The past few years I only had one dream destination: Uzbekistan. This was mostly inspired by the Registan square in Samarkand, but I was also genuinely interested in Central Asia as a region. The culture is such a special mixture of Middle Eastern, Russian and Asian influences. This year I finally went there. Since I wanted to visit more countries in Central Asia and it's quite complicated to do things on your own with public transportation and arranging everything with the visa, I joined a group trip to Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.
Turkmenistan
I started off in Turkmenistan. You should know that this is a fairly isolated country with a very strong government. The country is sometimes compared to North Korea and I can understand why. There is a lot of burocracy, unwritten rules you need to follow and for example Facebook and Whatsapp are blocked by the government. On the first day I joined a guided tour in Ashgabat. In the morning we visited the opening of the horse-racing season. When we entered the stadium things were a bit chaotic and suddenly we were told to go outside again and wait. We were taken to another part of the stadium and suddenly we were made guests of honor. This meant that the people who were already sitting on the front row were forced to leave their seats, we got free tea and Turkmen snacks and a tv crew of the national television came to film us. So after making my debut on Serbian national television in 2009 I now made my debut on Turkmen national television too.
In the afternoon we visited the highlights of the city and stumbled on a wedding photo session in the park. I got talking to the brother of the groom for a while and it turned out that he was working for a Dutch company and often visited the Netherlands. He explained a thing or two about traditional Turkmen weddings. It was a nice experience.
Uzbekistan
The next day we flew to the north of Turkmenistan to visit some ruins and drove to Uzbekistan. We visited the fortified old town of Khiva (where the picture of me below was taken) and then moved on to Bukhara. In Bukhara I met up with Akmal: a local who I found on Couchsurfing and whom I asked to meet up. It was nice to talk to a local because I had some questions about Uzbek society and culture. We were joined for dinner by an Argentinean man living in Austria who was on his way from his home town to Tashkent by bicycle. Obviously he had some interesting stories to share as well. I did feel a bit sorry for him, having to cycle hundreds of kilometers through the desert with temperatures of up to 40 degrees Celsius...
After having Bukhara the next stop was Samarkand. These two cities were the main cities I wanted to visit in Central Asia and they didn't disappoint. Unfortunately I wasn't able to make a picture of the Registan square without people, but even with people it looks amazing:
Or maybe "magnificient" is the more appropriate word.
After a day in Samarkand we went to Tashkent where I met my friend Zarina, who could answer my last remaining questions about Uzbekistan. So now I know everything about the official and the unofficial exchange rates, how the country deals with so many different population groups (did you know that not Uzbek or Russian but Tajik is the most spoken language in some Uzbek cities?) and why the national dish plov is supposed to be cooked by men even though the gender roles in Uzbekistan are quite traditional. I learned quite a lot of new things during this trip!
Kyrgyzstan
After visiting the nature park Aksu Zhabagly in Kazakhstan we went to Kyrgyzstan for a week. We started in Bishkek, which is certainly in my top 3 of most unattractive capital cities I visited (together with La Paz and Podgorica). Luckily I could meet up with my Kyrgyz friend Meerim the first time I was there and go on a crazy souvenir hunt the second time I was there, so I wasn't bored.
Another excursion I was looking forward to in Kyrgyzstan was the excursion to another nature park in the mountains - in case you didn't know yet: Kyrgyzstan is a country with very high mountains of up to nearly 7500 meters and the lowest point in Kyrgyzstan (435m above sea level) is still higher than the highest "peak" in the Netherlands - that involved sleeping in a yurt: a traditional tent in which the nomads used to sleep. Some people still live in yurts even today. After a long and slow drive over dirt roads we arrived at our camp. Unfortunately just after we arrived it started raining heavily, so we couldn't really explore the beautiful nature that surrounded us in the manner we would have liked to explore it. It was almost October already, so also the temperature was getting lower. We were told that it could be up to -13 degrees at night. And indeed it was quite cold at night. Luckily we had two thick blankets per person: more than enough to keep the body warm at night.
After a night that was still reasonably comfortable we could head to Karakol: the biggest city around the Issyk-Kul lake. Karakol itself is not the most beautiful town. It's built in typical Soviet style and there is not much to see or do. The area around it is pretty cool though. Lake Issyk-Kul for example is the second-highest big lake (only Lake Titicaca, which I visited in 2013, is higher) at an altitude of 1600 meters. The most beautiful part is the nature. On our second day in Karakol we rented an army truck (with driver of course) to go deep into the mountains for a walk. Just look at the amazing beauty of the nature over there:
Kazakhstan
We were going to fly back home from Almaty so in the end we spent two more days in Kazakhstan. I, as a true Dutch speed skating on ice-lover, really wanted to visit Medeo: an ice rink in the mountains close to Almaty where the circumstances are so unique that more than 100 world records were broken here. So even though I was very tired from the long trip I caught a local bus and went to Medeo on my own. When I arrived back at the hotel and wanted to rest, I got a message from my Interpals-friend Dana who wanted to meet up. I was tired, but in the end she convinced me to visit a viewing point close to the city. The view there was nice, but unfortunately on the way back - on the last thing I did during this trip - my camera fell out of my pocket in the taxi. I noticed this immediately, but the taxi was already gone. Due to the burocracy of Kazakh police (I was disappointed to see that apparently Kazakhstan is nothing more than a truly ex-Soviet state as well) I couldn't file a report and therefore I will never get my photos back. The photos you saw above are the ones I made with my phone and a few that I got from somebody who was in the group with me (thanks Serge!).
Obviously this was not the best way to end my trip through Central Asia, but I do look back at the trip with a satisfied feeling.
So now it's time to start planning the next trip. :)
