We were forewarned about this, and it proves to be quite true: the Central Asian culinary experience is not exactly the highlight of our trip.
Sure, after having spent some months in China, which has an interesting and rich cuisine that is however at times quite repugnant for unexperienced Western tastebuds, the recognisable foodstuffs of the "-stans" are quite a relief. The cuisine is however not very refined, with rather dull and often recurring ingredients (potatoes, bread, mutton and onion) and bland tastes. The sometimes creative combinations are quite frightening: ever considered mixing potatoes, rice, buckwheat, ketchup and mayonnaise?
There are influences from the surrounding cuisines: laghman (similar to Chinese noodles), plov (resembling Persian rice pilafs), nan (flat breads found across Asia) and samsa (similar to Indian and South-Asian pastries).
In Kazachstan and Kyrgyzstan, both countries with a long nomadic tradition, the diet consists mainly of meat (often chicken and mutton), milkproducts and bread. Uzbekistan is more influenced by the Turkish cuisine: kebabs, noodles and pasta, shashlyk and breads are some of the staple foods. Across the region, there is also a heavy influence of Russian cuisine: soups (borscht, okroshka), smetana, blini, and kotlety are found in most restaurants.
Drinks of course include tea (green and black tea being most popular), beers and the inevitable vodka.
In most restaurants, especially in smaller towns, service is of the ex-Soviet standard: we've encountered plenty of waitresses happily watching television only to be disturbed by our uninvited presence.
The food itself is rarely really inviting: you often get luke-warm dishes, fatty bits of meat and uninspiring cucumber and tomato salads. Of course, we haven't exactly been dining out in the more upscale restaurants in town. We often found that homemade food (dining in guesthouses where we stayed) or food bought at streetside stalls was a much better deal, both in taste and value.
Showing posts with label Kyrgyzstan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kyrgyzstan. Show all posts
October 4, 2008
September 22, 2008
Kyrgyzstan: artistic impression
Kyrgyzstan may already be thousands of kilometers behind us, but it's never too late to let you share Floris's artistic impression of this beautiful country. It's probably called "naivistic art", but let's just admit that he can't actually do much better...
Note the bilingual (Finnish-Dutch) sheep!
Note the bilingual (Finnish-Dutch) sheep!
September 13, 2008
Pictures and trip tracker
The trip tracker is updated to our current location and there are some new pictures from Kyrgyzstan and Kazachstan in the new slideshow.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
September 11, 2008
Some fun facts on Kyrgyzstan
Having left the Kyrgyz Republic, this is a good time for a few general impressions and facts on the country.
1. In Osh, Jalal-Abad and Bishkek, the roads and pavements are littered with uncovered holes and sewer-entrances. Not a nice place for blind people, and frustrating for car drivers.
2. Kyrgyzstan must be one of the few countries in the world to have a a currency denomination of 3 som.
3. The flag of Kyrgyzstan displays a tunduk (seen from below), the crown of a yurt, the traditional nomadic house of the Kyrgyz people.
4. Most of the vans, minibusses and trucks in the country are second-hand models from European countries: it's very common to see a truck, marked with "Schmidt Obst und Gemuese, Hannover, Deutschland" crawling up a mountain pass.
5. Inter-city taxi drivers stop at seemingly random places along the way to buy large amounts of tomatoes, melons and other greenstuff, which they sell to merchants in the city of destination.
6. Alcohol is dirt cheap. A bottle of vodka costs about 180 som (ca. 3.5 EUR), a beer being relatively more expensive at a price of 60 som. The results of this are obvious: the streets and parks are littered with drunkards.
7. Any car on the road is a potential taxi, but negotating prices is a cumbersome experience. A rule of thumb to estimate the price to pay is as follows. Calculate the distance, multiply with ca. 10 l gas per 100 km and multiply with the price of gas per liter (about 35 som); then add about 200 som for the service. Divide this with 4 seats, and you have your price per seat.
1. In Osh, Jalal-Abad and Bishkek, the roads and pavements are littered with uncovered holes and sewer-entrances. Not a nice place for blind people, and frustrating for car drivers.
2. Kyrgyzstan must be one of the few countries in the world to have a a currency denomination of 3 som.
3. The flag of Kyrgyzstan displays a tunduk (seen from below), the crown of a yurt, the traditional nomadic house of the Kyrgyz people.
