Reminds good student diary, full of facts like wiki, without poetry and reflections, but with obvious remarks and cliches. I've read it till the end only because it was easier to absorb all needed me facts from it as from a set of different articels.

While I note that this book has copped quite a bit of flack, for various reasons, in reviews below, I quite enjoyed it.

While I'm very aware of the Silk Road, the disaster that was the Aral Sea, and of course had heard of the Stans, Central Asia is a part of the world that I had given very little thought to so I found Fatland's work a great introduction to the region.

I loved her efforts to engage discreetly with the locals, and her trips to some remarkable places that I will never, ever see. I'm super impressed with her bravery in travelling solo in a challenging part of the world and am glad she chose to share her experiences and knowledge in such a charming and engaging way.

Very early on Erika Fatland points out that all I know about the region that covers a genuinely covers a large portion of landmass is Borat and 'My Wife'. And she isn't wrong. That is pretty much all I know. And as she travels through these 5 very distinctive countries that image of Borat in a Mankeni did thankfully melt away. It's a great travel log of a book, and it is always going to be interesting because I knew nothing about these regions. But no matter what the Ghost of the Soviet Union runs through it. To the point that it did blend the countries so much. But only because the Soviets isolated them so much from the rest of the world. The book hits all you us the usual stranger in a strange land of the travel log. It didn't really hold any surprises for me but it was a delight to read.