Family Travel

Well after completing the 7 "Stans" and all of Central Asia, I have to say, we have a brilliant leader for our little group! Ammon is amazing. He can learn and research everything we need to know so quickly. We have successfully negotiated one of the hardest regions in the world to travel. With the lack of tourism it makes travelling through very difficult and we've met many others that have not had such an easy time at all! We just mingle and travel the way that locals do, in most cases. This really is the only way to get a feel for the people anyways. It's so interesting to see the change in the look of the people as you travel from country to country. You always can immediately tell that you've crossed a border. There is always a noticable change, some very obvious and apparent and others very slight. One thing is always the same, people are people. Some are good and some are not so good. I'm happy to say that we have been lucky and only met the good ones (with exception of the taxi drivers of course). I believe that we have had an almost flawless (if it was completely flawless it would be boring, you need some challenges or there would be no stories to tell or any personal growth) journey so far, for three reasons: #1 Ammon is SO good at what he does #2 We are a family. It's amazing how border guards, security, police and every one else in general soften up immediately. As soon as they discover that we're travelling as a family for so long, they want to hear our stories and are amazed. We don't get our bags thoroughly checked like everyone else and the gaurds lighten up and start to have fun with us instead. I guess it's because they all have families at home too. Even the infamous Turkmen border guards stopped searching our bags after learning we were a family. They simply moved on to our Japanese friend next in line and completely ripped apart his bag! #3 Because of our prayers and yours. We have absolutely had several miracles (Did we ever tell you about losing our passports in Afghanistan?!) and felt protection at other times.
We are having a wonderful life experience! We will have so many memories to draw on when we get back to our normal lives at home. We are still going strong and there is still so much to see and do.
Maggie
P.S. Shean, I like Coke best now, hahah. They keep changing the taste on me in the different countries!