My friends and I have just returned from a 3-week trip through Central Asia. Our original plans were to travel overland from Almaty, Kazakhstan, continuing through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and finally ending in Iran, where we would visit Shiraz, Persepolis and Isfahan. Central Asia had been a big hole in all of our travel maps; we hoped the trip would provide a wide range of landscapes and cultures as we worked our way along the ancient Silk Road cities. One of my travel buddies can read and speak some passable Russian, I also know a few words which we hoped would be sufficient to get us through. Last August, I booked my ticket during a fare sale, leaving Austin into Almaty and open-jaw out of Tehran back into Austin. My friends had different itineraries; one planned on spending a few days in Ukraine, another would spend a week in Kazakhstan before we all met up in Almaty. Two of my friends would split off in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, leaving Dean and I to continue onto Iran.
Tickets acquired, the only issue now was obtaining visas for all of the countries. Each country would require a visa, varying from $25 to $140. Iran and Turkmenistan require booking tours (Iran for US citizens) in order to get a tourist visa. Iranian visas take quite awhile to arrange, for US citizens it is recommended to apply at least 2-3 months in advance of your trip, the process takes awhile just to get a visa reference number. Once you have the visa reference number in hand it takes only a few days to actually get the visa. In January I contacted a tour company in Iran to start the visa process. Iran doesn't have an embassy in the US, but it does have an interests section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington. We started the application process for the other -stans visas in mid-Feb.
The Kazakhstan visa ($40) only took 4 days to issue, which was a promising sign. Getting the Uzbekistan visa ($140) proved to be painfully difficult. We needed a double-entry visa for Uzbekistan since we originally planned on visiting Tajikistan (Penjikent) from Samarkand then returning to Uzbekistan. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan aren't on the best terms and I read that the border crossing near Samarkand had been closed for some time, our plans then changed to visiting the northern part of Tajikistan (Khujand) in the Fergana Valley. I sent off our passports on Feb 21st and we finally received our visa+passports back nearly a month later, despite many calls and emails to the embassy. Another friend who sent his passport in separately only took two weeks to get his visa, so I don't know why ours took so long.
Getting the Tajikistan visa ($25) also turned out to be a pain. I sent our passports off but I hadn't checked the embassy holiday schedule.. turns out they were closed for nearly a week for Nowruz (New Year), during which our passports were sitting on a desk in Washington DC. I called up the next week and the embassy said yes your passports have been mailed back already with a visa. Two days later, with no tracking numbers appearing I called them up again, they said oh.. we still have your passports but we need a LOI (letter of invitation) from a tourist company. I figured that getting a LOI would take awhile, meanwhile I hoped to send off our passports to get the Kyrgyz visa. I told the Tajik embassy to send back our passports. A few days later, still no tracking numbers which meant that our passports were gone yet another weekend... so far it has been 7 weeks and we only have two visas for our trip. During this time I had also been in contact with the tour company in Iran to keep up to date on the status of our visa reference numbers. Still no word from there either and it had been over 2 months by this point.
Meanwhile I had contacted Stantours, the tour company we planned on using for Turkmenistan LOI and tour, and asked if they could provide a Tajik LOI as well. They were able to do so for $30 but it would take a week or more. They also applied for our Turkmenistan LOI at the same time, which can take up to two weeks to approve. The following Monday night I received the Tajik LOI by email. I checked the tracking numbers and the Tajik embassy still had not sent back our passports. I faxed/emailed the LOI to the Tajik embassy overnight, hoping that they would now be able to issue our visa. When I called them the next morning to verify that they had received the LOI, they told me they had just sent our passports back that morning.... sans visa! There wasn't much we could do other than send off for Kyrgyz visa ($100) at that point... luckily that one was a quick 7 days turnaround. After receiving the Kyrgyz visa, I sent our passports back to the Tajik embassy.
Time was running out, we had less than a month to go before we departed yet only had 3 of the 6 visas we needed!! We had received the Turkmenistan LOI by this time and Stantours said that we would be able to get our Turkmen visa at the border, so that helped with one visa.. but that still left Tajik and Iran. There was a possibility to get the Tajik visa in Almaty or Bishkek.. but we didn't plan on spending much time in those places so getting it before we left home was preferred. After another week without hearing anything from the Tajik embassy, I contacted them again, this time they said now the LOI enough was not sufficient and we needed a copy of the Tourist License from the company that issued the LOI.... ah bureaucracy at its best. None of these extra requirements were documented on their website, and seemed to be made up on the fly. We were able to get the copy of the license again through Stantours, but that still cost another few days. Finally we have the LOI, the license and hopefully everything we need for the Tajik visa. They do finally issue the visa and send our passports back, arriving only 12 days before we are supposed to leave!
We still had not heard back about the Iranian visa. From other blogs I've read, usually that's the case and most people don't hear back about their visa status until a week or two before their trip is supposed to start! Ours was complicated by the fact that we wouldn't be in the US to get our visa... we would be traveling through Central Asia. We had made backup plans in case the visa didn't come through right away, instead of going to Iran overland from Ashgabat, we would fly from Turkmenistan to Istanbul, get our visa there, then fly to Shiraz, losing a few days out of our original itinerary. We contacted the tour company about our change in plans. A few days later, still with no word, we bought our plane tickets to Istanbul. As our departure date neared, I was busy finalizing hotel plans, packing and the like and didn't really have time to deal with the Iranian plans anymore. The day before we were supposed to fly to Almaty, I finally did hear back about our Iranian visa, after almost 4 months of waiting, we were officially denied. :( No word as to why.
That really messed up our travel plans, especially since our return plane ticket was departing from Tehran!! We had been thinking of backup backup plans in case of this eventuality... Dean and I could visit the Horn of Africa.. going to Djibouti, Somaliland, Yemen and Eritrea. But now it was too late to get visas for those places (Eritrea can take ~5 weeks or more, and Yemen stopped issuing tourist visas). Another option was an arc through the southern Balkans, visiting Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. Iraq (Kurdistan) was also an option.
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Hard earned visas!
Here's links to some of my other trip blogs
Peru/Galapagos 2005: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/491876-boobies-nazca-lines-peru-galapagos-trip.html
Mongolia/Caucasus 2005: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/500131-rtw-via-mongolia-moscow-mtskheta.html
Andaman Islands (India) 2007: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/656750-andaman-islands-report-9w-maa-ixz-maa.html
Guianas (South America) 2007: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/700081-most-dangerous-city-trip-through-guianas.html
North Korea 2007: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/812956-almost-last-american-pyongyang-air-koryo-trip.html
Ethiopia 2008: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/811240-ethiopia-adventure-274-iad-add-lli-bjr-add-iad-ethiopian-airlines.html
Central America 2008: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/898300-central-america-overland-san-pedro-sula-managua.html
St. Petersburg, Baltics and Belarus 2009: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/966734-aa-ba-bt-os-act-dfw-lhr-led-kgd-rix-msq-vie-fra-dfw-act-pickpocketed-st-pete.html
Canadian Rockies 2009: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/963122-riding-rocky-rails-luxury-trip-through-canadian-rockies.html
West Africa 2010: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/1091623-i-thought-shared-taxis-west-africa-were-uncomfortable-until-i-flew-air-france.html
Guam/Palau/Micronesia 2010: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/1165286-happy-isles-oceania-island-hopping-western-pacific.html
May 11-12, 2012
Flight: Austin (AUS) to Houston (IAH); United Airlines 737, econ
Flight: Houston (IAH) to London (LHR); United Airlines 777, econ
Flight: London (LHR) to Almaty, Kazakhstan (ALA); British Midland A319, econ
Hotel: Holiday Inn Almaty, 5k+$60/nt
So finally the day of departure arrives and our plans are in disarray. Being busy with work and last minute preparations I hadn't had a chance to call up United to get our tickets changed. My friend was using miles on his ticket, but my ticket was a paid fare which made things more complicated. Dean and I did decide to visit Erbil for a day, then fly to Albania and do a mad dash loop through the southern Balkans, ending in Athens.
I had booked the Supershuttle to the airport a bit tight on time, made worse when he showed up nearly 20 minutes late and still had 3 passengers to pick up! Luckily though traffic was light and we still arrived at the airport with plenty of time. The airport was nearly deserted so checkin and security took very little time. The checkin agent commented on my destination of Kazakhstan, she said she had just checked someone in that was heading to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I headed up to the United Club lounge, this was only the 2nd time I had visited there. For the last 10+ years I've had Admirals Club access but I am not flying AA as much anymore and had let my lounge access expire this year. Several months ago I had received an offer for the Continental Presidential Plus card (which gives United Club/*G lounge access) free for the first year so that was a no brainer.
The first hop on United to Houston was quick and uneventful, arriving at Terminal E I met my friend Dean who had flown in from San Antonio. We headed off to the lounge and called up UA customer service to change our tickets; we spent quite awhile on hold before being told they were not able to do so since our tickets were under airport control. They said to call back once we reached Almaty. Afterwards we went ahead and booked our flights to Erbil, Iraq on Atlasjet, a bit expensive at $405 roundtrip.
Our next United flight to London took off on time. I had an aisle seat which isn't my preferred seat since I have broad shoulders and carts always bang into me. My headphone jack was also on the fritz and I had to hold the jack down firmly most of the flight to hear any audio on the movies. The 777 was a former Continental plane and had good AVOD with large selection of movies. I watched 21 Jump Street and 3 Idiots (Bollywood film). Dinner was an uninspiring chicken enchilada. I only slept a few hours on the flight, trying to stay up the whole time to adjust to Almaty time, a full 11 hours difference from Austin!!
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IAH-LHR United meal
We arrived early into LHR Terminal 4 even after circling the obligatory holding pattern. Our next flight to Almaty was on BMI in a few hours. After the long walk from the plane to Flight Connections, the T1 bus was just pulling away, just missed it. We finally reached T1 and had to hunt around for the BMI lounge.. it was a bit of a hike as well. BMI was in the process of leaving the Star Alliance, in fact our return flight from Tehran was supposed to be on BMI after their departure from *A. But now luckily my United Club card gave us access. This was the first time I had flown BMI or been in their lounge, it was quite nice with breakfast items, wifi, etc. We only had about 20 minutes rest in the lounge though before it was already time to head down to the gate.
Almaty was still a long 7hr flight away.. at 3500 miles it is the same distance as JFK-LHR! This flight was on a A330 and was only 1/3 full, mostly with Indian passengers as the flight continued onto Amritsar after Almaty. Entertainment was severely lacking... no in-seat video just the overhead screen. The meal was also pretty bland and uninspiring.. even for airplane food. I spent most of the flight reading a book I had bought back in Austin. The rest of the flight passed quickly and soon we were coming in for a landing just as it was getting dark. We actually were about 45 minutes early landing. Since most of the passengers were connecting only a few passengers got off the plane, which meant going through immigration and customs only took a few minutes. We were in Kazakhstan, my 130th country visited.
We found a couple of ATM machines outside and got out some local currency, Tenge which is about 147:$1. I had checked taxi fares online, most had suggested 1000-1500 but there were also warnings about cheating taxis. when the driver said 500 each, that sounded OK. We even typed it out on our cell phones and double checked the price so (hopefully) there wouldn't be any misunderstanding.. especially since there wasn't a meter in the cab. So we set off to the hotel, the Holiday Inn which I had booked two rooms for my friends and I on points+cash rate. Hotels in Almaty (and Kazakhstan in general) are expensive ($200++/nt) due to oil money, indeed Almaty seemed a very prosperous place as we drove through the streets past Mercedes dealerships. We finally get to the hotel, where we find out 'they meant 500 per km'. No way were we paying that... no mention was made of 'per km' at the outset, and we didn't even know how far it was from the airport. They quoted 6000 Tenge. I hate unhappy taxi endings.. even when you think you have spelled out the fare at the outset. So I held out 2000 Tenge ($13.60) which was a fair rate... we said 2000 or 0. Didn't quite get to the arguing stage, but I was glad we had held onto our backpacks instead of putting them in the trunk, where the driver can hold them hostage. The driver kept saying hotel car rate would be 6000.. hotel car rates are usually jacked up 3-4x.. that's not the rate a taxi should be. Finally the driver relented and accepted the 2000.