4. Most of the vans, minibusses and trucks in the country are second-hand models from European countries: it's very common to see a truck, marked with "Schmidt Obst und Gemuese, Hannover, Deutschland" crawling up a mountain pass.
5. Inter-city taxi drivers stop at seemingly random places along the way to buy large amounts of tomatoes, melons and other greenstuff, which they sell to merchants in the city of destination.
6. Alcohol is dirt cheap. A bottle of vodka costs about 180 som (ca. 3.5 EUR), a beer being relatively more expensive at a price of 60 som. The results of this are obvious: the streets and parks are littered with drunkards.
7. Any car on the road is a potential taxi, but negotating prices is a cumbersome experience. A rule of thumb to estimate the price to pay is as follows. Calculate the distance, multiply with ca. 10 l gas per 100 km and multiply with the price of gas per liter (about 35 som); then add about 200 som for the service. Divide this with 4 seats, and you have your price per seat.
September 8, 2008
The Belgian Passport Breakdown
It is not only Kyrgyz trucks and cars that keep falling apart: it also happens to the newly designed Belgian passports...
In the latest design of the passport, there is a plastic security sheet in front of the name page. This plastic page of Floris's passport (issued only in may this year) started to crack at the edge when we were in Kashgar, but we managed to cross the Chinese-Kyrgyz border without any difficulties.
Meanwhile, of course, with every passport check that page is breaking up more and more, and now it is nearly completely ripped off. As we imagine that travelling overland in this part of the world, which is still troubled by "overzealous officials", with a broken passport could get us into some trouble. Trouble, such as: being refused to cross international land borders, being halted and harassed by local police, being accused of staying illegally in the country,... So we contacted the Belgian authorities in the region about this problem.
We were advised by the issuing consulate in Shanghai to get a letter from a Belgian consulate, stating that the passport is still valid as it is, which should steer us clear from any problems.
But that things are easier said than done is once again proven by the following sequence of events:
It is also interesting to note that the consul gave us some "unofficial advice", including pointing us to a shop in an underground passageway where we could buy a completely new passport, offering to laminate that page of the passport and giving tips on how to fix it with a bit of scotch-tape. To put it in his words: "This is a crazy part of the world, so you have to do a few crazy things here". Comment duly noted...
For other travellers: the contact details for the Belgian Honorary Consulate in Bishkek (for some reason not stated on the diplobel-website) are:
209-A Tynystanov Street
720040 Bishkek
tel. +996 312 900 100
mobile: +996 (0) 775 58 18 18
e-mail: n.aldashev@lorenz-law.com
web: www.lorenz-law.com
In the latest design of the passport, there is a plastic security sheet in front of the name page. This plastic page of Floris's passport (issued only in may this year) started to crack at the edge when we were in Kashgar, but we managed to cross the Chinese-Kyrgyz border without any difficulties.
Meanwhile, of course, with every passport check that page is breaking up more and more, and now it is nearly completely ripped off. As we imagine that travelling overland in this part of the world, which is still troubled by "overzealous officials", with a broken passport could get us into some trouble. Trouble, such as: being refused to cross international land borders, being halted and harassed by local police, being accused of staying illegally in the country,... So we contacted the Belgian authorities in the region about this problem.
We were advised by the issuing consulate in Shanghai to get a letter from a Belgian consulate, stating that the passport is still valid as it is, which should steer us clear from any problems.
But that things are easier said than done is once again proven by the following sequence of events:
- From information obtained on official Belgian websites, there didn't seem to be a Belgian consulate in Kyrgyzstan.
- We went to the German embassy in Bishkek, which handles some matters for EU citizens, but they couldn't help us, as they have no authority to fix non-German passports.
- Later, when we were in Kochkor, we received the contact details from the newly opened Belgian honorary consulate in Bishkek. The consul was very friendly and helpful, receiving us even on Sunday.
- The consul would write us a letter confirming the validity of the passport, but he couldn't validate it with an official stamp... as he hadn't received the consular stamps from Brussels yet! He had been waiting for it for a couple of months, but "it would be arriving soon".
- He couldn't type such a letter, as at the moment we were there, there was the usual power cut in this residential block, so he had to hand-write it.
- He wanted to copy his authentication as a consul and attach this to the letter, but as there was no power in his office, we followed him around to a still-powered copy shop around the corner.
