Rucksackpacked

Three weeks on the road down under North to South: Auckland to Christchurch  We have just finished three weeks driving through New Zealand, from Auckland on the North Island, right down to Queenstown in the south. Previous long trips have afforded the opportunity to write notes and observations on the way, whether on trains, buses, planes or boats. This time, the travelling was pretty much all by car with some long driving days and no time for writing. Here therefore are a few recollections and bits of advice written at the end, when some of the immediacy and granularity of observation have necessarily diminished. Nonetheless, here goes  One of the most frequent comments we encountered when sharing our planned itinerary with friends who had already been was: "three weeks: that's anyhere near enough time", and that proves to have been correct. There are one or two places which, with hindsight, we could have dropped, but many more where it would have been good to stay longe...

In October, 2024, four of us undertook a two week tour of the five Stans of Central Asia, west to east, in an organised group of sixteen from a variety of western countries. Here are some of the highlights, lowlights and observations from the trip. Despite it being over thirty years since the collapse of the Soviet Union, not many Westerners have ventured this way yet. Here's what we found... L as Vegas meets Phnom Penh in Asia Common sense says that arguing with officialdom in a famously repressive country is never a good idea. Common sense also tells us that arguing in English with a bored, tired and probably underpaid official who does not speak it is a waste of both their time and yours. And common sense says that in a strange and unexplored environment, stop, stand back and see what others are doing before joining in. But at three o’clock in the morning after a seemingly endless trek through the huge, lavish and eerily empty corridors and halls of Turkmenistan's Ashgabat a...