This monastery is located about an hour away from Lhasa. It was one of my favourite places, not so much because of the monastery itself, but its location. It is set high up on a hill above the Kyi-Ch...
Norbulinka (Summer Palace) Norbulinka is known as the Summer Palace of the Dalai Lamas. We had previously watched the Tibet featured films Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet and were keen to see how wel...
Sera monastery is a few kilometres from Lhasa. We headed there mid afternoon with the intention of watching the debating monks. Every day (except for Sundays), the Sera Monastery’s monks undertake a ...
Jokhang Temple and Barkhor square Our first day in Lhasa started with a visit to the Jokhang Temple, walking through the bustling Barkhor Bazaar to the Barkhor square. By the time we arrived, there w...
From Xining we caught a train to Lhasa, Tibet province in China, we chose the hard-sleeper, and even though it was the most we had paid at 500 Yuan (plus 200 Yuan booking fee), it was the worst seats...
Xining is located in the Qinghai province, a region on the north-eastern border of Tibet. Again we caught a train from Urumqi to Xining, this time though we had four people per room, but since we had...
Tian Chi, also known as Heavenly Lake, is located about 150km away from Urumqi in the Tian Shan mountain range and is a popular a day trip from the city. Regular buses leave at 9am from the People’s ...
We caught a soft-sleeper train from Kashgar to Urumqi, a full day of travelling, as we had a room to ourselves the time went by fairly quickly. Urumqi is a large gateway city connecting Central Asia ...
It was Travis who was very keen on visiting Kashgar. When faced with our dilemma leaving Kyrgyzstan, I suggested travelling straight to Urumqi and perhaps giving the inconveniently located Kashgar a ...
One of the nice changes was the change in cuisine, Kashgar has a large number of Uyghurn people which influences the cuisine. Uyghurs are an ethnic minority group with the majority living in the sout...
Kashgar (or Kashi as we learnt when booking the airline tickets) is an important Silk Road city as it was the first major hub after travellers from China heading west had passed the hazardous Taklama...
We left Karakol intending to spend the day travelling to Sary Tash, a border town roughly 100km from the Kyrgyzstan/China border, a 950km route that we thought would take approximately twelve hours. ...
We awoke early the next morning and set off on our hike, taking a mashrutka (number 305) as far as we could, to a place called Ak-Suu Sanatorium, where the mashrutka dropped us off on a track sixteen...
After spending a few relaxing days wandering around Bishkek we travelled toward the Lake Issy Kol region, east of the capital. As we had arrived slightly early season-wise, many attractions such as t...
From Osh we headed to Bishkek, the road was described to be scenically spectacular so we hired a private driver for $100 which allowed us to stop along the way to take photos and enjoy the scenery. H...
We arrived late afternoon in the town of Osh by mashrutka (minibus) from the border pass. We decided to stay at the Osh Guesthouse, a family run hostel located deep in the neighbourhoods of Osh. A fr...
The Uzbekistan currency, the Som, is quite interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, because of the instability in the Som and its high rate of inflation, the US dollar is used in parallel (i.e. you ...
We arrived in Tashkent in the afternoon by a shared-taxi and went straight to the Kyrgyzstan embassy. We had made the mistake of not applying for enough time on our visas, and our Kazakhstan visa had...
We arrived in Samarkand from Khiva at 6:30am on the overnight sleeper train. While not as comfortable as the Turkmenistan train (due to lack of a cooling system), it was still a good way to travel be...
Khiva is located around 500km north-west of Bukara and situated almost on the Turkmenistan border. To get there from Bukara we caught a shared taxi, shared taxis are a great form of transport, the on...
After catching the overnight train from Ashgabat to Turkmenabat (which was really quite comfortable and pleasant), we headed to the border town of Farab. There we departed Turkmenistan and crossed th...
The Derweze gas crater is located 260 kilometres from Ashgabat. It is a collapsed natural gas cavern which was lit to burn-off poisonous gas, this was all in 1971, and today it is still burning as br...
From Merv we headed south-west to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, a long four hours in a shared taxi mainly due to the appalling road conditions (unmaintained dirt roads in Australia are main ...
Our first stop in Turkmenistan after crossing from the Saraghs border was the town of Mary. We stayed at the Hotel Terminal near the train station (or wokzal , in Turkmen) after striking a deal with ...
As we cross borders from Iran to Turkmenistan, I wanted to write a brief post on our general experiences in Iran. Initially I was a little apprehensive and unsure about visiting Iran, largely due to ...
Our final destination in Iran was Mashhad, located in north eastern Iran near the border to Turkmenistan. We arrived by an overnight bus from Gorgon which took about nine hours. The bus was probably ...
From Dizin we decided to continue the scenic drive (Chalus Road) to Chalus. A friendly Iranian driver heading the same way offered to give us a lift at the suggestion of the traffic police (we were h...
Upon our return to Tehran from Kashan, we immediately submitted our paperwork for Turkmenistan visas and were advised it would take five working days. This meant we would need to stay in Iran for at ...
After a week in Tehran waiting for visas and what-not, our hotel’s manager Mr Mousavi at Firouzeh Hotel suggested we head to Kashan for a break from the hustle and bustle of the city. We took his adv...
We caught a bus from Esfahan to Tehran (the Iranian public-transport system is beautiful), our main goal in Tehran were Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan visas, we arrived on Sizdah Bedar (Getting rid of t...
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