Armed with this letter and his credentials, which he advised us not to try to cross international borders with (as there was no official stamp on it), we parted with the consul. He advised us to wait in Bishkek until the stamp arrived from Brussels. - The next day, we called the embassy in Astana (Kazachstan), asking if they could maybe compose such a letter (with a stamp) and fax that to the consul in Bishkek. The embassy in Astana was very helpful and happy to do that.
Just as we sent out an email to Astana with a copy of Floris's passport, we received an email from the consul in Bishkek that the stamp had arrived...
It is also interesting to note that the consul gave us some "unofficial advice", including pointing us to a shop in an underground passageway where we could buy a completely new passport, offering to laminate that page of the passport and giving tips on how to fix it with a bit of scotch-tape. To put it in his words: "This is a crazy part of the world, so you have to do a few crazy things here". Comment duly noted...
For other travellers: the contact details for the Belgian Honorary Consulate in Bishkek (for some reason not stated on the diplobel-website) are:
209-A Tynystanov Street
720040 Bishkek
tel. +996 312 900 100
mobile: +996 (0) 775 58 18 18
e-mail: n.aldashev@lorenz-law.com
web: www.lorenz-law.com
Still around in Kyrgyzstan
Getting on the web is not the easiest of things in Kyrgyzstan: Internet cafes are few and far between and even if you happen to find one, power cuts occur frequently. In fact, in all major cities we travelled to, the power was cut at intervals of up to 6 hours a day, and in some places even the water supply was suspended for a long time.
After Jalal-Abad, we drove to Bishkek, where we stayed for a day. It's not really the most fascinating city, with few 'sights' as such. Sure, there is the obligatory Lenin statues and ex-Soviet squares, but it's not particularly charming. The museum was probably the most interesting experience, being mostly devoted to Lenin and the Soviet propaganda with sculptures and paintings depicting the Russian revolution and the advancement of the great Communist cause and Soviet strive for world peace. Hundreds of pages of Lenin's notes were also displayed. We were of course unable to really understand them, but it seems Lenin had a habit of making frantic pencil drawings in the edges of his notebooks during boring meetings.
The city has quite a different feel than the cities down south in the country: there are considerably more Russians, far less Muslims and in it has somewhat of an unsafe feel to it (not that we encountered any problems): there are youths hanging around in the streets and the city is badly lit at night.
First of September was also the first day of Ramadan. Hanna, with her experience from more devout Muslim countries, has been almost shocked to see that Ramadan goes largely unnoticed at least here in the Northern Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz men still start drinking vodka from 10 a.m., everybody smokes and restaurants are open and busy from morning till evening. But the price of sheep is on the rise: the taxi driver who brought us back from the mountains bought one to be slaughtered at Eid Al Fitr, end of the month, bringing it back to town under the trunk of the taxi - it fitted perfectly in the place of the spare tyre and only protested at the worst bumps with a soft "ba-a-aa". The price was 2000 soms (approximately 40 EUR). We also enquired about the price of other animals. A donkey is cheaper than a sheep. "Of course. Donkey no eat!"
From Bishkek, we headed to Kochkor, from where we went up to lake Song-Kol, to have a bit of a walk in nature, high up in the mountains (3500 m), with pastures full of horses, sheep, cows and donkeys. We slept in a yurt, the traditional nomadic home of the Kyrgyz people.
The scenery was great - mountains on the one side, lake on the other - but the weather was not really optimal: we started our with a clear sky, but as the day advanced, the sky darkened, with rain and a cool breeze. The night in the yurt was quite an experience: it was very cold, even when covered with thick blankets. The following day, as we were walking back along the lake, the sky got dark grey and just before we got in the taxi, it started to rain melting snow. As we were not at all equipped to stay in the mountains with this kind of cold weather, we decided to head back to Bishkek, thus abandoning a part of our planned itinerary.
So now we are back in Bishkek again, resting for a few days in a nice and relaxed travellers guesthouse (Nomad's Home, behind the Eastern Buss station, Drevesnaya street, fourth house on the left. Best deal in town.), where the main topic of discussion seems to be the horrible authorities refusing to issue visas. Chinese are by far the most cursed - as we have already mentioned, it is virtually impossible to get a tourist visa to China at the moment. A shitty situation for many overland travellers. Beijing Olympics seem to work like a means to transfer tourism income from the already poorer Western China to the wealthy Peking area; it's end of the high season and the hotels and restaurants in most of the country have been empty since July, meaning that many a family in the Western China will have to tighten their belts until next summer - when hopefully no international event will give the Chinese authorities a reason to use this kind of draconian measures.
