Letter from the Silk Road
Letter from the Silk Road is an occasional personal blog about tourism on the Silk Road, the making of Caravanistan and other assorted musings that did not fit elsewhere.
Predictions for Silk Road travel in 2023
Another year, another round of Silk Road travel predictions. Last year, I got 3 out of 3: Turkmenistan did not open up The Pamir Highway remained difficult to access The Silk Road stayed quiet, with Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan bucking the trend So what do I think about 2023? Well, since several people asked, I jotted […]
Predictions for Silk Road Travel in 2022
I wrote a post in January 2021 with some predictions and observations for the year ahead. We said that Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan would remain open, but that overland travel would be very onerous, with closed land borders and PCR hurdles. We got that right, so let’s try another round of predictions as we enter the […]
Changing lives in rural Tajikistan
A small but dynamic non-profit organisation called Sadoqat is bringing big changes to people’s lives in rural Tajikistan. If you are planning to visit this beautiful country, why not drop by and see its projects, and even do some voluntary work as you pass through? Imagine a child going to school and having nowhere to […]
Silk Road travel in 2021 and beyond
We all agree the future is unknowable, but really, we can’t help ourselves. It used to be oracles and astrologers, now it’s artificial intelligence and economic forecasts. All with a roughly equal chance of success. So here is my take. Let’s start with what we know. Coronavirus in Central Asia Ever since the end of […]
What we did in 2020
Someone recently e-mailed me asking what we have been up to in the past year. And what were my predictions for travel in Central Asia in 2021, and beyond? I will give my predictions in another blog post next week. This week, let me tell you what we did in 2020. Perhaps it is of […]
Where to find free, legal bivouac & camp sites in Europe
Wild camping can be annoying, but if you spend a lot of time slowly traveling through Europe on foot, bike, horse or in a kayak, it’s sometimes difficult to avoid. There should be alternatives. And there are. Because the coronavirus limited my travel options to Central Asia, I decided to cycle around Europe in the […]
Who travels the Silk Road in 2019?
In December 2018, we ran a small survey on Caravanistan asking visitors about their travel plans. We got 390 answers. This is not a scientific study: the Caravanistan audience is somewhat skewed towards the long-term adventurous traveler, and the website is focused on the 5 post-Soviet stans. Nonetheless, we’d say it gives a good overview […]
A response to the Danghara attack
After the July 29 attack on foreign cyclists in the district of Danghara, a number of people have written to me, asking if it is still safe to travel to Tajikistan. As the editor of Caravanistan, a site I am sure the murdered cyclists were using to plan their trip, it feels like I should […]
How to portray Central Asia
Inspired by Binyavanga Wainana – How to Write about Africa, I had always seen this article (I wrote it in 2017) as a tongue-in-cheek look at the orientalist templates that centuries of colonialism have imprinted in the brains of westerners like myself, and the black-and-white portrayal some less-careful observers tend to go for. There’s been […]
How to Start Savouring Pamiri Food ( & Culture)
You are what you eat. Nowhere could this maxim be more obvious than in the Pamirs. A barren land of rock and rubble, brought to life only through the hands of its people. But what does it mean that nowadays, in the Tajik Pamirs, foreign foods such as borscht, plov and lagman dominate the dishes […]