Today, we set off on a 5 hour jouney (by minibus) to Mary. Whilst the roads were not the perfect mirrors of Ashgabat, they were in a far better condition than the road through the desert – I only occasionally had to hang on for dear life whilst the driver speeded along! Our first stop…

Well, this is weird. But I am jumping ahead of myself and should probably start with the joruney to get to Ashgabat. The road did improve as we got closer to Ashgabat, but once we were off the desert road, we had a pitstop where the driver proceeded to extract cleaning materials and give the…

So, today (for transparency, this was written in “real time” but can only be published now I have left Turkmenistan and am no longer in a country where SO MANY internet sites are blocked including anything blogging, social media related) we travelled the short distance from Khiva to Khodheyli to cross the border into Turkmenistan.…

Today was the last day of our tour. We drove back to Ashgabat (another bumpy ride) and a quick stop off back in the Russian baazar to buy a magnet (the essential travel souvernier) before retiring to the hotel for a swim, relax and repack. In very sad news, we again FAILED to ride the…

So, yesterday I said goodbye to most of my group (this is sold as a combination trip and only 3 of us (including my room mate Diane) are going onto Khiva and Turkmenistan), including our excellent guide Miko. As many of you know, I have very high tour guide standards from my multiple Intrepid trips,…

So after the overwhelming amazingness of the sites of Samarkand, I was interested to see how I would feel about Bukhara. Bukhara does not have the big impressive specific buildings/squares of Samarkand, rather the whole old city has been preserved which gives it a lovely feel. However, its hot, very hot. We travelled to Bukhara…

For many people, you say The Silk Road and the place that will sping to mind is Samarkand. As this trip has been some years in the planning, Samarkand has taken on an almost mystical aura, and I was concerned that it would never live up to my expectations. I could not be more wrong……

Well, this is something new… Tashkent is a huge modern city full of people (around 3.5 million), traffic and ENORMOUS buildings! Makes a bit of a change from Krygzystan. So, Tashkent means city of stones is one of the oldest cities in the world with the oldest layer dating back to the 3rd Century BC.…

Today, we loaded into a slightly less luxiorious minibus than we are used to (with less than half of our bags fitting in the boot). However, it was only a short drive to the border (I didn’t realise we were so close). The first job was to change some money into Uzbekisani som (as opposed…

Osh is the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan and the unofficial capital of Southern Kyrgyzstan. Its obviously more Muslim with more women covering their hair and has a high Uzbek population. What has been lovely to see, though, is that this is a busy city that makes a big difference from the rather empty feeling…