I love Central Asia. I love hiking. I particularly enjoy the people of Tajikistan, whose hospitality and warmth to outsiders I’d rank amongst any other culture in the world. It should be no surprise, then, that many of my favorite experiences of 6 months in Central Asia involved multi-day hikes […]
Tajikistan
Ishkashim Market: Almost Afghanistan
I know I may have mentioned this before, but shortly before leaving Tajikistan I took a short trip with a couple of friends through Afghanistan. Despite what several people I’ve spoken seem to think, there was no sense of ‘extreme’ behind the idea. It wasn’t to brag about later, to […]
Tajik Pamir Hospitality
How many times does it take being invited in for tea in Central Asia before it gets old? I’ve had a lot of these experiences, so far, and I’m still going strong. We originally met this kid at the neighborhood water pump, hauling home about 8 gallons of water. What […]
Getting to Afghanistan
On the topic of yesterday’s post, there was a lot of information we had to dig around for ourselves that would have been useful to know before trying to get to Afghanistan. First off, the Afghan Consulate in Khorog has ridiculously fast processing times. We dropped our passports off and […]
Pretty Little Penjikent (R)
Its very rare that regional capitals, in Central Asia at least, are anything but a transit point to get to bigger and better destinations. The city of Penjikent, though, is a wonderful little backwater. Though once easily accessible from the Uzbekistan city of Samarkand, a disagreement over hydro issues between […]
Faces of Murghab (R)
Murghab is, in one word, remote. The closest big city is in another country (Osh, Kyrgyzstan). The nearest Tajik town is, at the moment, besieged by the military in response to problems with the nearby Afghan border. The road to town was built by the Soviet Army in the 80’s, […]
Hey there! I'm Stephen, this is my travel blog, and that's me in the poofy hat.
I'm a photographer / writer traveling since 2008, and I've been doing my best to visit amazing places.
My current focus is Central Asia, because for a hiking and camping enthusiast it's as good as it gets.