Forewarning! Wordy blog ahead (next will be more fun)!
I'll do something different this time and do this blog as informational, and the next couple will be more pictures and descriptions.
1st I have to say I was bad for this trip and did a couple of things I usually don't do:
1. I didn't read up too much about the places we were going. Luckily, I had a travel mate in the group that had done his research, so he was pretty much my guide. Nevertheless, Central Asia has a very interesting history and I felt it would have enhanced my experience on understanding if I had done a bit more research. Sometimes after the fact I would do the "oooooh! That explains it!" But of course it's better to know and understand when you are there. Usually I'm a lot better about that and will be better about it next time.
2. Also usually I sort through my pictures as I am going along (learned the hard way with this one from previous long trips), but again, was a bit lazy and spent 09328492309342 hours going through them after the trip, which took foooooooorrrrrrrreeeeeeevvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeer. Note to self, don't do that again!!! I had almost 3000 (hehe), but managed to narrow down each segment to less than a couple of hundred. Phew!
Okay, so who, what, when, where, why? :-)
Loooooooooooooooooooooooong story short, last year I had a travel friend mention he was going to do the Stan's, and I thought, "the Stan's? Now THAT is something interesting and different, and oddly close to Dubai (a couple of hours)." But then after I expressed interest, he said, "it's an overlanding trip." And my heart fell... camping? I have ZERO experience camping and have always made a point of saying "NYET, not for me." Well, on second thought, I did do it in Tanzania when I did Mt. Kilimanjaro, but pretty much the porters carried and did everything for you. So of course that was my last memory so then after my first "NYET" reaction, I thought about it some more and then thought, "hey, it's not so bad." After some silly questions to my travel friend later about camping, I thought it was time to get out of my Dubai comfort zone and just do it. So late last year I signed up through MAdventures to do Central Asia - Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Phew! Of course in the meantime my friend had to cancel, but that's fine - there were still about 20 other people in the group. As usual, I planned it just at the tail end of Ramadan (and BTW, can I just say how much I looooooooooooooove Ramadan!! It's the BEST time of the year! Okay, fine, so it is annoying sometimes that you can't eat or drink in public, but to work a 6-hour day instead of 9 (and still get the same full pay) is The.Best.Thing.EVER!!!!) and over Eid (save those vacay days) - this is last 2 weeks in July and first 2 weeks in August - a month!!! Yayyyy working and living in Dubai!!! The other super fortunate thing is that I have a friend that has some camping gear AND is doing this mega camping trip next year, so he lent me a ton of stuff and he ended up buying the tent and sleeping met for his use, and then I conveniently "borrowed it."
So here is some basic info:
Company: MAdventures Travel (UK), UK to Oz trip (6 months)
Where I went: I joined them for a month of 6 in Yerevan, Armenia and left them in Dushabe, Tajikistan.
Place we went:
-Armenia: Yerevan,Khor Virap Monastery, Noravank, Selim Pass to Selim Caravanserai. Camp at Lake Sevan. Debed Canyon, Haghpat Monastery.
-Georgia: Tbilisi, drive along the Georgian Military Highway. Ananuri fortress/church. Jvaru Pass.Camp in Kazbegi.
-Azerbaijan: Seki, mud valcanoes, Baku
-Turkmenistan: Kow Ata, Ashgabat, darvaza gas Craters in Karakum
-Uzbekistan: Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand
-Tajikistan: Drive via Kojand to Istaravshan, drive via Fan Mountains over Shakhristan Pass. Camp and a couple of days at Lake Iskanderkul, Dushanbe.
People: 20 or so of us. Ages: 15 (with parents), 20y/o, 2 x 21y/o (a couple), 24y/o, ME at... umm... let's just say 30's, 4 x mid-40's (2 as a newly formed Overland couple! 1 the leader, and 1 a weirdo), 1 x 50 y/o, a few in their mid to upper 50's, and the rest 60 y/o and up. Granted, this trip is "UK to Oz" so to take 6 months off you either have to be retired or between jobs. I just was the only one that had an active job and got a paycheck when away, ha! We had a large range of professions (or former professions), from an astrophysicist to accountant to ambulance truck driver to a few teachers. Besides myself, there was an American family (but the mom was from New Zealand and the daughter held both passports), 2 Canadians, 1 Australian, and the rest were from UK (including Falkland Islands!).
Means of Transport: A fully equipped Overland Truck, which pretty much means it is set for us to pull up anywhere and set up camp and cook meals. Also once we took a ferry across the Caspian Sea (yes, the truck came with us!). The trip was all by land.
Weather: HOT HOT HOT. Mostly in the 30's C, NO rain, and more or less HOT dry heat. A few cool evenings though!
Group Dynamics: Overall, I would have to say, very nice! Some fairly well traveled, and some not so much. With any group there is always an odd one out, we had 2. If anything, they provide hours of conversation because of the weirdness or oddness, but besides them too (who were nice, just odd), everyone else I got along with. I found a clique and stuck with them (hahah, 60 y/o and up), who were nice, laid back people. Got great ideas for future travel trips and learned all about the UK retirement, ha ha. Being that I was the only one in my 30's, the "younger" were .... I have to say a bit young for me. So that left me with the older peeps, which of course were more fun and interesting anyway :-)
Accommodations: It really ended up being 50% bush camping and 50% hostels/hotels. We had quite the range of accommodations. 2 in particular with quite dumpy (Asgabat, Turkmenistan and Dushanbe, Tajikistan), the rest were fairly nice! The hostels in Yerevan, Armenia and Tbilisi, Georgia were super clean and nice. The best were in Uzbekistan. After the group left, I stayed in an awesome hotel in Dushanbe (Atlas B&B).
