A final vlog from us both covering highlights, challenges and surprises. Email subscribers can click https://vimeo.com/231868165 to watch. A picture of our (rough) final route below the video.
Another early start to catch a flight up to Astana. With the train taking 20 hours and time being short as we draw near the end we’d opted for the 90 minute flight. From the taxi as we approached the airport we could see a bunch of aircraft that literally look parked in someone’s backyard. … More Architecture, World Expo & International DJs – Astana
Our original idea was to take a night train from Almaty to Astana, but just before we left NZ we read more about Turkistan and changed our plans. From the 16th to 18th centuries Turkistan was the capital of the Kazakh khans. It is home to the mausoleum of Turkic Muslim holy man, Kozha Akhmed … More Day tripping to Turkistan
Our night train to Shymkent left at just gone 10pm. The people at the hostel told us to get there 2 hours before and that had been the drill in Uzbekistan, but after collecting our bags from the hostel and getting a taxi there it turned out we could have arrived 30 minutes before and … More Sizzling Shymkent
As transport leaves when full we’d been told to leave our Bishkek hostel at 8am for the Almaty (Kazakhstan) minibus to ensure we got seats and that it would likely go by 9:30. We didn’t quite buy into that so went a little later. The station was a much more civilised affair this time. We … More Apples are from Kazakhstan – Almaty
Our driver was 10 minutes early, which was a pleasant surprise as usually our drivers are 10 minutes late. He was a young guy, as well groomed as his car, which we figured by the tortuously slow speed we headed off down the gravel roads, was his pride and joy. We tried to relax and … More Back to the city – Bishkek
The driver who brought us to Kazarman swung by before dinner and we did a deal with him to take us to Song-Kul Lake the next morning. Our routine in the Pamirs had been to breakfast at 7:30 and leave at 8, so that has become our default but he suggested 7, which was fine … More Yurt living at Song-Kul Lake
When we weren’t eating dinner and talking to the 3 other guests, we spent the evening in Arslanbob doing some planning, as we hadn’t got anything more than a very rough idea of how we are going to get to Bishkek from Arslanbob and we couldn’t put off any longer getting a plan. The guidebook … More In the middle of nowhere – Kazarman
It’s ambitious to not long have changed country and then attempt to take 3 buses (4 if you count the marshrutka we took to the bus station) to get to somewhere in the country, but with a few words of Kyrgyz and Russian (Emma) and the village we were heading to being a common part … More Walnut trees and waterfalls – Arslanbob
As much as anything Osh is a functional stop to give us chance to regather before we head off on the next leg – we need a couple of consecutive hot showers to steam the dust off, good internet so we can get some of the videos uploaded, to do the laundry that has been … More Osh – civilisation!
Marie & Emma's Travel Journal 