>>2840086
Why the fuck is there a star on Khiva? That's not a capital

try your luck here OP
>>2825169
this thread is almost guaranteed no traffic

>>2840086
The architecture is super cool but it gets old fast. It's the 3M country - Medresa, Mosque and Mausoleum. You will be seeing a shitton of these and they're all in the exact same style because the place was really only relevant for a single century.
It's your last call to go there before it gets overrun. Buccara and Khiva are already very touristy.
The Aral sea is a cool trip. People do it by sitting on a rickety bus for hours but here's a PROTIP: there are flights from Nukus to Muynaq that return later on the same day and are hilariously cheap. Much quicker and you get the low flying airplane views.
The place was isolationist for years so you'll run into bureaucratic oddities and foreign shit like bank cards failing to work. Fortunately the former are getting systematically eradicated but they're not all the way there.
Basic knowledge of Russian will be a massive help. It's pretty much the second language of anyone over 30, aka most of the people you'll be dealing with.
They have the longest supermarket receipts in the history of mankind and all the cars are white Chevrolets.
Anything in particular you want to know?

>>2840216
Ive just always been interested in Central Asia (I think its the coolest landscapes maybe on earth between steppes, mountains, and deserts) and I've always loved the history of the area between the many empires. And I'm pretty easy to please accomidation wise (Clean furnishings, some local beer, pretty places to hang out) with some sight seeing somewhere ancient and cool like Samarkand.
Just trying to be practial though; as much as I'd like love to go be on the Mongolian steppe, going somewhere more developed first seems like a better idea as a white american with whatever language skills I can pick up before going. So, Uzbekistan and China are basically my candidates for a trip since they're developed, considered fairly safe, and probably not a nightmare to try and navigate.

>>2840297
Samarkand, despite its history, isn't very ancient looking. The old city was entirely demolished to make way for parks and new concrete construction with only the monuments left standing. It's very much like a theme park, in a way. Bucchara and Khiva are much better if you want to move back in time.
>Uzbekistan and China are basically my candidates for a trip since they're developed, considered fairly safe
Yeah
>and probably not a nightmare to try and navigate.
Eh, depends. Uzbekistan has a train network that works well and moves you between the major cities, but if you need to go to a smaller town or somewhere it doesn't reach, you're at the mercy of mystery buses with no posted schedules and private shared taxis that leave from who the fuck knows where, just ask around town. In Russian.
China has a great network with massive train and bus stations with frequent departures, which is nice and easy. Staggering number of metro lines in every city too. What isn't easy is the hoops they'll put you through in setting up your identity-linked accounts and communicating with the cashiers, drivers and "Warning: Leaves from a different stop on Sundays" signs in a language that isn't Chinese. Once you get past that though, it's smooth sailing.