In this series, journalist Simon Reeve travels to Central Asia to “meet the Stans” – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. His journey provides viewers with a unique insight into these countries’ culture and politics. In Kazakhstan, Reeve discovers a poorly secured former biological weapons factories with a hundred types of plague stored there. He also finds a shrinking sea that is now home to camel farmers, and the region’s best Beatles tribute band. Kyrgyzstan is the only country in the world with both an American and a Russian military base. While there, Reeve meets a member of a banned radical Islamic group, and he visits one of the world’s most highly radioactive sites. In Uzbekistan, the most repressive of the “Stans”, Reeve finds himself followed by the secret police as he travels across the country. Sharing an 800-mile border with Afghanistan, which provides 90% of Europe’s heroin, Tajikistan is one of the world’s biggest drug trafficking routes.
Meet the Stans
