Fri 3rd - Fri 10th August 2007 It was with much relief that after spending nine days in Tashkent I was now able to leave the city and head out and begin exploring the rest of Uzbekistan and in particularly, the old Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara. There is still some dispute as to which country Samarkand and Bukhara belong to. Due to Stalin and his gerrymandering of the old Soviet Central Asian borders the cities are in what is currently known as Uzbekistan. However, up until the late 1980’s the Soviet Republic of Tajikistan was still claiming that [View Full Entry]

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Wed 25th - Fri 3rd July The trip across the border from Khojand in Tajikistan into Uzbekistan went without a hitch. Everything was straight forward enough. Once in Uzbekistan, I immediately managed to get a taxi to the capital Tashkent without caring too much whether I was paying over the odds for the ride or not. I’d had enough of messing around haggling over transport costs so I just got in the first taxi I came to and accepted the driver’s first price. It was good to be in Uzbekistan finally, the very reason why I had come to Central Asia [View Full Entry]

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Thurs 18th - Tuesday 24th July 2007 I don't know what this blog says about me, the people I met, or just Tajikistan in general, but the most memorable things that happened to me in my remaining time in Tajikistan involved bus / taxi journeys and two journeys in particular. During the remaining seven days that I was in Tajikistan I visited the capital, Dushanbe, and a couple of other places but even a few weeks after visiting them when I was thinking about what to write for this blog, I found it almost impossible to remember exactly what I'd [View Full Entry]

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Thurs 12th July - Wed 17th July 2007 I'd been undecided (me? - never!) about whether to go to Tajikistan since planning this trip. It sounded like a wonderfully scenic country and would be the nearest I would probably get to being in Afghanistan without actually going to Afghanistan itself. On the other hand, I wasn't sure whether I had the time or inclination to go, especially as it seemed to be hard going and difficult to get around once in the country as there is supposedly very little public transport. Furthermore, the country was still supposedly subject to archaic rules [View Full Entry]

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Friday 6th July - Sunday 15th July 2007 After several days hanging around in Bishkek waiting for my Tajikistan visa to be processed, it was off to a town called Karakol which is located at the eastern end of Lake Issyk-Kul. Lake Issyk-Kul, which is set amongst the central Tian Shan mountain range is 170km long by 70 km across and is supposedly the second largest Alpine lake in the world after Lake Titicaca. During Soviet times, several health spa towns sprang up along its shores and the lake is reputed to be one of Kyrgyzstan's premier tourist destinations because of [View Full Entry]

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Friday 29 June - Thursday 5 July No one seemed to know which days or how often the bus went from Kashgar to Kyrgyzstan. Everyone was certain that it went on a Monday, which didn't really suit my timetable, but other than Monday, everyone had a different opinion, maybe Wednesday, or perhaps Thursday, or perhaps Monday Wednesday and Friday, who knows!! So it was off to the long distance bus station to try and find out. However, when I got there -Foreign Bus counter closed. A lady at the Chinese long distance bus counter [View Full Entry]

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Friday 22nd - Friday 28th June 2007 After spending three weeks traveling with Hee, it was strange to be traveling solo again. It was sad to see him go on his way, unfortunately in the opposite direction to where I was heading. With Hee gone, I'd now have to do everything myself again without the aid of someone who could speak a bit of Chinese. It would also mean that those long journeys through China and beyond would become very boring and tiresome again. From Urumqi to Kashgar was no exception. A 22 hour train journey in a train compartment where [View Full Entry]

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Sat 9th - Friday 22nd June 2007 After an over night train from Dunhuang during which time Hee gained an admirer which unfortunately for him was a middle aged Chinese man who couldn't leave him alone, we arrived in Urumqi the capital city of China's north western desert province, Xinjiang. Xinjiang has in the past been known as Eastern Turkestan but is now known as the Uighur Autonomous Region. Like Tibet, the majority of the population are not Han Chinese but Uighur who are more central Asian in out look than Chinese. Like the Tibetans, the Uighur have a completely [View Full Entry]

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Tues 5th to Friday 8th June 2007 Today Hee and myself were to leave the Tibetan part of China and head into the Chinese desert. We left Xiahe around 7am and headed to Lanzhou were we arrived around mid morning. There's not much to say about Lanzhou as we didn't stop very long. The town is on the edge of the desert and has quite a big muslim population and hence lots of muslim restaurants around the bus station. LP says that its the most polluted city in the world although it didn't strike me as being particularly any more [View Full Entry]

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Thursday 31st May to Tues 5th June 2007 The next place Hee and myself wanted to go to after Dege was to the Tibetan monastery town of Xiaha in Gansu province which is several days traveling from Dege with not much of interest to stop and see along the way. After discussions with people in the bus station (Thankfully Hee did all the discussions as he can speak a bit of Chinese and I can't) we were told that the best route would be back south to Ganzi again and then north to Yushu and then east to Xining and [View Full Entry]

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