Parr Planet – Travels with Stephen & Kathleen
Follow us as we travel the World!
From the modern wonders of Tashkent, we make our way by bus to the magical city of Samarkand. This ancient city invoikes visions of The Arabian Nights and its current beauty does not disappoint. The Registan, which is the main complex and tourist attraction includes three ancient madrasas or Islamic Universities. The beautifully restored blue and green tiles …
Next day we crossed the border to Uzbekistan and the bus took us to the heart of Tashkent, a bustling, modern city and the capital of Uzbekistan. The soviet art has been sort of a theme all along but the masterpiece that is the metro system is stunning to see. These stations are impeccably designed and decorated …
The next day, we headed over and through the mountains to Gazza Village. We stopped at a beautiful area with a mountain river and lake, hiked out to a waterfall and had a picnic lunch by the shores of the lake. Our guest house, home for the next two nights, was on a family farm. We could watch …
We cross back into Kazahstan over a mountain pass and are treated to a couple of days checking out some of its natural wonders before heading to Almaty for a quick view of the city. It is unfortunately raining when we arrive, but our weather thus far has been so amazing that we take it …
Our 29-day tour of “The Five Stans of the Silk Road” begins in Bishkek, Kyrgystan. We arrive one day early to get our bearings and have a nice walk around the city. It is a friendly, well-organized, safe-feeling city and you can definately see and sense the soviet influence on its development. Like the caucascus countries, they seem …
Astana is the capital of Kazakhstan. It was originally established as Bozok in the 8th century and was built into a sprawling modern city with huge boulevards, mosques, civic buildings, monuments and etc. by 1997, when it replaced Almaty as the capital. Not much that is historical remains here and it is mostly interesting as a modern, …
Not on the way, but the simplest way to navigate the flight to Astana, we ended up flying to Dubai and laying over for the night. It was dark by the time we got in but we had booked a room at a hotel next to the Burj Khalifa, currently the tallest building in the world, and …
Back in Tbilisi, we now have one full day to explore the city on our own. We started our day with a soak at one of the city’s fine hot mineral baths, where we had our own private bath suite and two attendants to wash and exfoliate us….delightful! We then wandered up the hill nearby with its …
Intent on seeing the Goris Cave Dwellings, we embarked on an overnight trip which would take us out to Akhaltsikhe and back again seeing the beautiful terrain, wonderous caves and some more fantastic monestaries and cathedrals. The Goris Caves are thought to have been in use since the 4th Century BC with the area and …
The easiest way to get from Yerevan to Tbilisi was to hire a driver to take us on the five hour drive. We got someone to take us to see various sites along the way so it turned into a nine hour journey, but it was still a nice day. In Tbilisi, we relaxed on …