One World, One Dream - Getting a Chinese visa.
After Jalal-Abad, we drove to Bishkek, where we stayed for a day. It's not really the most fascinating city, with few 'sights' as such. Sure, there is the obligatory Lenin statues and ex-Soviet squares, but it's not particularly charming. The museum was probably the most interesting experience, being mostly devoted to Lenin and the Soviet propaganda with sculptures and paintings depicting the Russian revolution and the advancement of the great Communist cause and Soviet strive for world peace. Hundreds of pages of Lenin's notes were also displayed. We were of course unable to really understand them, but it seems Lenin had a habit of making frantic pencil drawings in the edges of his notebooks during boring meetings.
The city has quite a different feel than the cities down south in the country: there are considerably more Russians, far less Muslims and in it has somewhat of an unsafe feel to it (not that we encountered any problems): there are youths hanging around in the streets and the city is badly lit at night.
First of September was also the first day of Ramadan. Hanna, with her experience from more devout Muslim countries, has been almost shocked to see that Ramadan goes largely unnoticed at least here in the Northern Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyz men still start drinking vodka from 10 a.m., everybody smokes and restaurants are open and busy from morning till evening. But the price of sheep is on the rise: the taxi driver who brought us back from the mountains bought one to be slaughtered at Eid Al Fitr, end of the month, bringing it back to town under the trunk of the taxi - it fitted perfectly in the place of the spare tyre and only protested at the worst bumps with a soft "ba-a-aa". The price was 2000 soms (approximately 40 EUR). We also enquired about the price of other animals. A donkey is cheaper than a sheep. "Of course. Donkey no eat!"
From Bishkek, we headed to Kochkor, from where we went up to lake Song-Kol, to have a bit of a walk in nature, high up in the mountains (3500 m), with pastures full of horses, sheep, cows and donkeys. We slept in a yurt, the traditional nomadic home of the Kyrgyz people.
The scenery was great - mountains on the one side, lake on the other - but the weather was not really optimal: we started our with a clear sky, but as the day advanced, the sky darkened, with rain and a cool breeze. The night in the yurt was quite an experience: it was very cold, even when covered with thick blankets. The following day, as we were walking back along the lake, the sky got dark grey and just before we got in the taxi, it started to rain melting snow. As we were not at all equipped to stay in the mountains with this kind of cold weather, we decided to head back to Bishkek, thus abandoning a part of our planned itinerary.
So now we are back in Bishkek again, resting for a few days in a nice and relaxed travellers guesthouse (Nomad's Home, behind the Eastern Buss station, Drevesnaya street, fourth house on the left. Best deal in town.), where the main topic of discussion seems to be the horrible authorities refusing to issue visas. Chinese are by far the most cursed - as we have already mentioned, it is virtually impossible to get a tourist visa to China at the moment. A shitty situation for many overland travellers. Beijing Olympics seem to work like a means to transfer tourism income from the already poorer Western China to the wealthy Peking area; it's end of the high season and the hotels and restaurants in most of the country have been empty since July, meaning that many a family in the Western China will have to tighten their belts until next summer - when hopefully no international event will give the Chinese authorities a reason to use this kind of draconian measures.
One World, One Dream - Getting a Chinese visa.
August 31, 2008
Osh, Jalal-Abad and around
Arriving late in Osh meant we had to find a place to sleep in a badly lit, unknown town. We fished out our Lonely Planet from our backpacks and asked a taxi driver to drive us to some of the hotels in town. Most of them turned out to be fully booked, so we ended up in an extremely overpriced Soviet style hotel: there was no hot water, no electricity after midnight, we got locked out the first night (we managed to break in though) and nobody cleaned our room, perhaps not even before we took it.
Osh was a nice city, however: quite small for the country's second biggest town, but with an interesting bazaar, where we found some nice handicrafts (slippers and two hats). As there aren't really overly interesting "sights" in the city, we basically walked around a bit in the bazaar, the park and through the charming, tree-lined avenues.
