The Stan’s fascinate me, for the longest of times I have dreamt of visiting and exploring cities such as Samarkand and Bukhara which were once a major economic and cultural centre in Central Asia. Not to mention their strategic location on the Silk road, an ancient trading route linking China to the Mediterranean.

After many years of pondering and imagining, I will finally be visiting the Stans next year 😎

Where are the Stan’s

For the uninitiated, the phrase Stan collectively represents 5 Central Asian Countries, all with the suffix ‘stan’ in their names. These are :

• Tajikistan
• Kyrgyzstan
• Uzbekistan
• Kazakhstan
• Turkmenistan

The Stan’s

As you can see in the map above, the Stan’s are surrounded by Russia on the North-West, Middle East on the South-West and Mongolia and China in the East. Although places like Uzbekistan welcome plenty of tourists each year, for whatever reason we don’t seem to read or hear much about them in the mainstream media.

The movie Borat generated a great deal of curiosity about the Stan’s, particularly Kazakhstan, since then however these countries have kinda gone off the radar.

Where am I going

As much as I would have loved to visit every nook and cranny of these 5 countries, the pressures of a full-time job and other life commitments mean I would only be visiting 2 of them over the trip, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. I will also be dropping-in to the nearby country of Azerbaijan for couple of days and spend time in its national capital Baku.

Baku, Azerbaijan : Image – courtesy Pexels

Although its all very tentative as I haven’t booked any hotels, the plan is to fly into Tashkent (Uzbekistan), spend no more than 1 full day before taking the train to Samarkand and Bukhara where I am hoping to spend at-least 2 days each.

I then plan to return to Tashkent and proceed directly to Almaty (Kazakhstan) for a few days before catching a plane to Baku. From Baku, I will travel to Istanbul (Turkey) and then onward to Singapore and Australia. All up, the trip is about 11 days in length.

A whistle-stop tour of the stan’s is not ideal, but I gathered that instead of waiting for a longer schedule to open-up (who knows when that may happen), I just had to make this trip. Travelling through 5 countries in a single trip isn’t the easiest of tasks at best of times. If and when the stars realign, I will come back and check out the remaining places.

Going to the Stans and Back

To get to Uzbekistan, I will be flying from Sydney to Tashkent, via Saigon and Seoul. I booked this part of the trip with Aeroplan Points.

Redeem Aeroplan Points to fly Partner Airlines

The price of 115,000 Aeroplan points isn’t exactly cheap. But there are two reasons I went ahead with it.

First, ever since Bamboo Airways partnered with Aeroplan I have wanted to fly and review the airline. Secondly, I didn’t want to fly over such a long route without any breaks. Booking through Aeroplan allowed me to build a 1-day stopover in Saigon to break-up the trip for an extra 5,000 points.

Don’t you love Aeroplan for its plethora of partners, ability to mix and match airlines and take Stopovers on the cheap 😉

To earn Aeroplan points, I transferred Amex Points to Aeroplan via Marriott Bonvoy. In doing so, I took advantage of the recent 50% transfer bonus which helped me convert Amex Points to Marriott Points in the ratio of 1:1

I will be catching trains, flying Air Astana or Uzbek Airlines for all of my travel within and between the Stans which I plan to book with cash. There are only 1 or two airlines that actually offer non-stop services in this region and there wasn’t an efficient way to redeem points on them. In any case, all of these flights are between 1 and 3 hours, so hopefully I can find some cheap cash fares.

From Istanbul, I will be beating the well-trodden path of flying Singapore Airlines to Melbourne via Singapore for 99,000 KrisFlyer Miles.

There is hardly any mystery flying SQ, and KrisFlyer Miles are fairly easy to come by. You can either transfer Amex Points to KrisFlyer in the ratio of 2:1 (2 Amex Points = 1 KF Mile) or convert Velocity Points to KrisFlyer in the ratio of 1.55:1 (15,500 Velocity Points = 10,000 KF Miles).

In Conclusion

I am happy I will finally be travelling to the Stans. It is one of those regions that is not the easiest to reach from Australia, I also don’t recall too many in the points blogging community write or talk about it. To me though, all that adds to the charm of visiting such places.

Best part is that with a little bit of planning and a handy balance of points and miles, anybody can make these seemingly difficult trips, fairly easy.

Have you visited the Stans? Leave a comment below.