5 Stans Review - Central Asia Travel

hello and welcome back to my channel I'm Grace onour and I love to showcase the beautiful world that we live in and in this video I will be making a five stance review video so this summer I traveled to Central Asia and the famous five stance and I will go through that trip the highlights what you should do and things to think about uh but before we head out there remember to like And subscribe and let's jump into the video so I think the first thing that we need to cover is which countries are the five STS famously the five that you usually talk about turkistan usbekistan Tajikistan Kazakhstan and kyrgystan all these countries were part of the former Silk Road and therefore they also have a lot of history are very interesting countries and also very diverse one would think that these countries which share so much history and are located in the same area would be very similar but but I found it was completely the opposite let's start with Turkmenistan turkistan is often referred to as like the North Korea of Central Asia it is a country which is quite close to the outside world it's hard to get into and it's not very explored among foreign tourists therefore there's also not a lot of resources or information about this country however the way you can get a Visa is by joining a group tour and and then your Visa will be issued by the tour company and I think that is one of the only ways to actually get a tourist visa for turkistan there are a few airlines flying into the country from what I know at least you can fly with fly Dubai from Dubai or from EST stumble with Turkish Airlines you get a Visa letter which you then go to this counter at the ashkabad airport for processing it is quite expensive it's around $100 and as you have to join a a tour when going to turkistan most of the logistics are already kind of sorted out for you it's generally said that you're not really allowed to walk around uh by yourself without the tour leader so some of the places that are worth visiting is of course um ashkabad which is the capital city also known as the White City uh or the whitest city on Earth because it's famous to have the most marble buildings in one city and the world it has the Guinness World Records also apart from having only white buildings uh also it's only allowed to have white cars it's a very unique and Grand City and there's lots of things to see then of course if you go to Turkmenistan you should definitely visit the darasa crater which is this burning gas crater which actually was an accident where they by accident found that gas was leaking so they set it a light but it's never stopped burning and they also call it the gateway to Hell or the door to hell and it's a very very unique place it's also been talks a long time of them actually setting out the fire um which would mean that kind of the whole um part of that kind of Attraction loses its interest so it's definitely worth if you can go to go now before they do anything with shutting it down and tri Med sun has um mostly just desert climate so um it's quite hot all year round and also good to know is that oldest STS are Muslim country so of course um it's important to respect that culture and if you go into mosque to cover yourself and so on most of the food however is quite common in each country um in Central Asia it's very heavily meat based but the most famous dish of Central Asia is PL uh which is this rice dish which as rice meat carrots um lots of different spices and so on and each country competes of who has the best PL unfortunately because I don't eat meat uh I did not have PL actually uh during this trip but if you do eat meat then you should definitely eat a lot of PL or you will definitely eat a lot of PL and you'll be able to compare which country has the best PL for accommodation uh as you're in a tour in turkistan U most likely you won't be able to choose accommodation it will already be picked for you however I can just say where I stayed we stayed at the sport hotel in ashkabad it was very Grand more like a a palace and very impressive and then when we went to the darar crator we actually stayed in yur and camped with a um kind of nomad family of course also turkistan has their own currency the turkman man um but what you can do is just bring US Dollars and exchange it in the country and then we continue to usbekistan actually also for all of these countries crossing the land border is very easy and for usbekistan it's more easier actually as personally with a European passport I did not need a visa before traveling to usbekistan so I could just get the visa on arrival um at the border we visited four cities in usbekistan Kaa bukara Samaran and tashkin and and I must say that a lot of the old usek cities are quite similar because um these were a major player in the silk route so they have very similar architecture and um structures of each City and personally I can just pick out my favorites out of the ones I visited and I must say it must be Kaa and bukara because those are the two smaller ones so it feels a lot more intimate it's less people and less touristy of course tashkin and suond are very beautiful but there's more crowds usbekistan also has their own currency the uson and same for here you can just exchange your US dollars I will also put in the different hotels we stayed at in each City most cities are filled with beautiful bazaars mosques minates madrasas and the architecture is very unique and personally for a girl who loves turquoise uh you have so much architecture with this beautiful blue color so um that's also something which is very unique another thing is that traveling through and around usbekistan is very easily done by train each city is connected with the the train route and also walking around these OBC cities at night are very beautiful it's very beautiful because all of the buildings are usually up which makes it very special as well and for example in summeran you have the evening light show as well which is very cool and we move over to Country number three which is Tajikistan Tajikistan was also one of my favorite countries on this trip because it is I would say less explored first of all some countries do require you to have a e Visa so you just go to the EV Visa portal and uh apply but of course many countries also so don't require that but just good to double check tajikistan's currency is called tomoni when you cross from usbekistan and turkistan into Tajikistan the landscape is completely different because I think around 90% of tajikistan's landscape is mountains we visited three places in Tajikistan kunan which is this small