Silk Road Travel

Traveling around ancient silk road that connected China and Western countries is one of the most famous type of traveling in regions of China, Central Asia, Iran and Pakistan.

Silk Road Tours and Silk Road Travel agencies

Tours around Silk Road. Silk Road Travel agencies. This post will provide information regarding Silk Road Tours and Silk Road Travel agencies. The picture on the left is one of the most famoust places on the silk road - Caravan Sarai - Tash-Rabat. It is believed to be 10th century artchitecture. However, there are theories that before being caravansarai this used to be nestorian church or even buddist temple. This might be true due to inside organization of this place. Whatever it is, from 10th century and on this was caravan sarai (unusual one though - animals were staying outside and not inside) and it is one of the best saved sightseeing on Silk Road.

Silk Road Tours

Silk Road Tours are divided into there parts - Chinese, Central Asian (Including Iran and Pakistan) and Combined.

Chinese Silk Road Tours

The most popular silk road tours touch such places as Beijing, Urumqi, Kashgar, Turpan, Dunhuang, Xian, Shanghai.

Central Asian Silk Road Tours

Three SR routes - Karakorum HighWay, Pamir HighWay and around Uzbekistan.

Combined Silk Road Tours

Any tour around Central Asia with trip to Kashgar, Urumqi and Turpan.

Silk Road Travel Agencies

1. Silk Road Tours Ltd
2. Silk Road and Beyond
3. Travel China Guide

I am still working on this post.

Best way tours and safaris http://www.bestway.com/central_asia.html

1. Title is way too long. It's not even good for search engines, not to mention users.

2. Russia and Afghanistan are parts of Central Asia. May be, just may be Afganistan is or at least it is part of those STAN countries but Russia...

3. The way this page is organized is quite old. This way was popular in the beginning of the internet, when people built their home pages as good as they could. But we are in 2009! This "Welcome to Country Travel and Tourism page" is really annoying.

4. Not a single, being one, picture can be any representation of a country. Least of all these: picture of Kazakhstan - http://www.bestway.com/images/peter_langer/kazakstan/KZATA005.jpg and picture of Kyrgyzstan http://www.bestway.com/images/peter_langer/kyrgystan/KGBIS014.jpg

5. This is a list of all tours they offer for central asian countries:
A Journey from Iran to Central Asia
Route of the Caravans
The Silk Road by Train
(Beijing to Moscow) - Westbound is the same as The Silk Road by Private Train
The Silk Road by Train
(Moscow to Beijing) - Eastbound
Silk Road: From Samarkand & Kashgar to Hunza
Silk Route to Bukhara
A Journey from Siberia to Tuva
The Naadam Festival & the Trans- Siberian Train (EASTBOUND)
The Naadam Festival & the Trans- Siberian Train (WESTBOUND)
Trans Siberian Train Express Classic Route (EASTBOUND)
19 Days Journey to Russia, the Baltic States & Eastern Europe
Arctic Circle by Steam Train
Splendours of Uzbekistan
From Ashgabat to Tashkent
Silk Road: From Samarkand & Kashgar to Hunza
Sojourn in Iran

The following have nothing to do with Central Asia even though they are claimed as CA tours:
A Journey from Siberia to Tuva
19 Days Journey to Russia, the Baltic States & Eastern Europe

The following are only CA countries tours:
Route of the Caravans
Splendours of Uzbekistan
From Ashgabat to Tashkent

6. This is a canadian company, which is good for US and Canadian clients and they say they have partners in other countries but are they too famous to be named on site?

7. SEO trick at the bottom. It's still popular in russian internet but i remember some years ago google banned for that. But apart from SEO perspective this set of links looks really bad.






8. For whatever reason there is a sign "Site last updated Dec 03, 2008" i would rather get rid of such sings or at least keep them updated. It seems like owner of the site has not visited it for a YEAR!

My grade is 3 out of 5

Advantour Central Asia http://www.advantour.com/

1. I have to say that site sells. Not quite everything it offers but still does. At least on home page you have some offers and you can get to tours by one click.

2. It appears that site belongs to Uzbek company with offices in CA or at least they want to sell Uzbekistan more than any other country in CA.

3. Why on page of worldwide partners there is navigation of Home > Silk Road > Central Asia > Uzbekistan ? Am i wrong to think it should be Home > Worldwide Partners - this relates to MICE page, contact us page and about us page.

4. Navigation at the top of each page in red looks like google ads. See pic below.







5. All these nagivation links lead to Uzbekistan hotels, tours, visas, etc. (Only MICE is not, even though actual MICE page has no links to MICE in other CA countries). If you move to sections related to other countries, these links start leading to these services in a given country. Confusing.

