Category: backpacking
A Near Miss on Base Camp One
In the morning we awoke to the sounds of people around us, and, paranoid that we should perhaps not be camping on church grounds, packed up...
Kazbegi Mountain
Kazbegi is a mountain town nestled smack dab between South Ossetia and Chechynia, in northern Georgia. All around this peaceful and...
Tbilisi and the Republic of Georgia
Our introduction to Georgia was astonishing. While the country itself is beautiful but developing, the people could not be any finer. When...
Baku to Tbilisi on the Night Train
We only had a five day transit visa for Azerbaijan. It is a relatively small country and while we would have liked to stay longer than five...
Top Sites of Baku and Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, being currently in the middle of an oil boom, is as expensive as Europe. We were confined to Baku because we only had a few...
Baku The Ancient City with a New Face-lift
We arrived in Baku at 1:00am and disembarked from the ferry with a sigh, it had been an amazing trip, and although it was over 30 hours...
How to Take the Caspian Sea Ferry
Here is the process you must follow when trying to get a ferry, since many people want this information and no one else provides it in one...
Central Asian Money Habits
One of the strangest, and most frustrating things about traveling in Central Asia has been the double standards related to costs. As...
Nohur The Last Call to Prayer
The small and relatively untouched village of Nohur rests in an unmarked valley of the Kopet Dag Mountains, which make up the border of...
Statistics from Shanghai to Ashgabat
Originally, the trip was planned as a Shanghai to Ashgabat adventure. Well, we have an announcement to make—we have decided to keep on...
Driving Through the Mountains of Uzbekistan
We left mid morning for the lake, in Tashkent province, about an hour and a half north-east of the capital. The drive was peaceful and from...
Funding the Escape
Naturally, some of you are wondering how we can afford to be unemployed and yet pay for train tickets all over the continent. Here is how I...
The Beatles are Huge in Kazakhstan
We arrived in Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan, at 6:00am after 36 hours on the train. We immediately realized how screwed we were...
Tashkurgan’s Stone Village and the Epic Glacier Adventure
At the end of a tree-lined street, we stopped at an old clay fortress. We discovered that it was over 1300 years old. Middle Eastern /...
Kashgar Old Town
We spent the day today walking around the Old Town districts of Kashgar. Around the mosque, one of the largest in China, were rows of...
Getting a visa for Kazakhstan from China
We applied for Kazakh transit visas and found the process amazingly easy (perhaps because we are comparing it to the process of getting an...
Shopping for Outdoor Gear in Shanghai
We ventured to every travel gear store in Shanghai. For those seeking camping, climbing, trekking or other outdoor wear and gear we fully...
Poll Results are in and Vietnam Wins
We conducted an online poll to see where our readers thought we should travel next. 37% of our voters thought we should go to Vietnam....
Cycling for Adventure Travel
As every good adventurer knows, a good companion makes all the difference. At AbandonTheCube we revere those who have gone before us and...
A Visa-Related Snag
Having completed all the necessary paperwork, acquired mini photos of myself and located my passport I set off to the Uzbek consulate in...
International Visas
As the trip planning progresses I find myself at the stage of applying for international visas, a process wrought with vagueness and...
The Problem of the Borders
In planning the trip from Shanghai to Ashgabat, I’m encountering some chatter online about difficulties previous travelers have faced...
Shanghai to Ashgabat, the Plan
As many of you know, I was laid off from my financial job on New Year’s Eve (classy timing). But this upsetting twist has been an...
How Much Would it Cost to Travel for a Year?
How much would it cost to travel in Asia for a year? This thought crossed my mind today as I was sitting in my office. Like being back...
The Mongolian Marlboro Man
The next morning we awoke to the sounds of horses. Billig had brought in a rather large brown horse for the evening, and he had strolled...
