? Samarkand to Istanbul in steps

Below are the route, the numbers for each of its 21 stages, and how those numbers were measured.

How long is the Silk Road?

The honest answer first: the Silk Road has no single length, because it was never a single road. It was a web of caravan routes between China, Central Asia, Iran, the Middle East and Europe. Those routes shifted over centuries as cities rose and fell.

So any distance needs a chosen line. The route in Caravan follows one classic western line. It runs from Samarkand through Bukhara, across the Oxus and the Karakum to Merv, through Khorasan by way of Mashhad and Nishapur, past Rey and Tabriz, under Mount Ararat and across Anatolia to Istanbul. The old caravan tracks no longer exist as continuous paths. So the distances are measured with OpenStreetMap routing along modern roads that follow the historic corridor between each pair of cities, rounded to the nearest kilometre.

That gives 4,870 km. Start in Xi'an instead, in China, and you add roughly another 5,300 km before reaching Samarkand.

How many steps is the Silk Road?

Steps are distance divided by stride length:

To use your own number, open the Health app on iPhone, then Browse, then Mobility, then Walking Step Length, and divide 4,870,000 by your stride in metres.

How long does each stage take?

The route in 21 stages, as Caravan splits it. Days assume 5 km a day, about 7,000 steps.

How did travellers measure the road?

Not in kilometres. Medieval geographers counted distance in farsakhs, roughly 5 to 6 km each. They placed Rabinjan, near today's Kattakurgan, 12 or 13 farsakhs from Samarkand. Today's road to Kattakurgan measures 83 km.

They also measured in days. The 10th-century geographer Istakhri wrote that the Sogd valley, the land between Samarkand and Bukhara, stretched "eight days' travel through unbroken greenery and gardens", with a fortress in every town and flowing water in every home.

What would you see between Samarkand and Bukhara?

The first stage is 296 km and 20 stops in Caravan. A few of them:

• Afrasiyab, km 0. The grassy mound that was Samarkand for more than 1,700 years. Alexander the Great knew it as Maracanda in 329 BCE.
• The Registan, km 3.5. Samarkand's great square, with three madrasas built between 1417 and 1660. Ulugh Beg, Timur's grandson, built the first. He was a ruler and astronomer whose observatory charted about a thousand stars.
• Kattakurgan, km 83. "Big fortress." Near here stood medieval Rabinjan. In the late 900s, the geographer al-Muqaddasi listed its goods: winter shawls, metal drinking cups, hemp rope and sulphur.
• Rabati Malik, km 194.5. The great portal of a building raised in the late 11th century for the Karakhanid ruler Shams al-Mulk Nasr. Scholars debate whether it began as a royal residence or a caravanserai. Caravans drew water from the domed cistern beside it, about 12 to 13 metres deep.
• The Vobkent Minaret, km 259. A brick tower finished by 1198 to 1199, said to have guided caravans across the oasis.
• The Kalyan Minaret, Bukhara, km 296. About 46 metres of patterned brick, built in 1127. Tradition says Genghis Khan spared it in 1220.

Can you walk the Silk Road virtually?

You can, without a visa or a camel. Caravan reads the walking and running distance your iPhone already records in Apple Health and moves a camel along this route as you walk. When your distance reaches a real place, like Afrasiyab, the Registan or Gijduvan, you get a postcard with its history, checked against at least two sources. At big stops you unlock a real treasure from the road, such as a Sogdian silver cup or Ulugh Beg's star catalogue.

Samarkand to Bukhara is free. Your health data stays on your iPhone. Get Caravan on the App Store.

For shorter roads, see how many steps the Camino de Santiago is and Route 66's first chapter, stop by stop.