little town and it was really nice to just walk around and then we traveled up in the mountains to isander co lake uh which is this mountain uh Lake which is really beautiful and there's lots to do there so we hiked to a waterfall we took a boat on the lake went swimming in the lake and then we went stayed at a home stay um in this tiny little village and it was really really beautiful and nice but the road to get to and from there is very scary and actually you cross uh a few tunnels and one of them is the anob tunnel which is the said to be the most dangerous tunnel in the world and you can definitely understand that because there's no ventilation or Lighting in these Mountain tunnels and if you get stuck it's pretty bad so even our driver was very happy once we made it out of the tunnels and then we finished off uh in dambe which is the capital city also known to have I believe the second largest flag pool in the world uh many of these Central Asian countries also kind of compete of having the highest flag pole uh which is kind of funny I can also really recommend to eat Kuro in dampen at this very local restaurant and if I can't find the specific place you should definitely just have kotob in Tajikistan which is kind of this potato yogurt and fresh vegetable kind of salad thing which is the famous local dish so that's really nice as well and we continue to Country number four which is Kazakhstan [Music] um and Kazakhstan is a huge country and unfortunately I only kind of scratched the surface of it because I only went to a very small part of the country and there's so much left to explore so we flew into almati uh we flew with aana Airlines and I found it actually very good and what I remember of kind of getting off the plane is that all around there's these kind of snow covered mountains in the background and it's really really beautiful so we spent about a day in almati there's also lots of things to see and do you can take the cable car um to see the city from above just walk around it's a very easy walkable City the kazak currency is called T it's easy to get visa on arrival um I believe for most countries at least if you're European uh of course double check but um yeah there were no issues at all with any form of needing to apply for a Visa beforeand so some of the places we visited in Kazakhstan was Ching Canyon National Park which is kind of refer to as the mini Grand Canyon we also visited the singing sandune which was also a very fun experience it's this sandune which is located in a very special place because all around there's kind of this step landscape and then just out of nowhere you have this sand June and there's not really sand anywhere else in that area so it's also kind of a mystery to why this sandune is located in this spot and the unique thing with it is is that when you're going on your bumb down the hill or kind of running with pressure the sandune starts to make a noise so that's very unique and fun and also when you hiked up to the top of the sandun you got this beautiful view of the surrounding landscape uh and then we also finished off at the um colide Lake and Ki Lake which are these beautiful also Mountain Lakes very different from the chadic ones whereas because in Kazakhstan there was more trees and forests so it was um more uh of a Greener landscape also commonly from most of these countries as they were part of former Soviet Union most of them would also speak Russian or have um Russian knowledge so if you do know Russian that is of course an advantage uh because you'll be able to communicate a lot better with people over there and one of the foods you should try in Kazakhstan which is quite famous is the Kur which is the like fermented cheese Bowl they have like different colors and different tastes as well but that's a very famous thing for C on so kumis which is fermented Mars milk is another very unique thing that you can try it's quite common to eat horse meat as well in these countries and especially in Kazakhstan so yeah just good to be aware of also the dumplings in the central Asia region are called Monti and some of the the breads um which all are very nice are called BAC shelek and Tander and the very famous dish which usually contains H meat is called bash barmak the last and final Stan is kyrgistan and same as Kazakhstan easy to get a visa and to get in to the country the currency is kusom the interesting thing about kirgistan is that it's one of the countries which has still a um little bit of a nomad Community where people live as as snads it's not to the extent like in Mongolia but there is kind of this tradition which still somewhat lives on kistan is very famous for hiking as you can imagine there's lots of beautiful landscapes our trip was kind of centered around the iso Lake which is the second largest high altitude lake in the world after Lake tiaka and there's lots of beautiful spots to visit all around the lake and you can swim in the lake and uh you can camp in a y so we saw the seven bolts Rock the fairy tale Canyon and we also got to experience or got to see how they um produce and build y also the traditional eagle hunting which also somewhat kind of lives on still and also because kistan is a big producer of felt which is also what kind of differs the Mongolian yurt to the kyus yur is that the Mongolian yurt have a fully like plastic out Outer whereas the kyus ones have just a felt outer and therefore uh kirgistan is quite uh specialized in making Felts so we also went to a small producer um making that and the capital city of Kyan is Bishkek um we also visited there and that was my five stance review video I hope that you found it interesting and maybe it inspired you to travel to Central Asia or gave you some good tips for any upcoming trips you have to Central Asia and if you have any questions about these destinations just put it in the comments below and I'll will try my best to reply to them thank you so much for watching Remember to like And subscribe and I will see you in the next one bye

Channel: Grace on Tour

Views: 11,864

Keywords: central asia, central asia travel guide, 5 stans, 5 stans tour, what to see and do in central asia, best places to visit in central asia, Turkmenistan, kyrgyzstan, uzbekistan, tajikistan, kazakhstan, central asia travel, central asia travel video, central asia travel review video, grace on tour central asia, central asia food, how to travel central asia, turkmenistan travel guide, uzbekistan travel guide, tajikistan travel guide, kyrgyzstan travel guide, kazakhstan travel guide

Id: gdCPK3Wx6_g

Length: 14min 42sec (882 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023