Editor’s Note: I met Al, the author of this post, while traveling through Central Asia this summer. Al has traveled extremely widely, spending significant time in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, from Mali to Haiti. Moreover, he has studied issues in other countries that have interesting parallels and contrasts in Central Asia, such as the сhanging nature of Islam in Senegal. With that in mind, I asked him to write a guest post for neweurasia outlining his strongest impressions as a newcomer to Central Asia.

My friend and traveling buddy, James, is one of the editors of this blog. We spent two weeks this summer traveling through Uzbekistan, where we passed a lot of time discussing, joking about, and analyzing Central Asia. James asked me if I’d consider writing a little bit about my impressions of the region. How could I resist?

Since this is a legitimately serious site on Central Asia, I should start with a caveat: I’m not an expert on the region. I’ve never studied Central Asia in school, I speak barely passable Russian, and I just visited the region for the first time. Still, if you’re interested in the general impressions and observations of a newbie to the ‘Stans, read on. For more of a blow-by-blow account of my time in the region, take a look at my blog.

My trip through Central Asia spanned six weeks and took me from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Turkmenbashi, Turkmenistan. I did the route overland, crossing through all five of the Central Asian republics.

There were a lot of things I liked about the region. Among the highlights:

1. Diversity. Part of Central Asia’s appeal is that it seems to have everything in one place: modern cities, yurtstays, horseback treks, mountaineering, the legendary and remote Pamir Highway, ancient historic cities (like Samarqand and Bukhara), colorful locals, traditional festivals and spectacular natural wonders (like Turkmenistan’s giant gas craters). I hope the few photos I have selected for this post illustrate the incredible diversity found in the region. Traveling across all five ‘Stans, I got to see enough variety that I was never bored.

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2. Hospitality. Many cultures claim to be warm and welcoming, but to see a Central Asian in host mode is really something else. If you find the real thing, it’s full-contact hospitality. Take, for instance, my new friend Halim, in Khojand. He hosted me and two other travelers for a couple of days after meeting us in the city. I’m not sure how he did it, but it was like he put his entire life on hold for three days to make sure we were happy. He helped us register our visas (see below), made us fresh cherry juice, took us around all the sights (literally), gave us a place to sleep and even pretended to like the crappy Sci-Fi movie I wanted to watch on TV. Being hosted by a local usually means being monitoring and shepherded around 24 hours a day; it can be a little cloying, but it’s also very endearing.

3. Central Asian Islam. The overwhelmingly majority of Central Asians are Muslim. I found it interesting to compare the Islam I saw practiced there with the forms of worship I’ve seen in other parts of the Muslim world. I’ve been to a few Muslim countries outside of the region (the U.A.E, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan) but I know Islam in Senegal best — in 2003, I spent four months conducting research on the Muridiyya, one of the country’s largest Islamic brotherhoods.

Islam in Senegal is very different from the Sunni or Shi’a Islam found throughout the rest of the Muslim world. The Senegalese, by and large, practice forms of Sufi Islam with strong sub-Saharan influences; the largest orders are the Tijaniyya, the Muridiyya, the Qadriyya and the Layenes. Their practices are often quite different from traditional Sunni Islam. Murids, for instance, follow ‘marabouts,’ local spiritual leaders who are believed to have hereditary spiritual powers; these leaders, in turn, are guided by Serigne Touba, the leader of the faith. In other words, for Murids, the connection with God is intermediated by the marabouts, something that sets them apart from most Muslims. The Baay Fall order (a subset of the Murids) believe they have a spiritual contract with God that allows them to ‘replace’ prayer with manual labor. This unusual arrangement makes the Baay Falls some of the few Muslims who are not obligated to pray (so long as they generally pursuing commercial activities). The Layenes also have a special arrangement with God – one that removes the ‘4-women cap’ on polygamy, so men are allowed to marry as many women as they can manage. But despite the unorthodox nature of Senegalese Islam, it’s a big part of people’s daily lives: buses prominently display posters of marabouts, people do pray often, and the religious celebrations (such as the Murids’ Grand Magal) are grand indeed.

Central Asia struck me as the opposite: while most Central Asians follow a fairly mainstream form of Islam (Hanafi Sunnism), their faith has little obvious impact on their everyday activities. During 6 weeks in Central Asia, I only heard the call of a muezzin three times (and only in Tajikistan). Central Asian men drink beer and vodka as heavily as Russians, and few pray or go to the mosque on a regular basis. Few people I met could speak any Arabic or understand the Qur’aan (I asked around). In fact, the only places I visited in the region that gave any signs of being Muslim were around the Fergana Valley in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan — an area known as a hotbed of fundamentalism and Islamic insurgents. The ‘Islam light’ that I saw in Central Asia isn’t surprising; it seems inevitable after over 70 years of Soviet anti-religious ideology. Where Islam was tolerated during the Soviet Union, only its least disruptive forms were allowed. For instance, Sufism, a more ‘mystical’ practice of Islam, barely survived in Central Asia.