The population is very diverse, with a majority of Uzbeks, a large Kyrgyz minority and quite a lot of Russians and other ethnicities.
The next day, we headed for Jalal-Abad, the third biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, but with only about 75000 inhabitants very laid back and relaxed. Through the Community Based Tourism association, we found a delightful homestay with a local family. A very clean room in a charming house with a shadowy courtyard, and with hot water!
Here, we took it easy, just looking around the bazaar, which is nice enough but not as big nor as interesting as Osh' or Kashgars bazaars. We also headed to a local rundown sanatorium and healing water spring the next day. The sanatorium was closed and the spring water was disgustingly warm and salty - not a true success in all.
On Saturday, we headed to Arslanbob, a farmers village in the nearby mountains, famous for its walnut forests. We had a walk near the river up to a waterfall which we never reached. Hanna saved some strange bugs from drowning and Floris made a small dam - both not very successful at that by the way.
We intended to leave on Sunday morning, and opted for a shared minibus (marshrutka) to Bishkek. The driver told us we would leave as soon as there were 3 or 4 more passengers, but even after having 6 extra we hadn't left yet. As it was running late already, and with a long drive ahead (10 to 15 hours), we got upset with the driver for the disinformation and left the car.
So, if all goes well, we leave for Bishkek on Monday 01.09.
Osh was a nice city, however: quite small for the country's second biggest town, but with an interesting bazaar, where we found some nice handicrafts (slippers and two hats). As there aren't really overly interesting "sights" in the city, we basically walked around a bit in the bazaar, the park and through the charming, tree-lined avenues.
The population is very diverse, with a majority of Uzbeks, a large Kyrgyz minority and quite a lot of Russians and other ethnicities.
The next day, we headed for Jalal-Abad, the third biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, but with only about 75000 inhabitants very laid back and relaxed. Through the Community Based Tourism association, we found a delightful homestay with a local family. A very clean room in a charming house with a shadowy courtyard, and with hot water!
Here, we took it easy, just looking around the bazaar, which is nice enough but not as big nor as interesting as Osh' or Kashgars bazaars. We also headed to a local rundown sanatorium and healing water spring the next day. The sanatorium was closed and the spring water was disgustingly warm and salty - not a true success in all.
On Saturday, we headed to Arslanbob, a farmers village in the nearby mountains, famous for its walnut forests. We had a walk near the river up to a waterfall which we never reached. Hanna saved some strange bugs from drowning and Floris made a small dam - both not very successful at that by the way.
We intended to leave on Sunday morning, and opted for a shared minibus (marshrutka) to Bishkek. The driver told us we would leave as soon as there were 3 or 4 more passengers, but even after having 6 extra we hadn't left yet. As it was running late already, and with a long drive ahead (10 to 15 hours), we got upset with the driver for the disinformation and left the car.
So, if all goes well, we leave for Bishkek on Monday 01.09.
August 27, 2008
The bordercrossing at Irkeshtam
We left Kashgar early morning on Monday 25 august. Early, because the border opens at 10 a.m. and there are long queues if you arrive later. We arranged a taxi to the Chinese side of the border for 500 RMB, which is a good deal (travel agencies asked between 600 and 900 RMB...)
The drive up to Irkeshtam was amazing: through mountainous desert, dotted with donkeys, camels and security checkposts. After a thrilling 4 hour drive on a near-empty highway, we arrived at the Chinese border.
The border formalities were very straightforward: at the Chinese side, customs clearance and immigration took about 10 minutes, without any troubles at all. An official then put us on a Chinese truck to cover the distance to the Kyrgyz checkpoint. A brief passport check later, we could walk further to the quarantaine, customs and immigration office. It was a bit disorganised but straightforward enough: we just handed over our passports and got them back in a few minutes, stamped and everything. One final registration later, we found ourselves in Kyrgyzstan.
The next goal was to find onwards transport to Osh or Sary Tash. That proved to be somewhat more of a challenge: there is no organised transport at all, so we walked around a bit until we were addressed by a very friendly Uzbek truckdriver, who would take us. But first, we could change some money and eat something (a nice bouillon).
