Hoboworld

Vladivostok to Fushiki Japan

2009-11-04T02:43:33+00:00

Finally the Ferry had set sail for Japan and we actually made it onto the boat.. two hobo riders actually got let out of Russia.. wow we are impressed.. haha.. we thought it was some sort of trick to keep us there.. In all honesty Russia has been one of the highlights and we will surely miss it. The dramas of getting a bike with 5 punctures to the port was enough fun but all up it made it and we are glad for that. On the other hand its great to be back on the road or in this case the sea again and moving ever closer to our final destination.

The ferry Journey was scheduled to leave at 9pm but boarding was meant to be at noon, in the end boarding was actually closer to 2pm and we set sail at around 4pm. Just in time to leave the port with the sun setting in the background which gave us the perfect opportunity to take loads of photo's of the snow covered islands as we mad our way out through the shipping channels. On board with us were the Japanese group who we had been meeting up with regularly since Mongolia and all was smooth sailing.. that was until we left the security of the harbour and the islands. The wind picked up and started to get a little rough.. the journey was scheduled to take around 36 hours so we should arrive in Fushiki Japan around 10am leaving us the whole day to clear customs.

The journey itself was pretty uneventful however what we thought was a rough sea going trip was actually seen by many of the other passengers who traveled the route regularly as being smooth.. ouch! I guess we just need to work on our sea legs.. or better yet just keep our land legs.. After struggling to keep ourselves entertained on a pretty quiet cruise we woke early to see land.. finally we had made it to Japan and the weather was beautiful and warm.. just what we needed. After breakfast we went down to our cabin to have our inspection by Japanese Customs. It was then that we found out that there was a Holiday in Japan and we wouldn't be able to take our bikes off the boat until the following day.. not to worry we managed to stay on the boat for an additional night for $20US per person. When we booked the additional night we asked if there was food and we got told yes.. what they really mean is that its $20 for the cabin and then you have to pay extra for the food that is available.. the complete opposite to what we had done previously on the boat (cabin and food inclusive)... given that they wanted $9 per person per meal we decided against eating any of their high quality cooked cardboard and got some sushi from outside the port... Still we had to conserve our money as we only had $100USD in Yen and we had to buy insurance etc for our bikes.

The following day we got driven from the port to the local JAF office where they had to verify that our import permits (carnets) were authentic. We then had to go back and get them approved by the Japanese Customs Authority. From there we had to buy insurance and finally get the bikes off the boat and out of the port. The bad news was that Heathers bike tyre had gone flat again while on the journey and we needed to take her bike wheel off and take it to the service station to get pumped up again. While we waited in the port we had decided that we would go into the nearest big town of Toyama and look to get the bike Tyre repaired.

Vladivostok

2009-11-01T02:01:04+00:00

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After a relaxing night in the Hotel we woke early with the intention of getting our package from DHL which included our Carnets (bike passports/permits required for entering Japan).. at the same time we would need to organise our ferry tickets for that night.. It was all going to be a HUGE rush but it was possible given that the Ferry was scheduled to leave at 10pm that night. First stop was breakfast then we went to the port to organise tickets.. The office said that it opened at 10am.. we waited there ringing the door bell until at least 10:30 before anyone was able to assist us.. Heather got the information first and ran down to me while I was trying to get a mobile top up card.. “helllllpppppp no ferrrryyyyyyyyy”.. Ferry Cancelled.. panic mode had set in for Heather and I went back to the office and asked.. The web page said you have a ferry that sails today and yet you say its cancelled.. when is the next one.. The next one is on Sunday 1st of November. Bugger that means we will need to stay in Vladivostok for another 6 nights.. there is no way that we could afford the hotel for 6 nights so we would have to down grade to a proper soviet era quality shack... At least that gave us some additional time to organise everything which was a blessing in disguise but a huge pain in the arse.. Now that we wouldn't arrive in Japan we would miss the next two ferries from Japan to Australia... That means the next ferry would probably be on the 26th of November.. ARGHHH... it was all becoming a big mess.. too much of a mess but we had to get home and this was the only (affordable) way.. To make matters worse the ferry company had dramatically increased the cost of the ferry tickets by no longer providing availability for non-cabin tickets (e.g. just get a seat on one of the floors) making it now cost 3 times more than we had planned.. bugger.. and they only accepted cash on boarding.. plus they didn't help us at all with trying to clear the customs paper work required.. they gave us the address for customs and went there with the hope that it was as easy as every other time.. we would have to go there the next day.. we had to find new accommodation and fast.. after searching around we found a place and managed to get a special discount for staying 6 nights.. it was a huge relief and we had sea views and a verandah too!. Totally sweet..

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The next morning we set out to sort out the customs stuff.. only after walking for 45minutes in the freezing gale force winds did we find out that nobody at customs knew what we needed to do.. it seems shipping motorcycles is not something that people do very often.... After going back and forwards between different people and getting the assistance of a lovely English speaking lady named Tamara, we managed to get the name of a company that could help us... we walked all the way back to the other side of the harbour to find the company... once we found them they told us that their services would be out of our price range.. they wanted 10,000 roubles for each bike to clear customs.. what a rip off there was no way but they did give us the contact details of someone else who could help us for a more reasonable rate which we paid 1,500 roubles per bike...

Yuri Melnikov

ph +7(4232) 220 887

Mobile +7 (902) 5243447

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We arranged to meet up with him the following morning and organise the customs paper work.. The next day everything went really smoothly and we had all the bikes put into the secure customs area. The process was so easy.. It turns out the building that we got given the details for the other day was completely the wrong place. With Yuri we went to a different building and got the stuff sorted almost instantly. It just goes to show that the shipping company Bisintour is terrible. That day it started the saga of trying to get enough money out to pay for the ferries. For some unknown reason we have never been able to withdraw the right amount of money using the ATM cards.. it always seems that they limit us to around £150 which would make it take many days to get our funds sorted for the ferry which we did not have. In the end we spoke to HSBC and they said to go around to numerous ATM's from MANY banks and take out our daily limit at each one.. we did this and got the necessary funds... finding unique banks is a tough job there seems to be only 4 banks in Russia that accept HSBC Maestro cards... bugger and we didn't want to cash advance our credit cards. At least we got it all sorted eventually and now had the time to relax, check out the sights until Sunday when our Ferry was “scheduled” to leave... lets hope it leaves this time.. we can not afford to spend another week in Vladivostok.. its already been a month later than we had planned to get here and the snow was forecast to start on the coming weekend... That afternoon we met a Dutch Cyclist who had ridden across Russia to Vladivostok... on a bicycle.. madness I say.. he was stranded and needed to find some affordable accommodation. We helped him out with some basic directions for the only hostel in Vladivostok.. Thankfully he found it okay and we organised to meet up for beers the following night.

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The next day was all about finally doing tourist things. We went to check out a World War 2 submarine and some other sites around Vladivostok. It was all pretty chilled out and that evening went out for drinks. It was nice to catch up with some other travellers again and break our cycle of sleeping early that we had got from camping so long in the cold (the warmest place being our sleeping bags).. all up it was a nice evening.

The next morning our bikes got put on the ferry.. lets hope it actually leaves the port this weekend.. with one day until the snow is scheduled its all going to be an interesting few days. Thankfully we had organised everything in advance and hopefully we would be more prepared for the ferry than we would have been the previous time arriving from Turkey.

</a> Saturday morning we woke to heavy snow fall and it was still snowing.. joy we could actually take advantage of the snow without needing to ride anywhere.. which was especially important given that we didn't need to pack our bikes or do anything important.. so we went out to take photos and have a few beers for lunch as a farewell to Russia (premature of course).. (HL: on the way back to the Hotel James stacked it on the ice feel on his bum hehe didnt have the camera handy though :-P).... It was a lazy evening after a big lunch watching movies and relaxing before we had our ferry trip to Japan.. On Sunday we woke to a beautiful sunny day that was nice and still... Perfect for our route to Japan.. We had breakfast and made it on board. Thankfully the boat actually set sail and we started our trip to Japan... Only delayed by another 7 days..

Khabarovsk to Vladivostok

2009-10-26T00:31:19+00:00

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Shortly after arriving in Khabarovsk we found ourselves a hotel.. as we pulled up outside a fancy white Mercedes Benz drove into the drive way.. while Heather was getting prices for the hotel I waited with the bikes. One of the guys from the car introduced himself and asked us where we are headed to and where we have come from. He was visibly interested on he details and he went into the hotel. Shortly afterwards Heather came back and had decided that we would stay in the hotel. I then started to unpack the bikes of anything that was easily to steal.... we really needed to get in and have a shower and clean ourselves up.. we looked every bit the stinky bikers... 10 days with only the most basic of washing really starts to show. Our motorcycle clothes which had been completely cleaned in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia now looked like they have never been washed... all the camping, wet snow, (HL: running away from drunk lumberjacks), grit and mechanical repairs leave stains that just look naaassstttttyyyy... but its all character building.. hahah nothing like walking down the road and people go over to the other foot path because they think your a bum! Anyway enough of our rant on personal hygiene or lack there of...

</a> After entering the Hotel the guy who we met outside spoke to the receptionist and our she guided us to a nicer room.. we didn't think much of it at first the new room was slightly larger. After cleaning ourselves up and putting on fresh clothes we needed to find the restaurant in the Hotel... we saw on the front that they had an Asian restaurant so we really looked forward to it. It turns out that it actually had a Korean restaurant (we are now only a few hundred kilometres away from North Korea) that did the full Korean bbq experience.. just what we needed good food.. while we sat down and ordered it turned out that they actually served Australian beef, which was a pleasant surprise. After ordering some champagne and our meals to celebrate making it this far we chilled out and chatted.. a short time after our meal we had the guy from outside this time with a Translator come and join us at our table. He wanted to tell us how when he was a boy he always wanted a bike but his parents wouldn't let him, turned out that he owned the Hotel and was heavily involved in the “committee of the council of Federation on Defense and Security”.. he was a nice guy and he invited us to one of his other Hotels the next day for Chinese lunch. We gladly accepted and arranged to meet him the next day for lunch. He then offered us the services of his staff to help us find our way around the city and to do anything we wanted... it was all a very nice gesture and we really appreciated the offer.

The next morning we decided that we would need to take him up on the offer and use their services to sort out our visa. It turns out that the Hotel in Chita that we stayed at actually didn't register as they had claimed to have done. That means that we are illegally travelling in Russia which was not something that we wanted to deal with... while we had the availability of people who could speak English and Russian and knew the process we should get it sorted.. The hotel organised for someone from the passport/immigration office to come out and meet up. We all then went by Hotel taxi back to their office, she filled out all the forms for us. We then had to go and pay the 3000 rouble fine each at the bank. Shortly after returning with the receipt we had our finger prints taken and had to sign numerous pieces of paper that our translator assured us said nice things... 2 Hours later we left and all up it was a real pain in the … getting the visas registered and the previous hotel misleading us making it a very expensive mistake.

We made it to the Hotel and met up with the guy who informed us that one of his meeting scheduled had changed and he wouldn't be able to meet up. He however said that we could go and use one of his private rooms and have a feast.. One of his assistants ordered all the food we would ever want and we ate the best Chinese food I have had in years. The best bit being that it was all free!!! it was a shame that we didn't have the opportunity to meet up with the guy again.. maybe in another life.. that afternoon we went back to the Hotel to relax on a very full stomach... the plan was to get back out of the Hotel and find an Internet cafe.. reality was that we got lazy and sleepy after eating such a big lunch and did almost nothing for the rest of the day...

The next morning we prepared early to leave the Hotel.. we needed to get to Vladivostok so that we could make it to the Monday the 26^{th Ferry for Japan. That gave us two days to ride around 775km.. the bonus being that it was now warming up as we headed further south and towards to coast.. now we had daily highs of 6-10c rather than 2c or -2c... as we went to leave we realised that Heathers tyre had gone down significantly and we needed to get it pumped up. We also had to adjust her chain again so that we could reduce the already shocking wear that we had caused it.. An hour and a half later we had sorted all our stuff and got back on our way. But not before breaking the foot pump that we had bought the previous day... piece of crap broke in two pumps... Heather was leading and she lead us right back into the middle of no where.. not to worry we went back to the road the hotel was on and went the opposite direction and found ourselves on the road to Vladivostok.. it was great to see that on the sign as it marks the end of our epic across Russia..}

The days ride consisted of us going between tyre pumps to make sure the pressure was okay.. we ended up buying an electrical compressor for $20 that worked only once then the fuse blew.. bugger and that day we ended up doing around 550km finishing just after dark in a little hotel... we ordered dinner at the cafe and had the best kebabs to date... it was time to sleep.... The next morning we woke and did the remaining 225 km into Vladivostok... It was amazing to see traffic again after such a long time.. Vladivostok and its surrounding cities are massive by comparison to everything that we had seen in quiet some time.

After trying to figure out how the hell the maps worked and getting lost several times we managed to find ourselves a few hotels.. Playing the price game between them we managed to find a comfortable place in what was now pure luxury (hot showers and clean sheets)... it was time to relax and enjoy the city before we got our ferry tickets and organised our next phase.... JAPAN..

