[Count Pierre]

(08-16-2018 01:18 AM)Captainstabbin Wrote:  

People still don't get it. They must truly, completely believe the nonsense they read in the failing NYT and see on TV. This HAS to be more than youthful naiveté, they were in their late 20s. This is just willful ignorance of how the world works.

Eco-tourism is a big thing in Central Asia - that includes biking, trekking, rock climbing, rafting, ect. There's no "youthful naiveté" in biking or trekking around in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan. Dozens of thousands of eco-tourists visit the region each year -including those who bike around the gorgeous "Pamir Highway", where the american couple has been killed. They have unfortunatly bumped into radical islamist nutcases, but this could happen everywhere in the world.

Central Asia is usually very safe (but I would not go frolicking around in the south by the Afghan border). It is politically repressive police states, and that is splendid for you and me because police will make reasonably sure that you are not jacked. I've been a few times in this part of the world, and travelled deep in Uzbekistan, and felt much safer there than in the arabs-infested areas of our western cities.