We checked into the hotel and found that my other friends had already arrived and checked in that morning. We knocked on their door but no answer.. they were probably out partying somewhere since it was 10PM on a Saturday night. We were hungry so decided to go out exploring to see if there were any restaurants open. The Holiday Inn is pretty centrally located, near the Intercontinental Hotel and less than a km away from Republic Square. The streets were dark and we didn't see anything open as we walked towards Republic Square. The square still had banners up from May 9th Victory Day celebrations (end of WWII in Europe). I had seen the Victory Day parades in Belarus several years previously, it is still a huge holiday in the former Soviet republics. There were a few people wandering around the square, but still nothing open. Finally we saw a coffeeshop in the distance which turned out to be open and packed, full of fashionable young things. It was interesting to see the mix of faces, some Russian, others definitely Asian. The women in general were very exotic looking. The coffeeshop had a menu with food (one item was horsemeat panini!). I passed on the horsemeat though and just had a tuna panini and beer, both of which were quite delicious. It was quite late by this point, almost midnight, so we just headed back to the hotel. Our friends had returned to their room, and were already quite toasty on a bottle of Cuban rum they had bought somewhere. My friends had somehow gotten the upgrade to the Executive Floor, while we were one floor below. However I didn't notice an executive lounge at the hotel and their room seemed identical to ours. We chatted awhile before heading back to the room to crash.
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Holiday Inn Almaty
May 13, 2012
Hotel: Holiday Inn; Almaty, Kazakhstan; 5k+$60/nt
This was our only full day in Almaty and Kazakhstan.. almost a shame given the size of the country, Kazakhstan is the 9th largest in the world. We awoke to an amazing view of snow-capped mountains out our window. Almaty lies at the base of the Zailiysky Alatau mountain range, a branch of the Tien Shan mountains. It's location is comparable to Denver; built at the base of the mountains with prairie/steppe running off endlessly to the north. We met up with the two Scotts and headed out to look for breakfast. The Lonely Planet guide had mentioned a cafeteria chain called Kaganat that sounded OK.. according to their map there was one very close to the coffeeshop we had been to the previous night. Apparently though it has either closed/moved or more likely LP got the location wrong... after hunting for awhile we walked further to the next one a few blocks away. 'A few blocks' in Almaty is quite a distance as blocks are large.. it's not much of a walking city. We finally found the place though on Dostyk street, 2kms away from the hotel. The place was an old school proletariat cafeteria.. they had blinis/crepes but nothing to go with them, no honey, syrup or compote. So I had dry pancakes for breakfast. There were several students eating there, the place is very close to the university.
After breakfast, we headed down the street to catch a bus up to a ski resort in the mountains. Along the way we ran into a group of Uzbek students, they all wanted their photo taken with us! The delay cost us though as we saw the bus pulling away just as we got to the busstop. We waited around for the next one.. as we were waiting this large group of students shows up, as it turned out they all got on the same bus we did. Super crowded, we all had to stand and it was made even worse when three guys decided to bring their mountain bikes on the bus!! The fare was only 70 Tenge ($0.48). The ride up the mountain took about 30 minutes to the Medeu stadium, an ice rink/track built a few years ago. Along the way we passed pipes running along the side of the road. The pipes looked like a Windows screensaver, curving and wrapping around everything in their path, looping up above driveways and disappearing under the ground in other places.
The stadium seemed to be closed, but we noticed the cable car heading further up the hill to the ski resort. We walked down the hill to the cable car station, which we had missed seeing while standing in the packed bus. The fare was slightly expensive at 2000T but the views from the car were great. The ride was quite long, taking over 30 minutes to continue up the hill to the Shymbulak resort. There were still piles of snow at this altitude (7500'), nearly 5000' higher than we had started in Almaty. We spent awhile hiking around the alpine meadows and eating lunch at a restaurant at the ski resort. There were now quite a few locals up at the resort. One guy had brought in a hooded falcon (falcon hunting is popular in Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan).
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Alpine scenery, near Almaty
It was already after 3PM by the time we got back down to the city. The two Scotts had already spent the previous day wandering around town and had seen most of the sights. So they headed back to the hotel to rest awhile while Dean and I started a walking tour of Almaty. One advantage of starting near Republic Square is it is downhill all the way to the train station, where we would catch the metro back. The walking tour took us past the Academy of Sciences, down a lovely tree-lined street, and to Panfilov Park. The Zenkov Cathedral is located here, an amazingly ornate Russian Orthodox church and one of the tallest wooden buildings in the world. The park was full of locals out with their kids playing and enjoying the weekend. From the park, we next headed to the Green Market, a large bazaar selling clothes to food, meat, spices, bread, etc. We got lost awhile trying to find an exit from the meat market, most of the vendors by this time were already closed or shutting down and most of the doors were padlocked! Next was the central mosque. Finally we headed to the metro station for the ride back uphill to the hotel. Almaty's metro is very new, it only opened in December 2011. Currently there is only one line, running from the train station past Republic Square. It was still nearly a 2km walk from the closest metro station back to the hotel!
We met with David from Stantours to pay our balance for our Turkmenistan trip, that meant we wouldn't need to carry around a ton of cash for most of the trip! We had wired a deposit but still had the remaining balance to pay. He gave us some good tips on crossing the border to Kyrgyzstan and going from Osh to Tajikistan.
For dinner we ate at a nearby kebab place and headed to the coffee shop for beers. I finally was able to Skype United reservations trying to get our ticket sorted out. I'd hoped to get our return changed to Istanbul/Athens or at best just drop the Tehran to London leg. The wifi connection at the hotel was bad though and I kept getting disconnected. Finally I was able to get through and keep the line open, but it took nearly an hour on hold to get both of our tickets taken care of. My friend's ticket was an award, so that was easy enough to change. My ticket was going to have a $250+ change fee though, but I remembered receiving an email about BMI leaving the Star Alliance and any itineraries using BMI would not charge a change fee.. after they put me on hold again for awhile they came back and said my change fee would only be $60 for additional taxes!!
hauteboy
Jun 8, 12, 10:05 pm
May 14, 2012
Hotel: Radison Guesthouse; Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; $50/double
Today was already our last day in Kazakhstan; it was time to move onto Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. We wanted to get an early start to Bishkek as we would only be spending one afternoon there. Originally we planned to spend a day in Bishkek, then a day or two going to Issyk-Kul lake. That involved some backtracking though, and we also added an extra day into Tajikistan into the plans. I had been in contact with a guesthouse in Bishkek that had arranged transportation onto Osh with a night in a yurt and horsesback riding. I had stayed overnight in a yurt in Mongolia when I visited a few years ago but none of my friends had and they all wanted an 'authentic' Kyrgyzstan experience. A taxi from Almaty to Bishkek including border crossing takes about 3-4 hours.
We set off from the hotel to the bus station in a taxi around 8:30AM. This was Monday morning so we saw lots more traffic and people out today than we had previously.. in fact there was huge line of traffic all headed into town from the western suburbs. Luckily we were headed in the opposite direction and there wasn't so much traffic heading towards the Sayran bus station. We got there and found the shared taxi ranks. These are cars or minibuses that have their destination written on cards.. touts yell out their destination. Shared taxis only depart when full.. if you are by yourself you may be waiting awhile. Since there were 4 of us, and only 5 seats we decided to buy the extra seat and get going immediately. The driver wanted 10000 KZT ($68) for the whole car to Bishkek... Lonely Planet said 8000 is better but he didn't seem willing to come down. As is usual for shared taxis, even when you pay for the full car it can take awhile to get going as they stop for gas, air in the tires, chat with friends, etc. We actually had to stop at several gas stations as some were out of gas/closed! One quirk here we noticed was many of the cars were secondhand from Japan where they drive on the left... our taxi was a right-hand drive Toyota minivan. That makes it difficult to pass trucks when you can't see around them! I've driven left and right- hand drive cars in many countries, but only once I had driven a right-hand drive car in drive-on-right country (Palau) a few years ago.. it definitely took more concentration!
We were soon out of the suburbs and heading across the treeless steppe which stretches 2000 miles north to the tundra and Arctic Ocean. The road was in great condition, a dual carriageway for some distance then merging into a 2-lane. One stretch was dead straight for over 31 miles. We passed through small farming villiages with tiny магазин (magazin or store). I noticed several necropolis/cemeteries built on the top of hills near towns. The mountains continued along to our left side as we drove west but eventually started tapering out, at this point the road headed south towards the border with Kyrgyzstan. Our driver only spoke Kazakh and was trying to tell us something, finally he called up a friend who spoke English. Still wasn't able to figure out what he was saying other than something about the border. We found out what he meant when we arrived at the border and the gates were closed to through-traffic (it was just turning lunchtime). They were still letting through foot traffic though so we were able to pass through. It turned out to be one of the quickest border crossings.. a quick stamp and a few minutes later we were walking across the bridge to the Kyrgyz side. This border crossing turned out to be just as hassle free. We handed our passports off to an official, a few minutes later he handed back our passports and waved us through the gates.. and we were in Kyrgyzstan! From the border we found a taxi into town for 1500 KZT, since we hadn't changed any money to Kyrgyz soms yet. I had loaded GPS maps onto my phone and was able to guide the taxi to our hotel directly.
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Driving across the steppe, Kazakhstan
I had booked the Radison Guesthouse for $50/nt per double. The guesthouse had good reviews and a few flyertalkers had stayed there on the $500 FRU fares earlier this year. The guesthouse is on a back street but within walking distance to the center of town. Rooms were small but had twin beds, TV, fan, A/C and wifi. The rooms were located motel style around a lovely courtyard with a chaikhana (teahouse) platform. We settled in for a few minutes then headed off down the street to find an ATM and lunch as it was after 1PM. We lucked out with ATM, just a few blocks away we found a bank that dispensed both US$ and Kyrgyz som (47:$1). I also found a change place that exchanged my last remaining 5000 KZT bill.
We went to the Chaikhana Jalal-Abad for lunch, a place listed in the Lonely Planet. It was a gorgeous place, carved wood posts and ceiling, old guys sitting drinking tea. The food was delicious as well, shashlik (kebabs), plov (pilaf) and laghman (sp??) which was a bit like beef stroganoff without the sauce. The best meal we'd had so far! After lunch we wandered through central Bishkek, going by the National Museum (sadly, closed today) and Ala-Too square. There was a huge Lenin statue that had been moved behind the museum. Bishkek was noticeably less affluent than Almaty, but it was a much more walkable city.. the blocks were not spaced so far apart. The weather was great, partly cloudy and not too hot. We finally ended up at Victory Square, celebrating the end of WWII before heading back to our guesthouse.
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Lunch at Chaikana Jalal-Abad
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Local girls
That evening we went to an Italian place for dinner. There seemed to be a good selection of restaurants along Chuy avenue. Many of the signs on restaurants were in English, so there must be a significant tourist or foreign worker population here. We did see some other Americans along the street but they looked more like contractors than tourists.
