Two of my favorite trips have been adventures where animal encounters were the point. I love observing wild animals, whether on land, in the air, on the water, or under the water. So it should be no surprise that Madagascar has been a place I’ve been eager to visit for a long time. Over 90%…
The final stop on my tour of Central Asia was Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. And after the chilly days in Issyk Kul, it was pleasant and warm for our last days before heading home.
Issyk Kul is the second largest high-altitude lake in the world (after Lake Titicaca). It is also the eighth-deepest lake in the world, the eleventh-largest lake by volume, and the second-largest saline lake. Since it’s at an altitude of just about one mile above sea level, it tends to be chilly here, though the lake…
I’m now in a place with very slow wifi, so I will not say much about the day and a half I spent in Almaty. Which is okay, since there’s not much to say about a place when there’s so little time to explore it.
Visiting the State Museum of Arts of the Republic of Karakalpakstan named after I.V. Savitsky (aka the Nukus Museum of Art) was a highlight of my time in Uzbekistan. To my thinking, there’s really no other reason to go to Nukus. It’s a very ordinary, borderline-ugly city in the middle of the desert. It took…
My OAT trip leader said that the real beauty of Khiva can be found inside the buildings. But I can’t agree. It’s true that entering many of the monuments reveals glorious, colorful tile work. And most of the exteriors are dull, monochromatic, adobe-like, and mud-colored. But for me, I’m not sure I didn’t appreciate the cityscape…
Even though Bukhara is filled with tourists and the things tourists love, it also ticks all the boxes for me as a lover of travel. It’s a delight to wander around here. The old town is beautiful, and its newest buildings blend perfectly with the historical ones. Bukhara was a major hub on the Silk…
We left Samarkand yesterday (now I’m in Bukhara). I started to think about writing this post two nights ago, but I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say about Samarkand. I’m still not sure, but I can delay no longer.
As usual, I’m too busy doing stuff to write a lot about what I’m doing, but here’s a rundown of two days in Tashkent, the first stop in my tour of Uzbekistan.
I don’t have much to say about Khujand. The best part of visiting this uninteresting city was the scenic drive from Dushanbe on the M34 highway.
Sometimes it’s easy to select a representative photo of the place I’m visiting to put at the top of my blog posts. This time, not so much. Dushanbe has many fascinating things, but no one of them captures the feel of the city. Perhaps that’s because this city is really just 102 years old. When it…
I had six days in Budapest, and I filled the first five with tours and musical events and museum visits. I purposely left the sixth day open, and I still had some things I hadn’t yet done in Budapest. But it was a beautiful day, so I decided to take a train ride to the…
Sign up to follow me and you'll receive an email notifying you whenever I post new content. Be the first on your block to find out where I am and where I'm going next!
