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Sophie JonesSophie Jones
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traveled in 24 countries Read more
  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    Day 260

    Bukhara

    August 29, 2023 in Uzbekistan ⋅ ☀️ 31 °C

    Back on the Soviet train I headed to my next stop on the silk road, Bukhara. Bukhara is over 2000 years old and was a major centre for islamic culture from the 8th century. It is the best preserved site showing Central Asian cities from the 11th to 17th centuries and the old town had many original minarets, madrasas and mausoleums. The most famous site is the 11th century Kalyan Minaret, an intricately decorated brick tower that apparently so impressed Genghis Khan that he ordered that it be spared when the rest of the city was destroyed by his army. It is also known as the Tower of Death because until as recently as the 20th century, criminals were executed by being thrown from the top. These days it's beautifully lit up and I was lucky enough to see the supermoon next to it - it was way more impressive than the photo shows!
    Other sites I visited were the 10th century Ismail Samani Mausoleum, and the Ark of Bukhara, a fort first built in the 8th century. There were also several old madrasas (places of study), and nice parks to explore.    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    Day 255

    Khiva

    August 24, 2023 in Uzbekistan ⋅ 🌙 29 °C

    Khiva was my first stop along the Silk Road in Uzbekistan. It had been inhabited since the 8th century, but was just an outpost of the Khorezm region, of which the previous capital Konye Urgench I had already visited in Turkmenistan. Konye Urgench had been the most important city along the Silk Road until it had been sacked and razed to the ground first by Genghis Khan and then by Timur in the 13th and 14th centuries, leading to Khiva becoming the main capital from the 15th century.
    While Konye Urgench was mostly ruins and archeology sites, with a few well preserved buildings, Khiva has the incredibly well preserved/restored walled city of Ichan Kala, the old town. You could almost say that the sites in Uzbekistan have been a bit too well restored, with very little to show for the age of these sites. But they do give you a sense of stepping back in time to walk along the cities as they were back then. Except now instead of slaves the main merchandise is souvenirs! Part of me wished that I wasn't backpacking, there were so many nice scarves, ceramics, silk clothes, bags, ornaments, textiles, and other items that I'd love to have brought home with me but just didn't have the room in my bag for! I just had to make do with some soviet badges.
    I stayed inside the walls of the old town in a lovely B&B that had great views of the old town rooftops and the Islam Khodja minaret. Staying inside the walls meant that I could wander the streets early in the morning and late evenings when the day tourists had left, feeling like I had the place to myself most of the time. The highlight of the city has to be the beautifully tiled Kalta Minaret Minor, which was originally supposed to be 80m tall but was never completed.    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    Day 254

    Nukus & Moynaq

    August 23, 2023 in Uzbekistan ⋅ ☀️ 34 °C

    I crossed the land border from Turkmenistan into Uzbekistan and arrived in Nukus, the capital of the Karakalpakstan region in the west. Karakalpakstan is mostly desert and is sparsely populated. It is also home to the Aralkum Desert, what used to be the Aral Sea. The Aral Sea was the 4th largest lake in the world, but unsustainable irrigation projects by the Soviet Union in the 1960s onwards led the lake to nearly entirely dry up, with less than 10% of the lake remaining. What remains of the lake became too salty and toxic for any fish to survive which led to the collapse of the fishing industry, and the dry land is a source of toxic dust that pollutes the air creating a public health hazard. I visited Moynaq, once a prosperous fishing village on the shore of the Aral Sea that is now 150km away. There are ruined boats stranded in the desert serving as an eerie reminder of the not too distant past. On the way back from Moynaq I picked up hitchhiker Garima, an Indian girl that had been travelling for 6 years and was on her way to Afghanistan solo. If anyone thinks I'm brave for doing what I do remember there are always way more hardcore people than me out there! I politely declined her invitation to go to Afghanistan with her... "We'd just need to find men to pretend to be our husbands to get across the border!"

