Is it safe to come to Uzbekistan after Taliban took over in Afghanistan?

For years we had been struggling from the belief that stans are located in the dangerous territory that is surrounded by Afghanistan. Even the ending the ‘stan’ had been spoiling the travel image and the whole travel brand of these countries for so many years. All the Central Asian countries (except Afghanistan) were a part of the closed country USSR, and barely the world had ever heard the countries that’s are turned onto a popular travel destinations recently. It was almost impossible to have a self-organized trip to any Soviet countries, including to make Uzbekistan tours, everything was under control of central travel” Intourists” organization that was belonged to the government, the whole industry was functioning as  monopoly  and that was not one of the economic sectors that soviets wanted much to develop. Only group tours were possible for western travelers and the quality of organization was far below the average.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the beginning of the 90’s all these independent countries started getting a chance to take the travel business on the new level by letting the market economy to function naturally which allowed the  private business  to contribute on building the new sector in the whole economy. Back in those days nobody had an idea of the remote former republics and you can imagine the lack of information without modern networks, media and internet. Everyone who was going on Uzbekistan tours, would be asked why on earth he/she has decided to go to ‘ Afghanistan’ and that has been going on for long period of the time, the ending stan would always frighten people associating us to the country where the war never ends.  

It took a lot of time for people living in other countries to realize that our republics do not have anything in common (except for the territorial relationship to Afghanistan), that we are not an Islamic state and that people live here in accordance of different principles based on tolerance, hospitality and friendship with many nationalities living in these part of the World. Tourism has been growing and thanks to the enormous efforts of our countries to promote the tourist potential and of course, the availability of information on the Internet, social media, people formed a completely different impression of these areas, the region provided confidence as one of the safest tourist routes and the question of security issue was no longer disturbing anyone who is interested in Uzbekistan tours comparing in the early 2000’s.

The latest events in Afghanistan, which have been shocking the whole world, will certainly have negative consequences for the tourism business. We did not have time for the tour operators to breathe calmly from all the problems that the pandemic created for us, another wave fell upon us, which will impede the resumption of this industry. At the moment, everyone has an exciting question - is it safe to travel to Central Asia? From our point of view and as history shows, at all times of conflicts and wars in Afghanistan, nothing threatened or influenced on the security of the peaceful life of Uzbekistan. The lack of confrontation of interests and strong border protection has always given a sense of security and tranquility in our country. This feeling of safety has always been among the citezens, and now we do not feel any panic and a threat. For a foreign tourist at the moment to bring to the consciousness that it is safe here is not a very easy task,  while there is an aggravated period of chaos, no arguments will have an impact on their decision to travel. It is hard to realize that the efforts of all our neighbors, including Uzbekistan, to advance the tourism potential as one of the safe places to go must re-start from the beginning and maybe even with an even stronger effort, there is a lot of work ahead in this direction.

If you wish to come to Uzbekistan or to other countries of Central Asia, our company will help you with all arrangements, and we can assure that you will feel safe with us and there is no reason to postpone your Uzbekistan tours!