Could Central Asia provide a new backpacking trail? Patrick Norén investigates.
Image: Evgeny Dubinchuk/Shutterstock
Despite there being almost 200 sovereign states in the world, there are relatively few regions where weeks or even months of overland travel crossing several countries and passing through a multitude of cities and landscapes is realistic and attractive to “amateur” travellers.
For decades, the two major backpacker trails outside Europe have wound their way through Southeast Asia and Latin America. Meanwhile, many other regions around the world that have the potential to offer something similar are often sadly blighted by a range of obstacles that make the prospect of a border-hopping adventure attractive to only the most hardened explorers.
In the decades following the collapse of the USSR, visits to Central Asia by and large remained the preserve of only the most adventurous. However, as international interest and investment in Central Asia grow and the region continues its cautious embrace of new markets beyond Russia, Central Asia’s prospect of offering a brand new backpacking adventure to the international tourist industry becomes a possibility.
On paper, at least, the potential is there. The types of backpackers who travel for weeks or months around Southeast Asia or Latin America tend not to spend more than a few nights in any given place. For a backpacker trail to succeed in this regard, it is critical to have the right balance of a variety of sights and activities but within a region that can be easily traversed overland.
Indeed, many of Central Asia’s main sights can be found within a relatively small triangle between Almaty in Kazakhstan, Khiva in Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe. Other potential destinations outside this triangle, such as Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul Lake, or the Kazakh cities of Astana or Turkistan, are still easily accessible by road or rail.
Many of Central Asia’s most popular sights can be found within a triangle between Almaty in Kazakhstan, Khiva in Uzbekistan, and Dushanbe in Tajikistan. Inside or just outside this triangle are Kyrgyzstan’s Bishkek, Osh, and its Issyk-Kul Lake, the Tajik city of Khujand, Uzbekistan’s capital Tashkent, the Chimgan mountains and Fergana valley, as well as the great Silk Road cities of Samarkand and Bukhara.
Another common thread that unites other such trails worldwide is the removal of bureaucratic obstacles to allow travellers to keep moving across borders for an extended period of time and with relative ease. To that end, the days of highly restrictive Central Asian visa regimes appear to be almost over.
While Kyrgyzstan has long maintained a relatively liberal visa regime with dozens of countries, nationals of 54 countries have been able to visit Kazakhstan for a maximum of 30 days visa-free since 2019. Uzbekistan is now visa-free for 30 or 60 days for almost 100 countries, with the U.S. and India being two exceptions. And, from 1 January 2022, Tajikistan introduced a visa-free regime for up to 30 days for citizens of 52 countries, with the UK and Ireland being two exceptions.
However, this does not quite give a full picture, as visiting Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region, home to the stunning Pamir Mountains and sharing a long and remote border with Afghanistan, still requires a special permit to enter.
That leaves only Turkmenistan, which maintains one of the most notoriously strict visa regimes in the world and is currently not demonstrating much intention to relax the biggest obstacle stifling its touristic potential.
So, while Ashgabat may continue insisting on visas for all on account of its permanent neutrality policy, the remaining four Central Asian republics clearly want to make their countries increasingly accessible to foreign visitors. But as to whether unilateral efforts on the parts of Astana, Bishkek, Tashkent, and Dushanbe will someday lead to Central Asia boasting a backpacker trail on the scale of Southeast Asia or Latin America, significant obstacles will likely prevent this from ever becoming reality.
Central Asia experiences bitterly cold winters that would make a year-round amateur backpacker trail a nigh-on impossibility. The logistical difficulties posed by travelling in such harsh winter conditions mean that a backpacker trail anywhere near the scale of its potential rivals would likely only be a seasonal phenomenon.
But even if only a seasonal phenomenon, Central Asia will still suffer from the more permanent lack of sun-kissed beaches and tropical waters like those of Costa Rica or Thailand. Such places have long been a staple of not just backpacking journeys but are a pillar of the global travel industry. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan have a long way to go before they can convince people en masse to swap the Caribbean for the Caspian.
Other significant geographic limitations would make turning Central Asia into a global backpacking hub a decades-long project, even if the five republics actively wanted it to become a reality. While Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are well-connected with each other and with Kyrgyzstan’s and Tajikistan’s biggest cities, the rest of the latter two are mountainous and remote, making inland connectivity sometimes tricky. Complicating this is the fact that the mutual border between the two has been closed since April 2021 over violent clashes that continued into 2022.
And, although Bishkek and Dushanbe have declared “progress” on resolving this dispute, the nervous traveller may well see the fighting as a reason to steer clear of those countries for years to come. All of this is before one considers the concern that the Taliban’s return to power in neighbouring Afghanistan has caused the region, plus the fact that Turkmenistan is not showing any signs of wanting to join the rest of Central Asia in truly embracing tourism.
So while much of Central Asia is trying hard to draw international tourists to the region, the prospect of it developing into the next major backpacker trail is remote. Diverse but mostly easily navigable, and with simplified visa regimes complemented by increasing investment from target markets, Central Asia is indeed in a strong position to further its tourism industry. However, one must also be realistic.
The reality is that Central Asia will always remain a landlocked region dominated by vast deserts, harsh steppes, and high mountains. And, at least for the foreseeable future, a challenging political climate can complicate matters further. Some of these problems are, of course, surmountable. However, even if only a seasonal backpacking trail does materialize at some point in the future, Central Asia as a whole has the potential to grow into one of the most exciting and dynamic regions for backpacker tourism in the world.
