The Stans 2026

 Good evening from Almaty International Airport (ALA). We've quite liked Almaty. To be honest, that might be partly because it's quite modern and this makes it much more like the cities we're used to. Though the traffic and car horns could be improved.  This is despite it still having an authoritarian regime - the lack of freedom etc is not apparent at a tourist level. It has been a pretty quiet day with little to report, so you might want to skip over today. We (Lynn) spent the morning organising and re-packing for the flights home. Eventually we checked out and wandered about the town for as long as we could. Lynn had looked forward to visiting the Marks & Spencer but was very disappointed with the contents, so we walked up the pedestrian mall and around the town generally.     When we ran out of things to do we read in the hotel until we were picked up and taken to the airport where, as already explained, I am writing this. Our flight out on Air Astana, KC 909...

 I realised yesterday that I have listed the major events each day, but not the little things that really make up the days. If I did that the entries would be even longer than they are now. But it may be worth pointing out some things just once… Money Each country has its own currency. Several of them are called the Som but they all have different exchange rates – and Turkmenistan has a black market rate which is much better than the official rate. The notes are not easily available elsewhere, so we’ve tended to change a bit shortly after arriving. It’s hard to know how much you’ll need. Restaurants have been fairly cheap, often you can get a good meal for the equivalent of $10. The shops are also cheap, though brand names we know can me similar to prices at home. Some places accept credit cards. It tends to align with the wealth of the country, so credit card facilities are common in Kazakhstan and to a lesser extent Uzbekistan. If a number of us have gone out in a group...

 I was pleased to discover yesterday's belief that there's not much to see in Almaty was wrong; we had a very pleasant day today. I am also coming to like Almaty. It has far too many cars - traffic is slow everywhere and cars frequently double park which slows it even more. But in the city centre, where we are staying, there are many crumbling old soviet apartment blocks and there are now shops with neon signs in their entries, so it is developing an interesting character. There are many coffee shops and beyond the area we're in are lots of shiny new developments. We started the day going to the Medeu cable car, up a long valley. Near the cable car station is a huge icerink (currently dry, as it's too warm) which was a high altitude eastern bloc training camp, and there are ski jumps on another hill. It skimmed the treetops, kind of slowly, for 4.5 km up to the Shymbulak ski resort, which of course had no snow at this time of year. Then we took another two cable cars an...