    Nukus is a modern soviet city but lacks the charm of the other cities in the region. Its isolation made it the perfect home to the Red Army's Chemical Research Institute where Novichok was created - which is partly responsible for the toxic air that now plagues the region. More positively its remoteness also led to the survival of a large collection of Uzbek and Russian art from the early 20th century. Stalin tried to eliminate all non-soviet art in this period, and sent most of the artists to gulags. Artist Igor Savitsky hid the art in this remote corner of the Soviet Union where it survived and is now on display in the Nukus Museum of Art. I'm not really an art connoisseur but it was a nice museum, and I enjoyed the local art that depicted the fishing villages that would have been commonplace at the time of painting, as poignant as it was.    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    3221
    Day 247

    Western Turkmenistan

    August 16, 2023 in Turkmenistan ⋅ 🌙 26 °C

    We headed back to the glitzy Ashgabat airport for an internal flight on Turkmenistan Airlines to Turkmenbashy on the Caspian Sea. We visited a Japanese POW memorial, a small Museum of Turkmenistan, and a seaside theme park with some interesting statues. Everywhere you go in Turkmenistan there are large portraits of either the current president or the previous president, who "coincidentally" happen to be father and son. These portraits are often huge, and often framed in carpet as there is a long history of carpet making in Turkmenistan.
    After a night in Turkmenbashy we hopped into some more 4x4s and headed into the desert once again to visit the awe inspiring Yangy Kala canyons. These are a series of canyons and ancient sea beds unlike anything I'd ever seen before. The drivers started up a fire and we had a good local lunch at the top overlooking the incredible view, which was great except for the 42°C heat and zero shade! After lunch we headed to Balkanabat where we were stopping for a night. This was supposed to be an uneventful stopover in an admittedly retro hotel, but as we went out for dinner there seemed to be a hardcore party going on in the next room. After we'd eaten the waiters invited us to join the party, which turned out to be the women celebrating a wedding, so we joined around 200 Turkmen women on the dancefloor partying in their traditional dress to very modern tunes! Most of the people in Turkmenistan still wear their traditional clothing so we must have looked quite strange to them. It was definitely a highlight of the trip for us.
    In the morning we moved on to Nohur, a traditional village in the mountains towards the Iranian border where we spent the night in a homestay. The culture in Nohur is quite distinct from the rest of Turkmenistan as being so remote they avoided soviet influence. They have their own traditions from pre-islamic days such as attaching rams skulls to graves, as they are sacred animals that are believed to fight off evil spirits and guide the souls to heaven. There is a centuries old tree at the heart of the village with a hollow that fits several people. This tree is a bit of a pilgrimage site for local people and we saw many people visiting it. At the homestay we had a great home cooked dinner of soup and plov (a central Asian version of pilau or biryani), and more delicious melon. We then spent the evening watching the stars which were really clear that far up in the mountains, we even saw the Space X satellite train which was a bit creepy, it looked like a moving snake of stars.
    On the way back to Ashgabat we stopped at another pilgrimage site of the shrine of Paraw Bibi, according to legend a beautiful and virtuous woman who disappeared into the mountain when invaders were coming for her, preserving her purity. Turkmen make pilgrimage to the site of her disappearance for fertility and a cure for insanity. At the base of the hill there is a facility for the pilgrims to rest and eat, which we visited and had the chance to meet some of the pilgrims who were very curious and welcoming, insisted on giving us food and wanted selfies.
    We also stopped at a large cave with a hot spring pool at the bottom which supposedly has many health benefits. It all looked a bit murky to me so I gave that one a miss...
    Finally we visited Nisa, a UNESCO site of a Parthian Fortress from 3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD, and then a horse farm where we saw another display of Turkmen horses, and a very cute puppy of a Central Asian Shepherd Dog.
    Due to the strict regime, tourists need to be supervised by a guide at all times while in Turkmenistan. However I was allowed to get an overnight train without a guide from Ashgabat to the Uzbekistan border. I had the chance to meet local people on the train, who happily insisted on sharing their food and tried to make conversation with me in a mix of their basic English and my basic Russian. There was one teenage boy in the next carriage with perfect English that mostly wanted to talk to me about how much he loved Billie Eilish! The next morning I was picked up at the train station by my compulsory guide, made a quick stop at Konye Urgench, an important archeological site on the old Silk Road dating from the 11th to the 16th century. Then I was dropped at the border to head to Uzbekistan...    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    11
    Day 244

    Ashgabat and the Darvaza Gas Crater

    August 13, 2023 in Turkmenistan ⋅ ☀️ 27 °C

    I flew out of Nairobi and into Dubai, being greeted at 4am by a 37°C temperature with high humidity. With a climate like that there was no chance of outing outside much! So I spent my few days in Dubai resting in the air-conned hotel room, and getting errands done in the air-conned malls. It was even too hot to spend time in the hotel's outdoor pool! After spending 8 months in Africa, seeing Dubai gave me a bit of culture shock, everything was pristine clean, the roads were in perfect condition and everything seemed orderly. I'm pretty sure my jaw was hanging open as I rode the metro from the airport to my hotel passing sights such as the Dubai Frame and the Burj Khalifa.

