Travel

Central Asia in review

I didn’t have a clue about what to expect from Central Asia. I knew very little about its history and culture and scenery. After 2 months of travelling around 4 of the 5 countries in the region, I feel like I’ve absorbed so much knowledge on all of those topics. In the interest of not completely forgetting all of this information, I’ve decided to record it here in a big overall Central Asia post. And it might be interesting to flick over if you want to gain an insight into this really amazing region.

This post includes:

  1. Overall words on my time here
  2. A brief timeline of the region
  3. A breakdown of the culture of each country

Basics

Days I spent in each country:
Kazakhstan - 22
Kyrgystan - 18
Uzbekistan - 14
Tajikistan - 6

Defining features (in my opinion!):
Kazakhstan - steppe, modern cities, friendly people
Kyrgystan - mountains, nomads (horses and yurts), lakes
Uzbekistan - silk road cities, modern cities, bread
Tajikistan - mountains, persian language, Pamirs

I have really enjoyed my time in Central Asia, despite it being hard at times. I’ve developed a real love for the area and will look back on my time here with absolute fondness. I’m also proud to say I survived the coldest winter in Central Asia in 15 years!

An unexpected constant: That aren’t a lot of hostels in Central Asia, with most of my time spent in Guesthouses, but the ones that do exist are very different to normal hostels. These hostels are not filled with other travellers passing through, but Russians living there. Because of mobilisation, many Russians have left Russia and are yet to find a permanent living situation. This creates a very strange vibe in the hostels, with me loving life and seeing the world, and this group of people who are just trying to survive. Many of these people have very warped views on the west and the war, which was interesting to hear about at first but quickly became very tiring. I felt like the spokesperson for England most of the time, despite knowing very little about the whole situation. Addressing strange Russian propaganda tropes about England became extremely boresome. An example of how absurd some of these were - “All people in England are gay”. Many of these people, perhaps because they were living there, didn’t abide by the unspoken hostel etiquette rules. Overall, they weren’t the most pleasant experience!

A brief timeline

8th - 5th century BC → The Scythians. Central Asia was split into Khanates (Kingdoms). Scythians were nomadic and depended heavily on horses.

3rd century BC → Xiongnu. Nomadic. Lots of fighting with the Han dynasty who ruled China.

2nd century BC → Silk Road started to form. Settlements begin to pop up amongst the nomadic lifestyle.

8th century AD → Uyghurs. Nomadic Turkic group who massively enabled trade across Eurasia.

9th century AD → Rise of Islam. At the end of the 9th century China collapsed and Persia started to decline. This negatively impacted the Silk Road and therefore Central Asia.

13th century → Mongols. Still nomadic. Central Asia remains separated into khanates. Mongols protected the trade routes across Central Asia and allowed them to prosper and improve. The Mongol empire collapsed due to internal rifts.

14th and 15th century → Timur ruled over the khanates. On Timur’s death in 1405, the region was divided into principalities ruled by his descendants. The rivalries between these means that they were defeated by the Uzbeks.

16th century → The Silk Road had dried up. Central Asia’s prosperity declined and it was known as the “backwater”.

17th century → Russia began advancing into Central Asia. By the 19th century they had total control of all of the khanates.

19th century → The Great Game between Russia and Britain. Afghanistan was the only country separating the British controlled India and the Russian controlled Central Asia. Both Britain and Russia wanted to keep Afghanistan as a friendly buffer, and it resulted in a host of activities now referred to as the Great Game.

20th century → Soviet Union. The 1917 revolution in Russia resulted in the Tsarist regime being replaced with the communist one, with Central Asia now being part of the Soviet Union. In the 1920s and 1930s the Soviet government created five republics in the region: the Kazakh SSR (Soviet Socialist Republic), the Kyrgyz SSR, the Tajik SSR, the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, each republic obtained their independence. And so we finally have the five countries that make up the region today!

Culture

These insights mostly come from conversations I have had with local people. More broad and easy insights come from my own experiences. If it is my own opinion I will state this, otherwise I am simply relaying what people told me. Do not take it as fact!!!

An overall point on languages in Central Asia: Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek are all Turkic languages. They were originally written using the arabic script which was introduced with Islam. This was changed to cyrillic during the Soviet Union, which is what remains today. However, the use of latin is on the increase, especially in Uzbekistan. Tajik is a Persian language.

