What better way to learn about the vast and important countries of Central Asia neighbours than through maps?

Here’s a geography challenge for you…

1. Which is the ninth largest country in the world, spanning 2.7 million kilometres square, and home to the Baykonur Cosmodrome spaceport?
2.  In which country is Lake Ysyk-Kol, the second largest salt  lake in the world and site of 2500 years of archeological history?
3. Of which country is Ashgabat the capital?
4. Where is the ancient city of Samarkand, in which one of the Muslim world’s oldest astronomical observatories was located in the 1400s?
5. Which Central Asian country has a high point of 7495 metres at Ismoil Somoni – once known as Communism Peak?

Answers below!

Maps were sourced from From the Free, Open Source Portable Atlas Project:

The Answers:

1. Kazakhstan – this spaceport is the only launchpad currently sending people to the international Space Station
   
2. Kyrgyzstan – the crossroads city at this lake may have been the starting point of the Great Plague epidemic
3. Turkmenistan – also home to the largest indoor Ferris wheel on Earth
   
4. Uzbekistan – this was a great center of learning and scientific study
5. Tajikistan – it was first climbed in 1933