It will be interesting to see how the region — nominally Muslim, but only loosely adherent — will change in the light of the religious revival taking place across the Islamic world.

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4. Adventure. More alluring than the region’s ’sights’ is the fact that you can really travel off the beaten path. And if you find something great, you could even be the first foreigner to do it. In Kyrgyzstan, there are dozens of remote mountain pastures where nomads camp, some of which have never been visited by foreigners. In Tajikistan, the most intrepid kayakers are just starting to try out the virgin high-altitude rapids of the Pamirs. And Turkmenistan, with its remote desert villages, gets almost no tourists. All five of the ‘Stans have restricted areas — mostly zones with politically sensitive people or sights — that offer challenges to anyone trying to get in. One traveler I met in Uzbekistan tried to smuggle himself into the off-limits enclave of Shakhimardan by hiding himself on the floor of a car. I wouldn’t recommend that particular activity, but the opportunities for adventure are definitely there.

5. Tea culture. Many of the most charming Central Asian customs revolve around drinking tea. Good thing, since people drink it all the time. During sweltering afternoons, locals retreats to chaykhanas (Persian for tea-places) and drink a couple of pots (green or black) with friends. The chaykhanas are fun and relaxing places; along with tea, I would often treat myself to a few skewers of shashlyk, fresh bread, or a beer. My favorite part of the chaykhana experience was the tapchans, raised, cushioned tea-beds that allow you to eat and drink while reclined like a sultan or prince — a relaxing way to spend an afternoon sipping away and watching passers-by. The teahouses are also very social places. Spend a few hours on your tapchan and you will invariably be asked “Eh, otkuda?” (”Where are you from?”) by a local at the next table. Hang out past 8 pm (or 6 pm in Tajikistan or Uzbekistan) and you’ll probably get dragged into a couple of vodka shots.

6. (Fairly) low prices. Inflation has a firm grip on the region, particularly as global oil prices keep climbing, but Central Asia remains a cheap travel destination once you get there. Traveling fairly often between cities and staying at reasonable hostels, you could expect to pay $250-300 per week in Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan (not counting visa costs). Staying put and being frugal, it’s possible to keep within a daily budget of $25 in the cheaper locations. All bets are off, however, in Almaty and Turkmenistan, where inflated prices will quickly shatter any backpacker’s budget.

Those were the pluses. But spending time in Central Asia isn’t always easy. Four big frustrations with the region:

1. Infrastructure. Quite simply, things — electricity, internet, phones, running water, postal services — often don’t work in Central Asia. In infrastructure quality, Kazakhstan is the best, followed by Kyrgyzstan; Tajikistan is a mixed bag (good phone lines, bad roads). Second worst is Uzbekistan: websites are blocked, connections are slow, phone cards don’t work and the transport is patchy. Turkmenistan, worst of all, has no available public transportation, virtually no internet, and it’s almost impossible to call internationally. Withdrawing money in Uzbekistan is often a full day process - and don’t expect to find a bankomat. And in all these countries, telecommunications and roads are in very poor shape outside of the major cities.

2. Taxi drivers. These guys (and they’re always men) are the scourge of independent travelers in the region. They wait in packs at all major transport hubs, street corners, airports and hotels frequented by tourists. From Kazakhstan to Turkmenistan, they’re universally annoying.

I don’t mind a bit of hard bargaining with a taxi driver. That’s part of the fun and, frankly, I’m pretty good at it. But the region’s sketchy chauffeurs resort to dirtier tactics to extort cash from travelers. The most common tactic is to lie to people arriving at a bus or train station (”the train lines are down;” “no buses today to Dushanbe”). The goal, of course, is to make you pay 3 times the price for expensive shared-taxi transportation. A few times, when traveling long distances by bus, cab drivers have driven me very slowly (on purpose), so that I would miss the daily bus and be forced to take their taxi the whole way.

The drivers show a touching degree of solidarity when it comes to gouging foreigners. Even if you know the real (locals’) price for a trip, and there are dozens of idle taxis waiting to leave, the cabbies will gang up to force you to pay an inflated price. Once, in Dushanbe, I had just shaken hands on a fair rate with a cabbie for a long trip, when the other drivers starting yelling in Tajik (presumably to make me pay more). The man changed his price, and no one else in the station was willing to charge even close to the fair rate.

Some cabbies even resort to coercion or outright violence. My traveling buddy, Thierry, paid $50 in Uzbkeistan to be taken to a nearby city. His driver took him to an isolated part of town where a bunch of his fellow cabbies were waiting. He ordered the passengers to get out, and demanded double the fare if they wanted to get to their destination. My friend coughed up; what else can you do when surrounded by a dozen angry Uzbeks? At the most extreme end, I was even chased down and grabbed by a drunk Kyrgyz cabbie who demanded an extra $30 because it was “a smooth journey.”

