Caravanistan

I was able to fly into Bishkek last night and entered Kyrgyzstan without any issues. I'm a Canadian citizen and transited through Istanbul, so no contact with any highly infected countries. On arrival in Bishkek, temperatures were checked before disembarking the airplane and then again right before ...

Today we tried to cross from Uzbekistan to Kyrgyzstan without success at the osh/andijan border. We have been in Uzbekistan for 2 weeks, before that Kazakhstan for 1 day, Azerbaijan for 2 weeks. We have not been to any ‘high risk’ places. a few hours at the Kyrgyzstan passport control they told us ...

Does anyone have any updates on the current situation around the Caucasus? Was planning to fly into Baku, apply for a Turkmen transit visa, then spend a month or so in Georgia/Armenia while that processes, then transit across the sea to Turkmenistan. Is the ferry to Turkmenistan running these days? ...

I spent two months in Kyrgyzstan last summer and found that there was very little precipitation. I actually didn't use my backpack's rain cover a single time. I didn't make it to the Naryn region, but I wouldn't expect it to be that much different from the rest of the country. I spent a couple of we...

Damn, talk about an overreaction. I'm wondering how they'll even attempt to enforce this.

Agree with Christian. I've been to all of these areas, but wouldn't dare to cross one of these borders illegally. Even if you manage to successfully cross, there are checkpoints everywhere and you will be arrested. Also, the Chinese are now patrolling parts of the Tajik/Afghan border. I'm sure they'...

When I was in the Wakhan last year, I met a Hong Kong tour group who had used the Shegnan border crossing (the one near Khorog) and then went to Ishkashim. From the sounds of it, it was fairly similar to the Ishkashim crossing. I asked a local I met from Shegnan, and the cost of a seat in a shared c...

I took a shared car from Termez to Samarkand last year, it took about 6-7 hours if I remember correctly. The cost was 130,000 Uzbek som.

It's a pretty smooth ride the entire way - there's one checkpoint before you enter the Termez area, but it's nothing big.

What about Pakistani nationals? Can they get Afghan visa as easily from Islamabad Embassy as others are getting? When I was at the embassy, I saw a lot of Pakistani nationals applying for visas. Not sure about the difficulty, but some told me that they don't even need to pay a visa fee. But for mor...

I've decided to visit Saudi Arabia with the new tourist visa in Novemeber, so went ahead and got my e-visa today.

Wrote up a guide to the requirements/prices/application process for the new Saudi tourist visa, if anyone is else is looking for some more info.