Covers Kazakhstan (Borat's home), and other Central Asian regions. The only entire up to date guide covering the entire region.

2007-10-07 Useful, though some strange opinions

This was the most up-to-date (and indeed, pretty much the only) guidebook to the region that I could find. It's got all of the standard Lonely Planet features, and it is easy to find things and has a good balance of descriptive and factual information.

However, I found some of the opinions in it incomprehensible and would warn any reader to take them with a pinch of salt. One hotel described as being awful with tiny rooms turned out to be fantastic and one of the best places we stayed in. Likewise some of the sights are talked down inexplicably. There are also very few photographs.

In terms of size, it's certainly not as heavy as most multi-country guides, but is still far from pocket size. I managed to carry it around in my daypack without suffering too much. I would definitely recommend getting this book if you are travelling to the region, simply because information is so hard to come by, and in factual terms at least this is reasonably accurate.