7 Myths About Central Asia (and Why They're All Wrong)

And none of them are reasons you came up with on your own. You inherited them — from old news, from a friend who never went, from a general feeling that countries ending in "-stan" are difficult in ways nobody can quite explain. Most of these reasons stopped being true about ten years ago. Let's go through them. "It's dangerous." This one drives me slightly crazy. Uzbekistan ranks 25th out of 148 countries on the Numbeo Safety Index. The Solo Female Travel Safety Index put it at number one in the world last year. Twelve million tourists came here in 2025 and the number of safety incidents involving foreign visitors was... basically zero. The country isn't dangerous. It's just unfamiliar, and unfamiliar feels dangerous even when the data says the opposite. "There's nothing to see." Nineteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites across the region. The Registan in Samarkand, which is one of the most jaw-dropping public squares on the planet. The Pamir Highway, second-highest international road on Earth. A gas crater in Turkmenistan that's been burning for fifty years. Alpine lakes in Kyrgyzstan at 3,000 metres. I could keep going but you get the idea. The reason you haven't seen it on Instagram is because almost nobody goes yet, which is — and I cannot stress this enough — the reason to go now. "Visas are a nightmare." Uzbekistan: visa-free for nearly 100 countries. Kazakhstan: visa-free for 70+. Kyrgyzstan: visa-free for 60+. Tajikistan: simple e-visa, takes ten minutes online. The only genuinely difficult visa in the region is Turkmenistan, and even that's manageable with planning. For the rest, you fly in and get stamped through. This myth is leftover from the early 2000s when the region was genuinely bureaucratic. It isn't anymore. "Nobody speaks English." In cities and tourist areas, plenty of people speak enough English to help you. Guides, hotel staff, younger locals, anyone in tourism. Outside tourist zones, Russian is more useful, but honestly, even without any shared language, people here will go out of their way to help you. I've watched a grandmother in Bukhara spend twenty minutes using hand gestures and Google Translate to give directions to a confused Japanese tourist. He found the restaurant. She invited him to dinner the next day. "The food isn't good." I'm going to try not to take this personally. Uzbek plov has over 200 regional variations and every family will fight you over which one is best. The bread comes from tandoor ovens that have been hot since before sunrise. The melons in autumn are the sweetest you'll eat anywhere on Earth, and I'm including the ones you've had in Turkey and Greece. The actual risk isn't bad food. The risk is eating too much because your host won't stop refilling your plate and saying no feels impossible. "It's all desert." Kyrgyzstan is over 90% mountainous. The Tian Shan range has peaks above 7,000 metres. There are walnut forests, alpine lakes, glaciers, green valleys. Yes, parts of the region are desert, and those deserts are beautiful in their own right. But calling Central Asia "all desert" is like calling Switzerland "all snow." You can be in a desert on Monday and camping by a mountain lake on Thursday. The landscape variety is insane. "It's too hard to get there." Direct flights from London, Istanbul, Dubai, Delhi, Seoul, Beijing — Tashkent is more connected than you think. Inside the region, high-speed trains link Tashkent to Samarkand in two hours and Samarkand to Bukhara in about ninety minutes. There are domestic flights, shared taxis, and reliable car hire. The infrastructure has caught up. The welcome was always there. That's the list. Seven myths, all dead. The only thing left from twenty years ago is the hospitality, which was already extraordinary then and, if anything, has gotten stronger since. If you want to see the region for yourself, take a look at our Silk Road tours. Or just send us a message and ask whatever's on your mind. The nervous questions are usually the best ones.