The Silk Road 2018

Taylor and I are on our way to The Silk Road!!!! We leave Portland on Wednesday August 29 at 7:00 am, and we arrive in Almaty Kazakhstan on Thursday August 30 (at 11:50 pm local time).  We like to say we are going to "the Stans".  This means we will visit all the countries that have the final syllable "stan", except for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

One of the hopes for ourselves and for you readers is to be able to say the names of the five countries we will visit.  If any of us manage to be able to spell the names of the countries as well, we should get a huge reward. Shall we organize a Spelling Bee?

Kazakhstan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Turkmenistan

 We will stop off in the Netherlands on our way home, to break up the long journey,  and to spend some time with Iris' parents.  As if not spelling challenged enough, we plan to visit Aachen (Germany).  Since we will be in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium territory I'm sure there will be even more spelling challenges.