🇫🇷 — Version Française plus bas — 🇫🇷

25th of May 2025, Khiva, Uzbekistan

🇺🇿 Uzbekistan, you are one of the rare countries on my route which I'd heard about before leaving home. And only great things, unlike some other countries. For example, when I mention India, people often bring up safety concerns, or sanitary issues, or even how spicy the food is. Then there are countries I knew little about, and that others know little about too, such as Kazakhstan. And then there is Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan, I was so curious to visit you. 💫 I've seen you in pictures a lot. I've heard about your architecture and how beautiful you are. And it's true. You are glorious. However, I'm struggling to understand you. 🥺 You are the first country where I don't get your culture and I struggle to have genuine discussions with your locals. It's hard to find you authentic. You are too touristy…

I KNOW, I am part of the problem. I am a tourist myself, and I tend to get very critical of travellers who complain about places being "too touristy" while contributing to that very tourism. I recognise the irony as this is exactly what I'm doing right now. But I had to tell you. I had to say it because I'm committed to transparency in these articles, sharing with you my observations and thoughts about my journey. And this has been a real, big, realisation that I encounter everyday and simply can't ignore.

I'm back on travelling with my Argentinian friend Francisco, who I met in Georgia. 🤘🏼And we can't help but notice how different this is from our Georgian travels. First, we can't find any couchsurfing hosts. We’ve tried in most cities we’ve visited without success. We discussed about knocking on doors, but this would be difficult in touristy places where they’d likely direct us to hotels. Yes, because we are doing the touristy places. We can't really manage to find a way out of them. Also, they are too beautiful to not see them.

Not only we can't manage to connect with any locals — which is the complete opposite of how we traveled Georgia with Fran, and how we typically travel in general, making it especially noticeable for us — but we're also constantly overwhelmed by tour buses discharging groups of tourists at every street corner. 😶‍🌫️😮‍💨

So we both experienced a few days where we were getting irritated quite easily and drained by this new phase of our travels. The heat was intense, but it was also just a completely different way of traveling. 🥵 Like anything, it takes time to adjust. But now it's getting better!! I've come to realise that Uzbekistan is simply another chapter in my journey, and accepting this has made everything better. When I say Uzbekistan, I'm really referring to this specific region: the Silk Road cities with their crazy architecture. I know there's so much more that Uzbekistan has to offer, and I'm excited to discover it!

One tricky challenge here is moving around. There are many night trains which are great. But for shorter distances, it's very common to use "shared taxis" all around Central Asia. Both locals and tourists use these private cars to travel between locations. But for me, taxis are a no-go, for obvious environment reason. 🚖⛔️ For me, traveling responsibly goes far beyond avoiding planes. It’s so much more. And avoiding taxis is very important. Maybe the graph below, which I prepared for my interventions in schools back in france would help illustrating why.

Graph showing that if I traveled from Paris to Mumbai in a car solo, my carbon footprint would be even worst than if I took a plane!