Bagan – Monday, February 12 At 5:00 in the morning I left for the airport. The hotel’s regular driver hadn’t arrived yet so the doorman walked out into the dark street to look for a taxi. He had to go down to the first major intersection, but finally he found one. As I hopped in [...]
Travelogue Dates February 10th: Yangon The single most striking sight in Yangon – and perhaps all of Myanmar – is the Shwedagon Paya. February 11th: Bago From this vantage point of Shwemawdaw Paya it seemed that every hill top within sight was covered with additional payas. February 12th: Bagan Two things about horse transportation: first, [...]
Visas I applied for the visas myself which turned out, in the case of the Russian visa, to be a mistake. The Uzbekistan Embassy in Washington is now offering a multi-entry visa to US citizens without a letter of support. Mine cost $45 and took a little better than one week to process. For the [...]
Travel Agents I used a number of travel agents and can recommend them all. I used Academservice of Moscow (E-mail: acs@acase.ru) for my Moscow hotels – the Moskva and Novotel. They supplied the support letter for the Russian visa application after I faxed them my credit card number. I also asked them to send a [...]
Hotels The Moskva ($48 per night) in Moscow was an aging soviet giant, slightly run down, but very well located. It was just off Red Square and near the metro and shopping. It’s easy to get lost in it – it was a long walk from the entrance to the elevators. I received about 6-8 [...]
A Small Visa Problem – Wednesday, September 13 I was on my way home from Uzbekistan via Moscow. At the airport the immigration official asked to see my Russian visa. When I showed it to him he frowned. “I think,” he said slowly, “your Russian visa has expired.” I wasn’t exactly sure how that could [...]
The Road to Turkestan – Monday, September 11 I was on my way to Turkestan, in Kazakhstan, to visit the Yasawi Mausoleum. It’s one of the best preserved of the many monuments built by Timur – the national hero of Uzbekistan. It was the last trip of my vacation and something I had been looking [...]
The road to Tim and Samarkand – Thursday, September 7 Laura wanted to stop in Tim on the way to Samarkand and that created a couple of problems. First, Tim wasn’t exactly on the way to Samarkand and the side trip would add hours to our journey. More importantly, none of us were sure exactly [...]
Samarkand – Friday, September 8 I started my sightseeing early the next morning: first I stopped at the bazaar to take some more pictures. The best one was of a line of women selling handmade brooms. In the background loomed the huge blue-domes of the Bibi-Khanym mosque which sits on the south edge of the [...]
Bukhara – Monday, September 4 Shortly after arriving in Bukhara I went looking for the Char Minar. I had seen pictures of this building in my travel guide and it seemed like a good place to start my sightseeing. It was only about a 10-minute walk from my hotel. The day was hot – the [...]