Kazakhstan

  • Language - In the villages and in the west people often only speak Kazakh, with no Russian. In major cities like Almaty, people often only speak Russian, even if they are ethnically Kazakh. When I asked the school children I spoke to about Kazakh they said they mostly speak Russian as it’s more practical to know. But they want to speak Kazakh too, as it’s important to preserve their language. They spoke about this in Russian… During the Soviet Union a lot of Russian people moved to Kazakhstan, and they remain there today. This means it has been impacted by Russian culture the most out of the Central Asian countries. You can really feel this in Almaty.
  • Religion - One affect of the Russian, and more specifically the Soviet Union’s, impact on Kazakhstan is the reduced importance of Islam in the country. Historically (well since the 700s AD) Central Asia has been muslim. I’d still call Kazakhstan a muslim country, but it’s the most relaxed one I’ve ever visited. I could count on one hand the number of women wearing head coverings, I didn’t hear the call to prayer once, and there were multiple orthodox churches in the big cities.
  • Women - It’s common for women to marry relatively young. The couple will live with the groom’s family. Women do commonly work, in all sorts of jobs like in Western society. Generally it seemed pretty modern to me! I was treated with the utmost of respect across the board. Older men on the train viewed me like a grown-up daughter. They looked after me - giving me some of their beer, lending me their sandals, helping me to get onto my top bunk. But they also really listened to me. They weren’t shy in asking me questions about my studies, my job and my opinions on their country. I wasn’t belittled for being a woman, and I felt very empowered by the interactions. In Europe, when older men showed an interest in me it always came with a slightly creepy vibe. In eastern Turkey, they simply wouldn’t interact with me. Here was the sweet-spot. I would highly recommend travelling to Kazakstan as a woman!
  • Kazakhstan is HUGE and is mostly Steppe, an ecoregion of grassland without trees. It’s desolate and herds of camels roam across it. This wasteland like area was used (or abused you could say) by Russia as a place to test out nuclear and chemical weapons, and as place to create a gulag (a prison labour camp) the size of France.
  • Kazakhstan is the world’s main provider of uranium, the substance used to power nuclear reactors for nuclear energy. In 2019 it provided 43% of the world’s uranium (this is a fact, I checked it). Remember, nuclear power is absolutely a positive thing in the movement towards sustainability and fazing out fossil fuels. If this stance shocks you I totally understand, nuclear energy has a bad reputation, but if you look into it I promise you’ll reach the same conclusion! And if you can’t be bothered to look into it, I am always happy to talk about nuclear power in an open manner and discuss the perceived negative aspects of it (so feel free to message me, I really do love talking about it!).

Kyrgystan

Kyrgystan is a funky one with a sharp north/south divide. There is a history of conflict between the two regions, and they are distinct to such an extent that I will discuss them separately. The difference grows from the fact that the north is ethnically Kyrgyz and the south is ethnically Uzbek.

North Kyrgystan:

  • Language - In Bishkek (the capital) everyone speaks Russian, not everyone speaks Kyrgyz but most do. Every else it was the reverse with everyone speaking Kyrgyz and most speaking Russian. The younger population in cities outside of Karakol were dismissive of me asking if they speak Kyrgyz, replying “of course we do, it’s our language”. This was a much stronger sentiment than in Kazakhstan.
  • Religion - North Kyrgystan is a muslim region, but I saw very very few women covering their hair and never heard the call to prayer. Speaking to one Kyrgyz woman, she expressed her concern over seeing an increase in women wearing hijabs. She told me Krygystan was not originally a muslim country and she does not want it to become like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. She views the hijab as repressive. When eating with a family in Bishkek I was instructed to pray after eating however, in the manner of cupping my hands as if holding water and then washing my face with this water. In Karakol (a city in the east) the young woman at reception wore a niqab (material covering the entire face and head with just a slit for the eyes) but it was clearly unusual. When describing the woman a local man remarked “she wears a piece of cloth over her whole face!”. In this eastern region there is a large population of Dungan muslims, originally from China. There are Dungan mosques because of this.
  • Women - In the cities it was very modern, with women doing all sorts of jobs and living alone etc. I went for coffee in Bishkek with one local woman who was in her 30s and was unmarried. I asked her about this, as I always asked if I was married. She explained that her family did always ask about this whenever she visited them in the small town, and it was less accepted there, but in Bishkek it was fairly common to be unmarried. In the villages it was more traditional, with women getting married fairly young and living with the groom’s family. People are expected to have children soon after marriage too. I went to lunch with one local man and detected a pretty strong tone of sexism in his comments. He told me that it was the woman’s job to pour the tea, looking at me expectantly when the teapot arrived. It made my skin crawl to be honest, but on the other hand I wanted to respect the culture so I obliged. It’s a really hard line to walk, and one that brings up a lot of interesting thoughts. I have a feeling that my experiences juggling personal beliefs and respecting different cultures will leave me pondering for years! Eating out with this man’s entire family the following evening, an effort was made for him to sit on a certain side of the table. His wife later explained that as the head of the family he should always sit facing the entrance to the room, as it would traditionally be in a nomadic yurt. One troubling feature of Kyrgyz life is the concept of bride kidnapping. This is when a man kidnaps a woman and forces her to marry him. The force comes from the fact that she is no longer seen as ‘pure’ (read: a virgin) after being alone in his company (also because rape is not an uncommon feature of the kidnapping) and so will struggle to find a different husband. This causes her family to tell her that she must stay with the man and marry him. This ‘tradition’, the quotation marks are there because its historical prevalence is debated, continues today in rural regions. Some studies estimate that one third of brides in Kyrgystan were kidnapped. However, some of these may be consensual, being more of an elopement than a kidnapping. Non-consensual kidnapping was only made illegal in 1994 and it is very rarely prosecuted.
  • There is still a large population of nomads in the north of Kyrgystan. These people settle in towns in the winter and move to pastures in the summer, living in yurts. Their livelihood comes from livestock.

South Kyrgystan:

  • Language - The primary language is a dialect of Uzbek and Kyrgyz that neither Kyrgyz nor Uzbek speakers can understand. Everyone also speaks Russian.
  • Religion - A lot more religious (muslim) than the north. I could count on one hand the number of women who were not wearing head coverings. The call of prayer was audible in both Arslanbob and Osh. Everyone gave thanks after eating by doing the fake washing face action, and I was encouraged to do the same. I have mixed thoughts on this. On one hand, I want to be respectful of their religion and culture. On the other, I am not religious and do not want to give thanks to a figure I do not believe in. I would always do the action to appease them and not seem rude, but it made me feel dirty in the sense that I was pretending and disrespecting my own belief. Speaking to Lachin, a muslim from Arslanbob, he does not relate to countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan and speaks of them with a lot of distaste. He does not see his religion as having anything to do with them, and absolutely does not want their influence spreading to Kyrgystan. But he isn’t worried about this happening, unlike the much less religious lady I spoke to in the north. Muslims from Kyrgystan are clear in their beliefs about treating everyone with respect, no matter of their religion, and have zero tolerance for extremism and are unsusceptible to its influence. I hope he is right.
  • Women - Sadly (in my opinion), due to the increased influence of religion, the south was a lot more conservative in all aspects including those relating to women. A woman’s role was exclusively in the home, and in villages they often only left the home on market day. The home extends out to the fields here, and I would often see women doing hard manual tasks with animals or vegetation. Girls still went to school just like boys, but it was less common for them to go to university. Arranged marriages are common, but the women do often have a say. Once married, the bride lives with the groom’s family.
  • People here are not Kyrgyz so the cultural practices of bride kidnapping and the nomadic lifestyle do not apply.
  • While being Uzbek, people here are very happy to be part of Kyrgystan rather than Uzbekistan. Kyrgystan is the most liberal and democratic country in Central Asia. It still has an issue with corruption, but you can do whatever you want, start whatever business you want, live the life you want. This is not possible in Uzbekistan. Life is difficult in Uzbekistan compared to Kyrgystan.

