Just completed a trip from Moscow to Beijing by train with stop overs in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. My route was not direct to Beijing as I wanted to see some of the Silk Road. My thanks to Olga and the team of ICTS in Tashkent put together a very nice tour itinerary visiting Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan. Travelling over land to these cities definitely gave me the feeling of the Silk Road, with its Deserts, Wastelands and Grasslands. In the visited cities I was given some of the history of the region plus its wonderful Mosques. The trip was quite an experience meeting local people travelling back to their home country. I had various conversations including fellow Chinese travellers who were interested in me and where I was going. The translation feature on their smart phones came in useful as they spoke in Chinese and I replied in English both of us speaking into the smart phone. Travel Local have done a good job in enabling me to travel in this part of the world, being met at stations, picked up at hotels by the tour guide and taken to tourist destinations in the local area. .