Our writer takes us on a journey of a lifetime across the so-named “5-Stans,” with all the wonder and mystery these nations offer.
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They’re called the “Five Stans” – the former Soviet republics in Central Asia between the Caspian Sea, Siberia and the Himalayan Massif. They’d been on my radar for years, but it was only last summer that I finally got around to discovering a region that had spurned tourism for so long.
All of them at once, of course. Because that’s the classic 5-Stans trip. A journey across dune-spangled deserts and snow-covered mountains, through cities ancient and modern, exploring crowded bazaars and architectural wonders, sampling exotic foods and sleeping in yurts.
For me, the attraction was twofold – history and mystery.
From Roman times through the Renaissance, this region was the heart of the fabled Silk Road that spread people, products, ideas, religions and armies between the Mediterranean and the Far East. What history buff or avid traveler wouldn’t want to trace a path once trodden by the likes of Alexander the Great, Marco Polo, Genghis Khan and Tamerlane?
After conquest by the Russian tsars in the 1800s and more than 70 years behind the USSR’s Iron Curtain, the “Stans” were also shrouded in mystery. No matter how many things I watched or read, there was still an appetite to find out for myself what these far-away lands are really like. You can’t taste the food, meet the people, touch the snow or smell the desert air unless you go there.
While it’s easy for travelers to visit four of these nations on their own, Turkmenistan remains a tough nut to crack. You need to join a guided group. And you need to obtain a Letter of Invitation (LOI) from the Foreign Ministry – via a vetting process that can take several months – which is then presented on arrival in Turkmenistan to get your tourist visa.
After extensive due diligence I decided on Lupine Tours, a British outfit that was one of the pioneers of getting international travelers into and around Turkmenistan. Not only that, but they could spirit me all the way across the region from Ashgabat to Almaty for a reasonable price, using various forms of local transport, over a span of two-and-a-half weeks.
Peeking Behind the Curtain
I approached Turkmenistan not unlike a curious child peeking inside of a wrapped gift — an overwhelming desire to find out what’s inside of a place often described as strange, secretive and shrouded in mystery. This doesn’t even mention the fact that it’s one of the world’s most isolated and least-visited countries. Only around 10,000 foreigners visit Turkmenistan each year, and only a handful of those are genuine tourists.
I’ve got to say it was rather odd touching down at Ashgabat International Airport and pulling up to the terminal as the only plane at the entire airport. Then, things got even stranger making my way into town on the shuttle bus. Nearly all the buildings are white, many clad in shimmering marble. All cars, trucks and buses are also white, as mandated by the nation’s first post-Soviet president, who wanted his capital city to always appear neat and clean. There were also lots of gold statues, many of them featuring that same former leader.
After checking into the Hotel Ak Altyn – which boasted a surprisingly busy pool bar – I met the rest of the Lupine group. Fifteen in total, around half of them American and the other half European. They consisted of a mixed bag of Millennials and retirees, teachers and tech workers, nearly all of them on a quest to visit every country on the planet. Our expedition leader was young and Australian, and along the way we would rendezvous with local guides who could render the lowdown on each destination.
One of the rumors I’d heard before arriving in Turkmenistan is that tourists aren’t allowed to wander around on their own. That was so untrue. I spent the better part of two days walking around Ashgabat with a couple of my new travel companions. Maybe the secret police were watching, but it wasn’t obvious. Nobody stopped us from talking to locals, going wherever we wanted, exchanging money on the black market or quaffing pints at the British Pub Florida beside the Russian Market. Our only interaction with authorities was the guards telling us not to snap photos of government buildings.
With Ashgabat in the rearview mirror, we drove north in a convoy of 4x4s through the dunes of the Karakum Desert to perhaps the only industrial accident other than Chernobyl that’s evolved into a tourist attraction. The famed – or at least infamous – Darvaza Gas Crater is a giant flaming hole in the ground, created during Soviet times when a natural gas drilling rig collapsed into an expanding sinkhole.
We got our first glimpse of the crater at sunset as a sandstorm blew in from the desert, licks of flames the only thing you could see through the swirling dust. Darvaza was even more spectacular that night, the short hike from our yurt camp lit by a flickering glow rising from the giant hole.
A Tale of Three (Very Old) Cities
After the white marble modernness of Turkmenistan, crossing into Uzbekistan was like traveling back in time as we cruised through a trio of ancient walled cities that were once major stops on the Silk Road. All three are now UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and rightly so.
Khiva was first up, its Itchan Kala (Old Town) protected by towering, buff-colored walls that reminded me of a giant sandcastle. With temperatures in the triple digits, it was like a ghost town by day. But after dark when it finally cooled down, the old town came to life, the open-air cafes crowded with locals and tourists, the historic buildings artfully illuminated and merchants hawking Khiva’s famous carpets and chugurma fur hats.
I didn’t realize then, but Khiva would wind up as my favorite stop among the three Silk Road burgs. It was smaller and less touristy than the others. And easier to navigate, because so many of its landmarks – turquoise-tiled Kalta Minor Minaret, the exquisite Mohammed Amin Khan Madrassah and the Jama Mosque with its ancient carved wooden pillars – are arrayed along a single pedestrian street. If there’s a single place in the 5-Stans that summons the vibe of One Thousand and One Nights, Khiva is definitely it.
Bukhara was another six hours farther east via a high road that meanders beside the Amu Darya River and across miles and miles of open desert. Founded by the ancient Persians, the city was pillaged by Genghis Khan but such a hospitable place in medieval times that Marco Polo and his father stayed there three years on their way to China.
