Caravanistan

The international timetable change is at the second weekend in December (7th/8th this year). In theory, booking should have opened by now anyway, in practice, it's quite normal that the booking of trains in mid-December is delayed a bit (this applies to both the CIS and big parts of Europe). Just wa...

Have they turned off the ATMs happily dispensing USD in the large international chain hotels in Tashkent and Samarkand? I could well imagine that they have an inofficial exception, since the new currency regulations are most probably not supposed to hit (wealthy) tourists and expats...

Thank you for the information! Please note though, that What's annoying is that it used to be the only way to book these tickets within Uzbekistan as physical UTY service centers were unable to book them. Is not entirely correct. The UTY counters are technically able to book all CIS trains and will ...

Hi, thanks a lot for your report! Do you have a link to your source? I searched Google News in Russian and did not find anything.

They have launched a website for the tourist e-Visa. The price will be displayed only after you registered (which is weird, but their terms and conditions do quite clearly state that the price is variable). I have not yet tried registering. Eligible nationalities include most of Europe and a few oth...

Well, south-western Pakistan is pretty dangerous with a serious risk of kidnapping (although quite a number of travellers go there, yes). Your best bet is probably going from Pakistan to Tajikistan through China via the Karakoram highway, this area of Pakistan is a lot safer (although no one can giv...

This sounds really weird but the website seemingly doesn’t like Australians. I booked a ticket for my girlfriend with New Zealand as the country of issue, worked fine. Couldn’t book any of the tickets I needed with my details, tried changing everything, finally worked when I changed my country of i...

Yes, as long as it's an "real" e-Ticket and not a coupon to pick up a paper ticket at a Russian train station. When booking online with RZD, just check if it indicates that you have to pick it up in Russia. Sometimes, rzd.ru is half Russian even if turned to English. In this picture, tickets for the...

The obvious way to book a ticket is the ticket counter. If you are passing through any other CIS country except Turkmenistan, you can buy tickets for Uzbekistan there as well at the counter, this might be a bit more expensive though. You can also book some Uzbek trains online with Russian Railways p...

Thanks for your report. Two notes: not sure if the free tea would be the case in other classes of travel It wouldn't. However, hot water is free in all classes and tea still very cheap (don't know exactly, certainly less than 0.5 USD) I'm still unclear whether it is illegal to drink in your cabin in...