So we waited and waited, because the driver kept on postponing his hour of departure - later, it turned out he was waiting for his cargo (as we had no common language, communication was the usual smiling and hand signs). We had a look around in the settlement, and we judged it to be one of the most crazy places in the world: there were houses made of containers, fueltanks and old railway carriages, and the place was littered with broken cars and trucks. The only "toilet" in town consisted of a shed with two planks - a delightful place without lighting, reserved only for women...
We looked around for other transport, but driver of the the single Lada Niva in town asked a ridiculous price of 70 USD per person, so we waited more. Eventually, our truck driver informed us that we would leave the following day, meaning we'd have to overnight there. He was obviously a bit uneasy about the postponement, and he and his wife Sonja were very hospitable and put us up for the night.
After a good supper of noodles, we talked some more with our hosts and went to sleep.
The next morning around 11 a.m., we set off in a Kyrgyz "Kamaz"-truck. Two reasonably straightforward checkpoints later, we were at last on our way to Osh...
The drive was splendid, with magnificent views on the Pamir plateau. Rivers, snow-capped mountain peaks, grassland with horses and yurts - simply splendid! The road was however in a complete state of disrepair: unpaved, sandy, full of holes... This caused the truck to have 6 (!) flat tyres in 30 km, which we covered in about 6 hours. We were happy to find other transport on the road: a car picked us up for 500 som each.
Late that night, we finally arrived in Osh after a full day's travelling.
The drive up to Irkeshtam was amazing: through mountainous desert, dotted with donkeys, camels and security checkposts. After a thrilling 4 hour drive on a near-empty highway, we arrived at the Chinese border.
The border formalities were very straightforward: at the Chinese side, customs clearance and immigration took about 10 minutes, without any troubles at all. An official then put us on a Chinese truck to cover the distance to the Kyrgyz checkpoint. A brief passport check later, we could walk further to the quarantaine, customs and immigration office. It was a bit disorganised but straightforward enough: we just handed over our passports and got them back in a few minutes, stamped and everything. One final registration later, we found ourselves in Kyrgyzstan.
The next goal was to find onwards transport to Osh or Sary Tash. That proved to be somewhat more of a challenge: there is no organised transport at all, so we walked around a bit until we were addressed by a very friendly Uzbek truckdriver, who would take us. But first, we could change some money and eat something (a nice bouillon).
So we waited and waited, because the driver kept on postponing his hour of departure - later, it turned out he was waiting for his cargo (as we had no common language, communication was the usual smiling and hand signs). We had a look around in the settlement, and we judged it to be one of the most crazy places in the world: there were houses made of containers, fueltanks and old railway carriages, and the place was littered with broken cars and trucks. The only "toilet" in town consisted of a shed with two planks - a delightful place without lighting, reserved only for women...
We looked around for other transport, but driver of the the single Lada Niva in town asked a ridiculous price of 70 USD per person, so we waited more. Eventually, our truck driver informed us that we would leave the following day, meaning we'd have to overnight there. He was obviously a bit uneasy about the postponement, and he and his wife Sonja were very hospitable and put us up for the night.
After a good supper of noodles, we talked some more with our hosts and went to sleep.
The next morning around 11 a.m., we set off in a Kyrgyz "Kamaz"-truck. Two reasonably straightforward checkpoints later, we were at last on our way to Osh...
The drive was splendid, with magnificent views on the Pamir plateau. Rivers, snow-capped mountain peaks, grassland with horses and yurts - simply splendid! The road was however in a complete state of disrepair: unpaved, sandy, full of holes... This caused the truck to have 6 (!) flat tyres in 30 km, which we covered in about 6 hours. We were happy to find other transport on the road: a car picked us up for 500 som each.
Late that night, we finally arrived in Osh after a full day's travelling.
August 19, 2008
Itinerary Kyrgyzstan - Kazachstan
The idea is to cross the Chinese - Kyrgyz border through the Irkeshtam pass, head to Sary Tash and Osh and continue towards Bishkek via Jalal-Abad and Tash-Kömür. From Bishkek, we plan to head to Karakol via the southern shore of the Ysyk-Köl lake. We will leave Kyrgyzstan and cross into Kazachstan near Kegen.
In Kazachstan, we will spend some time in and around Almaty, before taking the train towards Shymkent. From there, we travel further to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
In Kazachstan, we will spend some time in and around Almaty, before taking the train towards Shymkent. From there, we travel further to Tashkent in Uzbekistan.
The plan is to cover the above outlined itinerary in about three weeks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)