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Sophie and Rose LDN to Kazakhstan, Bishkek (2026)

25/09/2023

ALMATY (8/8-12/8)
We did it! After 167 days and 17,800km, I finally stepped off a bus at a suitably depressing bus station and arrived in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We arrived at our hostel to find that one of the rooms was in the reception area, separated by just a curtain. Our room was full of people fast asleep at 10am and we could hear every noise from the whole building. Worse still, there was just a single bathroom for over 30 beds. It inexplicably had one shower and two toilets, placed side by side. We cut our stay short and left, still thinking about what scenario that bathroom might have been useful in. Our new airbnb was much nicer and had the same number of bathrooms as the hostel.

After our diet of nonstop potatoes and instant ramen, our primary goal in Almaty was to find the best food in Central Asia’s most cosmopolitan city. We had a number of really great meals, full of protein and fibre. Almaty We also spent 2 hours (not an exaggeration) at Almaty’s fanciest supermarket and looked at all of the food options that were not potatoes. It was glorious. We also tried to find somewhere to watch Barbie but unfortunately that’s a no go in Kazakhstan unless you understand Russian. We were sad Barbies :(.

My favourite thing we did in Almaty was going to the public baths. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night than butt naked, being scrubbed within an inch of my life while being surrounded by women doing the same thing. We left feeling like new women. I would also recommend the State Art Museum - it had some really lovely stuff in and was surprisingly big. We were taken there by an uber driver that had clearly had a quite serious head injury and drove as such but we all survived the encounter.

I also treated myself to a haircut, a symbolic chop to end the journey. My hairdresser was lovely and between her little English and my little Russian I tried to explain what the hell I’d been up to for the last 6 months. I found that I couldn’t and not just because of the language barrier. I looked in the mirror and saw myself again, with short hair restored once more. The same me I was in February, but on the other side of the world.

22/09/2023

SON KUL 31/7-2/8
Attempt 2 to get to Son Kul was much more successful than our last time. Turns out it was MUCH easier to go through the gateway town of Kochkor than the completely inaccessible Naryn. Our journey was also greatly improved by the very helpful woman at Jailoo tourism agency: ‘Matronly Jailoo’.

From Kochkor, we drove for 3 hours up into the mountains, and saw some of the greatest views I’ve ever seen. There were lots of yaks and even a marmot and as we hit 3500m the weather started to get chilly: it was glorious! Our yurt camp was run by a lovely family with an adorable baby who we all played with over our 3 days there. There were chickens everywhere, as well as horses and a smattering of dogs. We also met intrepid cyclist Niek, in Kyrgyzstan for an 1800 km race around the mountains and spent a nice evening with him. The great irony of being cold for the first time in weeks was that Alice and I promptly forgot that the sun can still be strong: we left our sun cream in our bags and headed out for a swim in the lake. Needless to say by the end of the first day we were tomato coloured and feeling a bit foolish. Lesson learnt.

I have never known peace like it. It was so transformative to be somewhere so quiet and tranquil after the sensory overload that is urban Central Asia. It was just us, some horses, a LOT of fat-bottomed sheep (sheep bottom fat is highly prized here). On one of our walks we were admiring a man on a little donkey, single-handedly rounding up a thousand sheep and goats. He rode past us and thanked us; turns out we had inadvertently been herding sheep as well!

We were also treated to some of the best sunsets I have ever, EVER seen. They bathed the whole lake with liquid gold and we had some wonderful evening walks in the dimming light, marvelling at how we could have been so lucky to get there. We all went into our little group yurt like we were on sleepover camp and discovered that a chicken had shat in Matt’s bed.

Up to this point Kyrgyzstan had been a bit of a dud, but now I get why people rave about this country. My words and pictures will simply never do it justice: you’ll have to go and see for yourself.

21/09/2023

BISHKEK (29/7-31/7)

After our perilous journey across Kyrgyzstan, I have never been so relieved to arrive anywhere! Once our legs had stopped shaking, we checked into our hostel, had some falafel and started to feel a bit more normal.