May 15, 2012
Hotel: Tourist camp; Suusamyr Valley, Kyrgyzstan; $21.27/pp
We had a good breakfast at the guesthouse this morning; fresh homemade preserves, bread, tea, omlette, dried fruit, yogurt and pastry filled with dulce de leche.. yum. After breakfast we ran into a snafu. I had been corresponding with the owner of the guesthouse via email, and had arranged transportation to Osh with a stop overnight at a yurt along the way. However she wasn't there when we arrived, her daughter was having a baby. So that left us to communicate with her son and husband, who didn't speak any English. I had agreed to pay a certain price for the transportation.. it was expensive and quite a bit more than a shared taxi would have cost, but we figured the driver would have to return to Bishkek without any passengers.. nothing wrong with that. Then that morning just as we were all ready to leave, the son said no.. it's going to be twice that original cost! Yikes. That left us a bit in a bind since we wanted to stop overnight, stop along the way for photos, etc. We weren't sure if we'd be able to do the same in a shared taxi. After talking with my friends, we did a counteroffer, $400, split 4-ways for the 750 kms one-way trip!
We finally set off about 10:30. We stopped to fill up with gas first, filling up a couple of jerrycans. The road headed out west of Bishkek for an hour paralleling the mountain range to the south before we turned south to the road through the pass. At one checkpoint the driver said that we were his friends if anyone asked, since he didn't have an actual taxi license. The road started going up a canyon that kept getting narrower and narrower.. then we started going up, climbing through several switchbacks as we gained altitude. We stopped at several points along the way for photos, great views out over the snowy craggy peaks, some were 12000'. We finally reached the 2.5km tunnel through the final pass at 10000'. The tunnel was dark, dusty and dripping water from above. We come out of the tunnel and are greeted with the gorgeous view of the Suusamyr valley 2000' below us.. large treeless high steppe nestled among the mountains. The far range of snowcapped mountains was on the far side of the valley. The valley was dotted here and there with yurts and old Soviet-style mobile home/trailers.
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Road from Bishkek
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Suusamyr Valley
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Suusamyr Valley
The second miscommunication then happened... the driver apparently didn't know where we were staying!! He had wanted to drive us through to the next major town of Toktogul. We said we were looking for yurt stay/horse rides in the valley here. After consulting some locals, we found a tourist camp a few kms down a dirt road off the main highway. Turns out there weren't any 'real' yurts there... just fake tourist ones, my friends weren't impressed. I think it was still too early in the year to stay in a yurt with a local family, most of those do not start until June. The tourist camp also had what looked like shipping containers converted into cabins, and indeed that is what they were. The driver said the place was expensive, at 1000 KGZ ($21/pp) it wasn't too bad.. We decided to stay there and ride horses for a few hrs.
It took awhile to get the horses ready.. the camp obviously wasn't expecting tourists and looked brand new, indeed they were still setting up the cabins with TVs, heaters, etc! Meanwhile we had a late lunch of fried egg and bologna... there wasn't much food on offer either apparently. We had to pay for the driver's accommodation and food as well. The camp had a corral for horses and several of the cowboys were trying unsuccessfully to get the herd to go into the corral. The horses seemed very skittish and kept running off, finally they ran way off into the distance. The setting was incredibly gorgeous, green grass, snowcapped mountains in the distance and Big Sky overhead.
The cowboys were mainly riding bareback but were able to find enough saddles for us to ride. One of the horses was skittish and one of the wranglers had to walk along beside it while Scott rode. We set off for the hills nearby. My horse was a bit pokey, we get to the base of the hill and my horse stood fast. I'm a big guy and the horse was like nuh-uh not going up that hill! Making noises, kicking its sides and using the reins to slap all had no effect. My friends had long since disappeared up a rise on the hill and I was about to get off and walk up the hill when the wrangler appears and led my horse up the hill! He kept having to lead Scott's & my horse for most of the rest of the way.. wading through boggy areas and all. Still it was a great experience. After a few hrs riding we head back down the hill and back to the camp. It seemed like we had been very high up the hillside, but looking back we had barely gone 1/4 up the mountain! We toasted the sunset and successfully completing our ride with a swig of brandy, it was very cold now once the sun had set. Dinner was pretty good, rice and beef stroganoff.
May 16, 2012
Hotel: CBT Guesthouse; Osh, Kyrgyzstan; $15.95/pp
Today was going to be a long day on the road... the driver said that it was going to take at least 8 hrs driving to get to Osh. We set off after breakfast right at 9AM and started heading west through the valley towards the Ak-Bel pass. The road gradually climed up through glacial landscapes as the snow kept gettting closer and closer to the road. Evidence of previous glacial action was everywhere... erratic boulders and moraines. We stopped at the pass (10400') for photos, then started the long drive down the valley. The scenery was raw alpine beauty but started to change as we kept driving down the valley. There were actually forests here, the largest number of trees we had seen since Almaty. All along the side of the road were vendors selling jars of honey. We also passed several groups of shepherds guiding their sheep up the valley to the grazing fields of the high steppe now that they were free of snow.. these flocks would block the whole road at times! At one point we came to a huge pile of snow, this was all that remained from a large avalanche that had occurred in February. The driver said that the road had been closed for two weeks, and this is the main north-south road through the country! Taxis had to drive to either side and passengers had to walk across the avalanche to continue their journeys to Bishkek or Osh.
http://images2.travbuddy.com/1657571_13381452133815.jpg
Remains of avalanche
Finally the mountains dropped away and the land flattened out as we neared the town of Toktogul and the Toktugul reservoir, having descended over 7000 feet since leaving the pass. The landscape here was much drier.. houses and walls were built of red adobe. The reservoir is huge and it took nearly an hour to detour around. The south side of the lake was nearly completely deserted.. few towns or farms here. The road continued on and on down the river valley, along the downstream lakes which were an amazing turquoise color. We finally came out of the mountains and into the Fergana Valley, the agricultural region of Uzbekistan. At one point the road was following the border with Uzbekistan, we could see guard towers and closed roads just off to our right. We stopped for a break finally, along the road were rows and rows of mulberry trees with fresh berries, delicious!
We weren't too far as the crow flies from Osh at this point, but we had to make a long detour and dogleg around Uzbekistan. The road used to continue straight here but is now closed and requires detouring out to Uzgen before turning southwest back towards Osh. Google maps still doesn't get the routing right along this road! Finally we get to Osh around 5:30 PM, 8.5 hrs after leaving the camp. It took awhile to find our guesthouse; we had the phone # but not an address and Osh is the 2nd largest city in Kyrgyzstan. Eventually the guesthouse sent someone out in a taxi and we drove back with them. We paid our happy driver and he left quick.. he was planning on driving back to Jalal-Abad that day and spending the night with a friend. The guesthouse was very nice, huge rooms for 750som/person. We planned on spending two nights here. The owner didn't speak any English but we could communicate with her a little in Russian.
Osh had been the center of destructive riots a few years previously, clashes between Kyrgyz and Uzbek. There is still a lot of tension among some of the ethnic groups of Central Asia, the borders between countries were somewhat arbitrarily drawn, eg. Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan are primarily populated by Tajiks, while Osh in Kyrgyzstan had been primarily Uzbek. Hundreds of people were killed and over 2000 buildings were destroyed in the riots, and over 100000 Uzbeks fled across the nearby border to Uzbekistan. Since then things have calmed down, but we did notice a large police presence as we walked along the main road into the center of town. Still the town had a nice feel to it. We found a place to eat, the California restaurant, an American-run place serving pizzas and salads. It smelled good but the pizza is never quite the same as at home.
May 17, 2012
Hotel: CBT Guesthouse; Osh, Kyrgyzstan; 750som ($15.95/pp)
After the long drives the past few days it felt good to have two nights to spend in Osh. Osh has the largest bazaar in Central Asia and we planned on spending the morning wandering around the market. We started off at the guesthouse with a great breakfast of blinis, yogurt and fresh homemade jams. The apricot jam was especially delicious. The Fergana valley is a good place for growing stone fruits (Cherries, Apricots, etc). We then caught a taxi (120som) to the start of the bazaar. The market runs every day and stretches over 1km along the banks of the river through town. The market was great, lots of good photo opportunities for people and food. The market sells everything from bread, to meat, tea, fruit, clothes, traditional hats, etc. We spent several hours wandering among the stalls. We found a vendor selling traditional Kyrgyz felt hats. I had seen several old men wearing the pointed felt hats with various designs on it. We all decided to buy one, at only $1.50 after haggling it was a great deal. Haggling is expected in the market of course.
We wandered through several sections of the market before we came across the woodworkers and blacksmiths. The carpenters were building chaikana beds, only $200 each but a little too bulky to fit in my carryon.... That would be a great thing to make at home for the backyard. The blacksmiths were making some sort of hoe, three or four quick motions was all it took to bang out the blade and attach the ring for the handle. We wandered back through the carpet section and back to the center of town where we had lunch in a beer garden. We all ordered kebab and chicken shashlik along with a beer or two.
The museum was nearby, cheap at 50 kgs to get in, but then they charge 10 kgs ($0.20) for EACH photo you take.. first time I'd heard of a museum charging outrageous photo prices like that. Just behind the museum was Solomon's Throne, a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is a mountain ridge spur in the center of town, considered sacred by locals. There are ancient petroglyphs here and modern Muslim shrine. There were steps leading up to the top where there was a great view.. no wonder the town was built here as they would have had a view out over the entire valley and able to detect invaders from a long distance. We were all out of shape as we had to take several rest stops on the way up! The site was filled with locals visiting the shrine and walking along the many paths around the mountain. The rock had become very slippery in places with so many visitors.. in one spot there were locals taking turns sliding down their backs on one section.. obviously a common local ritual as the rock was worn smooth. We went around the side of the mountain and climbed up to one of the many caves in the hillside.
From Solomon's Throne we headed back to the hotel, stopping first at the Lenin statue outside city hall.. this was nearly an identical copy of the one we had seen in Bishkek. Back at the hotel we met some of the other guests, a girl from Kansas who was working in Kyrgyzstan on water/irrigation issues, and her cute Kyrgyz friend who spoke excellent English. For dinner we went to another chaikana near the bazaar. I had seen steamed dumplings listed on menus in a few places and thought that was what I was ordering, instead it turned out to be more like dumpling soup with fennel. They put fennel on everything in Central Asia; on the bread, in omlettes, in the kebabs... so I was getting a bit tired of the flavor.
May 18, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Sugd; Khujand, Tajikistan; $75.50/dbl
Today was going to be another long day on the road as we were planning on going to Khujand in Tajikistan. There are two ways to get there. One involves a transit of Uzbekistan through the flat Fergana valley, the involves going through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan which only involves a single border crossing. The problem with the 2nd way is there are enclaves of Uzbekistan in that part of Kyrgyzstan; even if you have a multi-entry visa many travelers have problems going through to Batken. Most taxis though now take detours on (non-existent) roads to get around these enclaves. The guy from Stantours said since we had double-entry Uzbek visas anyway that the first option was the better one. We figured we would need to do the trip today in 5 stages.. Osh to the Uzbek border, to Andijon, to Kokand, to Tajik border and to Khujand.
We set off around 9AM after finally finding a taxi to the border that was big enough for all 4 of us and our luggage. There are plenty of taxis in Osh, just most are tiny and don't have any trunk space. There are also minibuses that run to the border from the center of town that are cheaper. We arrived at the border by 9:15 and were through the Kyrgyz side by 9:30. We walked across to the Uzbek side where there was a large group of locals waiting. The guards saw we were foreigners and waved us through. One of them flipped through our passports, interested in the many stamps we have. No problems though, other than sitting around waiting 15 minutes for the official to come into the booth and start stamping passports. After getting the stamp, you have to go through customs. Normally this is a formality in most countries. In Uzbekistan you have to fill out two identical customs declarations on entry, declaring all the cash you are carrying and any electronics/valuables. The forms are in Cyrillic only so I was glad I had printed out an English version of the form I had found online (http://www.visit-uzbekistan.com/uzbekistan/flights/declaration.pdf). Next came a waiting game. We had been waived to the front of the line ahead of 40-50 locals but it took maybe another 30 minutes for the customs officials to start doing any work at all. There were 5-6 officials there, who were basically useless.. they'd get up from their desks, go walk outside, come back in, rearrange stuff on their desk, then talk to the other officials, then repeat. By this time the locals had been waiting at least an hour and were starting to get restless. The officials finally let us through and took our customs forms and passports, x-rayed and searched our bags. Then came another waiting game while we sat there for another 30 minutes while the officials entered our passport and customs form information into their computers. Meanwhile there were several birds flying all around inside the building! Apparently they nest up in the ceiling. Finally we get our passports back and head out to catch a taxi. Altogether the Kyrgyz crossing took 15 minutes, Uzbek side took 1:30!