Cooking/food: Soo when we were bush camping, they divided the truck into "cooking groups" of 2. Fortunately, I only got to cook once, phew! The meals were surprisingly good! Everyone chipped in and helped, which was nice and we usually did our food shopping at local markets/shops. Sometimes we had things like pesto pasta and spaghetti (that was my meal) and other times curry, chicken with veggies, bean dishes., etc. The food in the countries was also good, I had my share of borscht (not the same as my mom's). Pretty much every country had a variation of kebab's (Turkish and Mongol influence) and dumplings. It was interesting how the dumplings changed shape and form as we went, but I have to admit I was a bit dumpling'd out at the end. Peaches and watermelon's were in season, so I ate a TON of those, probably never have had so much in my life in such a short time! Will show snaps of other local foods with the next blogs.
Logistics: Visas. Besides paying for the trip and getting some camping gear, this was probably the most "difficult" part of the trip. Well, it wasn't so so bad. I ended up going through The Visa Machine out of the UK because Dubai doesn't have any of these embassies. So it would be a matter of sending my passport back and forth, OR just having the visa company do it all. Convenient, but it costed me a fortune! Armenia and Georgia were visa upon arrival, the others I needed a visa (this is with USA passport). Turkmenistan needed a Letter of Invitation, which was an additional expense and cost. Filling out the paperwork took forever because they are soo specific and particular ("must have capital letters, must have black ink"). And these countries, if it is the slightest incorrect thing, they can easily deny everything. So it just took fooooooooooorever to fill it out. I gave it ample time to get the visas, they said around 4-5, I gave it 6 weeks but it ended up coming down to the wire (and I had to be a bit demanding) because I needed it for my Serbia and Greece trip, which I literally got afternoon before I left! Quite the high anxiety and BP then!
Language: Govirite pa-ruski? Haha. Knowing Serbian and having a smidge of understanding of Russian from my mom (and a semester course I took at University), I have to say, it definitely came in handy. The places we traveled were off the beaten path and not so touristy, so although as most people, I could understand more than I could speak, it was helpful. Especially when we were in Azerbaijan trying to get on a ferry to get to Turkmenistan.
Sightseeing/culture/nature: If I were to summarize, I would say that Armenia was nice, but sadly, it was the most poor of all the countries. They have a deep history of different rulers, the Turks, the Mongols, the Russians (they are most against the Turks... and I guess Russians for that matter too), and unlike Georgia and Azerbaijan where there is a gas line and hence lots of American dollars, no one to really fund it. The main tourist attractions and other buildings are half finished, and it was a bit sad. But beautiful and lovely people. For nature, Georgia and Tajikistan were my faves, the mountains were stunning and the lakes beautiful. Uzbekistan had by far the best sightseeing, amazing sights with their famous tiles and mosaics. Turkmenistan was by far the weirdest place I've ever been to (more on that later) and Azerbaijan seemed a little void of culture because it is becoming to be the next Dubai with lots of news structures and development. I also would have to say the Tajik people were the most hospital and genuine and nice of all, sooooo lovely! It makes you believe that there really are good people out in the world today.
Comforts: Well, I did want to un-Dubai myself (meaning, un-spoil myself), and I sure did that! I admit the first week I was grossed out and just... I guess, being a brat about the grunginess of everything. The 1st 2 weeks I was counting down the days to no more camping and said, "NYET, I would never do this again." Then it kinda grew on me. It's one of those tricky things, obviously when you are out in nature, you have the elements of nature. Our most talked about 6-day in a row "camping" experiences were "dog, dog, heat, wind, boat, boat, stars). So as you can imagine we had wild barking dogs those 2 nights, another night when it was stifling heat, another night when it was soo windy I literally didn't sleep because I could have sworn my tent would fly away! So held it down the whole night and also it was soo loud with the flapping of the tent. Not fun. The ferry ended up being 2 nights in this nasty ferry, I won't go into details there, but then we had this brilliant quiet starry night when the Astrophysicist whipped out his astronomy set and we got a good look at some planets and stars. A really wonderful memory.
Overlanding and locals: We obviously drew a lot of attention on the road. For one thing, our truck was gi-normous and bright orange. For the other, again, they don't get a lot of tourists so people were very curious about us. I felt SUPER safe in all the countries, more so than most places I've traveled or been to (including the US), and when people approached us, it was more to practice English and/or to take our picture (??, eh, just go with the flow).
Would I do overlanding again? As I mentioned, if you asked me that within the first couple of weeks, you would have gotten a very adament NYET! However, it really is a great way to travel cheaply and see a lot AND you really do get a different local and cultural experience. We went to places that I'm sure had rarely been visited (you can always tell by the attention that is drawn to you) by tourists, and it's just a different experience compared to going to super touristy places where locals are immune to foreigners and cater to our needs (which we did go to many of those places, to note!). So... yes. I would say I would consider doing it again, I was thinking when I leave Dubai to go back to Chicago, they had some 6-month option (which is what my group was doing) and some really great ones all throughout Africa or the Americas. Nice! I'll just leave it open for now :-)
Soo... phew! Lots and lots more details, but I'll spare you and me (and hope I remember them later for my own use), but I know we all like pictures better and can explain and show more.
Next to come... pictures!!!!
Want more pics, details and info?
Oh, a few people from the group had really great thorough blogs... where I even referred to on this blog! I was on the trip July 18th to August 16th for reference (and countries listed above).
http://allisonhawryliw.blogspot.com
http://postcardblog.com
http://roundtheworldonabus.blogspot.co.uk
http://uk2oz2014-15.blogspot.com
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