Caravanistan

Are you sure that FCO 'advise against all but essential' invalidates insurance? We've regularly found ourselves in FCO 'all but essential' (orange blob if they show the map) on our travels, both backpacking and overland, even on short holidays, and always use regular travel insurance. Our understand...

Worth mentioning that a big draw at Green House is the gated parking. Fits three 4x4s and plenty of bikes. Didn't have to stress about the car during the day or overnight which was nice! It already seems to be pretty popular so we experienced a great mix of people when we stayed in Oct.

Ah yes, makes sense. The main Tashkent - Shymkent crossing is unquestionably more convenient than the diversion to Yallama too. In terms of options for Yallama though, saw shared taxis on the road to the border area, didn't notice buses. Almost certain we saw buses near Chinaz though - at a guess th...

Stayed at Topchan - $10 for a bed, registration included. Really nice (and clean) hostel with lots of effort put in to making it welcoming and comfortable, up there with the best either of us has stayed in.

We were turned around on the Uzbekistan side at the Chernayevka/Gisht-Kuprik crossing yesterday - the guard was helpful despite our basic Russian and we managed to understand that we couldn't get over in our own car and should go to Yalama. Managed to make the 100km trip back past Tashkent on the ta...

Pretty good experience crossing this border in a UK registered car, early November. The border was very quiet with occasional foot traffic, a few trucks, and just one car, which was ours. Despite it being quiet, there were lots of money changers either side of the border, and in no man's land. We we...

1$ = 5500 UZS at crossing from Tajikistan
1$ = 5600-5700 UZS in Bukhara

Spoke to someone today who was travelling through Uzbekistan last week and was getting 1$ = 5500 UZS consistently.

Heading there soon, so will share if this is still the case in a few weeks.

Yes, the police at that post are pretty bad. They were pulling both locals and non-locals at that sign recently. Saw a few shouting matches and write-ups over people not stopping completely. In our case we had actually stopped at the sign for a few seconds (as I remembered your post here!). When the...

Hey! Will do, we're keeping a log so we may well have some nice things to share in the coming months. And true indeed we couldn't give you a great description of a typical Bulgarian, except to say not these guys :lol:! What we probably should have said is that at a glance the group appeared pretty C...