Before our visit there, I don't think I even knew that Central Asia existed!

Well, it hadn’t really until 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved and five independent states emerged.

The only reason I think I wanted to go was the wonderful promotion in a Sundowners brochure, in particular one picture of wrinkly, carpet like mountains.

We had followed the ancient Silk road from Urumqi, Xinjiang over to Almaty in Kazakstan when we received concerned emails from home about something terrible that had happened in New York. We had no idea what they were talking about – though we had seen several newspapers with terrible explosions on the front.

Central Asia was a weird place to be post-September 11, given that all Americans were being evacuated in a hurry and there was world expectancy that the Americans would bomb Afghanistan – and soon!

With tight visa restrictions for most of the Central Asian countries, we didn’t have a long time there, and monitored the situation carefully.

Despite some warnings from home we pressed on with our planned route through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. It was a fascinating place to be post9/11, both to hear Muslim people’s perspective and to be free of the enormous media coverage that was happening at home. At one stage we were 300 miles as the crow flies from Mazar-el-sharif which just weeks later was heavily bombed by the US.

These weeks profoundly changed us in that we knew that they are people just like us, and yet we could fly out of there.

I learned that Ariana is in fact an Afghani name.

After going home and reading the superb Peter Hopkirk books about Central Asia and the Great Game, I realise we only touched on the surface – it’s a place I would like to learn a lot more about.

Copyright Ariana Svenson, 2005 - Comments and enquiries, please email us.