Russian Border to Khabarovsk

2009-10-22T08:37:24+00:00

</a> Beautiful Lake - Russia

After getting back into Russia for our third time it was time to fill up the bikes with newly cheaper fuel, get some lunch and enjoy the sunshine. Heather in hIt was freezing in the wind but out of the wind it was really nice and warm at around 15c. The only problem was that out of the wind we got attacked by these bloody midges, which hung around our faces like a swam of locusts. Heather was particularly keen on them.. That's all I can say about that.. te he he.. ohhh okay you twisted my arm.. all she could think about was how she couldn't handle two weeks of these bugs while we crossed the remainder of Russia.... ohh and there was at least two hundred and sixty seven tantrums... okay maybe only twenty.. (HL: whatever, James was the only one having wobblies).. After getting a fire going to keep the bugs away (HL: by sitting in the smoke) we relaxed for a few hours before making our way north. The warm weather was brilliant to take advantage of it we thought we would call it a day early and found a lake to camp by.. there was what looked like an unused rail road around the edge of the lake on the eastern side where people fished. Heather was setting up the tent and I was collecting some fire wood only to be disturbed by a huge mining bulldozer which clearly used the road to get back. We had to quickly unpack everything (HL: by throwing the tent in a ditch) and pushing the bikes up a small slope to be out of the way of the bulldozer, then moving them again as it was getting bigger as it approached .. it was all very exciting as it was night so just had massive lights on us, we hoped like hell that the guy wouldn't be coming back any time soon.. especially while we slept in the tent..

</a> "Road" Goes here ?? - Russia

As we went to bed that night it was absolutely freezing cold. We hoped that the lake would offer us some warming, instead it just offered us a freezing fog as the lake steamed the fog that it created froze.. We woke and Heather thought she heard the bulldozer coming again and almost jumped out of the tent, though it wasn't just a train far off (HL: dam train!). The thermometer at 6am when we woke reported -10c.. A short time later the local ranger came by to introduce himself. He said that it was -14c that night.. unusually cold. He told us that it would start snowing every day within a few weeks and that he called us extreme motorcyclists.. It was soo cold that when we washed up our dishes before we had a chance to dry them the water on the plates had already frozen. That morning we decided we needed a late start with the hope of the warmth of the previous day returning.. As soon as the sun came over the mountains sheltering the lake it warmed up and we made our way to Ulan-Ude close to lake Baikal. We had decided that we would have to give the lake a miss given that we wanted to put as little pressure on the bikes as possible. Every bit of distance covered was now on borrowed time.. at least that was how we felt given how the bikes had been in Mongolia. After setting off we met up with the Japanese group again and chatted for a while. It turned out it took them around 10 hours to get through the Russian border because they had so much film gear etc.. We confirmed our schedule and said that we wouldn't be going to Lake Baikal. We are sure that we will meet up with them again, we have the same route and a similar schedule.. lets s

</a> Winter is here - Russia

ee how things pan out.

That day we decided to detour around Ulan-Ude and head directly for Chita, The plan was that we had to get to Chita within three days so that we could register our visa allowing us to continue travelling east. About an hour and a half towards Chita we stopped for Lunch by a big river. Some guys from the nearest road working crew came down to have a look at the bikes and chat for a while. We cooked up some tea and relaxed for a while, one of the guys then came back with some wild yellow flowers and gave them to Heather (HL: Was sweet). We then sat back and offered him some food etc and relaxed some more. It was nice to be back in Russia but we had to make tracks to cross the 4000km to Vladivostok.. we soon got back on our way and found a campsite a few hours later in the Forest. Setting up a beautiful fire to keep us warm as the sun set... our best pit fire to date.. right beside an old rotting tree stump there to reflect the heat back at us.

The next day when we woke it was extremely cold again, we started to get a few flakes of snow falling so we left early and covered the 500km to Chita. We had to make it there for our Visa registration... (For those who don't know, when you enter Russia you have to register your visa at a hotel or police station within three days, otherwise you have to pay a fine, then you have to register every time you stay somewhere more than 3 days). We started looking for various hotels listed in the Lonely planet guide and couldn't find any of them. We ended up staying in a Motel which we are sure rented rooms by the hour... truly a classy place (HL: with leopard printed sheets and a picture of a woman naked, very interesting) but at least it was warm and they “registered” our visa for us... While in the Hotel I wrote some updates for our web page and organised the photo's that we had taken.. The plan was in the morning we would find an Internet cafe and update the blog... we went in search of the Internet cafe's only to find that none of them allowed us to use our laptop or use USB... shit we would have to leave the blog updates for another time... we should be in Tynda within two or three nights. While all this was happening we found out that the time zones had moved again making us two hours wrong which was causing us further problems. It was now 2pm and we had to get our our way.

</a> Russian road workers who helped us - Tynda

That night we made it out of Chita with the plan to do around 200km before we called it a night.. Shortly after leaving town it started to get very cold, a change had come through and the sunny skies of the previous few days had disappeared. We soon found a small off road section where we could camp in the Forest.. By this time the virus that I had in Mongolia had pretty much gone, but it was now Heathers time to get the flu... perfect timing right when the thermometer was struggling to reach 2c... making it very difficult to keep warm and there was a complete absence of hotels on route to stay in... The next morning we woke to slightly more snow as we headed further north.. Shortly after leaving our camp site we had a car try to pull us over continually.. we refused to pull over and they persisted.. In the end we slowed right down and they pulled over.. when we saw that they were 100% not police and had been drinking (had bottles in their hand) we rode on nodding our heads no as we went by.. they persisted once more then gave up.. the whole situation was very creepy. Made especially bad by the fact that we must have been 200+km away from the nearest town or police station... The further north we went the deeper the snow on the side of the road became with regular spurts of heavy almost blizzard dumps as we rode. Our main purpose was to try and keep moving and stop every few hours when we saw a cafe or restaurant.. anywhere really to get out of the cold and warm up, defrost the toes and fingers. We knew that we had at least 2300km to cover to get to Khabarovsk.. that meant that we would take at least 7 days at our standard pace...without being too stressed.. Unfortunately in the cold we could cover only between 160 and 250km per day making the going very slow and very slippery in the cold wet and windy conditions. As we progressed further North towards Tynda the temperatures didn't reach above -2c and the snow was now thick and with regular down pours of snow making visibility next to impossible.. not to mention the ice forming on our bikes and visors... We had to make it to Tynda though we had to stop as Heathers chain had stretched further, so we had to tighten it again and also fix her one mirror so it wasn't moving around.. we knew that from there on it was all south with the hope of it getting warmer.... That night we camped in an old quarry and had to make some more frame repairs to Heathers bike.. another one of the bolts holding her subframe together had been sheared off the day before making it all a little dodgy.. a few hours later after a late start we headed further north hitting a pinnacle of -11c as we crossed one of the mountains coming down towards Tynda.. The new road turns south before Tynda which was a huge relief... we could see the snow getting harder and worse. It was then that I started to get a flat tyre.. we had to do a U-turn and head back to the nearest town to get it inflated... this was because the guy who gave Heather's bike a lift into Ulaanbaatar had stolen our hand pump making flat tyre repairs impossible. We found an auto store and then had absolutely no way of getting to a pump... we ended up asking a group of guys if they could help, they invited us over to their cabin on the back of a big 6x6 truck and helped us out.. It was yet another case of fantastic Russian Hospitality. They used the compressor on the truck to give us air and offered us some food and chi to warm up... whoo hoo it was time to get back on our track to Khabarovsk... and it was only -5c.. positively baking hot.. my mankini and Heathers bikini is on their way out!!!

</a> Snow on our Tent - Russia

A short time after leaving the guys with the Kamaz we managed to get back into the snow.. as we progressed further the snow flakes got bigger and thicker making visibility extremely poor. We managed to cover only 100km further before calling it a day.. We managed to find a little off road and camped in a Forest where a ranger dropped by to see what the hell was going on.. It turns out he was happy for us to be there.. no guns and no alcohol made him a happy guy.. he stayed around and chatted for a while then left on his way.. It seems to be the story of our trip people dropping by and having a chat congratulating us for what we are doing and calling us extreme then going on their way. It turns out we camped underneath a military aircraft flight path right near the run way so we had a few low flying jets and big military cargo planes coming and going which kept things interesting watching out for the different types of planes. The next morning was much milder temperature wise and we had an easy morning before leaving on our way.. It was just the start of a saga that didn't seem to want to go away.. we left.. as the day cleared it got much colder and Heather got a flat tyre.. we pulled over and found that a thick piece of nail or wire had gone through her tyre and tube.. we initially didn't have the strength to break the tyre off the rim to repair the tube.. Heather setup a fire on the side of the road to keep us warm, while she did that I focused on trying to figure out a way to break the tyre off the rim.. it just wouldn't go.. after about an hour we managed to get it as a team effort.. finally it was now almost dark and we had to get the tube out, find the hole and repair it.. we managed to do that all in about 20 minutes and get the tyre back on.. only to find out that we had another hole in the tube that we didn't find... this was after we had replaced everything.. bugger and worse still we had no more CO2 cells left and our bike tyre pump had been stolen in Mongolia... a loud word that starts with F and ends in UCK came to mind.. we had to find a place to camp for the night then take the rear wheel to a repair place the next morning.... at that point in time two guys who had walked past us earlier came back and asked if they could help out.. we ended up following them back to their lumberjack camp in the forest.. The camp was set out in a clearing with a big army style canvas tent and a large bull dozer near by.. it was all very clean for what we expected.. (must love preconceived ideas)...while heather setup the tent I went and spent some time being social with the guys.. it was not long before the spirits came out and we had a few shots of their (moonshine).. “medicine”... it was super smooth but went straight to my head.. they said that we HAD TO EAT.... otherwise it makes you “CRAZY”... some canned beef (yuk) and bread later I was feeling pretty toasty and it was only two shots.. it was just the right time for Heather to arrive in the tent and start being social.. the big tent had a nice warm pot belly stove in the middle which kept it really toasty... and a huge fire risk.. but that's just when the fun started.. that night we chatted and drank until about midnight when it started to snow really hard..... Heather and I retired and they kept on going.. we woke at 7am to see that they had been drinking all night and wanted us to take them to get more booze... (and the snow was now upto 20cm deep outside) bugger now we are really screwed.. we persisted and managed to focus on getting the bike wheel off and trying to get the second hole patched. The guy's had told us the previous night that they had a compressor in town and that they would go and get it and come back.. turns out that there is no compressor and they just wanted people to drink with.. in fact there was not even a tyre pump in the nearest town.. it was all turning into a complete nightmare.. to make matters worse one of the guys had told me several times that he was now in love with Heather.. He wouldn't leave her alone he was hanging around her like a bad smell. When we got back from the nearest town the guys had by this time had drunk so much that they couldn't walk properly and became even bigger pains in the arse.. to cut a very very long story short I managed to get back to the camp site, pick heather up and we went into a town half an hour back towards Tynda to find a guy who could find and repair the hole.. we got it patched and got back to the camp site... after waiting in the queue at a bank for 1h:15m only to give up.. we ended up paying the guy all the money we had with the hope of being able to get back to the bike (HL: which was £1.15 hehe).. by the time we got back to the bike we found that the tyre was flat again.. we packed up to get the hell away from the lumberjacks who by this time had drunk so much that they had serious issues standing up.. we rode down to the road and they kept on trying to follow us and ride our bikes (HL: one started throwing rocks at cars, one car stopped and decked him, then when they drove off he flashed them).. Heather flagged down a big truck driver who was willing to give us a lift to the next big town to get the wheel fixed.. we all lifted her bike onto the kamaz which had a trailor that was 6ft high off the ground (during this process one of the drunk guys broke heathers rear indicator off)... and away we went.. but not before the Lumberjacks trying to ride away on my bike while I was loading Heathers, though Heather ran over and turned the engine off and took the keys.. by this time Heather and the Kamaz had started to drive away and the guys wouldn't get off my bike despite not having the keys.. in the end I had to get on the bike and turn the engine on to show that my break warning lights had come on to make them think it was not safe to ride.. I then said I would take it for a test ride then come back and let them ride it.. really what I meant was I was going to test how dumb they really are and ride off...

After two hours of following along behind the kamaz truck we got back to the guys house where Heather had organised for us to stay... he invited us in and when Heather was on her way past his guard dog it bit her on the leg hard enough to leave a bruise in the shape of the dogs mouth.. crazy he then took it away quickly and we packed away the bikes safely.. it was all in all a really nice night and we had a great time they have been the best hosts for us in quiet some time (since barnaul in Russia when we stayed with Victor and before that in Astrakan).. funnily enough both the worst and best hospitality of the trip comes from Russia.. 3 good experiences 1 bad experience..