We hadn't yet changed money into Uzbek som. Uzbekistan has a thriving black market for currency exchange.. the official rate is 1800:$1 but changing elsewhere the rate is 2500-2800:$1. We were only transiting Uzbekistan today though and didn't want to change any money at all if necessary. We still had quite a bit of Kyrgyz som and USD remaining and hoped that would be enough to get us across to Tajikistan. As we exited the Uzbek customs building we were hounded by taxi drivers, asking if we wanted to to to Andijon or Tashkent. Usually it's hard negotiating with a bunch of them standing around so we pick one guy out and say we want to go to Andijon.. later when we were in the taxi we asked him if he would be willing to take us all the way to the Tajik border, but he said no. That was fine as he only wanted 600 KGS ($12.76) to go 45kms to Andijon.. we had paid 500 ($10.63) just coming in 8kms from Osh to the border.. we definitely overpaid there. We noticed that Uzbekistan was in the process of transitioning from Cyrillic, all new signs were in Latin script. Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Tajik still use Cyrillic while Uzbek and Turkmen now use the Latin alphabet. We noticed that many of the cars on the road were Daewoo (Korean company). Several thousand ethnic Koreans were relocated to Uzbekistan during the Stalin period, and to this day you can get great Korean food in Andijon. There is also a Daewoo factory here that manufactures cars and minivans. Mostly we saw the tiny Damas minivans everywhere.
We soon arrived in Andijan town. Andijan is notorious for being the site of a massacre of protesters in 2005. Uzbekistan had been an ally of the US during the Afghanistan invasion and global war on terror. Uzbekistan used the GWOT as an excuse to crack down on Islamic militants, even taking it so far as to ban the traditional call to prayer from mosques. The massacre led to a cooling of relations between the US and Uzbekistan, and it is only recently that relations have started to improve again. Uzbekistan is still one of the major supply lines to the effort in Afghanistan. Andijon looked more prosperous than Osh had, there were lots of brand new buildings all through the center of town.
At the bus station, our taxi driver helped us find a shared taxi to our next destination, Kokand, 130kms away. We asked how much it would be in KGS, by a happy coincidence he asked 1000 ($21.27) which is all we had left! So that meant we had rid ourselves of all our remaining Kyrgyz currency. It was good traveling with 3 other guys since that meant we could always show up and get a shared taxi and leave right away. I noticed that the clock on our taxi was an hour behind Osh.. our phones had not yet auto-updated their time and I couldn't remember if Uzbekistan was on a different time zone the Kyrgyzstan. Turns out it was so that meant we had gained an extra hour today! So it was now only 11AM instead of noon. During our long taxi rides from Bishkek we usually didn't bother to grab lunch.. most of us had brought jerky or granola bars from home to snack on during long rides. The taxi to Kokand took about an hour and a half, at first the road was in pretty bumpy condition but soon got better and headed dead straight across the fertile valley. We passed lots of locals riding bikes and working out in the fields. I noticed more of the crazy above-ground water plumbing here. I wondered why they did it this way (I've since read that supposedly it keeps the pipes from bursting if they freeze... all the twists and turns mean there is more room for ice to expand).
When we arrived in Kokand we again were immediately able to get in a taxi to the border. This time we offered to pay in USD and he wanted $40 for the 50kms to the border. Supposedly there is little to no border-crossing traffic there so he would have to come back empty. All of the taxis we had been in so far were in good condition, although a bit cramped. I'm a big guy so got to sit in the front most of the time. :) Many cars here run on CNG instead of gasoline and have a huge pressure tank in the trunk.. we had noticed this the first time during our trip to the Caucasus many years ago. The trip the remaining way to the border was uneventful and we arrived at the border around 2PM. The border was completely desolate.. no cars or people and at first I was worried that the border was closed. Borders in Central Asia can close frequently and without notice. A guard came out of one of the buildings though and checked our passports before waving us through to the customs office. I'm sure we were probably the most exciting thing that happened that day! Exiting Uzbekistan involved filling out a departure customs form and declaring money, valuables etc, then handing it in with the 2nd copy we filled in on entry. One of the odd rules for foreigners is they must leave Uzbekistan with less currency than they entered. There are few ATMs in Uzbekistan and getting money out is difficult, if you do have to get a cash advance on a credit card it is better to spend all of it as getting the appropriate forms to leave the country with more cash than you arrived is a huge hassle. Even though we were the only ones crossing, it still took well over an hour for the officials to process our paperwork. Here though I think they were just bored and we were the day's entertainment. In the whole time we were there, only one other local came through.
Finally we are through and walk over to the Tajik side. The official there says 'Welcome to Tajikistan!'. He was a double-badge hat. Most of the officials here still had Soviet style military hats. Some were taller than others. Some had two badges, one on the band then one up on the brim, similar to this (http://i.imgur.com/KJkS7.jpg). The higher the hat and more badges, the more important. Entering Tajikistan was a breeze, fill out a simple entry form and we were in. No customs checks, no bag searches. Although we did run into a potential snafu. There was one last booth we passed by as we were walking out to the road.. the guy here wanted a copy of our LOI letter. I had it on my email but I had not printed one out (hadn't had access to a printer since Almaty!!). One of the Scotts had gotten his visa in Astana and didn't even need a LOI. So I just plaid dumb for a few minutes and kept shrugging my shoulders. So eventually he just let us pass on through, but that could have been a potential problem, or an excuse for a bribe. Total border crossing time was also 1.5 hrs for both sides.
The Tajik side of the border was just as desolate as the Uzbek side had been.. we hadn't seen anyone crossing through in the other direction the whole time we were there. We did notice a road a ways down where cars were turning. A few minutes later a guy pulls up in a SUV; we ask if he is a taxi and how much to go the remaining 90kms to Khujand. In Central Asia, nearly anyone with a car suddenly becomes a taxi, you just have to sort out how much the fare will be. He was willing to take us for $75. It would have been cheaper to go to the nearby town of Konibodom and catch a bus/taxi from there, but split 4 ways the fare wasn't so bad, and we often pay for convenience like that.
The route to Khujand was mostly flat through the neck of the Fergana valley, between the Karakum reservoir and the mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan. Due to the crazy geography and borders, we were often very close to a neighboring -stan. We arrived finally into Khujand around 5PM, 9 hrs after leaving Osh (with the time change). Going through the mountainous part of Kyrgyz probably would have taken the same amount of time. We found a hotel on the edge of town, the Sugd Hotel. A bit expensive at 180 TJS/nt ($75.78/double), our most expensive hotel so far this trip, but there are not a lot of choices for hotels in Khujand (at least not in our guidebook). You could be excused mistaking the hotel for a Sheraton, since they use a similar logo. We still hadn't obtained any Tajik som yet, so we found a nearby ATM that dispensed both US and som ($1 = 4.75 TJS)
We were starving after a long day on the road so we caught a taxi to the center of town (10TJS) where we went to the Cafe Ravshan. They had great chicken kebabs here, huge chunks of chicken meat and very tasty, and cheap. Afterwards we walked around the center of town. Khujand was originally founded by Alexander the Great nearly 2500 years ago as the easternmost point in his empire. The town is located on the Syr-Darya river, one of the two great rivers in Central Asia, the other being the Amu Darya. We ran into a group of local students who stopped to talk to us for awhile. Their English was excellent. We also noticed the difference in faces in Tajikistan, the people here look much more Indo-European than Asian. Tajiks are culturally closer to Iranians than the other Turkic people in Central Asia. Tajik is basically a dialect of Farsi, although it is written using Cyrillic alphabet instead of Arabic script. We found a grocery store nearby and an Internet cafe before heading back to the hotel. Our hotel was supposed to have wifi but unfortunately it wasn't working.
http://images2.travbuddy.com/1657571_13385812735657.jpg
Sugd Hotel room
http://images2.travbuddy.com/1657571_13385812699355.jpg
Syr-Darya river
mg0901
Jun 9, 12, 10:26 am
awesome.
Jinxy
Jun 10, 12, 12:14 pm
Awesome. Subscribed. Cant wait to read more
yous93
Jun 10, 12, 1:06 pm
sign me up
bensyd
Jun 11, 12, 8:47 pm
hauteboy, I feel your pain on those visas. I'm in the process of getting all of them + Russia and Mongolia.
I'll be travelling through Central Asia soon, so will be very interested in this TR.:)
CMK10
Jun 12, 12, 3:01 pm
Subscribed! Can't wait to read more.
rankourabu
Jun 12, 12, 3:14 pm
hauteboy, I feel your pain on those visas. I'm in the process of getting all of them + Russia and Mongolia.
I'll be travelling through Central Asia soon, so will be very interested in this TR.:)
Its not really that painful
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are on arrival when flying in
Kazkahstan you can get one on arrival now too no?
Uzbekistan - all you need is a LOI - and also available on arrival in TAS, if your country doesnt have an embassy
Turkmenistan - you need a "tour" but there are several companies that can arrange a hotel stay without a "guide", StanTours being the most known and most expensive.
Iran - well this one, you yanks are on your own :D
bensyd
Jun 15, 12, 12:56 am
Its not really that painful
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are on arrival when flying in
Kazkahstan you can get one on arrival now too no?
Uzbekistan - all you need is a LOI - and also available on arrival in TAS, if your country doesnt have an embassy
Turkmenistan - you need a "tour" but there are several companies that can arrange a hotel stay without a "guide", StanTours being the most known and most expensive.
Iran - well this one, you yanks are on your own :D
I'm driving from London so no visas on arrival by land and no diplomatic missions in Australia, so the passport has been London for a couple of months.
Also, on the Turkmen visa, they won't issue a transit (ie no guide) visa unless you apply in London in person, which obviously was a bit difficult. Still we have gone with a guide and tour and the price was fairly reasonable.
Some of the scenery in your pics look amazing! I get the feeling it will feel like the last frontier, almost like parts of South America before tour groups over ran it. :)
tycosiao
Jun 15, 12, 4:18 am
Great TR!
Subscribed too!
Speedbird84
Jun 15, 12, 10:18 pm
Amazing set of countries, and looks like an awesome trip so far. Have had a strong urge to head into the Stans for a while now.
Subscribed as well!
Must...Fly!
Jun 16, 12, 6:44 am
This is incredible so far. Such a far flung place...really looking forward to seeing the rest! :)
exilencfc
Jun 16, 12, 1:41 pm
Great TR. I'd like to go to the Stans but I don't think I know anyone else who wants to
mad_atta
Jun 16, 12, 5:18 pm
Great report! Like bensyd, I too have been in the process of getting all those same visas (plus Iran, Turkmenistan, Russia, Mongolia, China, Vietnam etc.) as part of the planning for the Mongol Rally, plus some subsequent travel. It's a major hassle and expense. Right now I am going through the joyful process of securing a carnet du passage as we will be driving our own vehicle through Iran.
We plan to see quite a bit of Central Asia, including the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan, which I'm insanely excited about. I just hope our tiny Renault can make it. I look forward to reading more of your account, hauteboy.