6. For whatever reason globus on the logo of the company shows Australia and some part of Asia - maybe there is Central Asia on this globus but it's not clear

7. Almost all the prices on hotels are $xxx

8. About us page is a bit confusing. You go there and get pretty much information on what company offers but not on their history or who they are. There are links to what they call "country travel agency" and you go there it reads something like Advantour is a travel agency in Kyrgyzstan. We are based in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan or Advantour.com is represented by a travel agency Oxiana in Kazakhstan. We are based in Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan or Based in Tashkent, Advantour is one stop travel agency in Uzbekistan. For other CA countries advantour is based in Tashkent. So, is Advantour and advantour.com are two different things? Where exactly are their based and what offices are branches? May be part of the solution is to call Advantour in Kyrgyzstan - Advantour Kyrgyztsan and so on.

9. It's quite hard to find tours for Tajikistan and Turkmenistan - it's not on the main page and you can go there from UZ, KG or KAZ tour pages only.

10. http://www.advantour.com/jp/internet-links.htm

11. For whatever reason on the above page link behind the logo leads to home page of Advantour site in ... French! Shoudn't it be leading to page in japanese?

My grade is 4 out of 5

Silk Road and beyond top three website mistakes

Disclaimer: Dear owners of the website i hope you will find this info very useful. It is really meant to have some good laugh and help you fix things you did not notice for whatever reason. You are doing great job and i do not want to put you down for it.

1) Picture of Uzbek girl at the tour called Ferghana Valley Extension 3 Days
http://www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/images/uzbek_girl.jpg

2) Pakistan is on the map but there is no info on this country. http://www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/central-asia.html

3) Ethiopia as part of Silk Road countries - http://www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/why-book-us.html

Silk Road and Beyond http://www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/

1) Site does fit into my screen :) that's good. General outlook is good, they have a map of Central Asia at http://www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/central-asia.html and they cover pretty much all countries in Central Asia








2) My main complain is about menu. See the image on the left for details of what i mean. I have to say that i browse sites in mozilla firefox and it turns out that sometimes sites are well done for IE but not doublechecked in mozilla. It might be the case with this site. I have hard time browsing the menu. Sometimes the down menu hides behind the picture trailor (see next pic on the left). Sometimes i point on link and menu falls perfectly well, yet i try to point on submenu and it dissappears.













3) Title - it reads Escorted tours in Central Asia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. For an unfamiliar person it might seem like Central Asia is a seperate country. So it might be more proper to have title read as Central Asia: Uzbekistan... etc. Also if it includes only three countries in Central Asia why do we have Mongolia and Pakistan there on the map? They also have Turkmenistan and Tajikistan but they fit into CA countries.

4) Tours - There are two tours with the name: Silk Road Cities Of Uzbekistan 11 Days. It turns out that one is a group tour and one is private. When i went to the pages of these tours i faced another problem - roller on the right of my screen did not appear even though the page is bigger than my screen, so i can't go down the page. Same thing is with every other tours pages. The problem dissappears in IE, so just like i thought website is not optimized for firefox. Also when you are on the page of Central Asia you can see all central asian tours on the left, but when you move to any tour on the left you find a longer list of tours, which are actually not tours to CA but i presume all other tours to other destinations. Plus in IE this list of tours for whatever reason stops at some point and one can't reach other tours. So site is not very well optimized for IE as well.

5) Navigation - when entering main page for CA there is a great section called "Places in Central Asia" but it dissappears when entering specific tour page, which i think it shouldn't do for many users want to read this info and coming back is not the best thing to do.

6) Silk Road Cities Of Uzbekistan 11 Days tour in the title has Silk Road Cities of Uzbekistan 10
I also compared this tour to Lost Silk Road Cities 12 Days and the only difference is that last tour has four days of Turkmenistan. I am not quite sure but it appears that Tashkent, Khiva, Urgench, Ashhabat, Merv, Bukhara, Samarkand and Shahrizabz (want to say London :) ) are lost cities of silk road. Why are they lost?

7) Mountains and minarets tour in my opinion has to do with Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. First is the country of mountains and second is the country of minarets for sure. But this tour will lead you to Kazakhstan and its canyons! and to Kyrgyzstan with one minaret - Burana tower and two city tours - Bishkek and Alamty, which are actually one of the youngest cities in Central Asia - about 200 years. Yes, there were some settlements there and silk road did go through them but Samarkand and Bukhara are more ancient (see website's comment for proper background below).

