Wow… Five countries (Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Georgia and Armenia) in six weeks. Mehmet Özbalci organized this tour through his company Fantastic Photo Tours, based in Istanbul, Turkey. We used him in 2016 for a tour of Turkey, and liked his approach so much that we decided to use him again for these countries. I thought we would […]
Uzbekistan 4 – Khiva
We finished our tour of Uzbekistan by visiting Khiva, a small city of 50,000 people. On our first day, Mehmet (our travel guide) arranged for a private performance of traditional music. Though these trips usually produce some very nice photography, it is sometimes a bit of a scramble as everyone wants the same basic photograph (center […]
Uzbekistan 3 – Bukhara
The highlight in Bukhara (pronounced “būhara”) was our visit to a blacksmith shop. The blacksmith and his son made a decorative handle, and Mehmet arranged for our group to photograph the process. The images above and the video show how this all worked out. When touring the Jewish sector of town, we passed a puppet […]
Uzbekistan 2 – Samarkand
We are now in Samarkand, the second city on our Silk Road tour in Uzbekistan – just in time for Evelyn’s birthday! Jamil is our local guide in Uzbekistan, and his parents showed up to meet our train, greeting Evelyn with a bouquet of roses from their garden. His mother also baked one of the best birthday […]
Uzbekistan 1 – Tashkent
We have now entered Uzbekistan, and started our photographic tour with Mehmet Özbalci, the same guide we used on our photo tour in Turkey last year. The above block gives a taste of the guidance Mehmet gives us. He had taken us to the Khast Imam Mosque to photograph in the late afternoon. There was a small […]