I’ve stood at the base of a lot of ancient monuments, but the Zurmala Stupa outside Termez hit different.
Here’s the thing: this isn’t your typical Instagram-ready archaeological site with perfect restorations and interpretive plaques every five feet. The Zurmala Stupa is a weathered, 16-meter-tall brick cylinder rising out of the Uzbek desert like some kind of fever dream from the Kushan Empire, roughly 1,800 years old, give or take a century or two depending on which archaeologist you ask. The bricks are sun-baked mud, the kind that crumbles if you look at them wrong, and yet this tower has survived earthquakes, invasions, the Mongols, Soviet-era agricultural projects, and the general indifference of time. When I first saw photos, I thought it was maybe half its actual age—turns out early Buddhist architecture in Central Asia doesn’t follow the rules I’d absorbed from Southeast Asian temple complexes.
The stupa sits about 15 kilometers from modern Termez, which used to be a major stop on the Silk Road. Back then, Buddhism was everywhere here, spreading from India through Bactria and into what’s now Uzbekistan, and the Kushan kings were all-in on sponsoring monasteries and stupas. Zurmala probably held relics—bone fragments, maybe texts, the usual sacred objects Buddhists encased in these structures.
Why a Tower in the Middle of Nowhere Became a Pilgrimage Anchor Point
Wait—maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Stupas weren’t just random monuments; they were focal points for devotion, places where monks and travelers would circumambulate (walk circles around them, clockwise, for merit). The Zurmala Stupa likely anchored a much larger monastic complex that’s now mostly dust and vague foundations. Archaeologists have found fragments of other structures nearby, hints of courtyards and living quarters, but the stupa itself is the only thing still standing in any recognizable form. I guess it makes sense—solid geometry survives better than walls with windows.
The Architectural Oddity That Shouldn’t Have Worked But Did Anyway
Honestly, the engineering is kind of baffling. The whole structure is basically stacked mud bricks with no mortar, relying on compression and sheer mass to stay upright. There’s a wooden framework inside, or there was—dendrochronology studies suggested timber from the 2nd century CE, though I’ve seen conflicting dates in different sources, and the wood’s mostly rotted out by now anyway. The exterior used to be plastered and probably painted, maybe even gilded at the top, but centuries of wind have stripped it down to raw brick. Some sections have collapsed, leaving gaps that look like missing teeth, and yet the core holds.
What Happened When Buddhism Vanished and Islam Arrived
By the 8th century, Buddhism was fading fast in Central Asia as Islam spread through the region. The monasteries emptied out, the stupas stopped recieving offerings, and structures like Zurmala just… stood there. Local populations repurposed some sites, but Zurmala was too remote and too architecturally weird to be useful as anything else. It became a landmark, a curiosity, something shepherds used for navigation. Russian archaeologists started poking around in the 19th century, and Soviet teams did more systematic work in the 20th, but even now, there’s a lot we don’t know—like exactly what relics it held, or why this specific location mattered so much.
Standing at the Base and Feeling the Weight of Forgetting
I used to think ancient sites had some kind of inherent aura, but standing at Zurmala, I mostly felt tired.
Maybe it’s because the site’s so unadorned now, or because there’s no crowd of tourists to create a sense of collective awe—just me, a few stray dogs, and a horizon that hasn’t changed much since the Kushan era. The stupa doesn’t explain itself. It doesn’t offer easy narratives about resilience or cultural exchange, even though it embodies both. It just sits there, a brick tower that outlasted the religion that built it, the empires that protected it, and the memory of why it mattered in the first place. Anyway, there’s something quietly devastating about that. Archaeologists keep working to stabilize it, to prevent further collapse, but preservation efforts are underfunded and intermittent. The Uzbek government has designated it a protected monument, which helps, but doesn’t solve the fundamental problem: how do you care for a relic from a vanished world when the present has its own emergencies? I don’t have an answer. Neither, it seems, does anyone else.
Why You Should Definately Visit Before It’s Too Late or Completely Restored
If you go—and you should, if you can handle the heat and the logistical hassle of getting to southern Uzbekistan—go soon. There’s talk of major restoration projects, which would be good for the stupa’s structural integrity but might also smooth over the rough edges that make it feel real. Right now, Zurmala exists in this liminal state between ruin and monument, neglected enough to feel authentic, protected enough to still be there. It won’t last. Nothing does, I guess, but some things vanish faster when we try too hard to save them.