Shameless plug: you can find out more about our adventure in my trip report thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/1357398-youre-driving-mongolia-charity-mongol-rally-2012-a.html), or you can read about it in more detail at our team website (http://www.khantikitours.com/) or follow us at our facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/KhanTikiTours). Plus, we're raising money for two very worthy charities, and we'd love your support. Find out more here (http://www.khantikitours.com/?page_id=49).
hauteboy, back to you...
hauteboy
Jun 16, 12, 8:57 pm
May 19, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Sugd; Khujand, Tajikistan; $75.50/dbl
After the long day on the road yesterday it was nice to again have two nights in a place. There aren't a huge number of sights to see in Khujand itself. We started with an early breakfast at the hotel, it was decent enough with eggs, bread, cheese and watery dumplings. We caught a marshrutka (shared taxi) minibus to the Panjshanbe Bazaar (Thursday market) and the mosque/mausoleum of Sheikh Muslihiddin. The mosque was the first major example we had seen of Central Asian/Persian style with a tan brick minaret and curved domes. The area in front of the mosque was filled with pigeons and some children playing among them. The huge square between the mosque and the bazaar was filled with people this morning and very colorful. The women here seemed to dress more traditionally, we saw more headcoverings here than we had seen the whole trip so far. The bazaar itself is described by the Lonely Planet as Stalin meets 1001 Nights, a huge arched/domed entrance decorated in green/pink/blue tiles. People here were very friendly, waving at us and wanting their picture taken. Unibrows are fashionable in Tajikistan, many of the women here have them and will even use herbs to draw them in. The interior of the market is occupied by butchers and bread sellers. The bread here in Tajikistan was still the round style with raised edge.
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Tajik som
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Mausoleum of Sheikh Muslihiddin
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Woman in market, Khujand
From the market we headed over to the Citadel, the original site of Alexander the Great's settlement. The walls have been recreated and the museum is located in the southeast corner. We wandered along the walls and met a group of girls that stopped to talk with us. Their English was excellent as well.. so far we had met more English speakers in Tajikistan than anywhere else. The Khujand area is the most prosperous area of Tajikistan, most of the agriculture is here since the remainder of the country is mostly mountainous. It was traditionally an Uzbek area but was added to Tajikistan when the Tajik SSR was created. We walked up to the river where there was a monument showing the different empires that had controlled Tajikistan.. Persian, Greek, Islam, etc. The museum was excellent, showing the history of the region. They had several models of sculpture from Persepolis (in Iran) in one of the downstairs rooms and a large map of the ancient world on the floor.
The mosque, bazaar and citadel were pretty much the only tourist sights in Khujand. The LP had mentioned the town of Istararavshan as being one of the best preserved old Tajik towns in the area, about an hour taxi ride away. We caught a taxi to the bus station and arranged a share taxi for 80 TJS ($16.82) to go the 75 kms. It was good to get out of Khujand and see some more of the countryside. We passed field after field, with people out working. Not sure what they were growing here though. The trip took about 75 minutes. Istararavshan is located in the thin neck of Tajikistan between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, cut off from the bulk of southern Tajikistan by mountain ranges. On the way into town we noticed a large hill that had once been the site of a Sogdian fortress that was destroyed by Alexander the Great. The taxi dropped us off near the Hazrat-i-Shah mosque. The mosque was a great example of Central Asian style, with an elaborately decorated portico, almost looking like a Chinese temple. Behind the mosque, the old town stretched out for many blocks. We started walking down some of the alleyways, lined with adobe buildings and the ubiquitous Soviet style plumbing. We hadn't wandered far before we attracted attention... local kids started coming up to us and following us. The word spread fast that we were the days entertainment.. at one point a dozen kids come running down one of the alleys towards us! Kids always love having their photo taken and seeing it on the digital camera. One of the older kids guides us through the maze of alleys to another mosque and medrassa (Abdullatif Sultan). One of the medrassa teachers invited us in for a few minutes for tea and fresh mulberries!
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Road to Istararavshan
The skies now looked like they were about to start pouring rain. From the mosque we wandered back through the scenic alleys to the main road and the bazaar to look for a place to eat and taxi back to Khujand. We couldn't find one of the places listed in the LP and the chaikhana was closed, but luckily it looked like the rain was going to miss the town. We eventually found a row of cheap kebab places ($0.50 each!) and had a quick snack before catching a taxi (60 TJS this time) back to Khujand. We walked the 1.5km from the bus station back into town before finding a restaurant right across from the Citadel. This turned out to be a great place, delicious food and still very reasonably priced. The restaurant was right next to the Grand Hotel. As we are sitting there eating dinner, a huge group (20+) of European tourists start pulling up in minivans... these were the first tourists we had seen the whole trip and were obviously on some package tour.
After dinner we headed to the Internet cafe again where I was finally able to upload my photos.
May 20, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Caravan Serail; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/dbl
We had an early start today as it was going to be another long day on the road and a border crossing on the way to Samarkand. We caught a taxi right outside the hotel and told him we were going to the nothern bus station. When we got there and said we were going to the border, he offers to take us all the way for a reasonable amount, 100 TJS ($21.09) for 70 kms. A shared taxi would have been cheaper but we already had our bags in his car, and split 4 ways anyway it wouldn't have been much difference. The weather was gorgeously clear today, not too hot. We had been lucky with the weather so far this trip, no rain and May seems to be a good time to visit when the passes are clear but it's not boiling hot yet. The drive over to the border crossing at Oybek took a little over an hour, arriving around 9:15AM. I had gauged my cash usage perfectly again as my remaining som was just enough to cover the taxi fare.
The Tajik border crossing was easy.. but then we still had to cross over into Uzbekistan. Our last two border crossings had taken over an hour each, and this was no exception. This border was busier than the one crossing we had done going into Tajikistan, already there was a long line of locals waiting to cross. We get waived to the front of the line again but still end up having to wait for the guy in the stamp booth to show up... then fill out the forms again, then wait on 5 guys standing around doing nothing to do something. We waited... and waited... the natives started getting restless again as well as it had been nearly an hour and no one had been allowed through customs yet. Finally we do get our passports back and through around 11AM.. nearly 2 hours to cross the border this time!
There were a bunch of taxis waiting on the other side asking if we wanted to go to Tashkent. Tashkent was a bit out of the way to head to Samarkand so we asked if one would take us all the way there. At first they wanted $200 for the 300kms, eventually we talked them down to $120. $30 each wasn't bad for 300kms! At first we had to head north up towards Tashkent before turning west. The roads were in good shape for the first stretch, then degraded to potholes and gravel along one stretch where they are building a new road. We crossed the Syr-Darya river again at one point. This part of Uzbekistan seemed poorer and less prosperous than the Fergana valley had been. Finally we come across the new road from Tashkent. The original road cut straight across the flat plains and through a piece of Kazakstan, the new road has been constructed around Kazakhstan as the original road is now closed. We stopped at a huge CNG refueling station, probably 20 bays or more that look like carwash stalls.
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Old Soviet bus
The road continued on past Jizzakh and through some low hills before descending to Samarkand. We had prebooked a hotel for two nights since the guesthouse I had wanted to stay at originally had been booked out already a month before! The taxi driver dropped us off at the hotel after we found it on our GPS. Thats one really nice thing about hotel sites now, some are starting to put the GPS coordinates of the hotel in the booking confirmation. I had downloaded offline maps of Central Asia to my Android phone and was able to look up the street our hotel was on. The hotel was fairly new, and a great location between the major sights in Samarkand. It had a lovely courtyard and comfortable rooms. The best part was the rooftop bar overlooking the old town and across to the blue domes of the Bibi Khanym mosque.
We finally changed some money into Uzbek som... $25 got us a huge stack of bills since the highest-valued Uzbek note (1000) is only worth about $0.40 at the black market rate. We felt rich! We headed out from the hotel towards the bazaar which had been renovated and was still undergoing renovation. In the past few years they have redone the center of Samarkand, bulldozing old neighborhoods and putting in pedestrian streets lined with tourist stores. Unfortunately they haven't kept the traditional style or anything.. it now looks like a strip mall in California. Samarkand was one of the major towns on the ancient Silk Road, its very name evokes the idea of exotic... the reality is sadly different as tourism has found its way here in a big way. We walked around the bazaar and to the Bibi Khanym mosque. It was already late afternoon so the lighting on the mosque wasn't the best.. it is better to see the grand facade early in the morning. It was still an amazing structure, blue turquoise dome with dark blue tiles and Arabic script. Most of the tilework in Samarkands's monuments is not original, many of the buildings had been destroyed in earthquakes and were only rebuilt in the past century.
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$25 in Uzbek som.. largest bill is worth $0.40
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View from hotel rooftop
As part of the renovations, huge walls have been put up around the old neighborhoods to keep them away from tourists view.. a bit of a shame. We found a door through one of the walls and wandered back into the old Jewish neighborhood. Samarkand and Bukhara had a sizeable Jewish population well into the 20th century but now most have moved to Israel. We wandered down the street which reminded us of Istararavshan until we came across the 19th century synagogue. It was closed though so we could not look inside. We wandered around, past an ancient mosque and out to the Registan square. We were hungry by this point though and would be visiting the Registan tomorrow, so we gave it a miss and caught a taxi over to a restaurant that the LP had recommended for good beer and food. We get there, and they are out of beer! So we walk a few blocks through the Navoi Park to an Italian place. This part of Samarkand has been sanitized as well, it is more a modern European city than an ancient outpost on the Silk Road.
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Old synagogue, Samarkand
The restaurant was OK enough, though their interpretation of spaghetti bolognese was.. original. We got a bottle of wine to share with our meal, the vintage said April 2012.. a three-week old wine! The sun was setting so we raced over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum (where Timurlane is buried) which is supposed to look best at sunset. Unfortunately we were mere minutes too late. Nearby was a statue of Amir Timur.. which bore a strong resemblance to Sean Connery. After returning to the hotel we all went up on the rooftop bar to watch the waning light.
hauteboy
Jun 16, 12, 8:57 pm
May 21, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Caravan Serail; Samarkand, Uzbekistan; $45/dbl
We had an early breakfast at 7:30 this morning but we were one of the last ones to arrive for breakfast. There was a large French tour group staying at our hotel and they were taking up most of the breakfast area. This whole trip I had been waking up at the crack of dawn, 4:30 or 5 AM.. something I never do at home. Breakfast was good but bready.. bread, pancakes and a scone. We set off for the Registan about 8AM and walked the 1km to the Registan complex. All the streets were lined with mulberry trees, and the berries would just fall to the sidewalk and ferment.. sometimes not the best odor. We were a little early to the Registan, supposedly it doesn't open until 9AM. We found a back gate that was open though and snuck in :)
The Registan is a complex of three medrassas and is the crown jewel of the monuments in Samarkand and create one of the most gorgeous buildings in the world. The medrassas were built in the 1400-1600s and are some of the oldest buildings remaining in Samarkand, any earlier structures were destroyed by the Mongols on their sweep through Central Asia. Two of the medrassas were well lit in the morning light. It is hard to describe just how beautiful these buildings are.. they are a riot of colorful tile in geometric designs, with huge facades with Persian-style arches. The easternmost medrassa, Sher Dor (Lion) departs from traditional Islamic art by depicting a pair of lions on the facade.
As we are wandering around the plaza, one of the guards comes up and asks if we have a ticket yet.. we don't of course, having bypassed the entrance. We go and buy a ticket near the front, 13000 som (~$5) which is a reasonable entrance fee, and includes using the camera. As we go back into the complex, the guard says the minaret is open for 30 more minutes, then 'closed for 2 weeks for renovations'. How convenient for us. We've heard that scam before.. they are trying to get you to go up the minaret, then ask for an insane tip. We passed on that and just spent the next hour or so wandering among the buildings. They have been restored too but they really did an amazing job. One of the buildings had a photo exhibit of how the Registan and Samarkand looked in the early 1900s before renovation.
