Uzbekistan Local Travel Experts

09/10/2019

We did a 17 day trip to Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan and this service helped us plan the trip (driver, guides, some accommodations). The planning before the trip was great. The communication was great and the recommendations were great as well. I think it would've been helpful for the agent to ask more personal questions to understand exactly what we were looking for and the pace of trip we wanted. In hindsight, the execution could have been great if we didn't assume that the agent knew how we wanted to travel. We did give them an idea of what we wanted to see and how fast we wanted to go but this didn't translate to the execution. The Pros: - Logistics during the trip were smooth and nothing really went wrong - The drivers and guides were fantastic - The accommodations that they planned for us were fantastic especially in Kyrgyzstan - The local experiences (ie. yurt stays and home stays) were interesting and we appreciated this part of the trip - Communication leading up to the trip was great The Cons: - Communication during the trip could have been improved. There were several occasions where we didn't know if we were going to get picked up or what was happening next but couldn't get a hold of our local contact for several hours and even up to 24 hours. If something had gone wrong, we would've been SOL. - We didn't have a guide for 2.5 days during our trip which made going to any attractions tough as we didn't understand the driver (he didn't speak English). We didn't even bother going through some of the attractions because it was pointless without knowing the history of the place. A guide should've definitely been included during these days. - They changed the schedule a few times during the trip but didn't let us know. - Communication about the itinerary beforehand would have been nice. For example, knowing that there was a driver picking us up at each stop (maybe a contact # in case they weren't there), etc. - There was A LOT of downtime during this itinerary. We could've gone to another country in this time frame. There were days where we just sat around and did nothing which seemed like a waste to travel across the world to do nothing. The experiences could have definitely been improved. For example, at the home stay, we sat around and did nothing for the whole day. We could've helped pick out ingredients to cook Plov and actually cook it ourselves? Or if there are local activities to partake in, that should've been planned.