Looking for an unusual destination

[GlobalTravellerbutespeciallyBognor]

Has anyone been to Georgia, Moldova or Transnistria? I’m intrigued to visit unusual places.

I’m in Almaty (Kazakhstan) at the moment - very interesting. Beautiful countryside and the city has quite a lot to explore. Lovely people. Air Astana is a nice airline.

A little closer to home, I'm intrigued by the Faroe Islands. I read about them because Shetland is looking at whether they can copy their undersea inter Island tunnels.

There's a regular direct flight from Edinburgh and if you like the outdoors and nature you could easily fill a few days.

Moldova is not an unusual place, OP. Sorry. Chisinau is actually a beautiful capital. And food is amazing!

I really want to go to Svalbard and Greenland. I’ve a yen for cold, arctic, glacial places.

I've been to all 3 places in the op.

Moldova was just a short city break. Tbh, I can't remember a huge amount about it and we've been to so many places in Central and Eastern Europe that I do sometimes get them confused with each other. I think we must have been staying in a cheap part of the capital city. Going out to buy food for breakfast in the morning seemed like stepping back in time and going behind the Iron Curtain, with a street lined with older women in headscarves selling stuff.

No need to book a tour to Transnistria if you go to Moldova. We just caught the local bus. It was an interesting experience to visit somewhere that isn't internationally recognised (although not as interesting as Nagorno Karabakh which we visited when it was still an unofficial republic). It's not a good idea to visit it now, though. We went years before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think official advice currently warns against travel there.

For Georgia, I've only been to Tbilisi which was lovely. It's such a huge and diverse country that there's a lot more to see which we didn't have time for.

Do you speak Russian? I’ve just read a book called Sovietistan about Central Asia is pretty interesting.

This is a lovely idea, thank you.

Thanks so much. Very interesting. Of your eastern European travels, where would you most recommend? And do you need Russian to get along smoothly?

How was NK? It’s officially part of Azerbaijan now I think? I’ve never been to Azerbaijan or Armenia.

Friends have just driven their truck-based camper to Georgia and Armenia. Trip has been about 200 days and (from the social media posts) they appear to have had a great time in both Georgia and Armenia.

Having the ability to get around while you are there, will surely enhance your experience of either country.

Georgia is on my bucket list - great food, wine, so much history…

Wow! That’s more adventurous than I was thinking - sounds an amazing trip for them.

I'd personally avoid the Faroes as they still slaughter Dolphins as a "celebration".
I fancy Uzbekistan. Looks fascinating.

We travel independently but don't really go off the beaten track so get by perfectly well with English.
There have been interesting things to see everywhere that we've visited. Even somewhere with grim, brutalist architecture will have interesting corners.

Romania was lovely. I can't remember the name of the city where we based ourselves (it was a train ride away from the capital) but we chose it so that we could get a driver for the day to visit the Libearty bear sanctuary.

I travelled a lot to Uzbekistan, but on business where you are cocooned from normal life. I found a gorgeous silk scarf in a market but it was expensive for me, assuming the official rate of exchange, and prohibitively expensive by local standards. A dodgy looking guy offered about 10 times the official rate which I rejected. It’s beautiful though!

We went away for a few weeks and visited Baku (in Azerbaijan), Armenia (from where we went to NK for a few days) and then Tibilisi in Georgia.

We really liked NK. We stayed in an AirBnB. The host was interesting to talk to about what was happening in the region. Her son was doing national service at the time because of the threat from Azerbaijan. There were some signs of previous fighting and a small museum about the fight for independence.

Azerbaijan invaded about a year or so later and took over. Azerbaijan is a country with a lot of oil wealth (we stayed in the very lovely old town area of Baku but you can really see the money in other parts of the city) and it had no need to annexe a small neighbour.

one set of friends went to Georgia this year and another Kazakhstan, both really enjoyed their trips but outside of the cities needed to use translate apps do get an e sim for cheap local data.

closer to home if you haven’t been i recommend Finland, venture beyond Helsinki, it’s a very interesting country though I did again need to lean on translation because the language doesn’t relate to any European languages so you can’t guess signs etc. it’s not as expensive as the rest of the Nordics either

One summer, we travelled around a few of the Stans.

Uzbekistan is worth visiting just for Samarkand. The architecture is absolutely stunning.

We don't speak Russian (which probably would have been handy) but I did find my almost forgotten school German handy as a mutual shared 2nd language when I needed to go to a pharmacy.

Of course Moldova is unusual for a holiday - the number of people who have been there will be tiny compared to say Spain or the USA

Yeah, absolutely. But i do have a lot of friends (myself included) who visited a large part of Eastern Europe - Moldova, Romania, etc. and we loved it!

Absolutely.

If you go on, say a travel forum, you will meet plenty of people who have been there but in real life? I've never met anyone else who has visited Moldova. Many previously unusual destinations have become relatively mainstream over recent decades but Moldova isn't one of them.

I went to Uzbekistan this summer with a day trip to the mountains in Tajikistan. Cannot recommend it enough - very easy to get around, cheap and friendly. Lots to see - the Registan in Samarkand is one of the most amazing sights I’ve ever seen.

I haven’t been to any of those places but I have been tempted by Mongolia recently (I found some cheap flights there while looking at flights to Asia generally). It looks fascinating.

Amazing trip

Yes! Apparently English has the remnants of some Mongolian words even now…

@VinnieVanLowewould love to visit Uzbekistan but we are restricted to the summer. How was it when you went - can you share the time you visited please? Did you travel independently or with a tour group?

So many questions!