Welcome to issue 5! To be honest I thought I’d stop by 3 at least and run out of steam but alas, here we are for another.

I’m settling in well to Bangkok but this time I want to talk from where I left you previously, at Guangzhou airport on my way to Tashkent via Xi’An. Hopefully by the next issue I will have caught up to where I actually am now and what I’m doing (which was the whole point of this newsletter).

Fam time!↗

It was an odd day that one, leaving a country that I had grown to really like, full of lots of quirks and things you just wouldn’t find anywhere else. I definitely need to come back to China, I missed out both the far east and western sides as well as a bunch of cities casually bigger than London.

However, after a quick layover in Xi’An (with 1st class lounge courtesy of trip.com :D), I hopped on the jet bound further west than Xinjiang province, to retrace the great Silk Road. I touched down in Tashkent, Uzbekistan that same evening and weirdly again it felt like being home somewhat as I was only there less than a year prior with Josh.

I got to our Halal certified hotel with the help of a Yandex, not quite at Didi levels but far cheaper than an Uber. I pretty much instantly conked out and awoke at around 8 in the morning with a ring on the phone…

I was informed that the gang (by gang I mean family) had touched down and to my surprise were already in the lobby of the hotel! Heading down on that lift to see them felt like being on that take me out show, just slowly coming down knowing that when the doors opened I would see the fam.

They had pretty much not slept at all so a little reload in the hotel was due.

After freshening up a little we all headed out and knocked out some sights that were close to the hotel, including the mighty Hotel Uzbekistan a pretty monumental-looking soviet-era hotel as well as the very classy Tashkent metro. Before long it was time to head back to the hotel to meet the rest of our tour group for this leg of the holiday.

The group consisted of: some guide don called Chocolate, who was going to show us around Uzbekistan; an American who lived in Austin, and two other Americans living in Denver.

The first dinner was pretty chill, just meeting everyone and getting some good munch in at some supposedly traditional place called ‘Fish and Bread’.

The next day we explored Tashkent together and ended up seeing some of the same sights as the day before, I was clearly too good of a tour guide. One thing I didn’t fully realise about Tashkent on the previous time was just how devastating the earthquake was that struck it. Pretty much the whole of the city and a chunk of the population was wiped out, setting the capital back years and also highlighting just how precarious our cities are to the force of nature.

I have sort of mixed feelings about Tashkent, it’s a nice city in that it has all that a city needs and there are some amazing sights but as far as the other towns in Uzbekistan go I feel as though Tashkent is really only a place to land the plane and then move through quickly to the more interesting sites.

That’s exactly what we did later that evening, hopping up on an overnight train bound for the far western ancient city of Khiva, a fortress town that stood the test of time, empires and now tourists.

Our room on the train got selected to have the additional feature of a sauna with no off switch and so we spent the first few hours hanging out on the corridor, with the rest of the group (and Mum) in another room next door. We chopped through some beers and crisps it was a very nice evening actually. Luckily the train staff managed to get our window open finally and the AC started to kick in which meant being in our room was actually doable, giving us a good rest while (somewhat) hurtling through the desert.

Upon pulling into Khiva in the morning we dumped our stuff at the hotel and explored the ancient town. It’s kinda like a Christmas market except in summer and not selling Christmas stuff but there were loads of little stalls lining the streets and carpet weavers tucked into little nooks in the old buildings. I bought myself a little carpet and tried on a traditional hat (made of camel fur!) I couldn’t actually tell when I had taken it off though…

The afternoon was spent trawling around the ancient buildings that at that point all looked pretty similar and I think we had all gotten fed up with our guide who kept on trying to quiz us and make awful jokes but tbf at least he was trying. Nothing was going to help us out in that heat and not ideal sleep from the train.

We had dinner in a very nice terraced restaurant which overlooked the old town as we prepared our stomachs for the Arsenal match later that night.

Just as we were getting ready to leave, disaster struck. A power cut…

Where on earth was going to have a generator up and running and directing the power into showing a European cup match?

The old mosque of course.

It felt a little sacrilegious watching a hellish performance in a once holy building but they were the ones who had converted the place into a bar so all good I suppose.

I guess the power of the Silk Road was not on our side as the fakkin bastards PSG snuck past us in penalties, finishing up our night :(

The next day we spent looking at more old buildings, which were actually really cool. Tom and I managed to get kicked out of the Harem hall and kinda ended up in the Khiva backrooms for a bit which was prolly a highlight.

That night we had a final group dinner on another terraced restaurant which had a great view of the old minaret. Our tour guide who may as well have just been ChatGPT at this point told us some wack info which turned out to be wrong and also said that we couldn’t get up onto the walls which Mum and Bea quickly disproved. He was too busy watching reels to notice tho apart from when he sniped a picture of them on like 30x zoom which was a bit odd.

Anyways, that next morning we said goodbye to chocolate as we headed into the unknown, one of the last ‘dictatorships’ of the world and a place that the ‘hole’ in pothole does not do justice to.

Turkmenistan!

The border crossing was a little nerve-racking, as the only thing we knew about Turkmenistan before is that you cannot do anything wrong or you could spend the rest of your life in the desert. However, our nerves pretty much immediately melted when we met our new guide who greeted us with “yoyoyo Intrepid people wassup”. The guy was a mid-20s football fanatic and immediately got onto talking about Arsenal’s form and England’s chances in the World Cup. Completely unexpected based on what we thought the Turkmen people would be like.

I have noticed travelling is always like that though. You go to countries expecting everyone to be a particular type of person, shown by stereotypes or just things you have heard online but one forgets that everyone is a person first, before whatever country they are from.