We still saw very few tourists... it was early though and the tour buses hadn't arrived. Obviously they get a lot of tourists as there were souvenir stalls setup in all of the old medrassa student dorms. We planned to come back to the Registan in the afternoon when the lighting was better on the Sher Dor medressa. We next walked over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum. Scott needed to buy a plane ticket from Khiva to Tashkent, he was planning on splitting off from our group in Bukhara. We found a couple of travel agencies, but none of them actually sold plane tickets (at least not domestic ones)! The Gur-i-Amir mausoleum was also decorated in the same Timurid style of turquoise dome with blue tile facade. We walked around behind it to the Ak-Seray mausoleum which was behind the wall in an old neighborhood. It was 3000 UZS to get in but my friends declined and only I went in to have a look. It was elaborately restored inside, blue and gold painting on the dome on the inside. We wandered back to Gur-i-Amir and went in the back way there as well, avoiding paying. :) There were three tombs inside, Timurlane and his sons.
We needed to buy our train tickets to Bukhara for tomorrow so next we hopped in a taxi to the train station, which was a few kms west of the center of town. The taxi driver kept trying to get us to go visit gold shops, go out to Shakhrisabz (birthplace of Tamerlane), etc. We did change more money with him though when we got to the train station and got a much better rate than the hotel had given us. The ticket office was a little chaotic but eventually we were able to buy our tickets for the next day departing at noon for 18000 UZS ($6.66). We walked across from the train station to a restaurant for lunch.. like others we had been to in Samarkand it was deserted. Where/when do people eat here? We all had hamburgers (we were taking a break from shashlik for a day or two), or at least their interpretation of a hamburger.
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Samarkand train station
Next up was Shah-i-Zinda, an avenue of royal mausoleums not too far from Bibi Khanym mosque. The complex (5000 UZS admission) was amazingly gorgeous.. although restored recently it has some of the most intricate tilework we had seen in Central Asia. There are a dozen or so mausoleums lining the avenue running along the middle. The site supposedly is the burial place of a cousin of the Prophet Mohammed and we saw many local pilgrims here praying and making offerings. At the end of the complex, a path leads through the modern Muslim cemetery. The gravestones are a bit eerie as they have a photo of the deceased etched into them. We had seen similar cemeteries before in Armenia. The path continued around until we found a gate leading back out onto the main street. We walked back through the bazaar to the hotel.
For dinner that night, we found a shashlik/kebab place just across from Registan square. It seemed more like old Samarkand, a nice courtyard, mulberry trees and a smiling cook fanning the coals of the grill. On the way to the restaurant, we had stopped by the Registan again to get afternoon views of Sher Dor. The guards this time were still offering to let tourists go up the minaret, when we told them they said it was going to be closed for two weeks, they said 'oh no, it is open'.
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Shashlik chef
hauteboy
Jun 16, 12, 9:35 pm
Here is our route of the trip:
http://goo.gl/maps/qAem
Map is incorrect from Kochkon-Ata to Osh, our route went around via Uzgen.. Google maps has a bug/disconnect in their routing.
HawaiiO
Jun 17, 12, 8:06 pm
Amazing trip report!
Thanks!!
mad_atta
Jun 17, 12, 9:15 pm
This is great, thanks hauteboy.
Here is our route of the trip:
http://goo.gl/maps/qAem
Looking at the route you followed, I understand that you did a daytrip to Istaravshan from Khujand, hence the dogsleg in your route. Do you happen to know if there is a more direct border crossing from Istaravshan if you're heading to Samarkand, or do you have to go the same long way around that you did?
I'm trying to figure out whether we drive from Samarkand to Dushanbe via the northern border crossing (ie somewhere around where you crossed), or if we loop around to the south of those mountain ranges and enter Tajikistan near Tursunzoda. Curse the Panjakent border crossing closure!
NYBanker
Jun 17, 12, 10:50 pm
This is some trip! Thanks for taking the time to share it with us.
hauteboy
Jun 17, 12, 10:59 pm
This is great, thanks hauteboy.
Looking at the route you followed, I understand that you did a daytrip to Istaravshan from Khujand, hence the dogsleg in your route. Do you happen to know if there is a more direct border crossing from Istaravshan if you're heading to Samarkand, or do you have to go the same long way around that you did?
I'm trying to figure out whether we drive from Samarkand to Dushanbe via the northern border crossing (ie somewhere around where you crossed), or if we loop around to the south of those mountain ranges and enter Tajikistan near Tursunzoda. Curse the Panjakent border crossing closure!
There are only western border crossings are the one we took at Oybek and the other one between Denau/Dushanbe... the Penjikent border closing is unfortunate as that is the one we were planning on using originally.
Keep an eye on http://www.caravanistan.com/border-crossings/ for up to date info.
vecta
Jun 18, 12, 12:58 am
another amazing trip hauteboy, thanks so much for sharing!
Tartegnin
Jun 18, 12, 2:20 am
planning on doing a similar trip in 2013 - would you use Stantours to help with more of the planning? Thinking of primarily Uzbekistan ...
mad_atta
Jun 18, 12, 6:44 am
There are only western border crossings are the one we took at Oybek and the other one between Denau/Dushanbe... the Penjikent border closing is unfortunate as that is the one we were planning on using originally.
Keep an eye on http://www.caravanistan.com/border-crossings/ for up to date info.
That is a fantastically useful resource which I had not previously found. Thank you! ^^^
Loose Cannon
Jun 20, 12, 5:25 pm
Very interesting Trip Report: I'm looking forward to more!
obiwan9
Jun 21, 12, 8:22 am
Just got back from ASB yesterday. If you're still there, the oguz kent (sofitel) has free wifi that you can use :)
Other thoughts:
Food at the British Pub is a miss
The restaurant at the far back of First Park isn't too bad, live music some nights too
I had no issues with the 11pm curfew, walked back from sofitel through downtown at 12am, to the hotel by 1st park. Even made a stop at the post office and said hello to many officers.
The Soviet welcome sign for Turkmenbashi is by far the best I saw, regret not stopping and snapping photos. There's a big golden statue on the highway to the mosque Turkmenbashi built outside ASB in his old village with out any police around it to take photos. The Mosque is worth checking out.
hauteboy
Jun 21, 12, 1:40 pm
May 22, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Lyabi House; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; $60/dbl
Our train didn't leave until noon today so we had all morning free. Breakfast was a lot quieter this morning as the large tour group had left the previous day. Afterwards, we went back to the Bibi Khanym mosque again to see the facade in the early morning.
We went back to the bazaar/bus stop area to catch a taxi to the train station around 11AM. Again most any car in Central Asia can be a taxi but the drivers can get in trouble if they get stopped. Our driver saw a police checkpoint at the other end of the bazaar so he ended up driving the wrong way down the road and squeezing between two cars in a parking lot to get going the other direction! We arrived at the train station which looks like an airport terminal, and almost the same procedure. They checked our tickets & passports and x-rayed our bags.
We still had awhile to wait before heading out to the platform. I noticed the new high-speed Spanish Talgo (duck-nosed) train that only went into service a few months ago, it runs Tashkent to Samarkand in only 2.5 hrs, cutting an hour off the journey. The 'Afrosiyob' train is timed to make day-trips from Tashkent to Samarkand. We were on the older 'Sharq' train that runs from Tashkent to Bukhara via Samarkand. The train arrived about 15 minutes late then it was a mad dash to find our train car, ours of course was the last car way at the end of the platform.
The train was 2x2 seating, which was facing backwards at least in our car. It was also quite hot in the train at least until we started moving. This was the third train I have used in the former Soviet Union. A few years ago my friends and I rode the Baku to Tbilisi overnight train and in 2009 I took the St. Petersburg to Helsinki train. The trip was about 3 hrs to Bukhara and I managed to sleep most of the way despite the Russian soap opera playing loudly on TV. The landscape was becoming flatter and drier as we headed west towards Bukhara.
We arrived about 3:30 and caught a taxi (15000) to the hotel. I had reserved the Lyabi House hotel, located just a block away from the Lyabi Hauz (pool). The Lyabi Hauz was a lovely restored area surrounded by medrassas, souvenir shops and cafes around the pool. The ancient pools used to be the main source of water for Bukhara but were never emptied.. resulting in frequent plagues. The center of Bukhara has been restored as well but has kept a more traditional architecture style of tan bricks and Persian-style arches. After we checked into our hotel, which was a lovely place surrounding a courtyard. My friend Dean and I were sharing rooms tonight, we ended up with a huge two-room suite up on the 3rd floor. Really nice hotel but still no wifi... we'd been stymied on having internet access in our hotel most of this trip! We planned on spending two nights in Bukhara before heading to Turkmenistan.
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Lyabi House hotel
We headed back out into the streets to explore for awhile. Bukhara is one of the best-preserved ancient Silk Road cities in Central Asia. Bukhara seemed more touristy even than Samarkand; at least the main streets in the center. The entire old town has been designated a World Heritage site, many of the old buildings have been repurposed to restaurants and souvenir stalls selling carpets, musical instruments, bags, dolls, hats and spices. All of the stuff was locally made though and looked to be good quality, even the t-shirts were made in Uzbekistan from Uzbek-grown cotton. We saw more tourists here than we'd seen elsewhere as well. Prices were more expensive here.. at one point we went in one shop to buy a bottle of Fanta, the young girl wanted 5000 som (we'd been paying 1000 or less in Samarkand). We all started to put our bottles back and the mom scolded the girl for losing business, we got them in the end for 3000. :)
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Kalon minaret
We wandered around to the Kalon Minaret square. The Kalon Minaret is impressive, 47 meters tall and nearly 900 years old. Genghis Khan was reportedly so impressed by the minaret it was one of the few structures spared destruction by the Mongols in their sweep through Central Asia. In the 18th century, emirs would throw people to their deaths from the top. It used to be possible to climb the stairs in the minaret but supposedly it has been closed for a few years and we didn't see any guards around offering to let us climb up for a 'fee'.
We wandered through a few more medrassas on the way back to the hotel.. the colorful Abdulazziz Khan Medrassa was filled with yet more souvenir stalls. It was dinnertime by this point and we had skipped lunch so we were pretty hungry. We had dinner at one of the chaikanas surrounding the pool near our hotel. They were still setting up/cleaning the area so we just sat for awhile by the side of the pool enjoying people watching. The dinner was pretty good, some good plov and huge chunks of shashlik meat. More expensive than Samarkand, but we were paying for the view/ambiance. There was also a lounge singer doing Russian songs.
After dinner we caught up with email at a nearby internet cafe. It was getting dark but the square was quite busy with locals, probably the most active night we had seen so far this trip.
May 23, 2012
Hotel: Hotel Lyabi House; Bukhara, Uzbekistan; $60/dbl
Today we had the whole day to explore around Bukhara. We had actually walked about half the distance through the old city yesterday; Bukhara is a much more compact and walkable city than Samarkand, it's maybe a mile or at most a mile and a half walk from one end to the other. We had an early breakfast at 8AM. There were a lot of British and Australians staying at our hotel but they all left after breakfast, dragging their suitcases on rollers, suckers. I've almost always used my trusty backpack.. I've had it since 1997 and it is still going strong. I had dome some laundry in the sink the night before and it was dry already.
We retraced our steps through the bazaars to the Kalon mosque. We went in the medrassa behind it (I forget the fee). Still no guards here offering to let us go up the tower. From the Kalon minaret we wandered to the Ark, the old citadel. The walls here were huge with round bastions. The Ark was the site where two British officers had been executed in the 1800s; during that time the Great Game was going on between Russia and England empires, the first cold war. Britain was moving in from India and Afghanistan and the Russians were moving in from Central Asia. Bukhara was an independent emirate at the time and was caught between the two. The British sent an envoy but he didn't bring the appropriate level of gifts so the emir threw him in prison. The next officer sent to rescue the first guy was also thrown in prison, causing an uproar back in England. Nothing was done though so eventually the emir had the two officers beheaded in front of the Ark.
