Dr. Jack Wheeler
March 10, 2020
A select group of TTPers will be joining Rebel and me this coming May for our third exploration of one of this world’s most spectacular and fascinating yet mysterious and unknown regions – all “Five Stans” of Western Turkestan.
Here we will find the ancient cities of the Silk Road still in all their splendor, and one of the glitziest cities you’ll ever see built yesterday in the middle of nowhere. Here we will find the Mountains of Heaven, the Door of Hell, and the Seven Pearls of Shing.
For seventy years, Moscow kept one of humanity’s most glamorous and historical regions hidden from the world, reducing it to a forgotten and impoverished backwater. With the thankful death of the USSR in 1991, all five stans were quick to declare their independence.
It has been a long and haltingly-trodden road ever since to their political, social, and economic recovery. Nonetheless… I was first able to travel through the region in 1963 – 57 years ago at age 19 – and the differences between then and today are staggeringly exciting.
To personally encounter that excitement is one of the most profound travel experiences our planet has to offer – for there really is no place like it, historically, naturally, culturally, on earth.
This is the first of a series of introductions for you to each of the Five Stans. We begin with Kazakhstan -- the Land of Nomads.
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