Best Central Asia Tour Experiences with Silk Road Treasure Tours
How do we (my husband and I) describe our 5-country (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan) month-long trip designed by Zulya Rajabova and her team at Silk Road Treasure Tours, without using so many superlatives you’d think we were making things up? We don’t know how, so all we’ll say is – it was a fantastic trip, one we’ll be thinking about for a long time. Our trip was well-planned: the logistics worked well, the sites were well chosen and our guides, we had one for each country, were either excellent or very good. As promised, they were flexible – they suggested itinerary changes where appropriate and responded to our requests if we wanted something changed. We learned a lot from them and enjoyed their company.
Silk Road Treasures made us feel like we were the only travelers they were working with. They kept in touch (we were part of a “What’s App” chat which included Zulya and our guides) and provided us with many wonderful experiences, one of which was a “wow” experience, but others could easily have been such. Some examples: in Uzbekistan we visited a family’s home, enjoyed their gracious hospitality and watched their children and eventually, the adults dance; a visit to a home where suzanis (fabric, usually silk, hand-embroidered with silk thread) were made and a factory/shop where women made plush velvet garments embroidered with gold thread; at a beautiful tea house in Tajikistan we dined on Qurotob (the national dish made of a flaky bread, yogurt, cheese and vegetables which was made in front of us) as a musician serenaded us with a tanbur (a string instrument); in Kyrgyzstan we watched (it was breath-taking) eagles hunt and men on magnificent horses play polo-like games; in Kazakhstan we marveled at the first floor of the newly-opened art museum, which had local art and wonderful explanations about it.
We learned about civilizations long gone – the Ancient Town of Panjakent (Tajikistan), the ruins at Merv (Turkmenistan), the Ashgabat National History Museum (Turkmenistan) and of course, life along the Silk Road. In the two weeks we spent in Uzbekistan: the minarets in Kiva, Samarkand’s Registan (public square and madrassahs) and Shah-i-Zinda funerary complex and the synagogues of Bukhara stood out. And – the handicrafts and the people who made them were a joy to see and to meet. It was a trip we’ll remember! We saw few American tourists. I think this is because Americans don’t know about Central Asia and they think it’s not safe. In fact, the opposite is true, we never worried about our safety. Turkmenistan is a strange country, but not as unusual as I thought it would be. Ashgabat, the largest city is a strange place. At night it’s lit up like Las Vegas, the buildings and the cars are white and very clean. There are plain-clothed police on many, if not all the street corners. And finally, we saw magnificent, snow-covered mountains in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. We had no idea these countries are trekking meccas!
Tore – Treasures of the 5 Central Stans
