Central Asia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Central Asia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Central Asia sits in the middle of the world's largest landmass, far from any ocean. Its five republics are often lumped together as the stans, yet between them they hold some of the planet's highest peaks, huge deserts, inland seas and grassland that runs to the horizon. This quiz covers the region the way a good atlas does: the capital cities and how they got their names, the borders and neighbors, the rivers, lakes and mountain ranges, and the animals that live there. It also takes in the history that passed through, from ancient caravan cities and medieval scholars to conquerors, empires and the Soviet century, along with the food, sport and traditions of nomadic life. It is written for geography fans, travelers planning a trip, students learning the map of Asia and anyone who has ever mixed up one stan with another. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the questions for a quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Uzbekistan is one of only two doubly landlocked countries; which small European country is the other?
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein and Uzbekistan are each surrounded entirely by other landlocked countries. Reaching an ocean from either one means crossing at least two borders.
Q 02What fuels the fire in Turkmenistan's Darvaza crater, nicknamed the Door to Hell, which has burned for decades?
Natural gas
Natural gas seeps from a cavern that collapsed beneath a Soviet-era drilling site. In 2025 Turkmenistan said wells drilled to capture the gas had shrunk the fire to a third of its former size.
Q 03Which 2006 mockumentary about a fictional Kazakh journalist in America filmed its village scenes in Romania?
Borat
Borat was denounced by Kazakhstan's government on release, yet the country later embraced the character in its own tourism campaigns.
Q 04Which lake between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan lost most of its water after Soviet irrigation diverted its rivers?
Aral Sea
The Aral Sea was once among the four largest lakes on Earth. The dried bed of its eastern basin is now a desert with a name of its own, the Aralkum.
Q 05Which fruit's main wild ancestor grows in the mountain forests of southern Kazakhstan, around the city of Almaty?
Apple
The apple was traced by DNA analysis to a wild Kazakh species, Malus sieversii. Almaty's Soviet-era name, Alma-Ata, translates as 'father of the apples'.
Q 06Which capital of Kazakhstan was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019, then switched back to its previous name in 2022?
Astana
Astana simply means 'capital city' in Kazakh. It took over the role from Almaty, the country's largest city, in 1997.
Q 07Kazakhstan shares the world's longest continuous international land border with which neighboring country?
Russia
Russia and Kazakhstan meet along 7,644 km of mostly open grassland. Only Canada and the United States share a longer border in total, and theirs comes in two separate pieces.
Q 08The ending -stan in names such as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan means 'land' or 'country' in which language?
Persian
Persian supplied the suffix, so Kazakhstan is literally the land of the Kazakhs. The ending goes back to an ancient root meaning 'where one stands'.
Q 09Which ancient trade network across Central Asia had its name popularized by a German geographer in 1877?
Silk Road
The Silk Road's name was popularized by Ferdinand von Richthofen, centuries after its caravans had made oasis cities such as Bukhara rich.
Q 10Which capital of Uzbekistan, Central Asia's most populous city, was largely rebuilt after a 1966 earthquake?
Tashkent
Tashkent was rebuilt as a model Soviet city, and by 1991 it ranked as the fourth-largest city in the whole Soviet Union.
Q 11Which capital of Tajikistan is named after the word for Monday, the day of its old weekly bazaar?
Dushanbe
Dushanbe grew from a market village into a capital within a few decades. From 1929 to 1961 it carried a different name altogether, Stalinabad.
Q 12Which capital of Kyrgyzstan was called Frunze in Soviet times, after a Bolshevik commander born in the city?
Bishkek
Bishkek took its present name in 1991. Before the Bolsheviks renamed it for Mikhail Frunze in 1926, the town had been known as Pishpek.
Q 13Which capital of Turkmenistan entered Guinness World Records in 2013 for its many white marble buildings?
Ashgabat
Ashgabat was rebuilt after a 1948 earthquake destroyed much of the city. Since 1991 almost every new building there has been faced in white marble.
Q 21Which mountain range covers over 80 percent of Kyrgyzstan and peaks at Jengish Chokusu, also known as Victory Peak?