</a> Click on Photo to see the ice forming at -11c

The next morning we woke to find that everyone had already gone to work and the house was empty.. we packed up our stuff and started to figure out what the hell we had to do.. then the guy came back and told us we could make ourselves feel at home while we fixed the bike.. he gave us all the tools and patches to do the work.. unfortunately we knew that the patches didn't fix the problem so I rolled the wheel down the road to some more professionals for them to take a look at it.. the first guys I met had a black out and couldn't help me so they gave me a lift to the bank and took me somewhere else.. the guy then took apart the wheel and couldn't figure out why it kept going flat it didn't bubble in water.. then when it went back onto the rim it would go flat again.. there was nothing obvious wrong and we couldn't feel any more spar's in the tyre to get more holes.. in the end he went to his wife in the hospital x-ray department and got the tyre x-rayed (looked at by a computer thing (yes yes I know technical terms)) to find what was wrong.. this was when he found by looking at the screen that there was a staple in the side of the wall which only had a very small spar which you couldn't feel with your fingers.. he removed the staple and repaired the tyre.. we then went back and put the tyre back on the bike.. Heathers excitement was almost overwhelming... we put the wheel back on and prepared to leave but not before we found a pump to fix the tyre if we got another flat.. we soon found one and made it back on our way to Khabarovsk.. a relaxing and uneventful 170km later we finally made it to Khabarovsk after almost 10 days we had finally made it almost all the way... what a relief.

Ulaanbaatar and back to Russia

2009-10-13T08:20:01+00:00

</a> Mongolian Robotic Man - Mongolia

After sleeping in our plan to leave early from Ulaanbaatar was dashed. It turns out that this was a blessing in disguise given that it had snowed over night. We now found that leaving later meant the snow and ice could melt somewhat. It was bloody freezing. It took us around 2 hours to get packed up and we ended up having a nice breakfast and leaving around 10:30am.. The plan was to head to the border so that we could cross first thing Monday morning. After leaving Ulaanbaatar the feeling of relief was amazing after 14 days of frustration. However crossing the mountains to get out of the city went from freezing to freezing plus plus plus (that's extra freezing).. the thermometer was reporting -2c with a strong cross wind making the ride particularly unpleasant.. at least once we crossed the mountains we had sunshine and warmth.

</a> hoboworld.to - Russia

We soon passed a group of two cars and a motorcycle. They waved to us but we didn't stop because they had been a fair way away from the road. It turns out that when we stopped for Lunch they stopped by us cooking on the side of the road.. It was a Japanese group</a> who are traveling and making a documentary/TV Show from Portugal to Tokyo via central Asia. The rider (Toi Jugatsu</a>) had two support vehicles and was riding a Honda Africa Twin in very nice condition. Their route had been similar to ours and they had been traveling for a similar length of time. After chatting for some time they set back off and we continued with our lunch. The plan was that we would meet them the next day at the border between 8am and 9am...... whooo hooo an early start hopefully this time we would actually make it. That night we stayed in a forest with some dog keeping watch over our campsite... It was very very cold and in the morning we woke to a very frosty start but with beautiful sunshine to keep us warm as the day progressed. We got the the border about 30minutes later and did all the usual pre border crossing preparation... We met up with the Japanese group who had arrived only a few cars before us. We then went through without any issues. In record time it took us 2 hours to get through the Mongolian side and less than an hour to get into Russia.. a new record.. 16hours the first time, 3 hours the second time and less than an hour the third time. We met the Japanese rider at the border post on the Mongolian side.

</a> Jūgatsu Toi, James and Myself (Photo Courtesy of Toi)

Ulaanbaatar

2009-10-10T08:15:05+00:00

</a> After our mission getting to Ulaanbaatar with one broken bike and one grumpy driver it was time to find a Hotel. Heather took the task on and found a place which was cheap, we didn't know how long it would take to find and fix the bizarre problems facing Heathers bike. We decided it was time to get out and get some good food... Mongolian BBQ it was then... After our first proper meal in weeks we hit the sack.. only to find out why our hotel was so cheap.. it was also a Karaoke bar... bugger Mongolians singing until 2 am... oh well we slept anyway through sheer exhaustion. The next day we woke with the plan of trying to compare the cost of fixing the bike in Mongolia vs shipping the bike directly to Australia and changing our route so that instead of going via Brisbane we would travel via Perth... After hunting around for anyone that knew about motorcycle electrics and searching the internet for any information we started looking for companies that could freight the bikes to Perth.. It turns out that in Mongolia all we found out was that they could only ship items up to 88cm in height or you had to have a complete 20ft container... seems logical to us... NOT!! you can't even but a part of a container you have to have the whole bloody thing... I guess we could have used the remainder of the container to ship home 20 yurts... or maybe that was just a bad dream.. All of the Mongolians we dealt with seemed to be anything but helpful in trying to find a solution to our problem. Most of them just wanted to buy the bikes or would go out of their way to be a pain in the arse.. It seems that they don't want to be paid for anything that would require them to do any work.. but they are more than happy to take your money for nothing. Its a shame because most of the Mongolians we had met that didn't work in shipping seemed to be friendly and helpful.

</a> On the walk back to the Hotel we came across a BMW Dealership.. they didn't do any bikes but they at least had experience at BMW Cars... they told us to bring the bike into them the next day and they would have a look at it.. whoooo hoooo hopefully this would be the answer to our problems.

So the next morning we pushed the bike the 3km to the dealership during peak hour traffic... talk about hard work. I was still feeling a little dodgy and pretty weak from the virus.. After putting the bike into the dealership we went back to the Internet to sort out a possible alternative if we couldn't get the bike fixed and to see what other peoples recommended solutions were. It turns out we had had numerous posts in response to our questions on the internet.. most of them pointed to the same parts that the BMW dealership said would probably be the problem.. It was time to go back to the Dealership and see if they had any possible answers. Turns out the battery and voltage regulator had become broken. There was also a short but we couldn't diagnose the short until we had a reliable power source. We told them to order the parts and we went out the celebrate.. we had a few drinks and retired to the karaoke hotel....

The next day I was feeling rough.. I think that the virus that I had got in Olgii was back with full force.. there was no time to waste we went back to the dealership to make sure the parts got ordered. It turned out that the parts didn't get ordered and that the prices and delivery times came out to being outrageous.. we ordered the parts ourselves from the UK and DHL'd them to Ulaanbaatar and it was cheaper than just the battery in Mongolia from the BMW dealership. It was now Thursday so we had 4-5 days to wait until the parts arrived because of the weekend. It was time to relax and take in the city while we had little else to do. We went out to dinner on Saturday and had a bottle of wine to celebrate the parts being on their way. We could track the package and knew that it was in Korea and the next flight was the following morning... we should have them first thing Monday.. YAY..

By this time I was starting to spend more time on the toilet than I was anywhere else.. My weight had fallen significantly and I was generally feeling very weak. The virus that I had gotten seemed to be winning... I was now not only on the loo but also vomiting which was really bad as it meant I couldn't eat anything at all.. I had to go to Hospital.. Monday morning it was time to go down to the Hospital.. Knowing that the hospitals had such a good reputation in Mongolia we went to a Korean university Hospital.. I got rushed onto a drip to rehydrate.. but this was only after we struggled to find out how the hell their system worked as nobody seemed to speak English and we didn't speak enough Russian, Korean or Mongolian. In Mongolia there is no concept of queuing.. so when you match that with Hospitals you really find chaos. People walking in on other people during examinations of areas that most people find private etc etc.. anyway the overall service from the hospital was fantastic. After being rehydrated I had to come back the next day for further examinations... now it was time to track the packages as the online tracking had said that the packages had arrived in Mongolia on the weekend so we must have got them.. we went to the Dealership to tell them the packages should arrive that day.. we then went back to the internet to check on the progress of our other stuff.. It turns out that customs in Mongolia is the biggest scam you have ever heard, they wouldn't release the packages until we had paid TAX on the SHIPPING of the goods and they don't provide any way to claim it back if your taking the goods back out of the country immediately. After paying $50US in tax we felt completely frustrated and it still took us until Wednesday night to get the package. All in all our experience of Mongolian customs leaves a hell of a lot to be desired. I went back to Hospital on Tuesday and had a battery of tests done including the joy of swallowing a camera so that they could see what was going on in my stomach... ouch! It was not a nice experience. Anyway the basic story Is that they came back and said that I had something I can't spell so I can't put it on.. they have given me enough medicine so that I can get back to Australia and see another specialist.. I can't drink, cant eat spicy food, can't eat sweet stuff.. dammit what is there worth living for...

Anyway its now Thursday and the parts have been delivered to the dealership so that they can fit them. It was now all sorted and we could kick the bike over.. Unfortunately the bike was still starting even when the ignition was off.. there was still an earth somewhere that had to be found.. it wasn't until Friday night that they found the problem. Yet again the DATATOOL alarm had fucked up and was earthing the ignition causing the bike to start. That was the third problem we had with the alarm since the start of the trip. On Saturday morning I got dressed up ready to go down and pickup the bike. When I arrived the bike had leaked oil all over the floor of the dealership. One of the Gaskets had blown. I needed to go back to the Hotel room and get the computer so we could confirm that there was no other issue. When I arrived back we didn't have enough Oil to refill the bike so we had to go and find more bike oil.. after being driven around Ulaanbaatar for about 2 hours we went back to the hotel and took the bike oil that I had bought so that I could service my bike and took it for Heathers... after arriving back we put the oil in the bike and went for a ride.. everything was going well.. when I got back to the dealership I stopped the Bike then it wouldn't start again. The bikes battery voltage had dropped. The new battery was busted.. bugger now we had to find a new battery in Ulaanbaatar so that we could leave before our Mongolian visa expired in two days... after rushing around we found a dodgy Chinese made batter which would at least work for the time being. All the guys put bets on how long the battery would last ranging from 1 month to 3 months.. the advice was to replace the batter as soon as we got to Australia.. I have to email them so that they can claim the kitty of around 50000T which is a significant amount of money. Finally the bike was now working and I could ride it back to the Hotel... Whooo hooo we went out for an early meal to celebrate and retired to the hotel early so that we could leave Ulaanbaatar by 7am. After 13 days in Ulaanbaatar it was time to leave.....

Altai to Ulaanbaatar

2009-09-28T02:10:02+00:00

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After getting Heathers bike fixed it was time to make our way to Ulaanbaatar. With our newly revitalized selves we headed off to the petrol station.. only to find that nowhere seemed to sell 92 octane fuel. There was no way we wanted to run our bikes on 80.. it would spell disaster... the BMW manuals say never put anything lower than 91 in.. so that's what we had to find.. eventually we found THE only place that sold 92 in town.. we are pretty sure it was probably some dodgy fuel but at least we had our tanks full and it was time to head on. The road from Altai was a huge improvement on the road coming in but it was still terrible. The sand was now very deep but there was now a distinct Buddhist feel to the route. While in western Mongolia the Kazakh's are the major ethnic group in the rest of the country the Mongol's are which means Buddhist is the religion of choice. We are now seeing prayer flags and monuments to Buddha which is a nice change. With Heathers newly repaired frame we can push on with more speed.

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Easily averaging 50km/hour+ now we blazed across the first section without any issues completing close to 200km in 3.5 hours which was a record. The road quickly went back to the Mongolian Standard of being very rocky and crap. However we made good time... completing over 250km for the first time in 7 days.. whooo hooo it was time to have an early night and relax.. catch up on missed sleep from the disco hotel the previous night and get some relief from the vibrations.. At least the speed we could travel had now improved. After finding a campsite next to some horse bones we made a fire using horse poo and chilled out for the night...

The next morning we woke to get back on the road early.. we wanted to make it to Ulaanbaatar now so that we could have a few days off and service the bikes. They had been taking a beating and we really needed to give them some love and attention. We left early and got back on the sand dunes with the intention of getting at least half way. A short time after starting Heather hit sand and got bogged down. I had to help her out by pushing as she gave it some throttle.. It was then I turned around to find that my pannier had fallen off while I was helping Heather.. It was just hanging on by a thread... bugger the repairs that we had done in Kazakhstan had finally failed due to the vibrations.. not a good sign.. We ended up having to tie the pannier on using some touratech</a> small tie straps that came with our bottle holders... we would need to look at fixing it properly when we got to Ulaanbaatar... The sand was now very deep and the going had slowed down to a snails pace... that would be if snails existed here.. it seems to be completely lacking anything except camels, mice and eagles...

A short time later after hitting a rocky section Heathers frame again broke, the repairs we had done in Altai had failed less than 48 hours later.. bugger we would have to take it slow to the next big town and get the repairs done there.. after 7 hours of riding and 4pm we rode into town it was now our job to find someone that was open to fix the bike so we could get back on the road to Ulaanbaatar.. we didn't want to stick around.. we found a guy who had a power drill but his drill was so weak that it couldn't even drill out the bolts.. eventually the drill got through it after 40minutes and the remaining bit of bolt was removed and replaced with a strong Russian bolt.. to this day its held out :) YAY.. no made in China bolts any more.

That night we camped on a hill over looking a big valley where we could see the cars and trucks so we knew which direction we had to go in the next day.. this was only after being lost twice on the same section of road.. we went along it.. felt it was wrong turned back.. then asked people they said it was the right way... we went along it again then they raced after us and told us to turn around it was actually the wrong way.. bugger..

