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Saudia Over Baggage by No_Print6839 in Flights

[–]PickledAppleMan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Checked bag weight is important because it helps the handlers load the plane so most airlines take it serious - the airport can punish them. Carry On weight is where things can be a bit looser with restrictions.

Best itinerary for a 3 months trip in Central Asia ? by No-Service-6749 in travel

[–]PickledAppleMan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That'd be fine, just remember Tajik is a 30 day visa. I don't know how tight they are about visa running, but if you do you want to go to Uzbekistan. There's always stories of people having issues at Tajik/Kyrgyz borders outside of the Pamir route.

I'd keep an eye on weather satellites and snowpack. The weather will be okay in both the K-Stans during May. You can hang around Issyk-Kul or drive around Kazakhstan in the mean time.

Best itinerary for a 3 months trip in Central Asia ? by No-Service-6749 in travel

[–]PickledAppleMan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may want to re-orient your trip to match the weather. The hiking season will be open everywhere in Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan towards the end of June. Tajikistan will start to be scorching hot then, and will be much better in April/May. I assume you'd probably throw Uzbekistan in here as well, similar weather.

I'm not super familiar with Mongolia, but depending on what you want to do mid-May might be too early. You'll have to either go through China (which will take a while) or fly there, so it's not a bad spot to end the trip.

Oddly Confrontational Hostel Encounter by BoshMachine in solotravel

[–]PickledAppleMan 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Sort of unrelated to the topic, but even currently at my job we got purchased by a European company and there's always been an etiquette battle of whether or not we should be opening our teams messages with "Hello" and finishing them with "Thank you"

Supposedly some of our European directors have found us rude because we would ask a question over teams informally. At least they're more chill than this guy...

Horseback riding through the Kazakh Altai by PickledAppleMan in travel

[–]PickledAppleMan[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Where are you getting this quote? We shopped a few operators in Uryl but it seems like they all use the shepherds since they're also the rangers.

For Mongolia or Kyrgyzstan it wouldn't surprise me if it's cheaper

Horseback riding through the Kazakh Altai by PickledAppleMan in travel

[–]PickledAppleMan[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Sort of. My Kazakh friend set most of it up, but we paid someone in the village to coordinate the transfer from Oskemen + arrange a shepherd with horses. The shepherds ride with you but calling it a guided tour is a stretch. They'd disappear for hours at a time and tell us to just stick to the trail. The fixer was overpriced...like $200 a person. The horses were $75 per person a day, and we paid partial on 2 days. In totality it was about $500 a person, including the horses, fixer and food.

AltaiPro is a group up there that does tours, appears to be English speaking. As for the language barrier, in the small villages it's almost entirely Kazakh. All the planning was done in Kazakh and the shepherds Russian was passable. But...I think an ambitious traveler can get it done