Travel Report: Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan - Tajikistan - Kyrgyzstan - Kazakhstan

[alexm456]

Hello everyone

Isolation has finally given me the time to write up my trip from August last year, and to finally sort through all the photos!

I started in Turkmenistan, flying into Ashgabat and then driving up to Darvaza and Konye Urgench. From the Uzbek border I went to Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand by train. Then a detour into Tajikistan to Dushanbe and then a five day trip around the Pamir Highway ended in Osh. A few days in Osh, a trip to Karakol and to Bishkek. Before ending in Kazakhstan in Almaty.

It was an amazing trip, and I heavily relied on the information available on Carvanistan so I'd be more than happy to answer questions that anyone may have.

If you want to read in more detail I have posted my trip thoughts and photos here: https://instamanse.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

[steven]

And isolation has given me the time to actually read your blog. Good to see you got the whole package, including a bit of frustration! It wouldn't be a real Central Asia trip without it, imo

Happy you enjoyed it, and that we could play a little part in it as well. Do come back, you have only scratched the surface!

[StephParis]

Nice report, I read it entirely
It reminds me a lot of good souvenirs. I'm really glad to know there is a train going from Khiva to Bukhara. Some years ago I hit this road through the desert in a over packed and fucking hot mini van, with the privilege of spending one night in some sort of restaurant on the road. I never understood why we had to stop there. I was really angry at that moment, now I'm laughing.
This is Central Asia, I hope you'll go back !

[Aish_aish_baby]

Hi everyone, I am planning to visit Central Asia in September with my partner. I just wanted a general opinion on the feasibility of the trip and what is recommended considering the global COVID-19 situation- aka not just VISA entry but also the general ethics of where to visit given the pandemic and most simple route to avoid having to quarantine in any country. We are from the UK and only one of us will be double vaccinated (I was only offered the vaccine this week (Moderna) and will have to wait 8 weeks but I contracted COVID only a month ago if that helps for any alternative to not being double vaccinated). We were thinking of flying into Tashkent and then moving to Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan (depending on simplicity of the route) and ending in Almaty. I really love this website and have read many of your pages throughout lockdown when I have been missing travelling. The pages are great information sources about individual travel to each country and breakdowns of VISAs but I suppose I am just posting this to find a more complete picture of what kind of route someone could recommend for travelling around Central Asia as we have never been to this region before. Any advice about which countries are the easiest to travel through/the most ethical/the top sights to be seen would be really really appreciated! We were planning to visit in 2020 and I really hope we will be able to make this year! Thank you for helping a big newbie and thank you for creating this website!

[steven]

Hi Aish,

in a nutshell, travel remains very complicated in the region. You can travel to UZ, KG and TAJ. Kazakhstan is fuzzy to me, I am not sure if you could get a visa. You will need PCR tests whenever crossing a border, vaccination card doesn't count for much.

Understand that the Kyrgyz-Tajik borders remain closed, so if you are looking at doing the Pamir Highway, know that you have to turn back the whole way to Dushanbe.

The easiest would be flying to Tashkent, do a tour of UZbekistan and then move towards Kyrgyzstan, flying out from Bishkek (or vice versa). That's feasible.

The most ethical? Not sure. They are all dictatorships, they all have a lot of coronavirus and little safety measures, all quite similar in that respect.

Top sights? That's too much to discuss in a forum post, I will refer you to the website there, it's as you noticed, pretty extensive.