Eventually we found our way back the next day and hit the road for Ulaanbaatar. About 5km later Heather hit some deep sand resulting in her doing an almost perfect superman/superwoman impression as she flew through the air head first into more deep sand. Thankfully she was okay but her pannier had taken yet another beating. We had been told that paved road would start in about 30km.. it turns out that paved road started in about 120km.. but at least the paved road started. We filled up with petrol again so that we had enough fuel to make it the final distance into Ulaanbaatar... we should be able to make it into Ulaanbaatar by the next morning early now that we could average 90-100km/hour without any issues.. it was a huge relief to see the tarmac again.. it had been 14 days since we last saw any real tarmac in Russia..and oh what a good feel it was. 250Km later we stopped for the night. Setting up our camp over looking the valley below a short distance from the road.. oh what a feeling :)

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The next morning we packed up early with the intention of getting to Ulaanbaatar in about 2-3 hours time.. We got back on the road and immediately heathers bike stopped running. Every time she touched the clutch her engine went crazy. There seemed to be some sort of short circuit. When we checked the oil it seemed to be empty.. our worst fears were that the engine had no oil and we had just screwed it big time.. but no light came on to say there was any problem with oil and we had checked the oil level the day before... in the end we spent three hours trying to diagnose the problem and found that we could start the bike and it would run but as soon as we tried to ride it the bike would stop.. the battery was not holding any charge so it was not a good situation. Heather ended up hailing down a truck which could take us to Ulaanbaatar.. unfortunately they couldn't and gave us only a lift to the next town. After strapping the bike down while he tried to get back on the road the bike fell over crushing her only remaining straight pannier... Heather enjoyed the trip with the goat (and bike) on the back of the truck which was on its way to the dinner table. At the next town we found a guy that would be able to put the bike (in pieces) in his van.. In the end we negotiated a price and set off... the guy took ages as he kept driving around asking for more people to give lifts into Ulaanbaatar.. picking up hitch hikers.. racing buses on the dirt sections of road all up Heather was in the back supporting the bike with no safety belt and the guy was a complete dickhead driver.. In the end we got to Ulaanbaatar and to where we had negotiated that he take us.. then he had the audacity to ask for more money.. what a dickhead he wanted us to buy him 20litres of fuel (at $1US/litre) because he felt that he got us to ulaanbaatar (the sign for the city) not where we had negotiated and there was a difference.. what a tosser.. in the end we refused to pay.. they got all the locals to look down on us despite them having people translate in the end he left with his tail between his legs... Finally we had arrived in Ulaanbaatar.. yay.. what a relief

Khovd to Altai

2009-09-27T01:24:36+00:00

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After leaving Khovd we had our sights set on Altai which is a town that was originally built by the Russians as a stop over on the main route south. Its right in the Gobi. The road surface deteriorated faster than we could have expected. The 5km of paved road quickly turned into a rutted nightmare. It was about 50km out of town that we started to follow around the edge of a lake. The roads disappeared into a tangled mess of tracks. We kept trying to find a track without so many ruts, rocks and corrugations but we had no luck. The pace quickly dropped down to a measly 20km per hour average as we tried to navigate around the obstacles. It was after riding for 5 hours and only completing 100km that we decided to find a place to camp. It was in a huge wide valley with big 3000+ meter mountains along each side.

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The valley floor was basically a mix of deep sand and loose rocks/boulders which made for an interesting time finding somewhere to camp. In the end we decided that the best place to camp was next to a grave site.. it happened to be one of the only flat areas in the valley.. So that night we went to sleep with the ghost of someone or something that died many years ago there to keep watch....

The next morning we woke again to storm clouds coming towards us.. the storms that we had reported to us must be on their way.. it was time to make tracks and get out of the storms way. We definitely didn't want to be in bog. Our going had already been pretty slow so if it got wet we would probably have to have an extended break in some shanty town along the way while we waited for things to dry out... not something that we wanted to do.

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All the “towns” we had gone past since Khovd had been more like American Western movie towns with just a collection of wooden shacks along the road. All together not very inviting. The morning was pretty uneventful we still pushed on in the deep sand and rutted tracks. Our average speed had increased to around 35km which we had been pretty pleased with.... that was until the road disappeared again as we had to cross some dry river beds... by looking around we could see that it looked more like a car/truck grave yard with all the flat tyres and car bits that had fallen off other vehicle's. Which raises another point about Mongolia... In Kazakhstan which has similarly poor roads people have flat tyres etc.. bits fall off but generally they move them out of the way of the road.. in Mongolia they just leave all the bits all over the road.. riding along you have to dodge rocks, ruts, spare tyres, engine parts, metal spikes, bits of fire wood, scrap metal, crashed car panels etc.. basically anything they can leave in the middle of the road they will..

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It seems that it may actually be a national sport.. so riding in Mongolia can be summarized by a severe lack of sign posts, no real main road to anywhere in the west or south, and a “game” of always trying to dodge the rubbish that they have left everywhere.. its really quite a tragedy that some of these beautiful sights are ruined by the amount of litter left... anyway with my rant over its time to get back to the story.. We managed to do a whopping 156km in 7 hours of riding which was a pretty good effort... but we had become very tired. The effects of the virus had been particularly bad on me and it wasn't really making my Mongolian experience enjoyable.. that night we realised that the nuts that connected Heathers subframe to the front of the bike had both been sheared off resulting in the rear half of her bike being loose.. not a good sign. We had to find a mechanic that could replace the bolts which really meant getting to Altai... it was still some 300km away. That night we camped near a Yurt in the middle of a huge flat plain... only in the very far distance could we see any land formations... great for navigation the GPS was completely useless except for giving us a rough idea of the direction we are going in. The next day we had to make it to Altai so that we could get Heathers bike fixed as we had no spare bolts.. That meant a very very slow days ride to make sure we didn't cause any damage. We had not seen very many other vehicles since leaving Khovd so getting a tow would be out of the question.

The road was still heading south and the further we got the more sand we ended up riding in.. the surrounding countryside was now becoming huge plains with sand dunes or deep sand valleys. Basically meant that riding had to be either full on throttle or taking easy.. That night we made it to Altai quiet late. Absolutely knackered.. We had to find a hotel there was no way we wanted to camp after such a tough few days with the virus/fever/tough terrain.. the first hotel we found wanted us to pay $60US for a room without a bathroom.. WTF.. this was a crap town that wanted to charge major city prices.. there was no way in hell.. we ended up finding another hotel that charged us $10 and included the disco next door being absolutely crazy loud.. the pit toilet was also a real win for us.. nothing like the experience of not a good nights sleep with an awful loo experience... people would stand outside the loo and just aim It stank so bad.. The next morning we went to the Mongol Rally service centre and they replaced the bolts on Heathers bike... also fixed her pannier bracket which had also been sheared off the previous day from Vibrations... It was time to restock and Head for Ulaanbaatar.

Olgii to Khovd and the start of the Gobi

2009-09-23T07:09:34+00:00

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After the tour we decided that we would stay in Olgii to find some time to get the unfinished tasks done.. Unfortunately our time was mared by a mysterious virus that we both caught. After a night of watching a movie and having some vodka it hit home hard resulting in being seriously ill for the next few days... Despite being ill in Olgii we needed to get going again.

We felt completely drained but we had to get going... Originally we planned to go north and follow the mountain ranges then head south to Ulaanbaatar. Given that we got snowed in on the mountain passes during the tour and on the way to Olgii we have decided we need to head south instead.. that means the Gobi. We had reports from other travellers that the roads to the north are much worse, the main route to Ulaanbaatar was to head south... so south it was...

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While we had been in Olgii we met an italian who was staying at our hotel who was riding a Honda Africa twin.. He had come up from Iran and was now looking to try and get into China... he also met four other Italians who are competing in the Mongol rally riding vespas... crazy... we introduced ourselves and compared notes. They had been working on fixing one of their vespas drive lines while we chatted to them.. apparently it was the fourth one to break due to the poor quality roads.. they said they had planned to leave for Khovd on the Sunday afternoon and hopefully make it there that day... You can see their progress on their web page</a>.

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We left Olgii early on Monday morning with the intention of getting to khovd around Lunch time as it was only around 250km away... shortly after olgii we realised that the “main roads” are actually main tracks and there was little to distinguish which road was actually the right one... signs are non existent and it seems that people just go their own way... about two hours later we stopped for lunch by the side of a beautiful lake, while we sat back eating we noticed a group of four other motorcyclists going slowly.. Heather bet that it was the Italians however I had seen them leave the day before... It turns out she was right they had yet another drive line failure on one of the vespas and had to stay the night in a ger to fix it... their final parts had been used. We wished them luck and set off.. The whole time thinking WTF.. Vespas this was now more offroad than road the corrugations are the same size as their scooter...

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it would be very slow going for them as the day progressed the quality of the road got worse and worse.. not to mention that there was a few 2400+ meter mountain passes that they would have to push the scooters up.. ouch! Anyway they get our respect that's for sure :) That night we camped early but we didn't make it to Khovd... in total we did around 120km of the 250ish km and we had only been riding for 6 hours... not a bad effort.. we had got lost several times following the “road” where the GPS said the route was.. if we had continued to follow the GPS we would have blindly ended up in a ditch somewhere that is for certain. It was back to asking for directions... The thing with asking mongolians for directions is they expect everyone to be riding a horse which can go up cliffs and over mountain tops... not ideal for a motorcycle so you needed to ask them where the road is not “is this the way to...”.. it was just a sign of things to come. The following day we woke to dark clouds so we had an early start and made it into Khovd just before lunch after an early start... they charged us 1500T per bike as road toll to use the 500 metres of surfaced road in the town.. what a con. We restocked on our supplies as we had been told that there would be no fuel for at least 450km+ we topped up all our fuel containers, fuel tanks and bought a 2L coke bottle for good measure.. while I waited for Heather to go and get some fresh vegetables from the market I got surrounded by about 20 mongolian drivers from the bus/taxi station/stop.. all asking me where the chain was on my bike.. “what no chain is your bike broken”.. “me mechanic me fix”.. umm no sorry it has no chain its called a drive line.. their look of bewilderment was rather amusing.. they all said that it was around 420km to Altai and that we should be able to make it in a day... however we also got told that there was 3 days of rain forecast and we would be screwed if the roads got wet.. They all wished us luck and when Heather got back we set off on the road to Altai and the Gobi...

Mongolia and the Altai mountains

2009-09-20T04:55:34+00:00

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Ahhhh finally we had reached Mongolia.. The border crossing out of Russia was fairly easy except that they had closed the border for lunch... we managed to get into Mongolia 5 minutes before their border had closed at 5pm... we had hoped to be able to get through a little earlier so we had time to get a good campsite when we got into Mongolia.. Unfortunately it wasn't so... Immediately after getting into Mongolia the road went from Asphalt on the Russian side to a rutted, corrugated mess of gravel and sand.. the road was in such poor shape that the locals didn't even bother to use it.. Instead they used one of the 40 alternatives... this made navigation very difficult and we had to keep asking the shepherds where the hell the road went.. on several occassions we had to back track to find another track so that we could make it to our intended destination Olgii.... After 3 hours of riding we came to our first mountain pass... In most countries the road upto a mountain pass goes through a series of zigzags or follows the river up a gradual slope.....

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well in Mongolia the road goes along the valley then straight up the steep side of the hill.. The slope on this particular mountain pass must have been at least 50-60°. The crazy thing was that the slope was soo steep and yet this was the main road from the Russian Altai into Mongolia.... We had a convoy of at least 15 semi trailers following us... how the hell are they going to get up.. the view from the top was spectacular... overlooking the valley as the sun set it was amazing, but we still had to find somewhere to camp.. and find somewhere fast before it got dark..on the other side of the mountain pass there was snow on the ground, as we descended down into the valley... a short time later we crossed a snow filled gulley and Heather decided that we should go off the road and camp further up the hill... no problems.. we rushed to get the tent setup, then Heather went to collect some stuff for a fire... horse and cow poop... and I prepared dinner... it was very cold so we hit the sack early with a plan to make it to Oglii early the next day... that night we had our first snow on the tent... we had a mild panic attack hoping that it wasn't rain.. I couldn't imagine riding on these roads if it was wet.. when we go out of the tent the mountain on the other side was covered in a fresh coat of white snow.. luckily we had only a small dose so we left early... continuing on our dirt track for about 30 minutes.. then we realised that about 50 meters away there was a nice fresh asphalt road.... why the hell are we still riding on dirt??? the new road was fantastic and we arrived in Oglii about 20 minutes later... the temperature was sitting at 2°C.. we had to get money and we had to restock on our food so that we could head north again....

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We managed to get into town and find a bank.. one thing we didn't realise was that there are no banks in Oglii that accept Mastercard or Maestro cards.. we had to transfer some of our emergency fund US dollars to Mongolian Currency... it was while Heather was doing this that we got approached by a Tour operator who offered to take us up to see the Glaciers and lakes in the restricted border zone with China and Russia.. It was something that we wanted to do but with the poor quality roads had decided it was a little tough.. we said that we would go and get some food, then after an hour meet up again to discuss it further... An hour later we had agreed on taking the tour, organised the route and started to prepare..it was all very rushed because we had to get some permits from the Military to enter the area, we also had to get some national park permits to use the park...we locked our bikes up at the tour operators sisters place in her secure garage, got prepared and set off...

