Caravanistan

Some photos of one of the new carriages on the train to Balykchy. Also noted that the carriages (including the old soviet ones) are now blue instead of the old soviet green.

https://eurasianet.org/china-kyrgyzstan ... lroad-deal

Agreements on a feasibility study for a railroad connecting China and Uzbekistan through Kyrgyzstan, in case someone is interested.

Hi, thanks for the info! Really helpful. Do you happen to know if this free sim card thing (or the shops) and currency exchange operate 24/7 in the airport? I'll be arriving in Bishkek around 5am this Saturday and would be great if I can sort this out before leaving the airport, especially the curr...

https://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren ... 0,10116225

In this link it is stated that trains from Kyrgyz to Russia will start running again, till Samara.

Not sire if anyone wants to travel to Russia at the moment, but it goes through Kazakhstan as well.

The caspian see ferry requires a lot of flexibility in terms of time, if my understanding is correct. If you decide on a route through Turkeministan you need to factor in time for a visa application, and flexibility if you do not get it (assuming you can get into Turkemistan at all, during the pande...

Next year the olympics are in China and there is a party congress, both reasons to potentially want to shut things down or make things much harder for foreigners. So even if the pandemic is out of the picture (does not sound very likely) there are reasons things are difficult. I am personally not ma...

@roadsilk eight months is not even enough to see everything, and I wonder if 8 years will do. 8 weeks is enough for a meaningful trip with some different experiences. Weatherwise an Uzbekistan to Almaty trip would work best. For a historic cities highlights trip in Uzbekistan one week is enough. Tim...

1000 meters us 6 degrees celsius lower, I think. And there is other effects. I am currently in Kyrgyzstan and above 3000 meters I have experienced night temperatures of slightly above or under zero. Normally september is colder, though from what I hear Kyrgyzstan has not the hottest summer ever.

I am planning to hike to ala kul and altyn arashan and today in Karakol I went to both to tourist information centre and destination Karakol to inquire about the current situation. Unfortunately I got conflicting information. One said the loop from Karakol valley to alty arashan is possible the othe...

I am currently in Kyrgyzstan, have been in Osh and Daroot-Korgon for a few days. Just arrived in sary mogol. Except for the Bishkek to Osh plane (where to mouthmask ratio was not perfect but just as good as ams-istanbul and istanbul-bishkek on pegasus) my mouth mask count is five. One random guy on ...