Home from the Silk Road

George and I have had the adventure of a life time exploring the Silk Road.  Funny that I remember studying Marco Polo and the Silk Road when I was a little girl in Lonoke, Arkansas.  I never imagined that someday I would follow that route on a trip of my own!  I say that this was the trip where I saw amazing things that I had never heard of in countries that I never dreamed of visiting.  Here is our route.

 

George and I started our trip by spending a couple of days in Shanghai, China before joining the tour in Xi'an.  Several of our good friends have lived in Shanghai and their descriptions of that city made us want to visit.  It did not disappoint.

From Xi'an we flew to Dunhuang, took a high speed train to Turpan, a bus to Urumchi, flew to Almaty, Kazakhstan where we got on board our 'private train' to explore Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and finally Turkmenistan.

We often joke that we are having a 'once in a lifetime trip'.  This one really does qualify!  I also learned that train travel is just as motion sickness inducing as a cruise ship.  I was very thankful for my scopolamine patches.  Also we had more than our share of some sort of travel virus as about 2/3 of our group got sick.  George's brother John spent 2 days in the hospital when he got home.  I spent almost a week on the couch with various ailments.  George and sister-in-law Katherine somehow escaped the 'bug'.  Lucky for them. So while it was a fantastic trip it was not an easy one.
Now I have to go through our 6400 photos....I see lots of blog posts coming!