Walking up a back street in Dushanbe on the way to the Hostel I came across these girls playing “elastics“. It made my heart absolutely sing to watch them 🙂 I have such fond memories of playing this game back in primary school – we were totally obsessed with it! It seems things have…
After several days of bush camping, we rolled into Dushanbe – the capital of Tajikistan. To be honest, after wandering and exploring for 2 days, there doesn’t seem to be much to Dushanbe, it’s more like a very large town than a capital city. Everywhere you look in Tajikistan, you see President Emomali Rahmon looking…
Although we didn’t get to bed until after 1am in Khorog, we were up early the next morning to head off for another long day of driving. It was going to take 2 days to get to Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, and given the roads we had driven on until now – no doubt…
Late start this morning after a night that was still below zero, but not quite as cold the night before. Was lovely to be able to eat breakfast in the sunshine and enjoy the view 😊 Then, with 20 sets of fingers and toes crossed, we headed back up the road to see if we…
The way I’m traveling at the minute is not my typical style. Usually I spend a fair amount of time in a place before moving onto the next, and I rarely have a set schedule for doing so – if I like a place, I’ll stay longer. If I don’t like a place, then I’ll…
Leaving Bishkek for the last time, we had 2 long drive days to the Tajikistan border via Osh. Aigol from the Green Apple hostel wished us luck with a juniper burning ceremony, and off we headed. Kyrgyzstan is most definitely a land of mountains – with over 90% of the country actually classified as such. …
The first day in Bishkek, a group of us went on a walking tour with the amazing Aigol from the Green Apple Hostel to learn a little about the city. I mentioned to her that I was really interested in the traditional food of the countries I visit and asked her to let me know…
An update … After 5 days, James did eventually get out of the mud in Kazakhstan with the help of the firemen, the army and this surprisingly small-looking, but obviously bad-ass truck! Apparently it had an anchor to keep it stable while it pulled the truck out… Welcome back James!
While we were waiting for James to un-stick the truck from the Tamgaly petroglyph mud with the help of his fireman and Army friends, we hired a mini-van and headed off from Bishkek for a 3-day tour around Issyk Kul – the second largest mountain lake in the world (behind Lake Titicaca). It turned out…
One of the days we had in Bishkek we decided to head out to the nearby Ala-Archa National Park for some hiking. Archa means “many groups of Juniper trees” of which there are 4 types within the park. It is only 40km away and it was absolutely perfect weather to enjoy the scenery and get…