Caravanistan

The Ducato is in use by several Russian police forces, at least in its earlier versions, so there might be some knowledge of it, from a mechanical point of view, at least in Russia. Mercedes is everyone's wet dream over in Central Asia and I've seen Sprinter vans being used as marshrutkas in Kyrgyzs...

My hope is that something picks up in the summer. There's a massive need for it from an economic point of view. I'm following things closely over in Italy, where the lockdown is perhaps at its hardest outside of China/Asia, and even there some productive activities haven't been stopped - the economy...

List of countries who citizens are nit being permitted entry to Tajikistan: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka, India, Finland, Italy, Britain, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Israel, Austria, Croatia, Switzerland, USA, Canada...

You can check flights, prices and schedules on websites such as Kayak, Skyscanner or Google flights. Since you'll be flying out of the US, the easiest choice would be Turkish Airlines. They fly from multiple US airports (definitely JFK, possibly O'Hare, Dulles and Miami) and they should have at leas...

Feels a bit open-ended, Jill, so it's hard to provide feedback. Don't really know how long a US citizen can stay in Central Asia, is it one month? or more? Also, do you want to travel fully overland or are you open to flights to hop from one part of the region to another? If you're interested in arc...

Bags are sometimes passed through X-ray at arrival, especially if they're large. Personally I never got checked but I travel with a small rucksack. Also bear in mind that a lot of the Highway is either near borders or in very close proximity to military installations, especially in Tajikistan. I got...

You can definitely go there, I did this summer and others did too. And Kashgar's Old Town, whilst perhaps not as spectacular as Khiva or Bukhara, is still worth seeing. However, it's undeniably a police state and a place where something terrible is happening. I've heard the words "cultural genocide"...

It mustn't have been pleasant: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50562584

New Panorama show on Xinjiang: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... ion-people

and the correlated article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-50551996

...in case anyone is interested, the boneyard is visible up close and personal: https://awtytravels.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/asia4.jpg https://awtytravels.com/2019/08/01/a-huck-finn-state-of-mind/ And it's quite a sight! Simply walk down the avenue from the airport, turn right at the first occasi...