I don’t know what I was expecting from Bishkek. In truth, I don’t think I was expecting anything from Bishkek, because we were not planning on coming here at all. HOWEVER, I’m really glad we didn’t! Alice spent 2 months here last year so we had a bit of a headstart in terms of where to go and what to see. A personal highlight was the State Museum of the Kyrgyz Republic. It’s quite a small museum, but it’s generally really well done (top floor a bit heavy on contemporary political propaganda for my liking, but that’s kind of the norm here). To be honest though, the main thing we did in Bishkek was eat lots of really nice (read: not central asian) food and try and recover from the trauma of our unexpected journey there. We had some great Korean food (there’s quite a large Korean population in Kyrgyzstan!), some decent coffee and LOTS of kvas.

We also stayed in a hostel that had the three Cs: Clean, comfortable and curtains! After 5 months of almost exclusive hostel living, these are the things that really set a hostel apart. It was also the only really nice hostel that we stayed in in central asia in my opinion so that’s a big win for Bishkek. Our other big win was that, after a week apart, we dropped Matt and Holly a text asking if they wanted to get the band back together for a trip to Son Kul. To our shock and great excitement, they said YES! Turns out things had gone a bit wrong for them too since our separation so they were also keen to travel for a bit as a four again! We all met at 6am at Bishkek II train station (which is full of old USSR murals that have been recently restored…) to head out. There is only one domestic train in Kyrgyzstan and it is by no means the fast option but Alice and I were so traumatised by the thought of a shared taxi that it seemed like the better way. And so begins our trip to the most beautiful place I’ve ever been. Stay tuned x

10/09/2023

FERGANA (24/7-26/7)
We had a super easy journey to Fergana from Margil’on (a mere 35 minutes in a taxi woohoo!!) and we finally stayed somewhere with AC!! THe last 3 weeks really made me realise that I’m not cut out for extreme heat; after an hour in the cool, i finally felt like I could think straight for the first time in days.

The draw of Fergana was that it is the main transport hub in the region so we thought it would be a good place to explore other places in the Fergana Valley. With the weather set to be a balmy 43, we knew that we were in for a slightly uncomfortable day but we put our big girl trousers on and got on with things.

Our first stop was a packed minibus to Kokand. We were sat right at the back with a lovely lady called Tila, who fanned us with her fan (much appreciated) and chatted away to us in Russian for the whole journey. She dutifully tried to set each of us up with one of her sons, showed us lots of photos of him, asked us how our prime minister was ( she believed that this was ‘the Iron Lady’) and also invited us to stay if we were ever in her neck of the woods. What a lovely woman! We went to Kokand to go and see the old palace of the Khanate; most of it was destroyed by the Russians but the little that was left was beautiful, although my abiding memory of it is being incredibly sweaty.

Next we wandered around for a long time trying to find an ATM (not glamorous, but that’s the reality!) before hopping in an even minier-bus to a small town called Rishton which is the ceramics capital of Uzbekistan. In the tiny little bus, a woman gave us both some bread that was so stale that sapped what little water was left in my body but we managed to finish it.

In RIshton we visited the workshop of Rustav Usmanov which, hidden behind a nondescript wall on a bit dusty highway, is free to the public and was totally stunning on the inside. Rishton is famed for the purity of its clay and we watched a master at work and was whipping up vases and bowls at the rate of knots. Upstairs, the younger appreciated were painstakingly painting all the characteristic blue and green designs by hand which was utterly mesmerising to watch. A total must-see!

06/09/2023

KHIVA (14/7-16/7)
After a terrifying shared taxi with Matt and Holly (it seems we now come as a 4!) we made it to the first stop on our great Silk Road adventure!

I can already tell that my abiding memory of Uzbekistan is going to be that it was absolutely boiling all the time 🥵. Luckily we were staying in a lovely b&b right in the heart of the old town with air conditioning and a fridge so we did at least have a place to escape the heat.

The main criticism of Khiva I’d read was that it seems a bit ‘fake’. It’s certainly very touristy (though most tourists are sensible enough not to go in JULY lol so it was actually quite empty when we were there) and the walled city makes it into a bit of a microcosm but actually this bothered me much less than I thought it would. Venice is worse haha.

