In Puli, a town ringed by forests and mountain peaks, a workshop still makes paper the slow way: one sheet at a time.

Setting foot in the 150-year-old ink shop in Nara, I expected to get my hands dirty. Instead, I learned that my ink stick could outlive me by more than a thousand years.

Born in India and travelled eastward with Buddhism, Siddham found an unexpected home in the temples of Japan, where this distinctive script has survived and continues to be practiced today.

Arabic calligraphy took an unexpected turn in China, where millennia-old traditions of ink and brush gave it an entirely new face, and the Chinese brush began to speak Arabic.

Somewhere between the artist’s last brushstroke and the scroll hanging on a wall, there is something most people never see: zhuangbiao, the craft that carries a work of art over generations.

Wandering through the Al Hosn Festival, you move between music and dance, handicrafts and camels, traditional food stalls and a lively souk, as the fort’s ancient walls recount the city’s stories after nightfall.

Tatreez, the Palestinian art of embroidery, is reimagined in SILA: All That Is Left to You, an exhibition where contemporary works explore heritage, identity, and the future of this time-honoured tradition.

Discover Emirati heritage at the Traditional Handicrafts Festival in Souq Al Qattara, where centuries-old traditions come to life through your hands, and in the scents and sounds around you.

Kokand’s International Festival of Handicrafts is a crossroads where Uzbekistan’s timeless craft heritage meets the artistic rhythms of Central Asia and beyond.

Hammomi Kunjak, the oldest surviving bathhouse in Central Asia, offers scrubs and massages that wash away the dust and weariness of your Silk Road journey.