Every single country on earth has assholes, every single country also has hilarious people and absolutely every country on earth has people that stand up as soon as the plane lands. Having the opportunity to travel through a place as unique as Turkmenistan was a truly humbling experience, again highlighting just how similar we all are even when media tries its hardest to pit one group against another.

My pre-conceptions about Turkmenistan were again shattered shortly after when our driver started blasting bass-boosted remixes of Migos and NBA Youngboy as we hurtled through the desert.

When I say hurtled I really mean it. I don’t think I can put into words both the impressive driving and lack of driving at the same time that was on display here.

For like 5 hours straight this man was pedal to the metal, smashing through sand, potholes and eventually our own tyre…

We were in three separate cars for our journey to the infamous Turkmen crater. They definitely had some sort of bet going on because suddenly one of the cars would peel away and just full on drive through the dunes, doing anything to get a few millimetres ahead of the others.

Eventually we started to head properly off into the desert and the road became rough tyre marks in the dunes. Before long we saw the glow in the distance and the next second there we were, face-to-face with the iconic gateway to hell.

The crater was in all honesty a little bit of a let-down at first, I knew before that it was slowly burning out but there really wasn’t anywhere near as much left as I thought there would be. To be fair, if it was full it would be impossible otherwise get as close to it as we did, the heat was already pretty strong with just a little left.

The real gateway opened up as the sun went down. Upon settling into our yurt camp and having a nice little dinner, we walked through a patch of desert to get back to the crater which had now lit up the surrounding environment and genuinely looked out of this world from a distance (and up close).

After some swell pics and a walk back to the camp we called it a night.

The next morning it was back in the three 4x4s and on the ‘road’ again down to Ashgabat.

No flat tires this time, but a lot of camels!

We knew we were approaching the capital when all of the cars slowly transitioned to being white and the roads suddenly became actual roads.

Before long we saw the white and gold oasis of Ashgabat. It has got to be one of the world’s most unique cities, every single car/bus/transport thingy has to be white and the majority of buildings are white with gold accents.

I think all of the foreigners were lumped into one hotel so they could keep an eye on us, it was the sport hotel that was used by athletes in sports tournaments at the nearby stadium and sports centre. Turns out Turkmenistan were very good at MMA and Weightlifting, which makes perfect sense considering their diet of pretty much pure meat.

Interestingly, unlike Uzbek, Kazakh and the rest of the silk road’s Central Asia segment, the Turkmens did not eat horse meat at all. Turkmen horses were seen as their absolute best resource (apart from the oil probably) and therefore to eat them would be a huge disrespect.

We actually got to ride on some of the famous horses for like 15 seconds each. I can’t say it was that smooth of a ride because I spent the whole time trying to get my foot in the stirrup.

We saw some very cool monuments around Ashgabat as well as an ancient fortress. Most of the stuff was dedicated to the first president who was very surprisingly the father of the current president. Some of his monuments have been toned down significantly since his heyday though. For example a huge podium statue of him used to spin around so he could be seen by all but now is stationary and a monument dedicated to his book is no longer lit up at night. It’s probably the most the people could do against him without being subject to legal difficulties.

The people in the city seemed to be relatively well-off. The richer Turkmen people spoke in Russian to show their higher class and were probably most likely involved in the oil trade. Oil was so cheap in Turkmenistan that it was pretty much free to drive a car and free to keep a house powered, so while most of the money was spent on monuments, they did somewhat have decent quality and cost of living.

After a couple of days exploring the city we did the most wack detour/trip ever and drove about 4 and a half hours east to a place called Mary to see a couple of old buildings and a library, stayed overnight and then drove straight back. I’m not really sure what the thinking was there but oh well.

We had one last night in Ashgabat and then boarded our plane early the next morning for Istanbul!

I think we all felt pretty glad to get out of Turkmenistan, while it was nowhere as strict as we thought it would be the general vibe and food were not great so it was so good to be able to properly relax in Istanbul.

Istanbul is such a cool city, it has so much history and really does bridge two continents, giving it again, a very unique feel. We took it nice and chill, seeing the mosques, cats and ice cream shops.

As the rest of the holiday had been pretty intense I think we all wanted some time to just unwind.

Not much else to say about IST but love it as a place, although the touristy stuff is ridiculously expensive so you are defo best just cafe hopping around and exploring different areas that way.

Juuuust like that it was time to say a big goodbye to the family!! Cannot describe how nice it was to hang out with you gang, really special holiday with really special people.

I said goodbye to them at IST airport as they boarded a flight back to London. I chilled on the toilet for like 2 hours and then got my flight direct into Bangkok later that night.

Next time…. Not one, not two but THREE special guests fly over to meet me in Bangkok and some shenanigans occur…

As always, thank you for reading!!! If you have any suggestions on how to improve or just random things hit me up yo. Alllsoooo check out @paromapparel on Instagram :D

Thought↗

I wish coffee replenished social battery as well as normal battery

Album of the week↗

The King Of Limbs - Radiohead↗

Super pumped for this one. It has got to be something from Radiohead, I’ve been rinsing them for the last few months. Question is which one? I have landed on The King of Limbs, while not the most ‘beginner friendly’ album they have (def rec In Rainbows for first time Radiohead), it is soooooo good!!! OK Computer might be my favourite but everyone knows that one so I wanted to recommend something a little deeper into their discography. Note - if you do decide to listen to this, have a super open mind and try not to think too much, there are some weird sounds but I promise it all fits together. It also is one of those albums with infinite replayability, getting much better and hearing new parts of the songs with each listen. I think my favourite track has got to be ‘Give Up The Ghost’. Absolute 10/10 album imo.

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