What Khiva definitely is is STUNNING. All
the blue tiled mosques, madrasahs and minarets are totally breathtaking; I don’t think any photo will ever do them justice. My favourite was the Toshhovli palace with all of its intricately painted tiles and enclosed aivans. It’s enough of an activity just to go and wander around for a day or two and let all of the architecture and the history wash over you. Wouldn’t recommend going up the big minaret tho; the views weren’t that good and it felt like we were seconds from tripping and breaking our necks in it at any given moment 😱

All in all, an EXCELLENT start to the Silk Road. Missing the camels already though 🐪

04/09/2023

Little did I expect that the hardest bit of the trip so far was in fact not the boat, but the travelling immediately after it!

After a night in a truly horrible hotel (ironically called the Hotel California - it’s in picture 2 ❤️) we made it to Aktau. Now, I think it’s fair to say that Aktau is not a tourist town (read: there wasn’t much to do and it was very hot and dusty) but we used the opportunity to work out our next moves across Uzbekistan and how on earth we were going to get there through the desert.

After an afternoon of WhatsApping we managed to find someone to take us to Beyneu (desert town in the middle of nowhere but also confusingly main train network link in western Kazakhstan 🚂) stopping at a few off-road sites on the way. Our tour guide, Aibar, was not actually a guide but instead worked at a bank… however he showed us some really cool spots! While I certainly wouldn’t recommend Aktau as a holiday destination, staying there was worth it to go and see the incredibly Mangystau desert which like nothing either of us had ever seen before. It was blisteringly hot and and windy (surprise surprise hahaha) and I got the feeling that we were truly the only people within a 100 mile radius at some points!

ALSO we got to see about a million camels and they are now my new favourite animals!! 🐪 🐪 🐪

It felt like a huge milestone to finally reach Kazakhstan (having told anyone who would listen for the last year that I was going to go there) but somehow it also feels like the trip is only just beginning!

01/09/2023

Time for the bus to sheki! We grabbed some bus station snacks (quite limited - Sophie ate lots of mustard sandwiches) and tootled to the town a few hours away, and then hopped into a cab to our caravanserai!

This caravanserai was a bit of a tourist destination - it is one of two in Sheki, built for merchants travelling along the silk roads. There were upper and lower floors - the top floors were where the merchants stayed but we ended up on the slightly less cushy bottom floor which used to be stables/storage. School trips went around during the day, which meant pushy teachers trying to get into our room. No thanks.

We found a nice restaurant on top of a hill with a lovely view of the sunset! We had kutabi (stuffed pancakes) and came back here basically every night! It was one of the only places that seemed to have any women and/or children in, which had become a big green flag for us. At the other place a nice man showed Alice how to eat Piti (mutton and chickpeas) 🥰

The next day we went to the palace! The grounds were very nice, and had various little restaurants - the palace itself was quite small and you had to pay to go and see one room inside. Really pretty, but tbh not worth travelling out of your way for.

The highlight of Sheki was probably a dance festival that was happening in our caravanserai, right outside our room? Had absolutely no clue what was going on at the time, but afterwards we looked it up and turns out it was a silk roads festival. Lots of cool dancing and instruments, and fun to see everyone prancing about in colourful capes and sparkly dresses!

Again, the men here were a bit weird. Just very keen to talk to us specifically and we felt very stared at. Honestly was not a fan of Azerbaijan - mainly because of the men/absence of girlies anywhere.

Sophie left after Sheki to go back to the UK! So went full colonial core and bought lots of spices, silk, and sugary sweets. Also a tiny sword (just the essentials).

Not sure if we would recommend Sheki or not - the caravanserai was very cool and food pretty yummy (but not very vegetarian). Some things to see, but perhaps not worth going out of your way to get to?

28/08/2023

We began our trip to Azerbaijan by doing something we’d desperately tried to avoid: flying. Turns out that, after the pandemic, Azerbaijan never opened its land borders and so the only way to get in is by plane. With Chechnya to the North and Iran to the south, we couldn’t exactly go around it so, begrudgingly, I booked us two tickets on Azerbaijan's budget airline. It’s amazing how easy it is to get between one place and another when you don’t have to sit on a train for hours.

