Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan does not make it easy for most nationalities to visit. My Letter of Invitation and Visa cost AUD$650 and took a month to obtain (my passport had to be sent to Washington in the USA).   I’m guessing this must be easier for French and Germans, as they seem to make up the largest number […]

The Uzbek Som is a crazy currency.  At the time of writing, the official exchange rate was USD$1 = 3790 Som, which is not necessarily problematic, until you realise that the most commonly used note is 1000 Som.   And although Uzbekistan is quite a cheap country to travel in, even something that costs $5 suddenly

The road from Bukhara to Khiva was an interesting one.   For the first hour out of Bukhara, we were travelling through more farmland, once again playing with potholes and making slow progress.    Then, as soon as the green fields and ubiquitous civilization suddenly gave way to the Kyzylkum desert, the road magically transformed into a 4-lane,

Although the old city of Bukhara is full of Madrasahs, Minarets, Mosques and Mausoleums, it is also famous for its 3 surviving undercover bazaars, or trade domes – Taki-Sarrafon (dome of money changers), Taki-Telpakfurushon (dome of hat makers) and Taki-Zargaron (dome of jewelers).   Those who have been reading along for a while can imagine why

The drive from Samarkand to Bukhara is a seemingly never-ending display of agriculture and what would appear to be Russian commission houses (all identical).   Along both sides of the road, an irrigated, green region fans out to a width of a few kilometres, but look a little further and you can see the arid hills

After dire predictions about how strict the Uzbek border guards would be and long it would take us to get across the border, in the end only took 4.5 hours to cross from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan with the truck, the guards only interested in what medications we were carrying.  This meant we easily made it