Fully Guided Tours from Bishkek

What people love about Fully Guided Tours from Bishkek

• Traveled in October

  4

  I never received an email to evaluate this trip. I would like to share my thoughts. Overall it was excellent and there is no way I could have seen or experienced all that we did on my own. I would highly recommend going if there is interest in the Stans. In spite of how wonderful it was I do have some suggestions to make the trip less frustrating. 1. Emil was pretty useless. He added nothing to the trip. When asked a question he would shrug. When he was sick he could have stayed at the hotel for the day, as we were overnighting there. He insisted on coming along so he could spread his illness on the bus. All he did was take photographs and get in the way of those who had paid good money for this tour. Please, don't get me wrong, Emil is a kind person, when he wasn't being short with people. He really made this trip less enjoyable and added nothing. He should not be a tour leader ever. 2. We stayed at Hotel Centrum Bishkek before the tour. It was very close to Seven Hotel, not very expensive and 100x better than Seven Hotel. It would make a huge difference if the first night of the tour was at a nicer hotel. I was extremely satisfied with the other hotels, yurts and homestay, except for maybe the one in Ashgabat. (I did find out most moderate hotels in Turkmenistan may have fabulous lobbies and shabby room and I did get use to the hotel in Ashgabat. It was in a good location and the staff was great.) 3. The transportation was not very comfortable in Kyrgyzstan. It was better to ride in the 4 wheel drive vehicle with no air con than on the cramped bus. Aba (sp), the owner of the transport spoke excellent English. However, the young, official guide's English was very difficult to understand. He was knowledge though it was draining trying to figure out what he was saying. I often asked Aba to step in, though he was reluctant to do so since it was Ahzamat's (sp) job. The young guide was wonderful helping my friend on hikes and was very kind, however he does not have the personality or the language skills to be an English tour guide at this point. It would have made a world of difference if we had someone with better language skills. Maybe Aba could be the guide and the young man could drive? Also the tour guide is Samarkand was not very good. In general the rest of the guides were good to excellent. Max In Turkmenistan was excellent and invaluable with getting us through the border. Also excellent was the woman guide in Dushanbe. 4. It would be far better if Penguin charged everyone the cost of admissions for the entire trip as part of the tour cost. For example at theTurkmenistan border we paid $110 US, yet the blue receipts I have came to $74 US dollars. Where did the other $36 go? If it went towards admissions and the remainder to Max, I am fine with it, but if it went elsewhere, I am not OK with it. We should know where the money goes! Or better yet just add it to the tour price. An additional $100 to the tour price isn't going to discourage anyone from going on the trip. This tour could have been beyond exceptional with just the few changes mentioned above. However I am so glad I went. I learned so much and had a really great time. Thank you.

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  The 5 Stan-s - Follow in the footsteps of Genghis Khan
• GonçaloTraveled in June

  5

  Excellent way to tour the 5 stans. The guides were good (Hamid in Tajikistan and Nazghul in Kyrgyzstan were the best!), things were well organized, and we even got to visit some extra sights in Tajikistan. I do have two suggestions: 1- Replace the extra day in Bukhara with an extra day in Kazakhstan. We decided to go on our own visit kazakhstan before this trip, and i'm glad we did, as one day in Almaty feels almost like a crime for such a beautiful country (my favorite from the 5). I understand it is impossible to include it in this tour as kazakhstan is huge, but the extra day in Bukhara was pretty much useless (we visit Chor Minor and then just "commercial breaks" - guide trying to sell stuff from random shops - and ended up the day before lunch), so i do feel (and the rest of the group did as well) that the day could be used in Kazakhstan to visit, for example, Kolsai lakes or/and charyn canyon, which we did - on our own, before the trip - and truly recommend. If not, for anyone reading this: go to Kazakhstan on your own before/after the trip if you want to really see the 5 stans. It REALLY worths it! 2- Have one single guide for Uzbekistan. I know this one might be impossible, since we leave to turkmenistan in Bukhara and return far away in Khiva, but reason for this suggestion is that the city guides were the least good among all of country guides, and i believe is because on the other countries, since the guides were with us multiple days, we would connect more and end up knowing stories not just about history but about "how is is living there" and other interesting facts that made us love the guides we had. In any case, in summary, it was a very good trip and well organized, so thank you Odil!

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