March/April/May in Europe and Central Asia - Part I (Lots of photos!)

Jimbojack · May 25, 2010

This spring I finally got a chance to go to Central Asia. Here is what my trip looked like:

Trip_Map_Central_Eastern_Europe_&_Russia_Map_2010.jpg

Starting in Los Angeles, I flew to Amsterdam where I had a day stopover and continued by flying to Vienna. In Vienna, I met my friend Klaus, and traveled with him to Prague, Kutna Hora and Bratislava. We also spent about a week in Vienna.

From Vienna Klaus and I flew through Berlin to St. Petersburg. There we met my friend Gregory and spent a few days in St. Petersburg, went to Moscow and Pereslavl-Zalessky for a few days and came back to St. Petersburg for a few more days. We then went on a 4,000 kilometer train ride to Astana, in Kazakhstan

From St. Petersburg we went by train to Astana, the Kazakh capital. There we met another friend, Christian, and continued to Almaty. From Almaty we went for a few days to Kyrgyzstan, going to Bishkek and lake Issyk-Kol. (We left 2 days before the revolution!) From there we went back to Almaty to pick up some visas and continued by train to Shymkent, then crossed the border into Uzbekistan and went to Tashkent where we met another friend, Vladimir. Then we went to Samarkand, Buhara and Khiva. From Khiva my friends left to go back home, except for Klaus, who came with me back to Bukhara and to Termiz.

I was able to cross the Soviet "Friendship Bridge" into Afghanistan (I got my Afghani Visa in Almaty). I went to Mazar-e-Sharif and Balkh for a couple of days. That part of Afghanistan is very safe (by Afghani standards), the Afghans that I met were some of the friendliest people I have ever encountered anywhere!

I went back across the friendship bridge to Termiz, from there Klaus and I went back to Samarkand and crossed the border into Tajikistan to visit the Fan Mountains. Then we went back to Samarkand and took a train to Tashkent to catch our flight from Tashkent to Kiev through Riga. That however didn't happen since the Riga airport was closed because of the Icelandic Volcano eruption, so after 2 days of being stranded in Tashkent we flew to Istanbul instead. Klaus continued his trip by flying to Kiev, I spent a couple of days in Istanbul and flew to Chisinau (Moldova)

From Moldova, I went across Trans-Dniester to Kiev and met Klaus again. After a couple of days we took and overnight train to Lviv, then crossed the border into Poland and went to Cracow. From Cracow Klaus went back home to Vienna and I continued by going to Lodz. Then I went to Plock, Ciechocinek and Torun before flying back home to California from Warsaw through Amsterdam.

Unfortunately I did not go to Turkmenistan as I originally planned, due to the extremely strict visa policies 2 of my friends were not able to get a visa in time (due to their nationality). I'll come back to Central Asia and visit the country in the future when I'll be traveling in Iran.

Here is the first part of the overview of my trip. It includes a few photos from each of these countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan

Austria

Czech republic

Slovakia

Russia

Kazakhstan

Kyrgyzstan

Uzbekistan

To be continued in part II...

Eventually I will post separate pages for each individual country along with descriptions, my observations and the history of the region.

More information about the trip can be found on my website:
Jimbojack - Europe & Central Asia

nightspidy · May 25, 2010

Beautiful & descriptive photos (as always!). I would love to travel like this, but don't know where I would even begin to start planning. Thanks for sharing.