The Stans 2026

 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...

 The observant reader, should such a thing exist, will notice that this entry is headed 'Tashkent'. Such a reader might be confused by this - surely we'd already been to Tashkent? Yes! And we are again. We flew to Tajikistan just to drive back here again. But first we were obliged to see the sights of Khujand, such as they are. I did ask my guide where all the million-plus visitors to Tajikistan go, as they're certainly not at what we understand to be tourist attractions. He explained firstly that the number of 'tourist' conflates that figure with other visitors, and these are mostly locals who hop back and forth over the border. Then of the people from further afield, some are Russians avoiding the war with Ukraine and pushing up local house prices. Finally, if there are any actual tourists left, these are still mostly Russian and they don't comer for education - they grill their own shashliks and drink vodka on 'gastronomy tours'. Our tour this mor...

 Well we'd been in Uzbekistan for quite a long time and this is meant to be a trip to the 'Five Stans'. So I expect you were wondering when we'd move on. The answer would have been 'today'. Admittedly this is a short excursion, only 3-4 days, so the implication is that there is less to see in Tajikistan, or at least that it has fewer tourist facilities.. That means today was a transit day. However we also spent time sightseeing. I thought those things were generally separate, and today I found out why. Doing both is too much. We left the hotel at 8am and went to the airport, which wasn't far and wasn't too big. All the usual hassles of international travel - multiple checks and scans, but we were pretty much through by 9am and our flight wasn't until 11.10, so there was a fair bit of sitting around and waiting, which is now comfortable in its familiarity. They have some decent shops in the airport, including one that sold a carry-on bag which was als...

 A fairly full day, seeing all of the usual and compulsory sights. Fortunately the hotel has a good buffet breakfast to set us up. I didn't take that many photos. Enough for this blog I suppose, so I'm not exactly on strike. But I am questioning whether you can tell one mosque from another. Anyway, let's get started. First stop was a memorial to the 1966 earthquake. This was obviously in the soviet era, so the memorial is very much in that style. Next we went to a large plaza with a number of buildings - a mosque, a madrasa (which is now taken over by shops selling embroidery, earrings, pictures), a library which has a very old Koran, and the Centre for Islamic Civilisation. The last of these is enormous and has a world record for the biggest something. But I'm not going to show you a picture because if you have read any of my other blogs you can imagine what it'll look like. So we'll move on to the Chorsu Bazaar. A large, old market with huge piles of fruit, ve...

 Another transit day. And although the actual transit didn't take that long, it shaped the whole day. So a bit boring, and you can skip this post if you'd like. The pleasant bit was that we had most of the day off - because being a tourist feels like a kind of job. Checkout wasn't until midday, so we had a late breakfast and mooched about. When we eventually checked out we left our bags and walked the few minutes to the Siab Bazaar. A pretty normal kind of market. There was tourist stuff and cheap clothes, whatever, around the edge. In the middle the stalls had stacks of tea, or nuts, fruit and vegetables, everything. I will mention there are tourist stalls absolutely everywhere, around and inside every potential tourist attraction, selling the same stuff. They are you to buy stuff but in a half-hearted way and don't pursue you. The currency is a hassle; $1 USD is worth 11,600 som. So every note is thousands of som and you have to read them carefully and count the zeros...

 I am writing early-ish on Thursday evening, sittin in Changi Airport. Our flight isn't until 2am, so typing is a good way to pass a little time. Perhaps I'll update this in a few hours, should something unxepectedly interesting happen. Flying this route is not very efficient - we have a similar issue in Istanbul, with two days and one night to fill before our next flight. Luckily the flight out of Istanbul is not so ridiculously late, but we still have to check out of the hotel and then fill another day. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. These blogs are generally abouit the recent past, not the near future. Though I must mention that Lynn noted this morning that there is more disruption in the middle east and flights through the UAE are delayed, so it was good that we made the change a few weeks ago. So today we got up and had the standard hotel buffet breakfast. Decent but not exceptional. Then we got organised and checked out. We could have got a slightly later checko...