Silk Road - Sep 2016 Itinerary

Billed as "the trip of a lifetime", this journey did, for me at any rate, live up to the hype. A bit of the history of the Silk Roads on this link . Stopping places on the Silk Road were spaced at a days' journey apart by horse or camel caravan. They were called Caravanserai, and here merchants rested safely overnight, and could trade their produce with other merchants. Merchants did not travel the entire Silk Route, but rather small sections of it, returning back to their own homes.

The enormity of the trip is only just beginning to sink in - whist on the road it was a question of "a day at a time". Now, looking over my photographs and having the chance to research the places we saw, it was indeed "the trip of a lifetime"

The Plusses

• A very rewarding trip with (mainly) very agreeable travelling companions. One cannot be on one's best behaviour for 2 months, in close proximity with a dozen other people, so we got to know one's "real" fellow travellers. Something that happens rarely in adult life. Apart from my family, I have not had to live so long in proximity with others since university. Weaknesses in character and stamina, were ruthlessly exposed - happily most of us passed the test
• We had been to a number of the countries on the route before. We overlapped our previous routes in parts of China, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbeckistan and Turkmenistan, Iran . It was nice to see again the places that we had seen before
• We had seen the Great Wall near Beijing, but not the western end at Jiayuguan New to us were the Terracotta Warriors at Xi’an (certainly worth seeing, but extremely crowded) , the extraordinary Buddha Caves which were a complete surprise, and the frescos on the ruined church in Ani near Kars were truly extraordinary. The festival of mourning for the murder of Imam Hossein which we experienced in Esfahan and particularly in Kashan was of an intensity that I had never expected to see.
• Towards the end most of us were pleased to see the re-appearance of Coffee into our diet - afraid most of what passed for coffee early in the trip was in fact instant coffee
• After two months I could appreciate the rigours that merchants suffered in times gone by, to take goods along the Silk Route(s) from China to Europe (and vice versa). The landscape was rugged mountains or arid desert for much of the way. And even then we did not have to cope with the brigands and war lords along the way (mind you, on reflection, Turkmen Customs officials made a passable substitute)
• I thought that our Wild Frontier Tour Leader, Jude Holiday, did an exceptionally good job in keeping the show running smoothly, in spite of the "local difficulties" we encountered along the way - including 4 of us, myself included, carted off to hospital at some point (not my fault, gov, I was hit from behind by a bicycle while walking along the pavement in Bukhara )

The Minuses

• There was a health problem with one of the group: after a doctor's examination, and with the insistence of her insurance company, Norma left us at Ashgabat. Although she was not happy with it, I think most of us agreed with the necessity for the decision.
• There was a problem with "inter personal relations" with two of the group, which made the first half of the trip "prickly" and the second half "embarrassing". I may not have helped by basically ignoring them and the problem for the second half, but it was clear that they did not want to be part of the group tour, and wanted to do their own thing in both eating separately and touring separately. Selfishly I reached the conclusion that it was my holiday and that I did not want to "work" at conversing with difficulty with them. I am very grateful to the stalwarts in the group who soldiered on with trying, often with little reward or thanks
• Although most of the group were, I think, mainly happy with hotel choices, I would concede that I may have been in a minority of one (or perhaps one and a half as my wife said) in feeling that the hotel choices could have been a lot better. With the exception of the appallingly cold Aşikoglu Hotel in Boğazkale , and the very good Red Wall Garden in Beijing most of the rest were unmemorable - in other words not a lot wrong with them , but nothing much outstanding either, to the extent that today I have little recollection of any of them. I feel that Wild Frontiers could do considerably more research on both Booking.com and TripAdvisor to come up with better hotels, particularly in Ankara and Istanbul, which being near the end of our voyage were the ones that one remembers most when it comes to re-booking with Wild Frontiers. Of interest I have compared my write ups on TripAdvisor of the hotels we stayed at with those of one other of our group who wrote reviews on TripAdvisor
• Again I may be in a minority of one, but I felt that the majority of "local guides" were rubbish. They spouted a proscribed script, often in bad English, and were really not worth listening to. From my point of view their job was to get me to the sights. I appreciate that in all the countries we visited that politics and censorship meant that telling the truth was difficult for nationals of a country. I appreciate that a tour like ours needs a local guide to translate, sort hotels, meals and transport and for general logistics, and that their job is not just telling us about the area.
• .
• The food in China was very good where our Tour Leader, Jude, held the budget. And memorably bad in Tajikistan where she did not. I personally (perhaps again a minority of one) did not like the food offered in Turkey (again the budget was with the local guide, not our tour leader Jude) - it being in the main canteen food served in ladles from a hotplate where it had been in the words of the guide "fresh cooked earlier today". And the restaurants in Turkey were mainly of the plastic table variety - by the end I had cut out lunch altogether and consumed just a bowl of yoghurt at most lunches (the good news from this was that I actually lost weight on the holiday, which is unknown for me)
• The group suffered as was inevitable from a cough and cold which went round nearly all of us, picking us off like the grim reaper, one by one. And a particularly violent runny tummy which again affected nearly all, and appears to have its roots in a Pomegranate sauce with a Chicken dish somewhere in Iran. If nothing else, the resulting illness cleansed my system, and took off the weight that I had put on in the first few weeks in China. On a trip of this length, to the places we went, and the close proximity in which we lived, these sorts of illnesses were to be expected

To follow our journey, start at Beijing and each stopping point after that has its own link, either from the previous city, or from the itinerary below

And finally there were the Chinese signs with baffling English translations

Barbara's photos

Maggie's photos

All Holidays - David Grant