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First of all we headed off towards the Glaciers.. on the way we stopped at his Mothers ger, then stopped at his Uncles house for some tea.. we ended up spending our first night on the tour at his uncles eating horse head, horse sausages, horse tongue, and drinking tea.. the next day after 6hours driving we finally made it to the Glacier.,.. the road there was crazy.. Anyway going into Details about the tour will take up a load of time so I'll be quick and nasty and put it all in point form..

Walked up to a Glacier at 3000+ meters above sea level... </li>

on the way back from the glacier we walked through knee deep snow </li>

had Yaks cream </li>

Tried Deer </li>

Had fresh Mongolian pasta. </li>

Had loads of tea </li>

had more tea </li>

got sick of tea </li>

drove along rocky roads for 24 hours in 3 nights... </li>

had temperatures down to -12c </li>

Had balsak which is a local doughnut style bread which you have with butter of fresh cream... we know its balsak because it reminds us of ball sack.. haha </li>

Heather spent hours teasing a kitten... </li>

watched some terrible Kazakh TV </li>

witnessed some amazing off road driving.. </li>

Saw Turkish stones </li>

crossed crazy rivers </li>

Saw eagles being trained for Hunting. </li>

Had a diet that consisted of traditional Kazakh food... meat, cream and noodles.. </li> </ul>
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All up the tour was well worth the money.. we called it our Holiday away from our Holiday... it was nice to have someone else navigate.. he didn't have or use any maps but knew the area so well that we didn't get lost or have any issues finding any of the sites that he said we would be able to see. There was no way in hell that we would have been able to make it up many of the roads with the sand and our bikes fully loaded that he could with his Russian 4wd van... I would highly recommend anyone wanting to go on a tour to use this guy.. Do the tour in 5 or 6 days not the rushed version that we did over 3 nights... it was a hell of a long way on the crappy roads..
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After the tour was over we checked into a hotel.. yay finally we could have our own privacy.. One thing I would say about doing a tour in Mongolia is to make sure you bring your own tent. The Ger experience is great but there is no privacy and everyone just stares at you.. its all very odd and uncomfortable but well worth experiencing at least once.. having your own tent gives you some freedom to go to bed when you want. Not get woken when wolves attack their flock of goats etc...
It was so nice to have our own room in the hotel.. unfortunately we both got sick and ended up spending most of our time in the room for 3 nights to recover... which is why its taken so long to update the blog...
Oglii is definitely a meeting point for tourists.. we have seen more westerners in Oglii that we have seen for our entire journey since leaving Istanbul...

Paolo an Italian who Is riding a Honda Africa Twin places </li>

4 Italians who are riding 4 vespas from Milan to Ulan Baator. </li>

2 English and 2 Finn's who are back packing from St Petersburg to Vietnam </li>

a group of French who have spent 3 weeks travelling from Ulanbaator to Olgii and the Altai </li> </ul>
It really is a cross roads for anyone who is coming overland to Mongolia.. Its recommended as a stop off.
If your looking for an experienced tour guide who knows his way around the Altai in Mongolia very well. Speaks good english and has a reliable 4x4 van then we highly recommend Jupar Abzal email: aktayulu@yahoo.com</a> tel : (mongolian) 95424044

Siberia the Russian Altai to Mongolia

2009-09-14T04:04:50+00:00

</a> After getting Heathers bike fixed by Victor it was around 9pm at night.. unfortunately we had yet to organise a hotel and needed to find accommodation. Without us even asking we got asked if we wanted to stay with Victor (the mechanic/bike god) and his girlfriend. We repacked Heathers bike, and helped clean up (a little bit).... and then set off... Heather decided to take the wrong turn when Victors girlfriend turned away from the convoy... we soon got back to Victors place after a quick stop off at the supermarket to get some food, beer etc... After a beer and a beautiful meal we sat down and chatted (as best we could when we didn't speak much Russian) over shots of vodka and ground black pepper... we soon got loads of great tips on where we should go and what there was to see on our route through the Altai to Mongolia...

</a> The next day we had an amazing breakfast and headed off to with Victor towards Barrnaul.. we decided that we needed to stay in Barnaul to catch up with all the other blog posts we recently posted and to catch up on washing etc... two nights of "relaxation"... aka posting stuff, writing blog posts, backing up photos, getting our washing done and for the first time in a while going out for some drinks... it was time to leave Barnaul... we had really grown to like Barnaul and its relaxed attitude.. before leaving though we had to get a Russian Sim card for our phone... O2 had charged us £30 for a 5 minute phone call... it was wayyyyyy too much and to put it simply O2 sucks big time.. trying to buy a SIM for your mobile with not very well spoken Russian was a great experience.. trying to figure out if we had a contract or not was interesting..

The route out of Barnaul was so simple.. Victor had kindly shown us the way and taken us to the main route... out of the hotel down the road and across a bridge.. so simple.. how could we go wrong.. and for the fist time in a while we had managed to find our way out of the city without too many issues.... farewell Barnaul..

That night we had decided to find a place early to relax and camp.. we had only around 250km to Gorno-Altaisk and had decided that we should take a lazy 2 days to get there... The first place we found to camp seemed really nice at first appearances.. after some exploring the area we decided against it.. a few key points.. a huge pile of animal bones... probably 10 cows at least.. then a shitload of shot gun and rifle shells around an abandoned factory... all very creepy.. we decided to relax in the valley for a short while in the sun before heading off to find a new place to camp... A short time later we found a place to camp at the back of a valley hidden away.. with great views out but very difficult to see in... perfect.. that's when we found that on the Thursday the permit office which we had to reach in Gorno-Altaisk was actually closed.. so that meant we had 3 days to get to Gorno instead.. that night we had a nice fire and chilled out in our campsite... the next morning we woke to another beautiful day so we decided that we would stay there for the day and relax.. what a great excuse to do absolutely nothing.. well not nothing.. we played cards, scrabble and barbecued all day... in the sun it was very hot and in our campsite it was sheltered from the wind.. perfect.. that night we had a change of weather and the rain came in... at least it didn't come in the previous day.. that day we headed off to Gorno to get the permits we needed so we could venture further into the Altai region of Russia.. then onwards to Mongolia... The process seemed pretty simple.. well that's if you can actually find the place where the permits are issued... we went to the right address... then they told us to go next door.. then they told us that we had to go to a place on the other side of the city.. all up we got there just before 12... when permits stopped getting issued.. luckily enough we managed to find someone who would still do the permits and the whole process was nice and easy taking only around 15 minutes per application. With our permits in hand we had 5 days to get to the Mongolian border post.. While I was there the permit office lady said that they had not had any permits issued since August for motorcycles however 2 hours before us they had issued two permits to another group of Motorcycle riders from the UK... what a coincidence..

</a> On the way out of Gorno we stopped to restock our food.. while I waited with the bikes Heather went to get some food, a guy stopped to give us some apples which turned out to be the best apples ever.. we ended up buying a bucket full of apples about 15minutes later from a road side stall... dam fantastic. At the same time a guy smacked his "girlfriend" in the mouth so she would come over and beg to me.. when I refused he was not very pleased and the guy who gave us the apple he told them to fuck off.. it was all a little surreal.. she now had a bleeding lip for nothing.. This is when Heather came out with so much food that there was no way we could fit it on the bike... we already looked like snails.. now we looked like snails that had been eating at an unnamed super size restaurant... Then we stopped at the road side stall . If only we took some photos.. it would have been a good image to show how not to travel by motorcycle.....

A short time after leaving Gorno we saw the two UK motorcycle riders one on his bike the other's bike on a trailer of a car going back towards gorno.. no idea what happened there but it didn't look too good.. That night we decided to stay our first night in a Turbaza.. a Russian Holiday camp.. basically the Russians build little cabins in the Forest which are cheap (£10) places to stay.. often with only basic facilities.. the first one we checked out looked like a dump.. the second one was quiet nice and had beautiful panoramic views of the river... Shortly after arriving I asked the owner if they had some beer for sale.. they said no but he offered to take me to the shop to get some.. on the walk to the shop we kept passing people where he would introduce me and say where we had come from and where we are going.. each time the people would have a shot of vodka to celebrate.. 5 shots of vodka on the way to the shop to buy some beers.. dam the walk was going to take a while... then the shop wasn't open.. they called the shop owner's mobile and they came back to open the place.. turned out to be more of a bar than a shop.. anyway on the way back we had another way to go where there was another group of people to toast to our ride... all up I had about 7 shots of vodka and a beer... I got back and Heather was clearly bored so she had decided to clean her bike... we decided to sit in the gazebo and watch the approaching storm while drinking our beers... yay I was already pretty drunk...

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The next day we headed off after a freezing cold night.. those dam huts are like sleeping in a refrigerator... I think sleeping in the freezer would have actually been an improvement.. and to top it off the day was rainy and cold. Whooo hoooooo.. we had to do some distance today so that we could cross our first mountain pass and hopefully get some good weather. The weather had finally decided to improve... it was now raining we crossed our first pass.. unfortunately the weather didn't improve.. the second mountain pass a short time later revealed a beautiful valley. (it was no longer pouring with rain) .. a short time after we found a nice place to camp on the river and the Sun decided to come out... the next morning we woke to an absolutely stunning morning... the sun was shining through the trees, with steam coming off the river..... very picturesque.

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That day we decided to take it easy so we could take advantage of the beautiful weather.. we stopped by a raging river to have lunch.. a short time later a big Russian 6x6 kamaz truck decided to cross.. the Altai drivers stopped and said hello and cheered when we asked to take photos of them crossing.. very impressive the river was moving fast enough for the truck to move down stream a little despite driving upstream to cross the river diagonally.. all up very impressive... about an hour after our early lunch we stopped to camp the night.. we fould a little Island in the river where we could get too and camped there.. we had to clean our clothes and wash.. the joys of washing in the icy river... Heather was too much a wuss to get in.. so she just washed using a washer.. poor little jimmy got in a few times to wash properly.. no stinky jimmy.. hello stinky heather.. to be honest the water was so cold it actually stung your skin when you got in... and it took me many attempts and a few screams before I got in., Heather was nice enough to laugh and chuck rocks in my direction to quicken my pace. once I got in my legs etc had all gone numb so the other times it was much easier.. as dusk started to roll in we had a bull calf who got stranded on our side of the river away from his mum... it was a shocking time to see the calf try and swim across the river we thought it would never make it the speed of the torrent.. as it started to swim it got taken by the torrent... and then it got stuck on the other side.. its head almost went under a few times it was a crazy thing to watch.. then it managed to get its grip down stream a little and got out of the river after a few attempts... we sat there in complete shock that the calf had actually made it.. there are humans that couldn't have made it (people with wheel chairs not included).. the calf definitely had balls...

the next day we had to make it to the Russian Border with Mongolia.... The ride through the Altai had been spectacular so far and it only improved. By far the best scenery and roads of the trip to date.. Its impossible to describe it so please see the photos..

Kazakhstan Altai to Siberia

2009-09-08T03:00:57+00:00

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After such a chilli border crossing our first objective was to find a nice sheltered place where we could have lunch... It turns out that the road from the Kyrgyzstan Border on the Kazakhstan side was actually really terrible. While riding along Heather startled some dogs which chased after her.... they then gave up.. unfortunately I was coming along behind her and they really wanted a piece of my leg.. one of the dogs was running along trying to grab onto my leg right next to the bike.. I accelerated hard on the rough, wet gravel road to get away only to find my traction went on holidays and I nearly ended up in the ditch on the side of the road with the dogs... it was so lucky that the traction came back and I managed to get away... It was a true brown pants moment.

The lunch break consisted of us sitting in a “picnic” area across the road from a police check point... it was interesting to see their “random” driver checks actually meant “lets pull over all red cars”... I think the police thought we must have been a little odd to be using the picnic area and I don't blame them.. it was such a dump.. the only thing that told you it was a picnic area was the sign... really it just looked like a run down bus stop.. One of the other tell tale signs may have also been the hundreds of smashed vodka bottles all over the ground... anyway talk about trip highlight!!!...

On the way out of the canyon where the picnic spot was Heather got her opportunity to take a camel ride... it may not have been too conventional but at least she had her first two hump camel ride...

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That night Heather saw the first bigger wild cat of the trip.. we are not sure what the actual animal is called but its much larger than a house cat but smaller than the big cats of Africa.. Shortly afterwards we had a huge storm rip through the area.. thankfully it was just a 45 minute passing interlude on a pretty perfect night.. we had a really nice big fire and relaxed... finally back in Kazakhstan what a relief... You may think that sounds strange but after the crazy driving in Kyrgyzstan getting back to the “normality” of the Kazakh drivers was actually a real bonus... to be honest I never thought I would ever say such crazy stuff....

