Caravanistan

Hi all,

I am aware that this may sound like a silly retorical question, but when travelling through Uzbek-Tajik-Kyrg-Kazakh, would you say taking a packpack instead of a suitcase is a must (or way more convenient) to travel around?

Reason I am asking, is because we will mostly travel from city to city with public transport, and personally I prefer taking a suitcase during travels instead of a backpack (I think its more conventient, as long as the pavements are okay). The tricky thing is that that we will also be doing some trekking (fan mountains, song-kul,...), but not sure yet if we will be doing multiple-day trekking, or some one-day treks. For multipled-day treks, a backpack is a must as you want to bring your gear with you en route. For one-day treks, I would say you can just leave your suitcase at your accomodation as you will come back there again.

When it comes tomultiple-day trekking, would you say we need to bring our own tent, sleeping bag and cooking gear during our whole trip, or can we buy/rent such things in places like Penjikent (fan mountains) just before starting your trek? Are there also options in Fan Mountains to stay overnight in (permanent) camps?

Thanks so much!

In Fan mountains, there are no places to stay overnight, it will be camping. But you can travel with your suitcase if you only want to do dayhikes, there is no issue.

You can rent camping gear in Tajikistan, ask our partners there for instance. Same for Kyrgyzstan, especially in Bishkek and Karakol no problem and probably in Kochkor also no problem.

The issue of the big backpack I guess depends on you: perhaps one of you can take a backpack and the othere the suitcase? Then you can still stuff all your things in 1 pack and have 1 person carry a light daypack and the other the big backpack.

Hi Stephen, thanks again for answering. I was thinking of taking one suitcase and one backpack, and taking the latter one with us while doing trekking. This should especially work OK when doing day hikes.

Two problems though if we would do 2/3-day trekking instead of day hikes: (1) if we decide to trek on route from A to B, without returning to A, we have to bring all our luggage with us, and this does not work with a suitcase. (2) If we DO return to our starting point A, we have to leave our suitcase at point A while trekking, so it's unattended for a couple of days (and it might 'dissapear' in those days). Any thoughts on this?

2. My wife also prefers a suitcase. We tend to leave it wherever we are staying for a few days if we intend to return. Nothing has ever gone missing.

3. You can also get your luggage sent. This requires an extra leap of faith and preferably someone who speaks a good amount of English so you can communicate your wishes, but as you travel on public transport throughout the region, you see that lots of packages get delivered on the marshrutka or shared taxi. So it's an option if you find the right person.

Thank you so much Stephen!