Caravanistan

Sept 16th-22nd is Internet Safety Week in China. There have been a lot of crackdowns the past couple of days on formerly functioning VPNs.... Many expats are complaining about it. Additionally the first week of October is Chinese National Day(s) which is a notorious time for The Great Firewall to be...

I'd personally stay in Nukus (very little to see and do in Moynaq) plus have a chance to see the art museum there -which is truly world class. Easy to rent a taxi from Nukus to Moynaq RTN for 5 or 6 hours.

You *should* be okay. Bear in mind though an onward ticket *is* an entry requirement. I'd be inclined to think, rather than Kazakh immigration, the area you'd most likely be given grief is checking in for your flight in Europe. According to Timatic, which is the site airlines use to check entry requ...

I guess if you really *had* to have an actual ticket you could always buy a Spring Airlines or AirAsia promotional fare. You can often pick up a one way zero frills flight for as cheap as 15USD (including tax) between Guangzhou and Don Muang Airport in Bangkok. At that price just toss the thing if y...

I just got my visa from the London embassy and I very much got the impression it was a box-ticking exercise It's exactly that. The Chinese *love* their red tape, but no one in the embassy has the time or inclination to wade through checking if all the flights and hotel bookings of thousands of appl...

Try and do the lowlands in May.

Temps in parts of all of the 'Stans, Iran etc will be getting blisteringly hot by late June. Best to move up into the hills/highlands at that point.

You can certainly just pay your first few expenses in $ if you need, book a taxi through the tourist information counter who will take both currencies, hotels will definitely take USD, and can give change in som if you prefer. Once you are downtown there are banks everywhere to change cash. But real...

Agree.... The money changer is open 24/7...just be aware though that it closes random hours for "technical upgrades" i.e workers needing to take a shit. The airport guys are stricter also than banks and money changers elsewhere as far as the quality of the $ you are trying to change, so ma...

Crossed this border from Kyrgyz to Uzbek a couple of days ago. Arrived at about 9am and there were already many, many hundreds of people jammed into the queue on the right side. Blazing hot sunshine, packed in tight inside a chicken wire fence. A lot looked like they had been there for many hours, a...