Well, this was the trip that we were never sure would actually happen. The idea started way back 3 years ago when we saw an advertisement for a Silk Road tour beginning in China, and decided to book it for March 2020.
Then COVID broke out in China, and they re-routed the tour through Korea. A month later, the world shut down, and the tour was cancelled, though they gave us a voucher.
We couldn’t get out of the country in 2020 or early 2021, but they started advertising a limited number of tours for 2022 and the Silk Road trip was back up with a few tweaks. We wouldn’t get to Khiva, which was a bummer, and the tour was one day shorter, but they had to claw back a bit of the money that the tour company had already spent back in 2020, so you could understand the rationale.
We booked for the last possible date in 2022, in the hope that the world would have opened up enough to travel by them, and luckily that’s what happened. Others in our tour group who had booked earlier dates all got bumped later on to ours, so we had the required number of bookings for the tour to go ahead. Turned out, our tour guides said, that it was the first and only tour group from Australia this year. All of the group were seasoned travelers, so we weren’t unnerved at navigating remote borders in a post-COVID environment.
And it turned out to be a great experience. All of the tour group I talked to would have been happy to pay an extra few hundred dollars and spend an extra day to get to Khiva, but we all felt that it had lived up to its billing.
Whilst it was really billed as a ‘Best of the Stans’ experience, we saw enough of the Silk Road cities and history to satisfy our interest in that field. The tour was surprising for its value, with all flights, accommodation, transfers, and two meals a day included. The accommodation exceeded our expectations, and the buses, tour guides and drivers were experienced and good. We often commented that we didn’t know how they did it for the price, and if every Trip-A-Deal tour is this good a value, we’ll be signing up for more. Probably with so few tourists, nobody was making much out of us. Normal story with COVID – some you win and some you lose.
A word about the infrastructure. Now we, like most tourists, stayed in the larger and more touristy towns and cities, but the infrastructure was better than we were led to believe, and certainly better that the warnings on the Australian government Smartraveller web site. Not everywhere had automatic means of payment (tapping) and sometimes you needed local cash, but the ability to exchange money without being ripped off, and to withdraw local money at ATMs was everywhere. We were led to believe that you wouldn’t find ATMs (wrong), and that US dollars would be the accepted form of cash in a couple of the countries (well, they maybe would have accepted them, but local cash was always the go). Consequently we had bought large amounts of US dollars that we never used, and never looked like needing.
Food and essentials were cheap, and food at the hotels, cafes and restaurants was excellent. No health or hygiene issues, apart from needing to carry hand sanitiser like all experienced travelers do. Toilets were a mixture of western and squat, and some found the squat toilets a bit hard to adjust to, but chemist and medical facilities were everywhere. Perhaps being female and having limited mobility would be an issue with the squats, and make the tour a bit awkward, but that was as bad as it got.
Wifi was in every accommodation, and almost invariably good quality. Occasionally it was only accessible from the lobby, but it was always available. Whilst we didn’t have local SIM cards, the guides were always in range of a signal if that was required.
There are occasional border skirmishes between some of the countries, but our tour didn’t go near any hotspots. Apart from ever present security near borders, palaces, government offices and residences, there were no obvious signs of the military, guns or tanks. All the locals were helpful and friendly, even if they couldn’t speak any English. The most common conversation went “Where are you from?” “Australia” “Oooooh!”. Lots of the locals were excited to have visitors, and desperately wanted to practise their English.
In short, it’s a part of the world that relatively few visit, and whilst it wouldn’t be the ideal destination for a first-off traveler, there’s absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t be on your list if you want to go somewhere a bit more exotic that Paris, London and New York.
So, in the early hours of this morning we boarded our Airbus A350 at the ever efficient Singapore airport, and headed off for Brisbane. Arrived on time, caught the train to Landsborough, and the bus to the door. Our usual feeling of nice to be home, but we’d rather still be away.