I have a trip coming up that I’ve been quietly excited about for months now. One that feels a little bit intrepid, a little bit impractical, and entirely irresistible.

I’m heading to The Stans - well, at least five of them: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan. I’ll then follow that up with Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia.

Even writing those names makes something in me sit up straighter.

Half the joy of travel, for me, has always been in the planning. The maps spread out. The routes imagined. The gentle realisation that I’ll soon be somewhere utterly unfamiliar, different languages, currencies I don’t yet recognise, alphabets I can’t read, and food I can’t pronounce but will absolutely try.

This trip feels right now, in a way that’s hard to explain but easy to trust. I’m less interested in rushing and ticking things off, and more drawn to places where time stretches, landscapes open up, and walking becomes a way of thinking.

There will be plenty of that on this journey. Long walks through cities and villages, across open spaces, along mountain paths, past mosques and markets, and places where the road simply keeps going. Walking has become one of the ways I make sense of the world, and these feel like countries that reveal themselves slowly, at human pace.

So much of this region sits at the crossroads of history. Silk Roads, empires, nomadic cultures, trade, faith, textiles, and colour. So much blue. So much dust. So many stories layered one on top of another. It feels like a good place to arrive without too many answers.

I’m also changing the way I pack.

I’m going very light to begin with, partly because I’ve learned I don’t need half of what I’d take on a local road trip, and partly because I already know how this will go. I will come home heavier than I leave.

Silk rugs. Textiles. Ceramics. Things made by hands that have a story.

I’ve travelled long enough to accept this about myself.

But more than objects, it’s the people I’m most curious about. The conversations that happen in fragments and gestures. The kindness of strangers. The shared meals where we don’t quite understand one another, and somehow manage anyway. There’s something deeply humbling, and freeing, about not knowing the language, the rules, or even how much something should cost.

It reminds me to pay attention.

Travel like this strips away certainty. You become a beginner again. And I like that feeling, the small vulnerability of it, the way it sharpens the senses. You notice more. You listen harder. You let go of being in control.

I don’t know exactly what this trip will give me yet, and that feels like part of the point. For now, the planning is its own quiet pleasure. The imagining. The anticipation. The slow mental shift away from the familiar.

This will no doubt be one of many instalments - from this journey, from past travels, and from trips still to come.

Soon enough, I’ll be there. Walking, watching, carrying very little, and leaving space for whatever wants to meet me along the way.