Let me start by saying that Baku is interesting and feels like a totally unique place within the Caucasus. It had a really good selection of museums, the public transport links were great, and there was a really nice selection of restaurants. It’s also a very beautiful city, with lovely architecture and a big long promenade along the edge of the Caspian Sea. My personal favourite activity that we did was going to the Heydar Aliev Cultural centre. This huge building, created by Zaha Hadid, is absolutely breathtaking to behold from the outside and then was filled on the inside with a number of interesting exhibits about Baku’s notable sites, the history of Azerbaijan and traditional musical instruments among other things. In total we spent over 4 hours there, which is far more than we’d spent in any museum for months. It also marked the beginning of a NEW SPECIAL GUEST: who would now be here for the remainder of the trip!

HOWEVER, having not really had any problems with male attention on the trip it was here that we started to feel very… female. It was, in retrospect, Azerbaijan was the only place on the entire trip where we felt stared at the whole time, no matter what we did, what we wore and where we went. At one point we were harassed by a group of men so intent on finding out our marital statuses that we had to finish our day and go back to the hostel. Even the hostel was filled with overly friendly men who seemed very keen to get to know us. This would continue to be a problem elsewhere in Azerbaijan so in that respect, it is not a place I can recommend.

25/08/2023

After quite an unceremonious exit from Kazbegi, we headed back down the Georgian military highway for the next part of our tour. Our journey had a number of lovely stops that Sophie and AA greatly enjoyed. The first was the Monument to Georgian Russian friendship, which is both huge and colourful and in the absolute middle of nowhere; the second was the beautiful monastery of Ananuri on the edge of a large reservoir and was once filled with wonderful frescoes (until the Russians whitewashed them…) On the other hand, and I lay in the car, drank lots of dioralyte and felt sorry for ourselves (pictured).

Telavi is the wine centre of Georgia and is, by many accounts, the oldest centre of wine production in the world. I (rose) cursed my rotten luck that the wine section of the tour coincided with my new inability to keep anything down, but luckily this wasn’t to last forever!

After a couple of days of feeling a bit rotten, the Asquiths were back! This was well timed, because Zaza took us to his own winery that he runs with a friend and we got to taste his wine as well as learn all about Georgian wine production (and buy a couple of bottles to take home for ourselves). The wine is made in HUGE clay pots (kveli) that are buried underground along with all ofthe wine skins and other gubbins and creates a flavour that’s more earthy and also gives it a more golden colour.

My favourite spot on this leg of the tour was the Museum of Alexander Chavchavdze, a member of the old aristocracy who was known as both a great intellectual and a great winemaker. The Tsinandali estate still makes wine and is now very fancy and we got to try even more wines, including a Tsinandali grape made the european way which was my personal favourite (some of the best wine I’ve ever had ngl).The house was also beautiful.

We spent the last night of our tour in the lovely little town of Sighnaghi, another wine centre and much more picturesque than Telavi. We went to the burial site of St Nino (a BIG deal in Georgia) and we all bought lots of icons to have blessed.

We headed back to Tbilisi with the car packed with wine and icons - not a bad way to end a trip if you ask me?

24/08/2023

After a few days in Tbilisi, it was time for our tour of northern Georgia - enter Zaza, our brilliant tour guide!

Zaza picked us up at 9am and whisked us off. We had a pre set schedule that we presumed we would stick to but oh no - nobody loves a detour as much as Zaza. Alex (Rose’s mum) mentioned a nearby church and the next minute we were zooming off the main road to Mtskheta - the old capital city! Not even 20 minutes in and the carefully formulated schedule seemed to have gone out of the window in the best way possible.

The church was beautiful, if a bit packed with a tour from China and Instagram girlies climbing all over it to show off their outfits (not really sure how we feel about this). We all knew the drill with orthodox churches by this point so whacked on our headscarves (which always looked like a supermodel in, Sophie more like an old orthodox babushka) and toddled around the flickering candles and glistening icons. Top stuff.