An exciting tour combining ancient Silk Road cities with stunning mountain scenery. There are opportunities for gentle walks or more adventurous hiking depending on your preferences. Some accommodation is basic.

8) Search - i tried the search by following criteria - Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Trian Journeys, January - now i know the result would be ZERO. But i found it very funny to have in search box the option of "Train Journey" after i have chosen Kyrgyztsan as my travel country. And my other attempt to search anything failed because i had chosen two criteria at a time.

My grade - 4 out of 5

East Site top ten website mistakes

Disclaimer: Dear owners of the website i hope you will find this info very useful. It is really meant to have some good laugh and help you fix things you did not notice for whatever reason. You are doing great job and i do not want to put you down for it.

1) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour Good laugh one - Day 18 - Tashkent departure next to it is a picture of camels caravan presumebly should show how tourists travel to airport in Tashkent.

2) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour Next to Day 8 - Tashkent - Samarkand there is a picture of Tash-Rabat, very good place not far from Kyrgyz-Chinese border - which is definetly not Tashkent or Samarkand and it's not even in the program there.

3) http://www.east-site.com/central-asia-kyrgyzstan-issyk-kul - this picture is not of Issyk-Kul, this is Sary-Chelek lake.

4) Again this is not Issyk-Kul lake - this is Son-Kul lake http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/small/kyrgyzstan_issyk_kul_lake2.jpg

5) On menu - Centra Asia Travel, which i think should be CentraL Asia Travel - In case you did mean centra here is some definition for it http://www.answers.com/centra and also http://www.answers.com/topic/centrum

6) Pictures of Central Asia link sends you to pictures of Samarkand only. http://www.east-site.com/central-asia-travel-guide

7) Good laugh one Picture of kyrgyz girl http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/small/kyrgyzstan_girl.jpg has a nice background of a kyrgyz guy

8) I think this is a really good picture of kyrgyz women http://www.east-site.com/images/kyrgyzstan/kyrgyzstan_people.jpg yet this is not quite the picture of PEOPLE of kyrgyzstan.

9) http://www.east-site.com/kazakhstan_cent_tour - one not full day in Tajikistan, it's like visit some piece of this country and run away asap.

10) Hm, by the way i think all posts in the forum of the site were made by company staff just quoting feedbacks of clients. I do not doubt the authenticity of clients' feedback yet the way they appear on site is a bit misleading.

Central Asia Travel http://www.east-site.com/

So, first of all i work on screen with 1024x768 pixels resolution and you can notice if you enlarge image on the left that this site is too big for my screen.
Secondly, this company appears to be working from US. See their contact us page.
Thirldy, i like when company talks to its clients or at least offers them some place to express themselves. This is what East Site did. (by the way this is a bit strange name for company that works only on post USSR central asia countries - i mean East is kinda bigger) They have very well integrated phpbb forum software to create such place. There is a problem here though. Forum was created on 18 Feb 2007 and since that moment there are 9 registered users. One gets the impression that company's site is dead and no one visits them. This is always a dilemma with forums - you want to create it for people to hang out and yet it appears that they do not want to.
Fourthly, it appears that East Site is a specialist in Uzbekistan as shows their tours page review. They have 10 tours for uzbekistan and maximum 3 tours for one other country in CA.
Fifthly, they offer hotel list only for three countries - Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. I am sure they offer services of hotel booking for other countries but for whatever reason they are not online.
Sixthly, their US passport service is a great thing. It also points out to specialization of site on US clients.
Company is really a US-Uzbekistan specialist even though it claims Central Asia presence.
My grade - 4 out of 5

Key websites for central asia tours

Here is the list of the first 10 results for "central asia tours"

www.east-site.com
www.silkroadandbeyond.co.uk/central-asia.html
www.advantour.com
www.bestway.com/central_asia.html
www.roxanatour.com
www.regent-holidays.co.uk/centralasiaitin.htm
www.asia-travel.uz
www.silktour.uz
www.worldexpeditions.com

here are 3 more to this list - central asia tour
www.fantasticasia.net/
www.orexca.com/
www.stantours.com/

Keywords for Central Asia travel agencies

So as usually i start with google :) to find travel agencies that work in central asia. I probably will stay with google but might switch to yandex or mail.ru at some point. Here are the keywords

central asia tour/s
kyrgyzstan tour/s
uzbekistan tour/s
kazakhstan tour/s
silk road tour/s

I have to say that as i work as a tour guide i know some of the companies mentioned in my blog. But i will do my best not to be bias.

First post

So, let's get started. This blog is about websites of travel agencies that work in central asia. I will review their websites and services. If you have any experience working with them feel free to post.