    I was only in Dubai for a few days before I flew to Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is one of the least visited countries in the world, with fewer than 10,000 tourists per year. Since the fall of the Soviet Union it has been ruled by oppressive totalitarian regimes under undemocratically elected leaders. It is an isolationist country with free movement and communication severely restricted, the only internet we could access was email. No social media was allowed, and you could Google something but if you clicked the links nothing loaded. As tourists you are only allowed to enter the country if you have a guide.

    Turkmenistan also owns the world's 5th largest reserve of gas, making the regime very wealthy. The president chose to show this off by demolishing most of Ashgabat in the 90s and rebuilding it almost entirely in white marble imported from Italy. The city is made up of wide avenues lined with grand buildings made of white marble, and countless golden monuments. At night everything is lit up in bright neon colours until 4am, making it an impressive city to land in on a night flight. Many of these buildings sit empty, and for the size of the city you don't see many people or cars around giving it the feel of a ghost town in many areas. The cars that you do see are all white, because in the words of our guide, "having a white car is not a requirement, but a recommendation from the president".

    On day one in the city we had a tour where we took in many of the monuments, the largest indoor Ferris wheel in the world, the wedding palace, and the Russian bazar where we tried the best melon I've ever tasted and had free samples of caviar. We also went to see a display of Akhal-Teke horses, a Turkmen breed of horses known for its speed, endurance, intelligence, and for their metallic sheen leading them to be known as Golden Horses. There are only around 6600 of them in the world, most of them being in Turkmenistan, and they are adapted for the harsh desert environment that they live in.

    Next we got into some 4x4s and headed into the middle of the desert to the Darvaza gas crater, aka "The Door to Hell". This isn't actually a crater but is a sinkhole caused by some sloppy soviet engineering. There are a few of these sinkholes dotted around the desert and no one is quite sure exactly how they were formed. They are leaking gas and the Russians have admitted that they set the Darvaza crater on fire to try and burn off the gas supply. Fifty years later and the crater is still burning and is showing no signs of running out of gas supply yet. We camped in the desert and watched the crater burn for hours into the night. As they say, fire is caveman TV, endless entertainment!    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    1
    Day 224

    Eastern Kenya

    July 24, 2023 in Kenya ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C

    Onwards to the Kenyan coast, I took a flight to Lamu in a tiny plane, almost missing it because I didn't check which airport we were departing from! Lamu is a small island off the northeast coast of Kenya that must be accessed by air as the road is too dangerous. Lamu Town was established in 1370 and is thought to be one of the original Swahili settlements. With relatively little tourism, the town has been well preserved and mostly retains its original functions. The buildings are made of coral stone and mangrove rood, with narrow alleys that can only be passed on foot or by donkey. Donkeys are still a major form of transporting goods and people, and there are countless numbers of them just freely roaming the island, some looking a bit more healthy than others.
    We flew out of Lamu and onto Kilifi, a town further south along the coast that is famous for a creek with bioluminescent algae. Unfortunately the moon was too bright to see the bioluminescence, where's the bad weather when you need it! So instead we just enjoyed the ecolodge which had a really cool swimming pool and bar area, unfortunately I was recovering from another bout of food poisoning from Lamu (beautiful place but not the most hygienic! I also met some other travellers that got sick while they were there) so I just had to enjoy the relaxed pace instead. At least I didn't have to put up with a compost toilet at this ecolodge while ill!
    So giving up on the bioluminescence we headed to Diani Beach, a stunning white sand beach with bright turquoise water. We spent a few days enjoying the beach, the cocktails, the good coffee, and the good vibes. If you're ever in Kenya make sure you have a Dawa, the national cocktail made of vodka, honey, and lime. It's very delicious and very strong! Finally we went on a boat trip to do some dolphin spotting, snorkeling, and swimming at a sandbar in a marine park in the Indian Ocean.
    Next we moved onto our final stop on the coast, Mombasa. Mombasa is the oldest city in Kenya, founded in around 900, and was a major port city by the 12th century. It had been controlled by various powers over the centuries and as such has a really interesting mix of Swahili, Arab, British and Portuguese influences. We didn't have long in Mombasa so we wandered around the narrow alleys of the old town, visiting the historic buildings and trying the street food. We also did a tuk tuk tour of the rest of the city, visiting the local market, the coastline where you can stroll the promenade and eat freshly fried crisps, and the giant elephant tusks, a monument to commemorate a visit from The Queen in the 1950s. Mombasa was a great city and I would have happily spent another couple of days there, but alas I had train tickets booked!
    Leaving Mombasa and the beautiful Indian Ocean behind, we got the Madaraka Express back to Nairobi, by far the nicest train that I'd gotten so far on this trip. Back in Nairobi I finally said goodbye to Michelle, who was off to Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro for her 50th birthday! I know that I said I was done with safari, but I managed to squeeze one more in before leaving Africa...
    I wanted one more chance of seeing Mount Kilimanjaro so I headed to Amboseli National Park, which is just north of the mountain. The mountain is covered in cloud most of the time so you're never guaranteed to see it, but if you do you might get iconic views of elephants grazing with the mountain in the background. The safari in the national park was as always great, I saw elephants, lions, hyenas, all of my usual favourites. But no Kili... until about an hour before sunset on the 2nd night when the clouds cleared behind our lodge and had a perfect view in the twilight sky. So I didn't get the shot with the elephants, but I was still pretty happy! It was the perfect end to a great time in Africa, but now I was looking forward to the next chapter of the trip...    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    12
    Day 215