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Kalon Minaret
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The Ark
The Ark though was closed for renovations and had been for some time, so all we got to see was the impressive front gate. We crossed the street to the Bolo Hauz mosque which had a huge pool. The mosques in Central Asia definitely have a different style.. this one was gorgeous dark blue and pink tile with a carved wood portico with a pool in front, it had once been the primary mosque used by the emir. From there we wandered into the park to the west where there were a few mausoleums, including the oldest one in Bukhara, built in 905 AD. There was also Chashma Ayub (Job's Spring), supposedly discovered by the Biblical Job. We met an Iranian guy there and were talking to him about our troubles getting the Iranian visa.
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Bolo Hauz mosque
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Job's Spring
The restored old City walls were just behind the spring. These used to stretch for over 12kms but only 2kms have been restored. We started heading back through the park, passing a very sad looking zoo and a funfair park, with Ferris wheel and paddle boats out on the lake. We came across either a beached whale or a sunbathing tourist in speedos lying on the side of the pond and gave him a wide berth. We passed the Crying Mother monument, yet another WWII monument with lists of names of those killed. We continued our walk back through town, this time bypassing the sanitized pedestrian tourist streets for the original old town just a block or two away. We wandered through the old Jewish quarter. Bukhara was once home to over 10000 Jews, they lived here since the 12th century until fairly recently. They even had their own language similar to Persian but using the Hebrew alphabet. Only two synagogues remain functioning now.
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Back streets of Bukhara
We found a place for lunch serving samsas (samosas) near our hotel, puff pastry filled with ground meat an onion. So good and filling, I ordered two but couldn't finish the second one. Spent most of the rest of the afternoon relaxing at the hotel. We were supposed to meet two other travelers for dinner who were continuing onto Turkmenistan on our tour as well, we wanted to meet up to arrange transport to the border for the next morning. It turns out they were staying just a block away from our place. Scott B. was planning on heading to Urgench/Khiva tonight or tomorrow morning. I had read about a train that ran from Bukhara to Urgench but only on Wednesdays; no one we asked seemed to know about it though until he found a travel agent that was able to book his ticket.
We met the other travelers for dinner at the same place we had eaten the night previous. Turns out they were from Texas as well, Dave and his travel companion Rachel had been traveling for several months already and still had several months to go, planning on visiting the Aral Sea, Israel and China after Turkmenistan. Scott was arranging his train tickets during dinner since the train was leaving soon, luckily he was able to get a seat and we all said our goodbyes. We asked the travel agent about transportation to the border but they wanted $100, a bit expensive even divided 5 ways. We went back to Dave's hotel and the owner there was able to arrange a minivan pickup the next morning for 126000 som ($48) a much better deal.
rankourabu
Jun 21, 12, 2:58 pm
Does one's wallet still explode with a 1000 som billls after exchanging $100 in Uzbekistan, or have they gotten around to printing some larger notes?
Great report so far. Great to see you are actually spending some time in each place, and not only flying in and out with one night in a western chain hotel in between!
hauteboy
Jun 21, 12, 9:25 pm
Does one's wallet still explode with a 1000 som billls after exchanging $100 in Uzbekistan, or have they gotten around to printing some larger notes?
Great report so far. Great to see you are actually spending some time in each place, and not only flying in and out with one night in a western chain hotel in between!
Nope, 1000 is still their largest bill. We were getting 2500-2800 black market rate, but we would only change $20-25 at a time usually.
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We don't usually stay in Western chain hotels on our trips, for one most places we go don't have them! On this trip only our first and last night were chain hotels, on points. This trip was unusual though since we had two nights in most places :)
mg0901
Jun 22, 12, 10:01 am
fellow AUS resident... this trip is amazing. I want to do Kyrgyzstan SOOO badly. it's absolutely beautiful. wonderful photos. did you do this on miles?
rankourabu
Jun 22, 12, 10:45 am
Nope, 1000 is still their largest bill.
lol, I made the mistake of changing $60 at one time a year ago
fellow AUS resident... this trip is amazing. I want to do Kyrgyzstan SOOO badly. it's absolutely beautiful. wonderful photos. did you do this on miles?
Kyrgyzstan definitely had the best overall scenery of all the -stans, and we didn't even get into the Pamir region which I've heard is even more stunning.
My ticket was a paid ticket, they had pretty good fares to Bishkek/Almaty last year, $960 open-jaw AUS-ALA/IKA-AUS. My friend used points, 80k for the same itinerary. We had to change our tickets to AUS-ALA/LHR-AUS after the Iranian visa got denied. Only cost us extra LHR departure taxes. We had to buy our other tickets to Iraq/Balkans.. eventually our itinerary was this:
MAY11 AUS-IAH UA Y
MAY11 IAH-LHR UA Y
MAY12 LHR-ALA BD Y
MAY27 ASB-IST TK Y
MAY27 IST-EBL KK Y
MAY28 EBL-IST KK Y
MAY28 IST-TIA TK Y
JUN02 SKG-ATH A3 Y
JUN02 ATH-LHR BA Y
JUN03 LHR-IAH UA Y
JUN03 IAH-AUS UA Y
mg0901
Jun 22, 12, 5:29 pm
Kyrgyzstan definitely had the best overall scenery of all the -stans, and we didn't even get into the Pamir region which I've heard is even more stunning.
I've read other trip reports that say the people of Kyrgyzstan are the "friendliest" of the stans... what do you think?
rankourabu
Jun 22, 12, 5:50 pm
I've read other trip reports that say the people of Kyrgyzstan are the "friendliest" of the stans... what do you think?
I'd agree with that (although I havent been to Tajikistan)
The people were amazingly friendly (almost as nice as Iranians!) - but knowing Russian helps - even if its broken Russian. Also, easy to enter with visa on arrival.
The lake and the beaches, the mountains, beautiful country. Sitting on the beach surrounded by snow capped mountains in the summer time ... excellent.
Great food and drink - at an excellent price.
hauteboy which 'stan do you think is the 'friendliest'?
hauteboy
Jun 26, 12, 2:25 am
May 24, 2012
Hotel: Rahat Hotel; Mary, Turkmenistan
Today we were heading to Turkmenistan, the last -stan country of this trip. Turkmenistan has a bit of a reputation.. it is one of the more closed off countries in the world and always scores pretty low on freedom of press, etc. They also sit on one of the worlds largest reserves of natural gas. Getting a visa requires taking an expensive tour unless you can arrange a transit visa which usually is only good for 3-5 days. We didn't even have a visa, only the Letter of Invitation, but Stantours had assured us that getting the visa at the border was possible.
We had an early breakfast at 7AM and then walked over to Dave & Rachel's hotel to catch the taxi to the border. It turned out we had one of the Daewoo mini taxis, which was a bit of a tight fit for 6 of us and luggage! We set off about 7:25, the ride was pretty uneventful and were at the Uzbekistan border by 9:15. The last part of the trip we were parallel to one of the large irrigation canals coming from the Amu-Darya river.
This time customs was actually quite quick, there were only a few people in front of us and we were through in maybe 30 minutes.. However getting our passports stamped out took the longest this time, another 30 minutes or more waiting. From there it was a 1.5 km to the Turkmen border. The guards wouldn't let us walk though and made us take a waiting minivan (500som/pp). Though Scott, Dean and I had already spent all our Uzbek som, we had to borrow some from D&R. Then at the Tajik checkpoint they checked our passports and we had to get in yet another minivan to go to the customs building where we finally arrived around 11AM.
Our guide, Batyr was there waiting for us and was able to expedite geting all of our visas sorted out. Turkmenistan has different visa levels, 5 day, 10 day, etc. The tour company had put a 10-day window on our LOI even though we were only staying for 4 days.. which meant that we had to pay for the 10-day visa instead. Along with taxes and other random fees it came to $260 for the three of us. If we had been able to get our visa in DC ahead of time it would only have been $35 each plus the shipping costs. The visa took a few minutes to arrange but entering Turkmenistan otherwise was very easy.
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Turkmen manat
We all pile into the waiting minivan, brand new Toyota with good air-con. Since we were on an arranged tour we couldn't use local transportation. We stopped to change a little money, I figured $50 would be enough for now as most of our expenses were covered. There were two other Americans on our tour but they were waiting in Turkmenabat (old name Charjou) the first major town near the border. At one point we crossed the wide Amu Darya river on a pontoon bridge. The Amu Darya is the other great river in Central Asia, it used to feed into the southern part of the Aral sea but most of the water is gone by that time, used up by agriculture (cotton growing mostly).
As we were driving through Turkmenabat, I noticed that there were lots of schoolgirls dressed in traditional bright green dresses and hats. Our guide said that today was the last day of school for the year. We picked up the two other Americans, an older couple from Arizona before heading to a local restaurant, Kafe Jäger.. This was a Russian-run place, all the waitresses were hottie Russian girls. The food was OK enough. Turkmenistan so far seemed more modern than Uzbekistan.
From Turkmenabat it was a 3+ hr drive to Mary across the desert. The landscape was flat and desolate consisting of sand dunes running to the horizon. The road was lined with erosion-control fences made of woven sticks. We saw several camels wandering along the road. The sky was overcast by this point, making it the first non-clear weather day we'd had in awhile. But luckily the clouds kept most of the heat away.. the desert here can easily get above 120 degrees in summer. The road ran dead straight for km after km. This must have been a difficult part of the old Silk Road.
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Road from Turkmenabat to Mary
Finally we reached the inland delta and the old town of Merv. This was once one of the great Silk Road cities of Islamic learning, rivalling Cairo or Baghdad. The city dated back over 2500 years before being sacked by the Mongols. Allegedly over a million people were killed here during the Mongol siege. Little is left now though other than mud walls. The site has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site, the area is huge and occupies two large walled compounds. We visited a tomb, water cistern and climbed up one of the walls that formed a defensive ring around the oldest part of the city. The area has only been minimally excavated; everywhere we looked there were thousands and thousands of shards of broken pottery. Supposedly there was a Zoroastrian temple and palace within the walls but you have to use your imagination to see it. The most impressive ruin remaining was a castle/house from the 7th century, the walls were formed of bricks and had corrugated walls. The sky was still overcast so the photos didn't come out the best.
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Camels in Old Merv
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Kzyl Kala
We still had about an hour to go to reach the town of Mary where we would be spending the night. Our hotel, Rahat was located on the edge of town next to an Iranian truck stop. Mary is the first major town on the main road coming across from Mashad, Iran. The hotel lobby was nice enough, with an atrium filled with citrus trees. The rooms themselves though were a bit tired.. peeling wallpaper and old bathtubs. Still it would do for one night, and there is not much choice when we were on the tour. Our guide had disappeared pretty much as soon as we got to the hotel.. we didn't see him until the next morning.
We walked next door to a grocery store which had quite a good selection. It was next to the restaurant and we met up with the others in our group there for shashlik and roast chicken. We had the beer on tap, which wasn't very good. I forget the name of the stuff. I had read in the LP that there was an Iranian trucker bar in the hotel.. that seemed interesting to check out. So we walk in to this place, which is decorated with pulsing LED lights and full of Iranian truckers getting frisky with 'local talent'. Just to make sure there wasn't any misunderstanding what this place was, there were red lights on the walls. The stereo was blaring hip hop Russian and Persian music.. the truckers were dancing with the ladies (some were quite stunning...) and every now and then a couple would disappear through the back door to who knows where... We sat and sipped our Efes beers taking it all in.
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Rahat Hotel room
hauteboy
Jun 26, 12, 2:32 am
May 25, 2012
Hotel: Ashgabat Hotel; Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
Today was our last long overland segment in Central Asia.. going from Merv to Ashgabat. It would have been much easier to fly this segment; there are several flights a day and domestic Turkmenistan flights are heavily subsidized.. tickets are $20 all-in one-way! Too bad no FF miles. But we wanted to do all of Central Asia overland so we had to make the final push to Ashgabat.
