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We left Samarkand around 8am for the five hour drive to Tashkent, our last stop on our 16 day odyssey. Admittedly we were all a bit tired and subdued— we had been keeping quite a pace for the last two weeks. However we had one last night in Tashkent to spend together and with Umid, our guide, who did a marvelous job taking care of us and sharing his country and its… Read More
We left Bukhara around 8:00am for the approximately five hour drive to Samarkand. As we were leaving the outskirts of the city, Umid pointed out a sedara on the side of the road and we had to stop for a picture. Sedaras were watering holes along the Silk Road, basically cisterns built to catch rainwater or a well dug from a spring, fitted with a roof over it to minimize water loss… Read More
We took a train from Khiva to Bukhara and of all of the vehicles we have been in and out of the whole trip, this, by far, was the most challenging. The train left at 3:30pm and when we got to the train station it turned out that all of the cars were sleeper cars- most unexpected. (I found out later that the train, which is a new line, goes all the… Read More
After a good night’s sleep and breakfast we headed out to tour the old city of Khiva. The external walls of the city still exist along with four gates, one at each compass point. Walking through the gates highlights how thick the walls are at the base—about 20 feet. We spent the day visiting the different sites in the city— mausoleums, the palaces, mosques and a master craftsman in wood. Walking through… Read More
Before we left Kokand, where we spent the night, and headed to Tashkent, we toured through the Khan’s palace. The palace was built in the 19th century to serve as the governance seat for the Khan of Kokand. In actuality there were three kingdoms in the Central Asia region, the Khanate of Kokand, the Khanate of Bukhara, and the Khanate of Khiva, before the Russian Czar Alexander came and conquered them at… Read More
We had one last stop in Osh before heading to the Krygystan-Uzbekistan border and that was a visit to Sulayman Mountain, another UNESCO World Heritage site. It was a place of pilgrimage in pre-Muslim times and is still so today for Muslims, especially pregnant women who come to pray for a healthy child. Historians believe the site marks the midpoint of the Silk Road. More practically it perches high over Osh and… Read More
Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan with approximately 350,000 people living in and around the city, sits in the fertile Fergana Valley in the southern part of the country (more on this later). Osh is also our jumping off point for transitioning to Uzbekistan for the second half of our trip and our next destination leaving the Tash Rabat yurt camp. In a country that is 90% mountainous with few direct… Read More
After two days at the Son-Kol Yurt camp we headed out driving south along the plateau for the 3600m Moldo-Ashuu pass towards our next Yurt camp at Tash Rabat near the southern border with China. The distance was not great- only about 250 km to get to our new yurt camp- but because of the bad road conditions restricting speeds to 10-15km/hour, the drive took most of the day. The long drive… Read More
We spent two days in a yurt camp in Son-Kol. The main goal of the first day was to move from Bishkek to the yurt camp that, even though was located in the nearby Tian Shan mountains, meant a long drive! Fortunately our itinerary was designed to have several stops along the way to break up the trip. Leaving the hotel at 8:30am we headed east out of Bishkek to join a… Read More
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