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The next day we woke to a freezing morning... this marked the first opportunity for us to have a fire in the morning.. The thermometer was reading just 4 degrees and the wind chill made it feel like we just walked into the artic.. Lets hope this is just a cold snap... we are still a fair way above sea level.. around 700meters as we follow the mountain ranges along the China/Kazakhstan border all the way to Russia. It's pretty hard to get lost on this section of the trip.. we just have to keep the glaciers in view on the right the whole way.... pretty simple stuff.. the cold wind really kept us working hard... having fires for breakfast lunch and dinner to keep warm.. we really should pull our thumbs out and actually get our motorcycle liners out and start using them... we are hoping its just a cold snap so that we don't have to...at least we now have sunny skies so when we get out of the wind we can warm up..

Kazakhstan is a crazy country... there must be some sort of bike voodoo god here that has a tendency to break motorcycles.. since entering Kazakhstan from Astrakhan over a month ago here is a quick list of things which no longer work so well...

Tachyon XC video Camera. </li>

BMW R1200GS Tank bag. </li>

Touratech F650GS tank bag. </li>

Canon 18-55mm DSLR Lens. </li>

Oxford Boss Chain bike attachment. </li>

F650GS mud guard. </li>

F650GS Front fork seal. </li>

F650GS front speedo/console mounting bracket. </li>

Both bikes rear break lights. </li>

F650GS side stand. </li>

Hand guard bolts vibrating loose. </li>

F650GS Chain guard. </li>

Autocom 300 kits </li> </ol>
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Then we hit the roads going north.. they have some crazy road building techniques in Kazakhstan.. on this particular section of road for about 200km every 20 meters there is a ridge along the road... does not sound too bad.. except that at 90km/hour they give you a real jolt.. if you go and faster and they are basically a motor-cross jump... go any slower and the jolt becomes bone jaring... with the weight of the helmet on your head and the cross wind it gives you a serious case of whip lash after so many hours... a time later the ridges start again this time they are much worse.. the road towards semey (near the Russian border) is a dual carriage way... sealed road... with huge pot holes and sand pits... really we think that they don't want anyone to leave Kazakhstan... all the roads we have used in and out have been shocking but many of the internal roads have been not to bad... at least in the east.. until now..the jolting of the ridges and the constant start/stop caused Heathers chain protector to somehow hit the chain... ripping it off and getting it wedged in between the spokes.. resulting in the chain coming off the bike.. we managed to get the chain back on the bike and ride to a camp site where we could re-tension the chain... but its just another thing to break.. at least now we had the chain correctly tensioned and Heather did all the work herself... a true mechanic in the making... soon ill become redundant...
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The next day we had to get to the Russian border.. we had about 40km to go to Semey and about 80km from Semey was the border. We had almost no fuel left and both bikes had passed their reserves.. we had exhausted all of our reserves to get this far.... the road from where we camped to semey was pretty easy... the surface improved and the traffic was light... we made it to the petrol station only just.. the petrol station we used was the only one that was still open.. we bought 47 litres of fuel... my tank is 33 litres they said we put 38 litres in and it was still not full... Heathers bike took the remaining 11 litres and was not even half full.. they basically had mis-adjusted the measure so they under served us with fuel.. and there was no way the octane was what they claimed... the bikes ran like shit on that fuel.. a complete scam in our view.. Shortly after the petrol scam Heathers pannier fell off the bike while travelling along a really busy road... thankfully I was behind her and I could stop and put the hazard lights on to stop any cars running over our gear which was now all over the road... we pulled over onto the foot path to re-pack the pannier and securely put it back on the bike.. this was the pannier which had been crushed in Kyrgyzstan so it wasn't exactly straight... now it was even worse..
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On the way out of Semey just before the border Heather stopped for a quick pee break.. on the side of the road where we stopped we found yet another plantation of marijuana... it seems to be following us... I am starting to get worried by all these coincidences involving drugs... its not something that we wanted to have anything to do with before we cross the border into Russia (in fact at all on this trip)... I could just imagine touching the plants then the sniffer dogs at the border taking a liking to me... not a good mix.. when we arrived at the Kazakhstan border the guy asks us if we had any “sniff sniff” or “inject in arm” completely by miming.. it was very funny.. of course we didn't and we all had a bit of a laugh about it and went to passport control.. This is when I was going through passport control the Kazakh guys took my photo with their camera as a part of the process.. right at that moment the power went out... am I really that bad that I can cause a black out?? It now took us about an hour longer to get through the Kazakhstan border simply because they had to do everything manually until the power came back on....now it was time for the Russian side... we had prepared for yet another marathon crossing coming into Russia.. fortunately for us the whole process for the Russian side was done in about an hour.. WOW.. after our 16 hour marathon at Sochi it really was a huge relief...
That night we found a campsite over looking some fields about an hour short of Barnaul in Siberia.. when Heather pulled into the spot she put her stand down... put the bike down only to find the stand broke off... dammit we checked out the stand and the welding had come undone.. luckily she had a centre stand.. yet another thing broken... and this time it was in Russia.. she really has a way with bikes...
We had to get to Barnaul so that we could find a Hotel and organise the letters from our inviting organisation to say we needed to go into the Altai. We knew that Barnaul at least had several internet cafes so we should be able to get everything sorted fairly easily.. On the way into town Heathers bike ran out of fuel.. we filled it with the 800ml we had remaining in our stove fuel container... she then took off.. I was stopped by the police and she kept on going.. I then left to catch up with her.. I kept getting the red lights so we lost each other again.. this time she pulled over and forgot that her side stand was broken.. she tried to put it down and broke it off completely when the bike fell over and smashed her pannier.. it also smashed the side stand switch so that the bike thought the stand was always down... YAY for electronics...
</a> After about 10 minutes of trying to fix the switch her battery was now flat.. luckily a guy stopped on his bike and offered us some help.. about 10 minutes later we had 3 other people on bikes appear one of which was Victor, a guy who owned a local motorcycle mechanics. He was amazing he got the bike going again in about 30 minutes. We then followed him back to his work shop so that he could fix the switch properly and so he could weld the stand back on the bike.. not only that he also fixed

The air filter </li>

broken pannier (its now better than new). </li>

Side stand </li>

Side stand switch. </li>

Replaced some bolts on the bash plate which had been ruined by the tar in Kazakhstan. </li>

Tank bag mount. </li> </ol>
All up given that it was a Sunday night it was all done in a few hours.. It was such a huge relief and we are so thankful to all the guys in Barnaul that helped us 1) find Victor, 2) fix the bike..
If anyone is in Siberia and needs a Motorcycle mechanic.. Victor at www.motoxayc22.ru</a> 8-903-957-0435 he is just off the road from the Airport coming into Barnaul.

Kyrgyzstan Tian Shan, Karakol and the Kazakhstan border

2009-09-01T07:05:17+00:00

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After a chilli night we woke early for Kyrgyzstan's independence day which is a national holiday... the 31st of August which also marks our 3rd month on the road.. it was a cold wet morning with low mist and fog in the valley... so much for our beautiful view.. the shepherds had come with their cattle early into the valley so we woke and prepared breakfast... I went over to the shepherd to talk with him... wow what a guy.. so many words.. The first thing he said was “neit narcotic mine”... wonder if he was paranoid we may report him... anyway I gave him some nut fudge that we had got in the desert and went back to our campsite.. a conversation that consisted of him saying neit.. da.. was just too exciting.. anyway it started to rain so we put up our small annex and played some cards with the hope that he rain would pass.. some other shepherd rocked up and it all seemed a little dodgy so we decided it was time to leave and find these alpine pastures that everyone talked about near Ak-Su... hopefully second time lucky.. it was now really wet and muddy after several days of intermittent rain we really wanted to find somewhere we could relax and hopefully dry out some more... Unfortunately everything seemed stacked against us... We eventually found Ak-Su which was the town that the police pulled us over in the previous day... then we found the turn off and started going towards the pastures.. the road was not so bad.. then we saw our tell tale sign... the only vehicles coming the other way seemed to be 6x6 KAMAZ trucks... hmmm that's a sign of a quality road.. after about 15 minutes we hit the first obstacle... a steep incline which took us up so that we would ride along the cliff edge of the canyon with the river below.. It was an exciting ride up the hill where I almost stalled several times and the boulders kept moving under the bike wheels making for extremely exciting riding.. I eventually got up the hill telling Heather to wait while I went and checked out if the road improved further on... it did improve but the whole area seemed a little dodgy..

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with kids lurking in the bushes, people just sort of hanging about and a small rangers house with a pack of wolves in a cage it was all a bit surreal and I decided that despite the road marginally improving it was time to find somewhere else to go.... on the way back down it was a very exciting ride back to Heather... going down the hill from the canyon top with no traction and a heavy bike in the wet.. When I got back we decided we would try and find somewhere to camp again on Issk Kol and make it to the Kazakhstan border early the next day... on the way back to Karakol we made a few detours to see if we could find anywhere else to camp.. unfortunately we came up with nothing except garbage dumping grounds and places that seemed to be flooded... we eventually got back to Karakol and got completely lost... to give you an idea Karakol is a regional administrative centre.. but it has very very few asphalt roads.. most of them are clay/mud and guess what happens when it rains.. the whole town turns to bog.. after slipping and sliding around we found our way out in the direction of the karakol valley which is another alpine valley which requires you to pay an entrance fee as its part of another national park... being the genius's that we are we found our way on to the opposite side of the valley to the ranger station and thought it was a good idea to continue in the hope we could find a camp site... all we found was bog, mud and more marijuana plantations.. this time there was a bunch of sinister guys over looking it so we decided to bail.. on the way dropping my bike several times in the slippery mud/clay and bashing my burn against the peg.. all up I was very frustrated and freezing cold.. After about 2 hours we managed to find our way out of town... finally we got back on the road to Issk-kol...... Heather found a beautiful spot for a late lunch and we stopped to relax for a while... as it seems is the norm in Kyrgyzstan everywhere that you stop your never actually alone.. there is always someone that comes by.. this time we had some dugan's which are from across the border in China come and say hi, followed by the shepherd who owned the walnut plantation we had decided to prepare lunch in.. It also seems that Kyrgyzstan people simply don't care about the environment... there was so much dumped rubbish everywhere form previous picnicers the shepherd made special note about how disgusting it was.. we made a point of showing him we took all our rubbish with us.. we hope he understood...

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At least we had found ourselves in a nice dry warm place out of the wind for lunch... after a few hours we decided to start heading towards the kazakhstan border and find somewhere along the route.. it was time to get out of Kyrgyzstan... The borders are closed to westerners on national holidays so we wanted to get there early the next day to make sure it went smoothly.. we ended up camping on a small lake about 50km away from issk kol and having an early night as we watched yet another storm coming up the valley.. it was all now soo familiar and yet every time it was something worth watching. Unfortunately the mosquitoes made it unbearable so we had an early night. Waking in the morning to more rain and wet... the road in to the lake had been pretty easy the previous day.. but now it was a complete mud pit.. I nearly rode off into the lake as the bike slipped out from under me.. only just saving it.. I then dropped my bike and burnt my other leg on the exhaust.. it just wasn't my few days.. Heather on the other hand didn't drop her bike but managed to get it bogged in mud up to the bash plate (engine protection).. that required me to push it while she revved it.. of course she took the opportunity to cover me in mud... te he he.. now back on my bike covered in Heathers mud we made our way to the border in pouring rain.. the beautiful valley that we soon found ourselves in on the way to Kazakhstan was truly spectacular with 7000 meter peaks in the distance and a huge glacier visible up one of the mountains... it was spectacular even in the shitty weather.... as we approached the Kazakh border we could finally see blue sky.. YAY.. however it didn't get any warmer than the beautifully warm 6 degrees.. At the border we had our photos taken with the Kyrgyz guards and arrived back in Kazakhstan. The border guards said that it had snowed the previous night but melted early on... dam and we are only just into September and its already so cold.. hopefully it would warm up as we descended back down from the mountains into the steppe of Kazakhstan...

Bishkek to Issyk kol and the Tian Shan

2009-08-29T07:02:46+00:00

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Finally.... we had a tracking number for the package that was coming in from turkey.. the replacement clutch was on route... according to the tracking information on the web page it had arrived in Bishkek we just had to hunt it down... to DHL we go.. the nice girl there was super helpful and said that the package should be in their system by 3pm so we should come back then.. at 3pm we came back and she said it had arrived and was at the airport..