Tian Shan
The Tian Shan takes its name from words meaning 'Heaven Mountain'. Its second-highest summit, Khan Tengri, is the highest point in Kazakhstan.
Q 22What covers about 70 percent of Turkmenistan, under a name that translates as Black Sand?
Karakum Desert
The Karakum Desert has a color-coded neighbor in the Kyzylkum, whose name means Red Sand.
Q 23Which fertile valley, home to Andijan and Kokand, is divided between Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan?
Fergana
The Fergana Valley was renowned in antiquity for its 'Heavenly Horses', and in 104 BC a Han emperor went to war to get hold of them.
Q 14Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan both have coastlines on which body of water, the largest enclosed by land on Earth?
Caspian Sea
The Caspian Sea covers an area larger than Germany. Its water is slightly salty, which is one reason it gets called both a sea and the world's largest lake.
Q 15Which country's Xinjiang region borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on Central Asia's eastern edge?
China
China's Xinjiang region touches eight countries in all, and three of them are Central Asian republics.
Q 16Which city in Uzbekistan is built around the Registan, a public square framed by three ornate madrasas?
Samarkand
Samarkand became one of the medieval world's centers of science under the astronomer-prince Ulugh Beg, who built the first of the Registan's three madrasas.
Q 17Which conqueror's armies swept into Central Asia between 1219 and 1221, taking Bukhara and other great cities?
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan invaded after a governor of the local shah seized a trade caravan he had sent and executed its merchants as spies.
Q 18Which of the seven countries whose names end in -stan has by far the largest population, at over 240 million?
Pakistan
Pakistan got its name only in 1933, when the activist Choudhry Rahmat Ali coined it as an acronym in a pamphlet.
Q 19Which crop, nicknamed white gold in Uzbekistan, took so much irrigation water that it helped dry up a great lake?
Cotton
Cotton from the Uzbek republic once made up about 70 percent of the whole Soviet crop, and some two million people joined the harvest each year.
Q 20Which mountain range, nicknamed the Roof of the World since Victorian times, covers much of eastern Tajikistan?
Pamir Mountains
The Pamir Mountains carry the world's second-highest international road, a highway that links Tajikistan's capital with the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan.
Q 24Which lake in Kyrgyzstan, the second-largest mountain lake on Earth after Titicaca, rarely freezes in winter?
Issyk-Kul
Issyk-Kul has a name that means 'hot lake' in Kyrgyz. It has no outlet, so its water is slightly salty, and it ranks among the ten deepest lakes on Earth.
Q 25Which river, known in antiquity as the Oxus, crosses Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan and once fed a now-shrunken lake?
Amu Darya
The Amu Darya gave its ancient name to Transoxiana, the 'land beyond the Oxus', whose great cultural centers included Bukhara.
Q 26Which spaceport in Kazakhstan launched both Sputnik 1 and Yuri Gagarin's flight as the first human in space?
Baikonur
Baikonur covers more ground than any other working launch site in the world, and Kazakhstan has leased it out under a deal that runs until 2050.
Q 27What did the Soviet Union test at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, a site known as the Polygon, from 1949 until 1989?
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons were tested there hundreds of times, above and below ground. Soviet authorities hid the effects of the radiation on local people for many years, and the site closed in 1991.
Q 28Which 14th-century conqueror, born near Shahrisabz in what is now Uzbekistan, is buried in the Gur-e-Amir mausoleum?
Tamerlane
Tamerlane's tomb was opened by Soviet anthropologists in June 1941, days before Germany invaded, which fed a lasting legend of a curse on anyone who disturbed it.
Q 29Which ancient conqueror married Roxana, a local nobleman's daughter, while campaigning in Central Asia?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great married her over the objections of his companions, who would have preferred a Macedonian or Greek queen.
Q 30Which dish, added to UNESCO's heritage list in 2016, is the national dish of both Uzbekistan and Tajikistan?
Plov
Plov is unusual because its rice is simmered rather than steamed. The grains cook in a meat and vegetable stew called zirvak until all the liquid is gone.