Hypermobility

Most of the time my travel planning goes something like this: 1. decide where I want to go; followed by 2. find appropriate flights – but sometimes I end up doing it backwards. I flew Air Baltic back from St Petersburg to London (via Riga), as it was by far the cheapest flight available, and ended up signing up for their mailing list, because who doesn’t like being bombarded by details of cheap flights to random destinations on a near-daily basis? Exciting finds:

- Irritatingly enough, there doesn’t seem to be any information about this available on their website, but according to the emails they sent me, and also this site, Air Baltic is launching a Baltic Pass, allowing passengers who buy an Air Baltic flight to Riga, Tallinn, Liepaja or Vilnius from outside the Baltic countries to purchase flights between those cities for 35 euros. It’s a deal I’m unlikely to take advantage of myself, as a) I visited Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 2005, and, barring a trip to Lithuania for my 30th birthday next June (of which more later, possibly), I’m not planning a trip back in the near future; and b) it’s easy enough, if you’ve got the time, to bus between the cities included, and I generally believe that Flying Is Cheating – but for people wanting a brisk jaunt around the Baltic countries, it’s a very good deal indeed [insert global warming-related disclaimer here].

- More excitingly from my own point of view is Air Baltic’s selection of destinations. Following my xmas trip to Budapest, I am in the rather frightening position of having NO PLANNED TRAVEL, which inevitably sends my brain into travel-planning overdrive, eager to latch onto intriguing options: I’ve long had a hankering after Tbilisi, but it’s the cheap flights on offer to Tashkent that really excite me.

Uzbekistan! I visited Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan way, way back in 1998 (nearly 10 years ago, which is frightening), and I’ve often been regretful that I didn’t make it to Uzbekistan on that trip. Tashkent itself doesn’t excite me that much (other than the fact that it’s the only Central Asian city to have an underground rail system, fact fans), but its proximity to places like Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva certainly does (and, as I have just seen from the website I’m linking, Shakhrisabz), and the Ferghana Valley. And, OK, “proximity” may be taking things a bit far, but it seems that the 356km between Tashkent and Samarkand can be travelled in under four hours, which is rather impressive. (Incidentally, I have to say that I love the fact that the Uzbekistan railway has a blog.)

As ever, this is just one of multiple trips that I am considering for 2008, dependent on multiple factors including employment and PhD funding and the like. But it’s a good one to think about.