YAY at least we now knew where it was.. Now it was getting it from the Airport to the office in Bishkek that we had to worry about.. we had decided to ship some Christmas shopping home via DHL because the local post companies had been a little dodgy.. The process was soo easy... until it came to pay.. both Heathers and my credit cards came back with errors.. shit.. we had to work out what was wrong and DHL was going to close soon.. The only option was to exchange some of our safety blanket funds from US Dollars to Kyrgyzstan Com... that's because we had already withdrawn our maximum amount (£100) from the bank to buy the Christmas gifts we planned to send home.... Given that Bishkek is exchange city... it must have at least 500 places where you can exchange that should be easy... well that was just the beginning of our saga. It was Friday afternoon and everywhere was closed, closing or wouldn't exchange small US Dollar notes at a reasonable rate.. often offering only 40 per $... The official rate was 45ish and most places listed 43 on their screens... It turns out they only offer that for big notes like $100... It was all a big con.. Then to find out that they wouldn't exchange a slightly older $20 we had just added to the annoyance of the whole situation... Whats worse is that when we called HSBC they said that they had no sign of any transactions on their system.. It seems that the roads are not the only broken thing in Kyrgyzstan... their banks seem to be screwed tooo...maybe that was why we could only with drawl funds from one ATM in Bishkek... In the end we exchanged $200 US but we had a small shortage because they wouldn't exchange the small notes for a reasonable exchange rate... it had now been an hour and we had gone everywhere around the area.. It was time to head back to the bank and see if we could get any more money out before it closed.. otherwise we would have to wait until Saturday to ship the package.. adding extra cost to the shipping and being a pain if our clutch had arrived in Bishkek already. In the end I went to the bank which was right near a British Airways office/agent which had a nice BA lady who spoke english.. she told me that they won't exchange small notes because there is such a high rate of counterfiet notes in circulation.. shit that was a pain.. In the end the bank let me exceed my withdrawal limit and take out the remainder of the money we owed DHL...Thankfully.. Its soo annoying that the Bishkek banks only allow you to withdrawal such a small amount and then still charge you a 2% commission on top of a not so great exchange rate. It's all rigged up to really screw the travellers they are trying to attract...everywhere we have been able to withdrawal our UK limit which has been a blessing to save on transaction fee's... anyway back to DHL we got our package sent and it only took 1.5hrs to organise the funds.. just as we got ready to leave the office the lady came out and said that our package had arrived.. wow.. we now had to clear the clutch through customs which was simple and we had all our stuff sorted. We could leave early the next morning for Lake Issyk Kol... It was time to Celebrate.. to the supermarket to get some Vodka and juice on route back to our hotel room... YAY!!! something had worked out correctly.... A short time later we sat in our hotel room playing cards drinking vodka with the clutch in its box sitting there ready and waiting... a bottle and a half later we retired for the evening...

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The next morning we woke and packed getting everything sorted so that we could spend the next few days in the high altitude mountains of the Tian Shan.. Our Bishkek chapter was drawing to a close.. It felt strange to realise that after 7 nights it was time to leave and everything had fallen into place... we had one close to fixed pannier that was just a little loose but otherwise it was now working again.. a new clutch and we had stocked up on food etc... we will remember Bishkek as the city that is best enjoyed from your Hotel room at night, has the best fast food burgers of any City on our trip so far.. (and they only cost £0.15 each) and has people that are only to happy to help if you ask!... good bye Bishkek....

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The road out of Bishkek was interrupted by a quick last Burger stop.. oops we are pigs YAY!!.. anyway back to the ride.. we slowly progress out of the city on route to issyk Kol.. a huge high altitude/alpine lake stuck between two mountain ranges in Kyrgyzstan.. but we wouldn't be in Central asia without a police stop on the way out of town.. Thankfully the police officer just wanted to know where we are going and so on.. nothing too serious which was nice.. It seems now that most of the Police stops are just for them to get their photo's taken with us and the bikes.. we really have a certain celebrity feeling here in Central Asia which is quiet nice at times.. I think it must stem from the fact that their heritage is nomadic and they really appreciate the travellers here.. Soon we arrived at issyk Kol.. The dam national park fee was 500 com per bike which was ridiculous... it had better be worth it.... well it was as we came out over the crest we could see the lake's expanse as far as the eye could see.. its massive compared to all the other water sources we had seen inland so far.. I guess only the Caspian comes close but then that's a sea not a lake... We soon found a place to have a swim and camp on the lake in a nice private spot.... only to be joined by another group of people about 5 minutes later.. we waited around for a while then found a new place further around the lake which was more private.. That is when we re-named issyk Kol to Icy Pole... its meant to be thermal and It does have warm thermal currents that you can feel between the icy cold Glacier melt... The salty water never freezes even though the winter average is -25c according to one local we talked with... being so cold from the swim we quickly got a fire going to warm up as we sat and watched the day come to a close with a monster storm coming in from the south east corner... As the night rolled on the storm came in and the electrical storm was soo big that the whole night sky turned to daylight for seconds at a time. Revealing the entire silhouette of the 4000+ meter peaks on the south shore and the reflection on the lake was unbelievable.. as we turned around to look north we could see the north range of 4000+ meter peaks being illuminated by Almaty's lights (Alma-Ata) the capital of Kazakhstan.. It was a spectacular view that we just sat and watched until the storm came by and down came the rain... it was time to retreat to the tent for the night.. It pretty much rained all night leaving the whole place flooded.. The lake rose about 30-40cm in one night which was a massive achievement given the size of the lake... we sat in the tent and played cards eating M&M's, Nuts and dried fruit for breakfast while we hoped the rain would stop... a few hours later it did and we hit the road again... soon to be noticed by a group of guys in a car heading towards karakol... they wave us to come along side them so they can take photos of us.. we did which I am sure made their day.. we later pulled over for some lunch and they stopped and got more photos of them with us.. Turns out they are Iranians who love motorcycles on Holiday and hadn't seen our bikes before on the road.. all up it was another case of minor celebrity... After a long lunch we wanted to get to a place near Ak-Su which is a high alpine pasture at about 3000 meters above sea level near Karakol. The plan was to enjoy a thermal spa etc and relax for a few days in the area before heading back to Kazakhstan.....

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Unfortunately in Kyrgyzstan there are almost no road signs besides town distance signs on major roads... After finally finding our way out of Karakol we got pulled over by the police to again check where we are going. We asked him if we are on the right road to ak-su and he said yes.. ak-su would be the next town.. In the next town we got told it was further up the road.. following along peoples directions we ended up riding for about 45 minutes and came across a security check point... The guards at the check point seemed pretty drunk but we asked them where the hell we are... they pointed out that we had managed to get ourselves into the border zone with China.... bugger.. we decided to turn back despite the guards saying that we could go on without the required permits... sounded sketchy.. so we turned back with the hope of finding a campsite before it got dark... After turning back we could see several ideal spots but didn't know if we could camp there as it looked like farm land... given that the spots appeared to be in prime view of the farm house we decided against it.. then heather asked a guy who was on his horse and cart for permission.. bingo we could camp there.. a quick u-turn and we went back down into the valley near the river.. it was a little wet under foot and we could be seen from the road so we decided to move away from the river a little to somewhere more private... in the end we found somewhere that was nice and protected while offering beautiful views of the valley and the 4-6000 meter peaks surrounding it... which is when we noticed these strange looking plants in what appeared to be an animal pen.... turns out we had found a campsite right in the middle of several very large marijuana plantations.

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There must have been at least 3000 6-7ft tall plants not to mention the several hundred poppy plants also in the mix... given how nice our campsite was we decided to stay anywhere with the hope that playing dumb would solve any problems if the owners came back!.... that night it was very very cold.. camping at around 2500 meters with the wind coming from the direction of the glaciers made for a great night to have a fire and retire to our warm tent early....

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Kyrgyzstan mountain passes and crazy drivers

2009-08-27T07:36:41+00:00

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Our first night in Kyrgyzstan was pretty uneventful. After such a hard day we slept through and woke up in the morning... dam it was cold. The morning was very crisp.. probably because we camped at about 1200 meters above sea level and that it was now on the slippery slope d.. the nights have been getting much cooler over the last few weeks but the days have remained hot.. It turned out that the place we camped the night was in a beautiful valley with huge mountains along each side rising to over 3000 meters.. One side of the valley was dry mountains and the other was green... Heather now stole the Uzbek jacket that we got given by the Kazakh family the day before... the field report she gives me was that it was nice and warm.. and ohhh how warm it was.. and... yep its warm.. when I asked for it back.. all I heard was “beep beep” and then in a flash she was gone.. After breakfast we started riding with the intention of finding a camp spot shortly after lunch and having a nice easy day... It turns out that there is an almost constant flow of houses and villages along the road towards Bishkek...

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There was practically no spot available to camp... We stopped for a nice long lunch break along the river just outside of a small town.. while we waited for our pot to boil a shepherd came with his cows to the river to drink and rest... After about 2 hours break we continued riding and came to our first mountain pass in Kyrgyzstan .. As we approached we could see that the pass was under thick cloud and the wind had really picked up... Everywhere that was available to camp had a yurt pitched on that spot which made finding a camp site almost impossible... It was now shortly after 1pm and the temperature had dropped from 28c to 8c and we had only just passed 2400 meters... or about 1/3^{rd of the way up the pass... as we started to get close to the pass the temperatures fell even more and we started to get a mix of snow and sleet (in August) which was making the crossing dangerous and very very cold... especially as I had chosen to wear jeans and shoes today instead of my usual motorcycle apparel..}

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the plan was that it would allow my leg to heal instead of the sore sticking to my boot and getting more infected... the flip side was that it was very very cold and wet.... Heather was also wearing jeans and she too was frozen on the bike... with the wind chill factor we guessed it probably felt like about -5c or lower... Unfortunately due to poor weather we didn't stop at the top to take a photo of the sign with the altitude of the pass... 3400 meters. Our highest mountain pass to date.. and one of the most spectacular.. its amazing when we ride up these passes and at the top there are still mountains which tower over you like your nothing... completely awe inspiring.

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After crossing the mountain pass we started to head down into a huge wide valley which was filled with yurt camps.. everywhere you looked there was another Kyrgz family with their yurts setup for the summer... we soon joined one of the main roads through the mountains towards Bishkek.. The plan was that we would ask one of the Yurts if we could camp near their setup.... about 15 minutes later along a straight section of road Heather was hit by a speeding car.. completely screwing her pannier, smashing the canon camera lens that we had in that pannier and ruining several other bits of kit... I saw the whole thing in slow motion as soon as I heard the screeching of tyres I looked behind to see a car screaming towards heather.. Then there was the impact.. the car went under her pannier forcing her rear wheel up off the ground leaving Heather to balance on the front wheel.. the pannier literally exploded with the impact and all our gear was strewn all over the motorway.. Heather managed to hold onto the bike without going off the road and down a steep incline into a ditch... The whole incident happened on a completely straight section of road where there was some road work being done to re-tar the road... there was no sign of road work except some witches hats and boulders blocking our lane... we slowed down.. unfortunately the stupid idiot driver didn't bother slowing down and ran straight into Heather at a speed not under 60-70kms p/h... She was very very lucky that he only got the pannier so it could absorb most of the impact... if she had been hit on the bike it would have been a completely different situation..... The wanker then decided that he didn't have to stay around and just drove away after we tried to get his details.. of course he refused to give any details at all.. the work men who initially said that they would give us help quickly declined any offer and basically screwed us over... it seems like they all stick together and don't give a shit...

Unfortunately with only one pannier the bike was unbalanced, Heather also had whip lash from the jolt. We also had to find a place to put all the gear that was from the now destroyed pannier... it was a case of turning both bike into snails with huge bums of gear stacked high and proud... we decided that we couldn't easily keep the gear secure so we had to get to Bishkek so that we could organise a replacement as soon as possible... Unfortunately Bishkek was about 160km away and the weather was bloody cold and we had gale force cross winds which made the ride “exciting”. While travelling along the road we saw a donkey that was half eaten with a dog tearing its insides out to eat.. not the nicest scene.. then about a kilometre further there was a wolf that had been killed.. it seems that this section of road was bad luck for everything...

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Shortly later we had to start our second major mountain pass to cross over into the valley where Bishkek is... the mountain pass was a huge engineering wonder with constant remains of avalanches and rocks strewn across the roads.. Shortly after passing the pass on the way down the other side there was a big accident where a tanker had over turned... There was another car that had been badly damaged... it still confuses us as to how the accident actually happened. The truck was on the way up the hill.. the car on the way down the hill.. the car had been hit on the front.. the truck was upside down facing up the hill against the cliff on the side of the road.. Being a petrol tanker everyone was there to steal/takis e the petrol that was now spilling out over the road.. there must have been at least 30+ cars all with people scrambling to get some petrol.. it was crazy.. the accident must have happened a while ago as the crane had just arrived when we went passed to help turn the truck back over.. as we descended down the other side the road starts to follow the river in what can only be described as a deep canyon.. the road was well maintained which was something we really didn't expect after the last month of pretty poor quality “roads”.

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As we got closer to Bishkek the crazy drivers out numbered ants and it became more of a case of stay the hell out of their way... their idea of driving safely is to drive as fast as they can and break as hard as they can.. red lights are just a matter of “slow down and look for the cops”.. its absolutely manic.. in a two lane road you will have three or four cars trying to over take each other with oncoming cars... They have no awareness of motorcycles at all.. it also seems as though they can't actually judge distances.. all up the experience of Kyrgyzstan driving has not been so great....

After riding around Bishkek for a few hours we found a hotel which was in our price range.. we had no Kyrgyzstan currency yet (not a single cash machine from the border to the hotel).. we couldn't pay for the hotel.. the people agreed that we could pay the next day as they said It was unsafe to take out cash in Bishkek at night.. The problem was we needed to eat.. luckily one thing that Bishkek does have is 1000's of currency exchange places... all of which offer pretty poor exchange rates but we needed some money and we got some by exchanging some US Dollars. Just enough for us to get some dinner, vodka and breakfast in the morning... it was time to retire to the hotel...

