The Wandering Chocoholic

“Sometimes a journey arises out of hope and instinct, the heady conviction, as your finger travels along the map: Yes, here and here … and here. These are the nerve-ends of the world…”
                  ―Colin Thubron, Shadow of the Silk Road

Well, I’ve been home for a couple of days now. I’ve caught up on sleep, excised the stomach bug demons, and my bag was delivered this morning. I guess the trip is officially over.

I’m still not quite able to wrap my mind around everything I’ve seen and done in the course of the past month. I could sum up the trip in a series of sights seen, a checklist of cities visited, a list of foods eaten, or a catalogue of photographs. But none of those really adequately capture how uniquely awesome an experience it was.

When I embarked on this journey just four short weeks ago, I did so with excitement and a fair amount of trepidation. What would these countries, so far from home both geographically and culturally, be like?

I’m pleased to report that my expectations were both exceeded and completely subverted. Exceeded in the sense that the weather, food, culture shock and sightseeing were all way better than I expected. Subverted in the sense that none of these places were at all like I had imagined them to be. I was expecting to feel somewhat alienated, but I didn’t at all expect to feel a sense of the familiar, like these were places I could truly love.

So, in absence of any meaningful way to capture how amazing this trip really was, I give you a bullet point recap in the form of…

Silk Road Odyssey by the numbers

Distance travelled:

• By plane: 2,275 km internal; 25,440 km including getting to and from
• By train: 3,757 km
• By automobile: 2,700 km, roughly
• By tuk-tuk: 10 harrowing kilometers

Days on the road:

• In China: 11
• In Kyrgyzstan: 7
• In Uzbekistan: 7
• On airplanes: 2

Average daily budgets (excluding flights, accommodations, transportation and tour inclusions):

• China: 230 CNY (~$45 CAD)
• Kyrgyzstan: 800 KGS (~$15 CAD)
• Uzbekistan: 112,500 UZS (~$43 CAD)

Number of times I ate:

• Noodles: 25
• Peking Duck: 0
• Red bean paste by accident, thinking it was chocolate: 5
• Red bean paste on purpose: 0
• Pilaf: 1
• Lagman: 1
• Manti: 8
• Watermelon: 25
• Salty cheese balls: 0.25
• Oreos: 7 thousand million

Number of times I drank:

• Beer: 8
• Good beer: 0
• Wine: 3 or 4, including wine tasting in Bukhara
• Vodka: 5
• Baijiu: 1 (and that was more than enough)
• Water: ALL the time
• Coffee: Too few
• Green tea: Too many

Words or phrases I learned in…

• Mandarin: 10
• Uyghur: 2
• Kyrgyz: 0
• Uzbek: 0
• Russian: 5
• German: loads

Trip highlights

So, so many to list. Here were just a few:

• Walking on the Great Wall of China
• Cycling on Xian city walls
• A totally harrowing tuk-tuk ride in Xi’an traffic
• Quad biking on sand dunes in Dunhuang
• Early morning Jiahoe Ruins in Turpan with nobody there
• Kashgar animal market
• YURT CAMP!!!
• Swimming in Lake Isuk-Kul
• Hiking in the national park in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan
• Bukhara! Bukhara! Bukhara!
• Sitting on a supa in Uzbekistan, sipping tea, watching the world go by
• Getting into the un-gettable Folk Festival in Samarkand

Trip lowlights

There were very few lowlights; it was really a trip full of highlights. Even the small things that happened, like catching a cold in China, getting a case of traveller’s stomach in Kyrgyzstan, having to wait at a closed Chinese border checkpoint, or missing a flight connection in Istanbul, were just the standard stuff that you’d expect on a trip like this, and none of them diminished my enjoyment of the experience much.

Useful stuff I packed

• Sunscreen
• Bug repellent
• Scarf
• Sunglasses
• Hat
• Capris
• Skirt
• Closed hiking shoes
• Hand sanitizer (seriously, used ALL the time)
• Protein bars
• Toilet paper
• First aid kit with a bunch of handy medications
• Battery pack to recharge my phone on long train rides
• Local SIM cards in China and Uzbekistan
• VPN for China

Useless stuff I shouldn’t have packed

• Towel – every hotel and guesthouse supplied them. I never used mine even once.
• Hairdryer – it didn’t work with the plugs in China anyway, and most of the hotels had them. If they didn’t, there was no electricity so I just let my hair dry on its own.
• Rain jacket – never worth the weight of carrying it around in my bag in case it should rain. If it rained, better to just get wet

The bottom line

I couldn’t have asked for a better Silk Road experience. I’d go back to any of these places in a heartbeat, and I’m inspired to explore more of the different ancient routes on future trips. I’d highly recommend this journey to anyone who’s intrigued by the ancient or modern-day places on this route, or merely in the joy of being on the road.

Thanks so much for reading and following along with me. Until the next journey!