Elections in Kazakhstan are "neither free nor fair", it says. Uzbekistan "remains an authoritarian state with few signs of democratisation". Tajikistan's President, Emomali Rahmon, "severely restricts political rights and civil liberties". Turkmenistan, where former president Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow (an ex-dentist and father of the current president) once ordered that all cars in Ashgabat be painted white to match his beloved marble-clad buildings, "is a repressive authoritarian state". (Ashgabat was declared to have the "highest density of white marble-clad buildings in the world" by the Guinness records organisation in 2013.)

Indeed, says Laughton, "the lowlight [of the trip] was the constant fear of being watched. Although we could explore each place we were in independently, we were still on a strict schedule to move on from place to place. We noticed on the last couple of days our driver kept receiving phone calls roughly every 30 minutes, asking where we were. He later explained this was the 'ministry of tourism' checking up on us constantly."

Kirill Nourzhanov, from the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at ANU, offers this context: "The [position of] president and strong authoritarian rule is widely seen by the majority of the population everywhere across Central Asia as the custodian of stability. Stability is much more important than political freedom." Tajikistan, for example, endured five years of brutal civil war in the '90s, costing some 100,000 lives and displacing many hundreds of thousands. Current President Emomali Rahmon was seen to have played a pivotal part in bringing peace to the fledgling nation.

Moreover, says Luca Anceschi, a specialist in Central Asian Studies at the University of Glasgow, none of the Stans has experienced much in the way of liberalisation, ever. "Once you recognise that this is an extremely authoritarian region, that the politics of the region have been governed that way for 30 years, and actually even before - because the Soviet Union was an authoritarian experience - you then start to make sense of things."

In practice, even the most overbearing dictators can only reach so far. Says Laughton: "One curious thing we discovered in Ashgabat was that every cafe we visited had their Instagram name on display for people to follow. For a country with a supposedly closed internet system this was baffling. We later found out from a local that nearly everyone uses VPNs [virtual private networks] and, in reality, everyone uses the same apps and social media as the outside world."

Although the five Stans span a vast 4 million square kilometres in total, they are positioned between their old conqueror Russia to the north, China in the far east, the theocracy of Iran and extreme Islamism in Afghanistan in the south, and, to the west, the Caspian Sea, Turkey and Europe beyond.

'They're doing good business, locked into all sorts of unions, blocs, alliances, so there's no prima facie rationale for Putin to do the nasty by them.'

So they were understandably alarmed when Russia invaded another neighbour, Ukraine, in 2022 (as were the former Soviet republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). "In Kazakhstan, in particular, there is a considerable concern about Russia's aggressiveness," says Nourzhanov, "especially given that there are plenty of Russians living in the northern and north-eastern parts."

On the other hand, he says: "The political elite in Kazakhstan is reasonably assured that [a Russian invasion] would be a very unlikely turn of events because Kazakhstan does not have a beef with Russia. They're doing good business, locked into all sorts of unions, blocs, alliances, so there's no prima facie rationale for Putin to do the nasty by them."

Russian is commonly spoken in Kazakhstan, where it is seen as a mark of prestige and urbanity, says Nourzhanov. There is also a widespread perception, he says, "that Russia offers greater mobility, great opportunities to people in Central Asia, to the young ones, than the West".

In Kyrgyzstan, home to Kumtor, the largest open-pit gold mine in Central Asia, and with pockets of rapid modernisation, many workers still travel to Russia for largely menial jobs and send remittances home. Since the war in Ukraine, this has brought additional perils, with some workers from Central Asia coerced into joining Russian forces in a so-called shadow army, according to the Atlantic Council. "These are not professional soldiers. They are more likely former cleaners, street sweepers, construction workers - undocumented migrants, often trapped in legal limbo, lured with false promises of fast-track Russian citizenship or pulled straight from prisons and detention centres."

Yet older Central Asians might feel nostalgia for Soviet rule, suggests Dilnoza Ubaydullaeva, a research fellow at ANU's National Security College.