We had breakfast in the bar where we had been last night.. it looked a lot different during the day. We set off around 9AM for the full day drive, our guide said we would not arrive until 5PM! The drive was uneventful but the road was pretty bad in some places. The summer heat melts the roads here, so as soon as they finish fixing a section, the previous section is already needing repair. We stopped at a few places along the way and made a quick stop for lunch. One of the sites we stopped was another old ruined city; all that remained again were the adobe walls. We were very close to the Iranian border along this stretch.. we could see the border fence about 2 miles away at one point. Just outside Ashgabat we stopped at an old mosque that had been destroyed by a 7.3 earthquake in the 1940s. That earthquake destroyed Ashgabat and killed nearly 100000 people, though this was during Soviet times and there was little news about it at the time.
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Samsas - filled with meat+onion
Ashgabat is a mix of a city.. there are stodgy old Soviet apartment blocks and shiny new marble buildings everywhere. The former president Niyazov had set on an ambitious plan of rebuilding the city in the last 15-20 years, most of it truly gaudy and ostentatious... think Pyongyang meets Las Vegas. Whole neighborhoods have been bulldozed to put up tacky monuments and empty apartment blocks. We passed by the Library, cancer clinic, 'Olympic' stadium and Presidential Palace as we headed towards our hotel. We were staying in the Paytag near the train station and across from the US embassy, it used to be the old Ashgabat hotel and most people still call it that. The hotel is a throwback to Soviet times with a key lady on each floor. We finally arrived at the hotel around 5:30PM.
After a quick freshen up we all met again for dinner at the nearby Pizza Haus restaurant, although none of us ordered pizza the food there was good; I had a hamburger that was pretty decent. After dinner we wandered around the streets for awhile. I had noticed many schoolgirls out in uniform here in Ashgabat, here the color was bright red with gold trim, many were wearing green sashes for graduation. The women here were very exotic looking, Persian and Turkish mix.
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Turkmen schoolgirls
We were allowed to wander around Ashgabat without a guide, but you still have to be careful about taking photos.. we were taking photos of a golden statue of the former president when out of nowhere these guards appeared and made my friends delete the photos from their camera. I had slipped my camera back into my bag quickly so I still have a photo of the forbidden statue. :) We found an internet place nearby, they needed our passport to be able to use it, and many sites were blocked (Facebook, etc). I can usually get around that by using a proxy, but they had blocked that method as well!
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The photo that got us in trouble..
After the internet place we wandered back to the hotel and across into a park where there was a kiosk selling beer for 3M ($0.70). The view out over Ashgabat at night was incredible.. color-changing neon lights highlighted some of the buildings and construction cranes.
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Ashgabat at night
May 26, 2012
Hotel: Ashgabat Hotel; Ashgabat, Turkmenistan
It was hard to believe, but today was already our last full-day in the Stans. Breakfast was in the restaurant below the hotel, it was OK but greasy fried egg, ham and bread.
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View from hotel. Iran border is just the other side of those mountains.
The LP had mentioned that the Tolkuchka Bazaar was a worthwhile visit.. we caught a cab there for 15M. The bazaar had been relocated to a new facility recently and is now out past the airport. The new facility is huge; laid out like a pattern in one of the Turkmen rugs. The book had mentioned that the old bazaar had lots of character, but unfortunately the new place has about all the soul of an outlet mall. We wandered around disappointed for a few minutes before deciding to head back into town. The new facility is huge.. 700x500 meters and there was little to no shade between the buildings.
We went back to the hotel then walked up through the center of town, past the Lenin statue, Earthquake museum and Presidential Palace. The Arch of Neutrality used to be here but had been moved recently to another part of town. This was one of the monuments built by the former president, it was topped by a golden statue of himself that rotated with the sun. The new president has been slowly removing traces of the former president apprarently! It was a long, hot walk (100 degrees) up past the Presidential Palace.. we had to take a detour as the guards wouldn't let us walk in front of it. I kept dunking my hat in one of the many fountains, filling it with water and drenching my head to keep cool. We were wanting to go to the Yimpas shopping center, a Turkish-owned market.
Finally after wandering through an old apartment block and up the street we found the shopping center. This place has everything you need; grocery store, internet, restaurants and money changers. We changed a bit of money and ran into some girls there that worked at the US embassy. They were pretty surprised that we were there as tourists! We asked how living there was and all they would say was 'interesting'. Foreign service are posted for two years and I imagine Turkmenistan isn't high on the list of desirable postings. The restaurants were located on the 3rd floor and they had a good variety, I had a huge pide (Turkish pizza). I will say the food quality had been very good so far in Turkmenistan.
We caught a bus outside the market up to the Altyn Asr (Golden Age) shopping center, located in a huge pyramid building with waterfalls on all 4 sides... the largest fountain in the world. The place was empty though and we went up to the top for great views out over the city and Independence Park. The park was empty today but we had seen lots of families wandering around it on our way into town the day before. At the southern end of the park was the Independence Monument, also known as The Plunger.
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Altyn Asr shopping center
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The Plunger
We all had dinner again at the Pizza Haus, and almost all of us ordered the same thing we'd had the night before! The restaurant was definitely convenient, located just in front of our hotel. We said our goodbyes to the other Americans since we would be leaving the hotel at 2AM to catch our 4AM flight! The others were going north through Turkmenistan via the Dervaza gas crater and eventually heading back into Uzbekistan. We had an early night since we would be getting up in only a few hrs. And so ended our trip through the -Stans. Scott would be heading back to the US tomorrow while Dean and I still had another week to go... first to Erbil then going on an arc through the southern Balkans. Originally we would have been going to Iran tomorrow!!
bthotugigem05
Jun 26, 12, 6:53 am
I've always been really curious about going to Turkmenistan, mainly because of Turkmenbashi and the interesting personality cult he built. Really enjoyed this section. Erbil is next on my list of places to go, so really looking forward to the next update!
travelkid
Aug 28, 12, 8:09 am
Its not really that painful
Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are on arrival when flying in
Kazkahstan you can get one on arrival now too no?
Uzbekistan - all you need is a LOI - and also available on arrival in TAS, if your country doesnt have an embassy
Turkmenistan - you need a "tour" but there are several companies that can arrange a hotel stay without a "guide", StanTours being the most known and most expensive.
Iran - well this one, you yanks are on your own :D
Kyrgyzstan has no visa requirements for some 40+ countries as of 3 days after my last entry late July.
Also KZ and KG has regulations allowing tourists with visa to one country to visit border areas of the other (incl Almaty and Bishkek/Issyk-Kul). This would likely mean you could have skipped the KZ visa even if you arrived there. Only possible with a double entry visa though. I was allowed into KG with my KZ dbl entry visa arriving from Kiev, just to be hauled back and have the entry deleted shortly after though. But that was because the KZ visa started the day after. They offered me to overnight in transit:D But rather paid for VOA.
I've read other trip reports that say the people of Kyrgyzstan are the "friendliest" of the stans... what do you think?
Kyrgyzstan definately is more free, with less of recent years civil war, internal conflict, oppression and other madness etc than their neighbours of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tadsjikistan- however not without problems of course. And I think that i reflected in the people.
My main problem summer 2012 after driving 7500km to Mashhad, Iran near TM, was being denied TM transit visa at local consulate to my local agents disbelief. Well well, drove back to Europe making alternative plans. Eventually flying Aerosvit from Kiev, Ukraine into FRU, KG.
bryanwallace
Aug 30, 12, 6:30 pm
sorry to bother,but i am also very keen to visit-but would like to take kids(10,8,4)
is it a place to take kids?
also are there any good beaches and from what time of yr can you "do " the beach temperature wise?
thanks
travelkid
Aug 31, 12, 1:58 am
sorry to bother,but i am also very keen to visit-but would like to take kids(10,8,4)
is it a place to take kids?
also are there any good beaches and from what time of yr can you "do " the beach temperature wise?
thanks
You obviously need to do your research to go to this area with your kids. Its not like a tour to Disneyland. Or maybe it is:D If you are a seasoned traveller and responsible parent this is no problem. But plan. Maybe tours. If you speak russian, travel independantly. 1 parent and 3 kids- plan.
For sealife, lake Issyk-Kul in visa free Kyrgyzstan, a few hours drive from Bishkek in summer time. KG is your next target^
mad_atta
Jan 27, 13, 5:02 am
Thanks for the updates, hauteboy, I have really enjoyed re-reading this now that I have been through the places in question.
So we walk a few blocks through the Navoi Park to an Italian place. [...] The restaurant was OK enough, though their interpretation of spaghetti bolognese was.. original. We got a bottle of wine to share with our meal, the vintage said April 2012.. a three-week old wine! The sun was setting so we raced over to the Gur-i-Amir mausoleum (where Timurlane is buried) which is supposed to look best at sunset. Unfortunately we were mere minutes too late. Nearby was a statue of Amir Timur.. which bore a strong resemblance to Sean Connery.
I'm pretty sure we went to that restaurant too, though we were certainly not brave enough to drink the wine (I think we drank the omnipresent Baltika beer instead). As for the statue, I didn't notice the resemblance to Sean Connery at the time, but I'm fairly sure this is probably it:
If anyone's interested, you can see our trip report from travelling through the region here (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-reports/1357398-youre-driving-mongolia-charity-mongol-rally-2012-a.html), which I have finally got around to updating. But the real question is, where is the rest of this one? I was really looking forward to Iraq and the Balkans...
mad_atta
Jan 27, 13, 5:06 am
I've read other trip reports that say the people of Kyrgyzstan are the "friendliest" of the stans... what do you think?
We found the entire region remarkably friendly. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan probably the friendliest (Kyrgyzstan definitely has the nicest border guards). We often encountered very generous and welcoming people in Uzbekistan too, though the much more touristed nature of that country has probably robbed some of the very genuine friendliness from the place. Kazakhstan was noticeably less friendly and more businesslike, though not unwelcoming. As for Turkmenistan... well it was just bizarre. You could feel the Big Brother vibe of the place overwhelming many of the other impressions, so I don't have a strong memory of how friendly or otherwise the people were. I don't recall much interaction at all.
mad_atta
Jan 27, 13, 5:13 am
sorry to bother,but i am also very keen to visit-but would like to take kids(10,8,4)
is it a place to take kids?
also are there any good beaches and from what time of yr can you "do " the beach temperature wise?
thanks
I wouldn't consider any of these places exactly beachy, they are just not those kind of destinations. Lake Issyk Kul in Kyrgyzstan is beautiful, but it's very high up and the water is icy cold, even though the air temperature may be warm in summer. Having said that, Kyrgyzstan would be a great family vacation if you were adventurous and the kids were old enough to ride horses and/or hike (probably not quite there, in your case!). I certainly didn't feel that it was unsafe, though my standards may be different to many others'.
Tajikistan is possibly even more beautiful than Kyrgyzstan once you get into the mountains, but that is a country with quite a troubled recent past (for example, on our trip an entire section of the country was closed off due to a 'security operation' - read: drug war). You could do a great trip flying into Almaty, and doing that region of Kazakhstan (including Charyn Canyon, the Tien Shan mountains) plus a loop into the Issyk Kul region of Kyrgyzstan and, even better, up to the stunning high altitude lake of Song Kul where you can stay in a yurt and breathe the purest air you have ever experienced. I'm sure tour companies would do that kind of itinerary. It's a magic part of the world! ^
Catweazle
Feb 24, 13, 3:31 am
I'm interested in going to Kyrgyzstan in the next few years, so thanks for giving me further inspiration!
In regards to that last post above mine; I was 10 when my father took our family trekking in Nepal for two weeks, so it probably depends on the kids.