Welcome to my next trip report, covering flights in Uzbekistan Airways business class, Somon Air business class, and Saudia first class, as well as stays at a couple of Hyatt hotels. My good friend Matthew (from Live and Let's Fly) and I have a shared interest for visiting random countries and flying random airlines (at…
Continue reading: Introduction: One “Stan” At A Time
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
Looking forward to this Trip Report @Lucky! Probably more than all the others because of the sheer ridiculousness of the teasers you've put out about it. Expecting nothing short of mind boggling for the Uzbekistan Air review.
Can't wait!! Also, are your rankings of the top First Class products coming soon too?? Dying to hear about them! Love the blog, thanks for all your hard work 🙂
@Lucky did you get a chance to fly that soviet Russian aircraft you talked about earlier? (I believe you mentioned it in a prior post-if not my bad) would be interesting to see not only unusual airlines but unusual aircraft too
I really like the title of this trip report series! I am looking forward to it!
@Stvr- Actually Matthew has already started the report of this trip yesterday and has posted the review of the flight to Tashkent and the review of the hotel they stayed at in Tashkent.
Well done with the trip report title! Haha!
I notice though on your flight map that there is a stop in Riyadh and Jeddah. Did you really stop in both?
Hey lucky my family and I, now living in Chicago since 1988, are from Dushanbe. I left when I was 3 months old :).
I've been a points guy for 3-4 years but figured it would take 20 before a blogger found their way to Dushanbe 🙂
Dude let's stop pretending this site is about points and miles! It is about you pushing cards, buying tickets and then expensing them in the name of this blog. Chill and keep it real!
Your headline photo shows Hotel Uzbekistan-you should have stayed there. It was the only hotel foreigners were allowed to stay in during the USSR era and it still has holes in the bedroom walls where the listening devices were placed. Interesting hotel to stay in with the KGB headquarters just down the road!
I take it Turkmenistan was not on your itinerary...
Took me an entire 3 months to get a visa, and luckily I got a business Visa which doesn't require a 24 hour "tour guide" (i.e. government security agent to follow you around) .
The 11p.m curfew was a little annoying, but it is a really stunning country!!
Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more interested in these rather esoteric once-in-a-lifetime destination that the airlines you flew in on 🙂
Fantastic places to visit on this planet. Very off the beaten path and as you probably noticed, the locals are genuinely surprised that you made it that far out. And the plov is great in any of the stans 😀
It makes sense though, that there aren't many flights between Tashkent and Dushanbe, because the market is simply not there. These countries are still very poor. None of them, apart maybe Kazakhstan increasingly, have a middle class. On top of that, the totalitarian Uzbek and Tajik governments dislike each other, to put it mildly. Tajik citizens, can't travel to Uzbekistan (or the UAE) without a visa they've arranged beforehand.