Stan 2: Kazakhstan

One of the nicer bits.
To be fair, most of the country looks like this.

Kazakhstan, second country on our Silk Road holiday, was ... an experience. By which I
mean DON'T EVER GO THERE.

I REALLY MEAN THAT. I'm on a one-woman mission to collapse their miserable, surly excuse for a tourist industry.

Honestly, it's the first country I've ever been to that I concluded was not worth the bother. And there was quite a lot of bother on our way out in particular, as the border guards took one look at our group and decided it was time to pick on someone and extract a hefty bribe. Seven of us made it through to the safety of Kyrgyzstan (and did we hell as like know what was going to happen next or what we should do), while one (along with our extremely noble guide) was held for 7 shitty hours under interrogation until he coughed up £100.

Fuck Kazakhstan and its corrupt police.

So I'm not even going to post any interesting pictures, just in case I give you the mistaken impression that travelling there might be worth the risk. All the ancient historic monuments stop at the Uzbek border anyway - and anything good Kazakhstan has, Kyrgyzstan has more and better.

😡😡😡