Even more than the ancient structure, I was blown away by Bukhara’s covered bazaars, one on each side of the old town beneath colossal domes and arches, hundreds of shops peddling carpets, ceramics, spices, jewelry and miniature paintings. Restaurants tucked into age-old caravanserai caravan stations serving iconic Uzbek dishes like shashlik and plov.
When it comes to blow-your-mind architecture, nothing in Central Asia compares with the Registan in Samarkand. Created between the 15th and 17th centuries, the square is flanked by three enormous Persian-style madrassas (Islamic schools) with turquoise domes and lofty minarets. Their facades are covered in intricate mosaics, not just the usual geometric and floral patterns, but also ferocious tigers, leaping deer and giant faces that represent the sun.
The downside (if you’re not into crowds) is the fact that it’s been discovered by the masses. The Registan was the only place along the trip that felt touristy – especially in the evening, when thousands gather for the sound and light show on the amphitheater-like open side of the square. Still, that made for some choice people-watching.
Into the Pamirs
Moving on towards Tajikistan was a two-step process that started with an overnight journey on a vintage Soviet-era passenger train to Termez. We were booked into a second-class sleeper car, four bunks to each cabin with the restroom down the hall and open windows for air conditioning. Uzbekistan Railways supplies a pillow, sheet and bottle of drinking water, but we stocked up on beer and snacks at the Samarkand train station before departing.
I shared a cabin with our Uzbek guide, who suggested I crash on one of the upper bunks to get the full effect of cool air flowing in from outside. Taking his advice, I slept like a baby on what was otherwise a hot, sticky desert night on a very slow train.
After snapping selfies in front of a barbed-wire fence that marks the boundary between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, we boarded a bus for the capital, Dushanbe. And boy was that a shock. After a week of open desert and medieval walled cities, we found ourselves in a 21st-century metropolis of high-rise buildings flanked by green spaces and artificial lakes, and our swankest digs of the entire trip. I’ll always remember the Rumi Hotel for its epic shower, endless breakfast feast and the fact that it’s the only hotel I’ve come across anywhere on planet Earth that offers free laundry service (up to five pieces).
Yet the pampering was short lived. The next day we faced the daunting prospect of crossing the Pamir Mountains. Located at the western end of the same massif that gives the planet the Himalayas and Hindu Kush, the Pamirs harbor some of the world’s highest peaks (over 25,000 feet, or nearly twice the height of California’s tallest mountain, Whitney).
One of the routes through the highlands is Highway M34, a narrow, twisting roadway plagued by rockfalls, avalanches, landslides and other dangers. The first stretch was along the gorgeous Varzob River, its whitewater flanked by thick forest and flowered-filled alpine meadows. Then came a series of seemingly endless switchbacks that lifted us to the notorious Anzob Tunnel, a three-mile-long underground passage that Atlas Obscura calls “dark, damp, perilous” and known locally as the “Tunnel of Death.” The payoff on the other side is the view from 11,000-foot Anzob Pass, a panorama of jagged peaks still draped in waterfalls and snow in midsummer.
By the following day we were in Kyrgyzstan, overnighting in the city of Osh. Back in the day, the area’s silk production helped give the Silk Road its famous name. The mulberry bushes and silkworms are long gone, and there is little left of ancient Osh. Instead, the town’s leading landmark is a colossal 90-foot-high Lenin statue, one of the few I saw in the 5-Stans.
Real Life Nomadland
Waving do svidaniya to the bygone Bolshevik leader, we hit the road again on the longest drive of the entire trip — 16 hours up and over the Tien Shan mountains to Bishkek. Stretching 1,500 miles from Western China all the way across Kyrgyzstan, they aren’t nearly as high and mighty as the Palmers but far more fascinating from a human point of view.
Away from the towns, the Tien Shan are primarily populated by nomads. Not the van-dwelling type, but the real deal. Living in comfy little yurts, tending to free-range horses and sheep, these migratory people live off the land like their ancestors have for thousands of years. That is, with a few “mod coms,” of course, like mini pickup trucks and roadside stalls selling kumis (fermented mare’s milk) and qurt (cheese balls made from mare’s milk). Horse milk is an acquired taste, but as I had discovered the night before in Osh, the cheese balls aren’t bad when paired with beer.
It was gorgeous countryside, rolling meadows scattered with yurts, horses grazing on the lush grass or drinking from small ponds that reflected the mountains behind. This view, I imagined, painted a similar scene to what must have greeted Marco Polo and other travelers through this region so long ago (if you don’t count the pickups).
Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, had the most Soviet feel of any city along our route. Because it wasn’t founded until just before the Kremlin conquered the region, much of the architecture is Russian influenced, from the Tsarist-style city hall to the massive Stalinist-style White House where the president lives. There’s a big Lenin statue that dominated the city’s main square until its independence, when it was moved to an obscure location behind the State History Museum overlooking an old Soviet star filled with red flowers.
Another short drive, one last border crossing, and we were back in the modern world. Cruising down a modern, four-lane freeway towards Almaty, Kazakhstan’s metropolis and the final destination before flying home. Boosted by oil money and oligarchy, Almaty has a flashy metro system, Parisian luxury boutiques and more steel-and-glass skyscrapers than I could possibly count.
But Almaty hasn’t lost touch with its nomadic past – it’s just updated to the 21st century via new art museums and cultural centers, high fashion inspired by long-ago styles and materials, and something I especially enjoyed — Neo-Nomad cuisine that blends modern cooking styles and artful presentation with the same vintage ingredients as those throwback nomads I’d met in the highlands.
Getting There
Turkish Airlines flies daily between LAX and Istanbul, with onward connections to both Ashgabat and Almaty.
Getting Around
Lupine Travel offers guided 5-Stans journeys through Central Asia that range from two to three weeks.
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