For now, none of the Stans appears to have openly endorsed or condemned Russia's aggression; when the Kyrgyz city of Osh pulled down a giant statue of Lenin in June, authorities claimed it was just to move him to another spot. "They are also extremely concerned about pressure from the West," says Nourzhanov. "Everyone coming from Washington or Brussels tries to twist their arm to join the sanctions regime, to join the high moral course of opprobrium against Russian aggression. Why would they do that? It's against their national interests, and that's why they basically stick to a neutral position."

'Two generations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence, all five Stans have become very self-assured, confident nation states.'

Russian trade with the Stans, meanwhile, is booming, writes Annette Bohr of the London-based policy institute Chatham House. "Moscow has been making particularly significant inroads into the energy sectors of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan as it attempts to find new markets for its exports as a consequence of sanctions," she writes.

Turkey, too, remains a key economic partner and is a strong draw for the Stans' young, enticed by job opportunities and Western modernity. The Turks, as a people, once inhabited central-east Asia then pushed west from the 11th century across Central Asia into Anatolia, now modern-day Turkey, hence the prevalence of Turkic language and culture in four out of five of the Stans (Tajik, spoken in Tajikistan, is a Persian language, not Turkic).

In 2009, Turkic-speaking Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan joined with Azerbaijan and Turkey to form the Organisation of Turkic states. "The economy is undoubtedly an important aspect of the OTS members' cooperation but it is not the only one," reports The Times of Central Asia. "Culture, including language as its essential part, and history also play crucial roles in the Turkey-dominated group's ambitions to create a unified Turkic world."

Then there's China, which announced its global Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 in Kazakhstan's capital, Astana. The scheme, which now counts more than 150 countries as members - including all five Stans - promises investment loans, joint ventures and infrastructure projects. Ostensibly, it represents China's modern version of the Silk Road but it's also clearly another arm of Chinese influence.

"While nobody knows what the Belt and Road Initiative is all about," says Nourzhanov, "there's some very real money pouring into Central Asia and manifesting itself in the form of glistening railway lines and shiny pipelines and power-generating facilities. So the Chinese presence is growing and growing and growing. It's making a real impact on daily life and economic performance in Central Asia."

Another lingering influence is radical Islam, perpetuated by groups such as Islamic State Khorasan Province, a branch of IS. After independence, some young people from Central Asia were drawn to Turkey, where some encountered radical Islamist movements for the first time, says Ubaydullaeva, religion having been effectively banned by the Soviets. The Stan governments are largely secular and wary of threats to their regimes. Even beards and hijab can be deemed problematic; the Taliban, of course, are just across the border in Afghanistan.

Yet what is often lost on outside observers, says Nourzhanov, "is that two generations after the collapse of the Soviet Union and independence, all five Stans have become very self-assured, confident nation states. They're simply not reducible to being, you know, pawns in the new Great Game [the 19th-century rivalry between the British and Russian empires] or living in someone's backyard."

Kazakhstan was less than pleased to feature as the home nation of the bumbling title character of Sacha Baron Cohen's 2006 satire Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. It banned the movie and threatened to sue Baron Cohen but ultimately figured any publicity was good publicity and by 2012 had even adopted Borat's catchphrase for a tourism campaign: "Kazakhstan - very nice."

'Go beyond the eccentricities ... Try to understand that it all happens for a reason.'

Of course, resources-rich Kazakhstan is nothing like it was portrayed in the movie (some of which was shot in Romania, in any case). Ultra-modern Astana (literally, "capital" in Kazakh) is a tableau of glitzy monoliths, described by one local to us as "a lot like Dubai, but on ice" (summers there can hit 35C, winters can be minus 35). The former capital, Almaty, is a thriving cultural hub near ski fields that enjoys a milder climate - a great place to live, according to Alex Walker, an Australian CEO of a junior mining company that's exploring in Kazakhstan for copper and gold. "Fantastic nightlife, great people, great culture and safe," he says. With one caveat: "You need to be super into your meat, your potatoes - you need to be absolutely into it. Not highly recommended for vegans."

Paul Cohn laughs at Western misconceptions of life in Kazakhstan, where he has lived for close to 20 years and is now both a partner with the consultancy Ernst and Young and Australia's honorary consul. "I think people, in their minds, have some kind of idea, possibly because of the 'Stan' at the end of the name, that it's a lot more dangerous or backward or, you know, dusty or desert-y or whatever." In reality: "A lot of households have three cars in the garage. The quality of life here, I would say, is not dissimilar to a lot of southern European countries."

