About this guide

Who we are

This site is an independent guide for foreign travellers in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan. It is not a government website. No government, embassy, airline, railway or travel company runs it or pays for it.

What we do

We answer the practical questions travellers ask most: visas and entry rules, trains, land borders, money, phones and safety. Each page starts with a short answer. Every rule, date, price and limit on it links to its source and shows when we last checked it.

How we check facts

We look for each fact on an official source first: a government body, or the company that runs the service, such as a railway. Each fact carries one of these labels:

• Confirmed by an official source: an official website or app says it.
• Unverified: we found it only in news reports or other unofficial sources.
• Sources disagree: sources give different answers. We explain the difference under the fact.
• May be out of date: the fact has passed the date when we planned to check it again. Check the source before you rely on it.

We follow official sources and the news for rule changes, and re-check each fact against its source every two weeks to three months, depending on how often it changes. When a rule changes, we update it once, and every page that uses it changes too. We record changes on the rule changes page.

Drafts are prepared with the help of AI tools. Before a page is published, every fact on it is checked against its source.

Languages

We write in English first. The Russian and Chinese versions are written for readers of those languages rather than translated word for word, and each is checked before it is published.

Money

This site has no advertising, and we earn nothing from the links on it.

Mistakes

If something is wrong or out of date, please tell us.