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I'm now in Turkestan, an ancient town right at the centre of Central Asia.

This town is known for its magnificent mausoleum built by Amir Temur or Tamberlaine the Great and devoted to Hodja Ahmad Yassavi - a great Sufi, poet and saint.

The mausoleum was built in the 15th century, well after the time of the Great Master of Sufism Ahmad Yassavi who lived in the 12th century.

Little is known about his life, and all that remains is his Book of Wisdom written in verse, and a lot of legends.

According to one of them, after Ahmad Yassavi converted the nomadic population of the steppes to Islam, he decided to devote the rest of his life to God. He secluded himself in a dugout under the ground, where meditated until his death.

They say that he followed the motto: 'Die before your death'.

The followers of his mystical Sufi school of thought - Yassaviya - have been become extremely popular in Central Asia.

Other schools of Central Asian Sufism - adopters of mystical love both to God and men, like Naqshbandiya, Qubraviya, Qadyriya, Mevleviya - all have their roots in the ideas of Hodja Ahmad Yassavi.

The Ahmad Yassavi mausoleum competes architecturally with the legendary palaces and mosques of Samarqand and Bukhara. After Tamberlaine the Great built it, it became a place of pilgrimage for Muslims from all over the Central Asia. People came in their thousands to pray, to meditate, to cure themselves.

It's widely believed that three pilgrimages to the tomb of Ahmad Yassavi are equal to one pilgrimage to Mecca.

During Soviet times, Ahmad Yassavi was pronounced a reactionary religious figure and the Mausoleum was used as stables for the military unit stationed next to it.

My maternal great grandmother came from the same town as Ahmad Yassavi and considered herself as a distant decendent of him. She used to recite the Book of Wisdom.

In mid-1970s, I decided to write a novel about Yassavi. I knew that it wouldn't be published, however the power of his poetry that transcended the centuries, the legends that I had heard about him and his place in folk religion, made me begin the novel.

In the end, I never wrote this work, but it inspired a completely different book: The Railway.

Now when I am in Turkestan to make my programmes about the past, present and future of Central Asia, I see that the pilgrimage season is dead.

The snow and freezing cold of the steppes have emptied the place, so we had the the site officials to ourselves.

I saw the tomb and we were allowed to go through the twisted and dark stairs to the roof of the mausoleum. Then we made our way down and came to an underground mosque which was founded during the life of the Great Master.

There the warden - a young lady - showed us something that looked like a well, covered with a wooden lid, in the corner of the room.

She said: "Here Ahmad Yassavi secluded himself underground for the rest of his life and devoted himself only God". She added: "This is a replica of his dugout. It's four metres deep". The lid was locked, but I asked her: "Could I go in there?"

"No" she said, "Nobody is allowed to go there". I insisted, I told her that I'd be ready to talk to her bosses, knowing that nobody would be around on this wintery day. I told her the story of my great grandmother... And all of a sudden, she opened the bar and allowed me in.

People fly into space, go to the poles, do all kinds of extreme journeys. I felt as those adventurers must feel, when I entered this hole filled with the prayers of the Holy Shaykh, Grand Master, Great Teacher.

There's a picture of me coming out of that hole which could tell the story better than my words.

But what I know for sure - I was at the very centre of Central Asia not just geographically, but spiritually too, not just spacewise, but also timewise...