    Western Kenya

    July 15, 2023 in Kenya ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    After nearly eight months I have reached my final country in Africa! I arrived in Kenya on a night bus from Kampala, which is never the most comfortable way to travel. On my first day in Nairobi I met an Australian woman called Michelle in my hostel that I ended up travelling with for a couple of weeks. We went to the National Museum of Kenya, and then to the Giraffe Centre where you could get up close and feed the Giraffes. The following day we went on a walking tour of central Nairobi with one of the hotel staff, which was pretty interesting, and you wouldn't want to do it alone without a local to guide you. My favourite part was probably the busses, or "matatus", which are all decorated with various famous people and fictional characters, and usually have coloured lights and very loud music blaring from them! It was also the first time that I directly witnessed corruption as some railway security guards tried to get us to pay them as we hadn't followed "the proper procedure" to be allowed to take photos. Much to their annoyance Michelle and I just walked off, but the guy from the hotel and another tourist Mathias went to the office to sort it out. Of course the rules for the proper procedure didn't exist, and Mathias just flashed his Swiss ID claiming that he was a diplomat and would call the embassy to sort it out - and the security guards all swiftly backed down!

    As Kenya was my last African country on this trip I had to make the most of it and do one more safari! As it was the time of the great migration we headed to the Masai Mara to try and see some of it. Millions of herd animals such as wildebeest and zebra migrate back and forth across the Serengeti and Mara, and in July/August they cross from Tanzania into Kenya across the Mara River. At this time the plains are covered with animals as far as the eye can see! We also saw some other interesting sights that I hadn't seen on safari yet, which included some giraffes fighting by swinging their heads and necks at each other, and some hyenas, jackals, and vultures all tucking into the same carcass.

    After the Masai Mara we headed to Lake Naivasha, where we did a boat trip to see some interesting birds including pelicans, storks, and fish eagles, plus a pod of hippos. In the afternoon we visited Elsmere Lodge, the home of Joy and George Adamson of Born Free fame, who raised Elsa the lion and other rescued animals to release into the wild. The story of Joy Adamson was really interesting, but I particularly enjoyed the free afternoon tea and watching the colony of colobus monkeys in the garden!

    Another day and another great lake in Africa, next we were off to Lake Nakaru. The draw here is the large flocks of greater and lesser flamingos. What I was not expecting was to get so close to 5 white rhinos! Up until now I had only had very distant sightings of lone rhinos, and this park had both black and white rhinos. The black rhinos were hidden away from the road with a new baby, but the white rhinos were happily chomping away at the grass just meters away from the van. This was an amazing sighting in itself, but at the same time there was a pride of lions on the other side of the road chowing down on a young buffalo. It was quite stressful as I didn't know what direction to look in! For a few minutes the rhinos were forgotten as the whole pride including the cubs came right to the road to take a drink from a very dirty looking puddle. I guess there is less chance of a crocodile lurking or a surprise hippo attack coming from a puddle!

    Lastly, we went to Hell's Gate National Park, the landscape which inspired the gorge scenes in The Lion King where the wildebeest stampeded and killed Mufasa! Luckily there are no lions there so it is pretty safe to cycle through the park to see the giraffes, zebras, and buffalo, although you're not allowed into the gorge any more due to the risk of flash floods.

