Memorable Central Asia 5 Stans Exploration with Silk Road Treasure Tours

To celebrate our retirements, we signed up for a Silk Road Treasure Tours journey to Central Asia to visit Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.   We’d always hoped to see Central Asia, which figures importantly in human civilization and history.  While the region was written up recently in the New York Times, it is still off the beaten path and relatively unexplored by tourists.   The architecture is incredible, including ancient walled cities like Bukhara and Khiva, Registan Square in Samarkand of Uzbekistan, the ruins of ancient Merv of Turkmenistan, and the historic mosques and minarets with their intricate decorative tile work.  In the markets, we saw handcrafted rugs, ceramics, woodwork, and metalwork done in front of us by local craftsmen and weavers.  While we’d vowed not to bring back more stuff, we ended up buying a beautiful Uzbek rug in Bukhara that now graces our dining room.  The tour was very well put together.  We saw each of the countries of Central Asia, but spent most of our time in Uzbekistan, which has many of the region’s best sights.  We found the people across the region uniformly open and welcoming.  The region has stayed out of the Middle East conflicts and welcomes Americans and other foreigners.   All of the governments value tourism, are committed to preserving public order, and are careful to safeguard travelers.  The Central Asia travel by car, train, and plane organized by Silk Road Treasure Tours was smooth.  The hotels were very comfortable, if not elegant.  Our tour guides were uniformly knowledgeable and capable, and spoke excellent English.  They and the others in our travel group were fun to be around and travel with, making for a memorable post-retirement experience.

Kara and Warren.