On to where we were meant to be - Gori! Stalin was born here, and boy did they make that known. The biggest building in the town was the Stalin museum which seemed yet to find any balance/nuance, more just giving off v pro Stalin vibes. Exhibit A: the tote bags and T-shirts you could buy with pictures of Stalin’s face on. Again, shout out to the Instagram girlie having a photoshoot on the stairs of Stalin’s train carriage where many big horrible events were almost definitely decided upon. Hmm…

Then it was cave time again! This time it was Uplistsikhe, a cave town 😱 It was quite steep and high, again nice for Rose and her fear of heights, with amazing views and some fun cave ceilings, cave churches, cave wineries… what more could a girl want?

By this point we were knackered, and it was time for the long drive to Stepantsminda. This was over 3 hours, and we also discovered at this point that it’s the only road between Russia and Georgia so saw lots of Russian tourists and big lorries. The road was basically on a cliff that looked like it might crumble at any moment, but we tried not to think about that. At least it wasn’t as bad as it was on the way back for some of us … (stay tuned!)

18/08/2023

After Yegheg the three of us trotted back to Tbilisi, had a bit of a trot around (including a meal out in the courtyard of our hostel, Fabrika, where every cool youth in the city seemed to congregate). made his way back to the UK, and then it was time for our new special guests!

Enter AA and ! After waking up at 3am and spending a whole day travelling, they arrived at our new Airbnb home to us in our only clean clothes and every available surface covered in wet washing: we are nothing if not good at making ourselves at home! The Asquiths came out to Georgia for a ten day trip around northern and eastern Georgia.

Quick rundown of what we did in Tbilisi with AA and Nell:

1. Tbilisi’s thermal baths – we splurged on a private room and a ‘traditional peel’ and spent a couple of hours being the happiest hippos in sulphureous water of varying temperatures. Would recommend going with people you know as much of the process involved you being very very naked and being vigorously scrubbed EVERYWHERE 👀 Our room was also absolutely beautiful, and you could order snacks there (including sausage and cheese? in a v warm room?)

2. Gabriardze Puppet theatre- OMG this is a must! We saw a production called ‘Alfred and Violetta’ which was essentially Verdi’s ‘La Traviata’ but set in 1990s Tbilisi. Very political, v funny, v absurd and, weirdly, very moving (AA cried at the end, bless her). Also, the puppetry is masterful and very inventive!

3. Khinkali – we found a great little restaurant (Klike’s Khinkali) in Mtantsminda that had delicious traditional Georgian dumplings with sour cream and ghee! The spicy mushroom ones were a real winner!

Tbilisi delivered on many fronts, but weather was not one of them. Frankly, it absolutely pi**ed it down for the entire time we were there which was not ideal for sightseeing, but we made it work (and embraced being very soggy). I do think it would have been even better if it had been sunny, but you can’t win them all can you?

16/08/2023

Next up,3 nights of camping in the Yeghegis Valley in the south of Armenia. Our first big problem was trying to get there- turns out that the only functional transportation between Yerevan and Yeghegnadzor is a single bus that leaves from a random suburban roundabout with no fixed timetable. In nothing short of a miracle, we found it and managed to squeeze us, our bags and supplies into it. It was not a comfortable journey but was made more bearable by a chat I had with a local teenager on google translate.

Once we got there though, everything was lovely! The campsite was great, and we had arranged to borrow tents through them, so we didn’t even have to put them up ourselves! We met some lovely people at the site, including , Sophie and her lovely dog Rumo who had chosen her while she was hiking the Caucasian way and had followed her for THREE DAYS. He didn’t know it, but Rumo was preparing for a big journey to Germany to find a permanent home there. A heart-warming end for the goodest boi

Sophie and Rose LDN to Kazakhstan

25/09/2023

22/09/2023

21/09/2023

10/09/2023

06/09/2023

04/09/2023

01/09/2023

28/08/2023

25/08/2023

24/08/2023

18/08/2023

16/08/2023

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