3. Rampant Machismo. I think that all cultures are a little macho. In North America, being macho isn’t usually viewed as very cool — although it does flourish in pockets (the military and college fraternities spring to mind). In Latin America and West Africa, I found machismo levels far more toxic. In Latin America, it’s usually of the sleazy ‘I can sleep wıth whoever I want to’ variety. In the Senegambian region, machismo involves bragging about achievements (whether doing well on an exam or harvesting the millet fastest) — humiliıty, at least in terms of downplaying one’s achievements, is a completely alien concept there.

I found that Central Asian culture can be at least as irritatingly macho as both West Africa and the Latin countries I’ve visited. I’m really talking about Turkemnistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan here; Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Karakalpakstan didn’t seem nearly so bad.

The younger guys are often looking for ways to prove their toughness. It can take a lot of forms: yelling for no reason, or pushing and touching during conversations (and especially taxi-price negotiations). It gets worse when people are drunk. One of my friends had to slip out the back of a tea-house because a group of ten drunk youth were waiting to get him — they said he had disrespected them in some unspecific way. I had at least two drunk men grab me and demand money or belongings — it can be worse if their friends are egging them on.

Stranger is the attitude towards women. In a culture that expects chastity of its women and virginity of its brides, men are allowed to get away with, well, pretty much anything. My buddies and I went to five or six nightclubs in Central Asia; the female patrons at each one were almost entirely prostitutes. The local guys I talked to about this found it perfectly normal – after all, you had to go home with someone, right?

And as in much of Latin America, faithful monogamy is treated casually. One Tajik taxi driver asked me how many girlfriends I had. “One,” I told him. “Just one? Why?” “Well, she’s very beautiful, so one’s enough,” I explained. He gave me a ‘suit yourself’ look, then explained that he had lots of girlfriends – three at the moment, in fact. I guess I looked surprised, so he clarified: he said “magazine” a couple of times and mimed a phone call with his free hand. I guess his ‘girlfriends’ were in fact escorts. Kind of odd, since five minutes before, he was telling me about his wife and kids.

I found Central Asian machismo surprising given the fact that it’s the women, rather than the men, who seem to be doing all the work. And not just the domestic labor (which is obviously 100% women-operated) – the most grueling manual tasks seemed to be the exclusive domain of women. In the scorching Ashgabat heat, all-female teams in long dresses cleaned up the streets; outside Dushanbe, I saw dozens of women (but no men) tilling the fields; and across Uzbekistan, I saw a lot of women hard at work and plenty of chaps hanging out in the teahouses.

I’m painting a harsh picture here, and I might be wrong about some of this stuff. After all, these were my impressions, and Central Asian culture might be less macho than it seemed to be me on the surface. I wouldn’t bet on it, though.

4. Insidious Bureaucracy. The wasteful Soviet tradition of paperwork, apathetic governments and corrupt officials form a deadly combination for independent travelers. The problems start before you even enter the country: all five republics force you to buy overpriced (e.g., $110) visas, few of which are available on arrival. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan force travelers to purchase absurd ‘Letters of Invitation’ before initiating the visa process, a requirement that adds an average of $50 in costs and two weeks’ waiting time.

When tourists actually enter many of the republics, they often have to register their visas with the government (why, no one knows). In Tajikistan, the process took 6 hours, trips to 2 banks, 4 official stamps, 2 copies of our passports, dollars AND local currency… and this with the help of a local who spoke native Tajik.

Complying with these ‘tourism’ rules is frustratingly difficult in some places. The draconian Uzbek ‘Registratsiya’ system forces travelers to declare all their valuables when they enter the country, as well as retain receipts for moneychanging and hotel stays. Tourists who declare the wrong amount of money (by even $1), or who forget to collect a hotel registration for a single night, can face hundreds of dollars in “fines” (Uzbek for bribe). The rules in Turkmenistan are even stricter.

It’s unclear whether the leaders of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan actually want to discourage tourism, or whether they simply don’t care. Fortunately, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan seem to have taken some steps towards making travel easier, with relaxed visa and registration requirements.

So those were the negatives.

As a travel destination, Central Asia probably isn’t for everyone, at least not right now. A budget traveler to the region should expect to spend roughly 25% of their time (and 40% of their funds) acquiring, registering and processing various visas, permits and declarations; haggling and waiting for sketchy transportation, or; putting up with other logistical nuisances. For a lot of people, that sort of stuff might be a buzzkill. If the region follows the Kyrgyz approach (vastly improved visa laws, a grassroots-tourism industry, crackdowns on bureaucratic graft) then Central Asia could soon become a much more appealing destination for the average traveler.

For those who wouldn’t mind the region’s hassles, or for those looking for a little more adventure, Central Asian is an incredible place to visit. Crossing the region, I saw incredible sights, met wonderful locals, made good new friends, got to fumble around in several languages, tried some fantastic cooking, and (best of all) didn’t have to spend much money in the process. For this traveler at least, the region really was worth the effort.

Pictures (in order): The jailoo at Song-kol Lake, Kyrgyzstan; pre-Mongol tower outside of Mir-i-Arab, Bukhara; gas crater at Darvaza, Turkmenistan.