    The nature and wildlife in Africa is spectacular and I don't think I'll ever get tired of going on safari! But with my itch for safari temporarily scratched, off we headed back to Nairobi...    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    3
    Day 210

    Uganda

    July 10, 2023 in Uganda ⋅ ☁️ 31 °C

    A lot of my time in Uganda was spent recovering from something - a cold in Lake Bunyonyi, and then a stomach bug in Kampala. So with time getting on before I had to get my flight out of Kenya I decided to only make one stop - to Murchison Falls National Park.
    Murchison Falls (or Kabalega Falls for the Ugandan name before the Europeans "discovered" it), is on the Victoria Nile before it reaches the white Nile. The entire river is forced through a 7 meter gap at 300 cubic meters per second. This makes it the most powerful waterfall in the world, on the longest river in the world. The sheer power of the water churning when you're standing at the top of the falls is amazing, and of course you get a good drenching from the spray.
    The following day we had a couple more game drives in the National Park, which is the biggest and oldest in Uganda. I saw a family of hyenas really close up, which are my favourite animals in Africa after the elephant. I also saw loads of giraffes, a leopard with an antelope in a tree, buffalo, bucks, and warthogs. We also went on a river safari where we saw more large herds of elephants and pods of hippos. We went to the bottom of Murchison Falls to see the power from that direction, and the current of the river was so powerful that the boat could only get so close, and struggled to keep even.
    Finally we headed back to Kampala where I had to get a night bus onto Nairobi!    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    111
    Day 195

    Rwanda

    June 25, 2023 in Rwanda

    Onto Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, I spent a couple of days exploring the city which was the most developed city that I'd been in since South Africa. I visited the gut wrenching Kigali Genocide Memorial that teaches about the Tutsi genocide where over half a million people were murdered in 1994.

    Next I went to Kibuye on Lake Kivu where I enjoyed the quiet and natural beauty for a few days. I went on a boat trip to see the lake and visit some islands inhabited by monkeys and fruit bats. Then I moved onto Gisenyi on the northern shore of the lake, a town with a more lively scene where I celebrated my birthday with mojitos on the lake.

    Finally I made it to Volcanoes National Park in northern Rwanda for the main event, Mountain Gorilla trekking! We trekked into the jungle to see these magnificent creatures, it was so beautiful seeing them peacefully eating in their natural habitat, watching us as we watched them. The family we visited was the Amahoro family, which means peace in kinyarwanda, the local language. The family consisted of 2 silverbacks, and a range of gorillas of all ages down to young babies. We watched them in the clearing for a while then went to watch some of them climbing the trees. We're warned to keep a distance from the gorillas for their safety, but that can be difficult as they are clearly curious and wander past for a good look, even reaching out to touch at times. I felt extremely lucky to get to see them!
    I also went on a trek into a bamboo forest to see Golden Monkeys, a rare type of monkey found in central Africa which were also very interesting to see as they chomped away on the bamboo.    Read more

  • TravelerSophie's Trip
    1
    Day 181

    Burundi

    June 11, 2023 in Burundi ⋅ ☁️ 24 °C

    After leaving Malawi myself and another traveller Jonathan spent a few long days on busses crossing western Tanzania to get to Burundi. With only a 3 day visa in hand we only had limited time to cross Burundi to get to Rwanda. Luckily we had Jerome, a fantastic Burundian guy that helped us to navigate the country quickly. On day one we hired a car to take us to the source of the river Nile. There seem to be several sources of the Nile depending on what country you're in, but Burundi seem convinced that theirs is the right one as it is the furthest from the source! While we were there we bumped into a load of teenagers on a school trip, and we ended up in the same place as them for the other Burundian sights that we went to see too! We bumped into them later that afternoon at Karere Waterfalls , a series of beautiful waterfalls in southern Burundi.
    After a night in a very local hotel and some good local food, we set off to see the Royal Drummers of Burundi. The drummers are apparently world renowned and have travelled all over the world to perform. They energetically played for 40 min in the burning heat, and the large group of students really added to the atmosphere as they cheered along and ended up dancing with them at the end. They were well worth the effort of coming to Burundi to see them!
    We then headed to Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi and wandered around the city a bit. Finally we had a driving tour around Bujumbura to get more of an idea of it before saying goodbye to Jerome and heading for the Rwanda border.    Read more

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