To better understand the region, says Anceschi, "go beyond the eccentricities, beyond the idiosyncrasies of the region. Try to understand that it all happens for a reason."

Relations among the Stans themselves range from warm to frosty. In 1994, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan formed an economic union, joined in 1998 by Tajikistan, to allow free passage of labour between the nations. There is a growing regionalism in Central Asia, says Nourzhanov, even if for decades "they simply could not get the collective act together". "There's still a fair deficit in terms of trusting each other."

'Before long, maybe in the next 10 years, Central Asia will simply become a distinct regional bloc.'

Even cautious Turkmenistan just this year took its first tentative steps towards joining a wider group, entering a free-trade agreement with Uzbekistan to remove customs duties on most goods produced in both countries. The five Stans have also begun to develop common stances in areas such as foreign policy and the passage of oil and gas pipelines. "This is a sign of growing maturity," says Nourzhanov. "Before long, maybe in the next 10 years, Central Asia could well become a distinct regional bloc."

Earlier this year Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan signed an historic accord recognising their respective borders, ahead of another historic meeting in Samarkand of five Central Asian heads of state and the two presidents of the European Union. "It seems the EU is now racing to catch up after years of under-engagement, recognising Central Asia's strategic role in emerging global supply chains and connectivity," Oybek Shaykhov, secretary-general of the Europe-Uzbekistan Association for Economic Cooperation, told The Diplomat. The EU is increasingly interested in the Stans' natural resources; in 2024, it bought more than 70 per cent of Kazakhstan's oil exports, according to the Lowy Institute.

For tourists, while visa red tape is easing, travel in the region can be hairy: the Australian government recommends taking a high degree of caution in Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan, due to the threat of crime, terrorism and civil unrest - with a warning to not travel at all to the regions bordering Afghanistan. Kazakhstan, the wealthiest and most "Western" of the five, was recently given the green light by Smart Traveller. Some 15.3 million tourists visited it in 2024, according to its Tourism Industry Committee. Its old capital Almaty was lauded in The New York Times' 2024 list of 52 Places to Go This Year for its "neo-nomad" cuisine, great coffee and other "endless delights" such as "a mustachioed man playing the accordion in front of the kaleidoscopic Ascension Cathedral".

As for Uzbekistan, government efforts to lift its tourist numbers are working, with 6.6 million in 2023, up from 2.7 million in 2017. More than a million visited in April alone, according to the Global Tourism Forum, whizzing from one world-heritage city to the next on bullet trains. Its ancient city Bukhara features in this year's New York Times places to travel list, and, for different reasons, in the news: a sprawling tourist development in a "buffer zone" next to the old part of the city has seen UNESCO urge the government to hit pause. One local cultural heritage group opined that "a fake 'Orient' in visual proximity to the historical core of Bukhara is doomed to ... repel citizens and scare away tourists". An architect from Bukhara told the BBC his city "risks becoming a Venice in the desert".

Some travellers are venturing to more far-flung areas of the Stans, says Joan Torres of niche travel business Against the Compass. The drive from Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan along a highway that reaches 4000 metres is particularly spectacular, she says. "It's all isolated settlements and gorgeous landscapes. Sometimes you drive for miles and you don't see another car." But for very remote areas - "100 per cent not set up for tourism" - it's best to at least hire a guide with a four-wheel drive. Of the 1.2 million foreigners who visited Tajikistan in the first nine months of 2024, just 1900 were from Australia.

Kourounis' trip, back in 2013, took two years of planning: visas for Turkmenistan must be applied for months in advance and require a separate "letter of introduction", usually issued by a tour company. Visitors who make it inside typically submit their itinerary to state-authorised guides.

To Kourounis' surprise, though, the government not only co-operated but sent two geologists to assist him in "unlocking the secrets" of the burning pit. "They were of tremendous help, providing us with a lot of historical information about how old the crater was and how it formed," he says. In the end, he put on a custom-built heat-resistant suit and rappelled over the precipice. The project was - obviously - scary, he tells us, but ultimately rewarding. "There were many surprises along the way, which makes sense when you're trying to do something that no one's ever done before."