Laurence Mitchell, a British subject and travel writer who has written the first edition of the Kyrgyzstan travel guide for the Bradt Travel Series, is one of our favorite travel photographers. We like the places he goes. His photography website has some fine work from the wide swath of the world from North Africa to the Tibetan plateau.
Mitchell’s bio in the Kyrgyzstan guide says that he's interested in “forgotten places, border zones and territories in transition.” We share those interests. Our first extensive travels were poking around in the former east bloc countries as they emerged from Communism.
Somehow, I’ve developed an affinity for arriving at a country’s border by local ferry. It’s more gritty, far more of a front line experience than plopping yourself in from a comfy western airport (although there’s nothing wrong with that, either).
We’ve steamed around old Communism’s borders, on an Italian ferry, the m/v Expresso Grecia, from Durres, Albania to Trieste back in 1993 when the Durres port was a frightening, decrepit place. We entered the former east bloc from the top at Tallin, Estonia, on the Tallink ferry from Stockholm, and from its underbelly, sailing across the Black Sea from Istanbul to Odessa on a packed Ukrainian passenger ferry, the m/v Yuzhnaya Palmyra.
The m/v Yuzhnaya Palmyra at Istanbul.
It’s all somehow evocative of days past, when passengers really sailed to get where they were going, on proper ocean going vessels, to exotic ports of call, and entered the foreign land at eye level.
Which brings us to now. In planning a first trip to the Central Asian Stans, I’m intrigued by the possibility of entry across the Caspian Sea, sailing from the busy port of Baku. Severing the physical connection, leaving from the Caucasus states that so badly want to call themselves European, physically turning your back from the west and facing east into the Stans, ought to amount to a dramatic entry.
Baku, Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea.
Except that I’m hard pressed to find a kind word written about the port of Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. A typical description is the non-committal “quiet, lonely town,” in an aging Cadogan guide. This after your 14 hour sea crossing and ahead of your 16 hour train up to the capital of Ashkabat.
So we’ll hold this entry route in reserve for later and enter the Stans instead at the complete opposite end, up top at the much more adventurous Torugart Pass land border between Kyrgystan and China at 12,310 feet (3752 meters).
We’re working out this itinerary now. It’s planned for next July, after a visit to the Sunday market in Kashgar (Kashi), China. We’ll post on it again as we make progress. It’ll be our first trip to the Stans, but there’s photo coverage of Albania, the Caucasus states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, Turkey, Ukraine and about eighty more countries on EarthPhotos.com.
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