Uzbekistan

  • Language - Everyone’s first language is Uzbek, with most people also speaking Russian. The influence of Russia in general, including the Russian language, is a lot less here than in Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan. In the east of the country people often spoke Tajik as well.
  • Religion - According to the museum manager who gave me a private tour around the citadel in Bukhara, 95% of Uzbeks are muslim. A lot of women do cover their hair, but a large number don’t still. I heard the call to prayer in most places. Alcohol was not a given in restaurants. I didn’t witness the fake washing face after eating as often as in South Kyrgystan.
  • Women - Very similar to northern Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan, women were visible working across sectors but were more confined to the home in rural areas. Women seemed to run most guesthouses, and most stalls in the bazaars. I saw lots of women police officers. Young women in the cities were very confident, coming up to me to ask questions about where I was from and to proudly tell me they planned to travel. I had lunch with two university students and one of them informed us that she wouldn’t marry and have children, she would instead travel the world!
  • Up until 2016 Uzbekistan remained quite closed off to the rest of the world, under the rule of a repressive, authoritarian President, Islam Karimov. Uzbekistan is still recovering from his rule.

Tajikistan

  • Language - The main language is Tajik, which is a Persian language. This means many people also speak Farsi. Russian is widely spoken, especially in the cities. In the Pamirs, each village has a distinct language due to the isolated nature of the communities. The alphabet used for Tajik was originally arabic, but is now latin (although I mostly saw cyrillic in Dushanbe, perhaps because of the dominance of Russian?).
  • Religion - Like with the rest of Central Asia, Islam ‘lite’ (as described by my tour guide Denis) is practiced in Tajikistan. People drink alcohol, go to mosque only on a Friday and many women don’t cover their hair. The situation in neighbouring Afghanistan is looked on with pity, and there doesn’t seem to be any chance or concern of the extremism spreading to Tajikistan.
  • Women - It felt slightly behind Kyrgystan and Kazakhstan in gender equality, but definitely becoming more modern. A woman’s role is primarily in the home, with this changing in the cities but remaining firmly rooted in the rural areas.
  • There is an on-going border dispute between Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. The most recent flair up was in September 2022 and 100 people were killed in fighting. This sentiment is seen in attitudes towards each country from the other. In Kyrgystan I was told to be very careful in Tajikistan, that the people were ‘wild’. In my experiences, both countries were beautiful and people were exceptionally friendly!
  • Tajikistan is split roughly in half. The west of the country is simply Tajikistan, the east is an autonomous region called the GBAO. You need a special permit to enter this area, and it’s primarily comprised of the Pamir mountains. The people of the Pamirs are different to Tajiks in language, culture and appearance. I didn’t visit the Pamirs so I won’t go into a lot of detail on this area, but it’s less conservative in how people dress and there are a high number of people with fair complexions with blonde hair and blue eyes, and even people with red hair! It’s a really tough place to live. Nothing grows easily in the soil and the high altitudes. Accessibility is difficult with poor mountain roads. This has led to food security issues, worsened by the border closing between Kyrgystan and Tajikistan as food could more easily be delivered from Kyrgyz cities than Tajik ones in the northern region.
  • Tajikistan is the odd one out in a lot of ways, namely its people are ethnically Iranian and speak a Persian language. But the culture is very similar to the other Central Asia countries, including its cuisine.

Turkmenistan

Disclosure: I did not visit Turkmenistan because it’s basically impossible! But I did have a long conversation with four Turkmen men (that sounds funny) that I met at a tea house in Uzbekistan. I felt like I gained enough insight to briefly mention about it.

  • It is the second most closed country in the world, after North Korea. But inside it remains quite open and ordinary life is good. Unlike most countries, where the more countries you can visit visa-free the better, Turkmenistan has the opposite mindset. The government requested that Turkey removes its visa-free status, wanting its population to need a visa to visit Turkey.
  • They have ‘democratic’ elections which ‘elected’ the former President’s son to be the next President… You cannot talk against the leadership of the country, or anything to do with politics or you will be repressed. Society is not at all liberal, unsurprisingly.
  • But yes ordinary life is good. People have a high standard of living in terms of big houses, nice cars, and extremely cheap gas and electricity. A litre of petrol is cheaper than a litre of water! The guy I spoke to runs a strawberry plantation which uses huge boilers which are large enough to heat an entire district of the city. He does not even account for the price of electricity in his business as the price is negligible. That’ll probably sting a bit considering the whole energy crisis in England at the moment. But think about your freedom of speech!
  • They have incredibly stupid laws. For example, in Ashgabat, a city made entirely of white marble, your car must be white. And that means no black radiator on the front, no black alloys, no black tinted windows. I asked if it was difficult to find your car in a car park, they didn’t get it.