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Our task for the next few days was to ensure that the replacement clutch was on route from Turkey and that we could get a replacement for Heathers screwed pannier.. it sounds pretty easy but when there is 5 hours time difference and only one internet café allows us to plug our laptop in... It's a big hassle.... After two days of being on the internet, phone etc. almost constantly we finally had our clutch on the way... the pannier was a different story.. After speaking with Touratech Germany, they came back to us with a quote for the shipping of 601 Euros which would make a replacement pannier cost something like 920 Euros which was absolutely ridiculous.. it would be cheaper to go and find someone to manufacture a similar product here in Bishkek.. After struggling with what our options are I spoke to the Hotel security guard who offered us some advice.. In the end we decided that we would have to try and fix the pannier to the best quality possible.. if it wasn't we would have to buy some sort of bag or other box and get some bubble gum and stick it on the rack... we hear blutack is good for pannier repairs... The next day we went in search of a panel beater that could help us fix the box.. in the end about 200 meters down the road from the hotel I asked some guys who had been working on repairing the drain pipe if they knew anywhere we could get it done.. 15 minutes later the guy had worked his magic and we now had a rectangle pannier with a bottom that fit in better than we could ever have hoped. Now we needed to find a pop rivet tool and someone with a power drill... after walking for 2hours we found the area where all the trades people buy their tools and supplies.. bingo.. we bought a pop riveter, some rivets and some silicone sealant for the rock bottom price of £5 ha-ha. now we needed to find someone with a power drill.. on the way home Heather saw some guys sitting outside a construction site and asked them for some help.. we got ushered into the site with cement falling from the crane above.. yay for safety.. of course nobody wore a safety hat of even safety shoes.. sandals/thongs are okay here!! a short time later after trying to explain what we needed the guys went to their welder... uhh ohhh.. not a good idea.. aluminium welding is not something we wanted.. eventually someone explained that we just needed a drill and some holes.. 30 minutes later it was all sorted.. we gave the pop riveter to the guy who helped us.. no room on the bike and it only cost us 170 som which is about £2.40.. He felt really special and I'm sure he will really appreciate his new tool.. All up we had spent 1500 som (£17) to get the pannier repaired compared to the brackets alone from Germany costing 45euro+... its not going to be water proof but at least its going to store some luggage..

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Bishkek is a crazy city which is very beautiful with loads of nice avenues and parks. It unfortunately is not the safest city and we have been followed by a guy who clearly wanted our wallet/phone whatever other valuables he could get from us.. additionally the drivers are seriously crazy from our hotel room we have heard at least 3 big accidents with the screech, horns and BANG!!.. despite having so many accidents it seems that people don't realise that its the way they drive which cause problems and continue to drive like complete loons... There is no surprise that their road toll is so high for such a small country.. im pretty sure that drivers licenses are given out to only dickheads..

Burnt Leg Update : Some of you have been asking about the state of my burnt leg.. well its now 20 days after I burnt it and its no longer really sore.. however over the last week or so its been a real pain in the.... I've gone from walking on it and having puss from my right leg's wound spurt out and land all over my left leg.. pus dribbling down my leg to my foot... its been seriously nasty.. but at least I no longer have the pains shooting up through my leg that I had while I was in the desert... hopefully with the crème that I have been given to put on it things will improve quickly..

Kazakhstan Hospitality

2009-08-22T11:04:39+00:00

After a long night celebrating we woke early with the intention of getting to the Kyrgyzstan boarder early. We didn't want any problems or long queues to contend with. We had heard that it could take a very long time so we didn't want to miss the closing time of 8pm.... Thankfully on our high quality (£2) vodka we didn't have any hang over and felt fresh in the morning.. After packing up and having a big breakfast (again horse sausages and eggs) it was time to make tracks.. for the first time at a border crossing we had got fully prepared with loads of food and water so that we didn't end up starved and hungry (e.g. Like coming into Russia).. I hope you see the irony in that as the story unfolds...

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On the way into Taraz we stopped at one of the various local honey producers to get some honey for the fresh bread that we can now get everywhere... we bought some local honey that has an excellent taste... It still had some bee's in it.. after a short honey break we got back on our way to Taraz... Stopping for Petrol on the way into town. In Russia and most of the old Soviet states in Central Asia you have to go and pay for the petrol first. They then turn on the pump and fill you up until your money runs out... Its all a little bit of a lucky dip as your never 100% sure how many litres of fuel you actually need or have used up... Often its either too much or too little.. When we arrived the armed guard came out and started yelling at us to turn the engines off... it was a little odd... but we went to the wrong pump that didn't have the right type of fuel for our bikes so we had to push the bikes back. I went in to wait at the cash register while Heather had the bikes filled by the attendant.... while I was waiting in the service station they had some serious heavy artillery... some beefy shotguns and a collection of other weapons behind the counter.. maybe they hadn't paid their protection racket fees yet... around the door there was shotgun blast marks.. All the shelves in the “shop” had absolutely no stock and everyone seemed a little on edge... all up the whole “lets fill up” experience was rather amusing and really highlighted that we are not in Europe any more :)..

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Shortly after filling up we found our way through Taraz... on the way south we asked for Directions and found that we had actually found the right road the first time.. shortly after getting directions we got pulled over by a man and his wife... They offered to drive us to the right border roads so that we didn't miss the turns that are often not sign posted.... After a short time we made a few turns and got onto a long straight road.. They pulled over and offered if we would like to come back to their place for some Chai/Breakfast... They seemed very trust worthy and drove a nice car so Heather accepted their invitation.. After a short drive through some back streets we came to their house.. It was very nice with a beautiful court yard and a collection of fruit tree's and a vegetable garden. Once we arrived we cleaned ourselves up and the guy showed me his collection of photographs of various motor sports events they attended, their horse and some family shots. “Unimog good?”.. “Da”.. From the photo's he had a real passion for motor sports in particular off road driving/riding. Afterwards we went out to their court yard for breakfast. They had a collection of stuff animal heads around the verandahs over looking the fruit trees. We sat down at their table with the family and discussed (whit the help of their grand kids translating from Kazakh/Russian to English). All up the extended family was very welcoming and the food was more than superb.. Its probably the best food we have had since leaving the U.K. It was very nice to have traditional Kazakh food that was home prepared, we had an assortments of chocolates, pancakes with home made strawberry jam, soups, fresh breads, grapes, nuts! It was amazing, we felt like kings! A true feast, great hosts.

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We ate and drank chai for a few hours talk about all sorts of things, after a while the subject turned to Safari's. It was interesting to hear that the father would go hunting and so on. It was amazing when his grandchild brang out his hunting rifle.. Some SKS rifle with telescopic sights.. very impressive gun.. It had to make for a good photo opportunity which Heather ran for the camera! Their hospitality was amazing and really added to the overall fantastic feeling we have had with Kazakhstan so far.... They offered us to stay over the night but unfortunately we had to refuse knowing that we had to make tracks to Kyrgyzstan so that we could pick up the replacement clutch for Heathers bike... they loaded us up with gifts, silk material and a Uzbekistan jacket which we will love when starts to get cooler, food and helped us get back on the way to the border (we followed one of the Son's who drove out to the main road and gave us directions to the border).

At the boarder crossing we parked our bikes and went to passport control.. that was when all the fun began.. In Kazakhstan and many other ex soviet countries you need to register your visa in what's referred to as OVIR. The OVIR process is not required for some nationalities and in most of the books it talks about the process being automatically done when you enter the country. Unfortunately for us the automatic process didn't get done. We had asked at a hotel in Atryau and they said it was not required... go figure.. even when we got pulled over at police check points they made no comment of our visa registration missing.. anyway the immigration guys noticed that we had been there for more than 5 days without registering and asked us to go and sit to the side... Some more senior immigration officials and some customs officers joined the pack and tried to explain the situation to us.. Unfortunately we didn't speak any of the languages they did so we had to sit around for 2 hours while they found a translator.. The place where we had to sit was actually right near a broken stinky loo which made the pleasure so great too just see the both of us hanging our heads out the window for air.... After bringing the local schools English teacher down to the border we had someone that could translate for us... we got taken to a room up stairs and away from the other people.. At the time we thought.. oh shit they are about to really screw us over.. we tried to explain the situation to them about what we got told and showed them the lonely planet guide with the automatic visa registration stuff but it did little to help.. When we got taken upstairs we now had about 10 officials all in the same room, all different uniforms and the feeling we had was not so great.... we had to start answering loads of questions and it was a huge blessing that

a) Heathers bike had broken down...

b) Heather had put the dates of where we stayed each night on a big map so that we could show where we had been for the period in question. She put nice descriptions of the places like, land of bugs, vodka night, stinky gas night, we were happy they couldn't read English.

After about 4 hours we had filled out a load of forms and the police had arrived. They said that it was not a huge issue for us to not have done the OVIR and that we would only be given a warning.. the condition was that we had to go with the police back to Taraz to get a stamp on our passports so that they got registered... We signed loads of documents feeling a little unsure of what we were signing since it wasn't English though the vibe in the room was light at this point. The drive from the border into Taraz was more scary than any roller coaster ride I have ever been on... 90+km/hour in 40km zones with traffic, pedestrians, horses, cows other cars etc... it was very scary and we almost had a crash at least twice.. After a 30 minute drive to the immigration department in town we got told to sit at the guards office and wait until the police returned... Having not eaten since we left the people house I pulled out some Nut fudge that we bought back in the desert and had some, offering the Guard some was a real bonus.. He became really friendly and got some people who worked there that spoke English.. The surprised look on their face was not something we expected when we said we needed the OVIR stamps... they said that nobody would be in for at least 3 days that could do that.. shit.. it was Friday afternoon and it was outside business hours.. maybe we would have to stay in Kazakhstan for a few extra days until we could get this all sorted.. thankfully about 5 minutes later a man came running in who had been called back to the office by the police to sort out the stamps.... YAY.... about 20minutes later we got back in the police car and driven at high speed all the way back to the border... it was now 7:20pm and we had 40 minutes to get through the border before it closed..... Thankfully the remaining paper work only took about 10 minutes.. The guards happily sorted out the exit stamps and gave us a merry send off to Kyrgyzstan.. Finally we got back on our bikes and rode out of Kazakhstan about 10 meters until a guard stopped us again.. thinking that this was yet another Kazakhstan border we didn't understand what was going on.. then the Guard said that this is the Kyrgyzstan border to Heather and ohhh what a relief that was... most of the borders we had crossed so far had large gaps between check points where “no man's land” existed... often filled with sheep or goats.. at this crossing it was all in about 100 meters which was a welcome surprise.. all the guards at the Kyrgyzstan border smiled and welcomed us with open arms which was another big change between countries. It was nice chatting to them while Heather sorted out the paper work and chatted with the immigration control guys.. all up the process took about 30 minutes.. in that time Heather ended up being given two more loafs of bread... Welcome to Kyrgyzstan... The guards told us that we had to do wheelies as we drove away.. unfortunately we didn't have the space to do one safely which I'm sure disappointed them but it was still a warm welcome to their country....

It was now getting dark and we had managed to get through before closing time... It was now time to find somewhere to camp and fast.. The ride out of the border goes straight ahead not to the right like the signs say.. thankfully the guards told us that before we made the mistake ourselves..(well Heather made the mistake and I had to go and get her te he he).... As we passed through the border towns all the shepherds had the roads blocked with all their live stock being brought back to their pens for the night to keep the wolves away.. it was nice to see all the kids still out and big groups of people chatting along the road as we passed.. Many of them waving and kids chasing after us waving.. It was a really nice feeling. We felt special.. hehe

Shortly after we went through the third small village a van driver started to follow us... it was not something that really raised any alarm bells at first however as we sped up he would also speed up.. when we did a U-Turn to find a camp site (which turned out to be a swampy field) he also did a u-turn... it was all very creepy especially as it was now getting very dark.. We couldn't find any camp sites or places to stay so we kept on going.. as we went through a mountain canyon we came around the corner to see a huge dam wall with a jet of water at least 200meters spraying out.. the sheer size of the dam wall in the canyon at night was creepy.. while Heather stopped to check out the Jet the van appeared again behind her... it was time to get the hell out of there and fast... riding along the dodgy mountain roads at night was not a safe experience with cars and pot holes to contend with.. the van driver was not a welcome addition to the situation.. after several stop's and go's we decided that I would go and talk to the van driver.. He was just a “little” bit creepy.. he said he was going to Talas and that we could put the bikes in the back of the van so we didn't have to ride on the unsafe roads.. my response to that was no and he persisted.. It was very bad in the end we just rode off after telling him to leave us alone...

Shortly afterwards we went really slow to let him go past us so he wouldn't see where we were going.. this time we then followed him for a while until he disappeared off into the distance.. it was now time to start looking for a place where we could hide the tent and our bikes for the night and get some rest.. it was now 9:30 and we felt exhausted.. Luckily we had the food we were given to snack on.

Shymkent to Taraz... the long way

2009-08-21T08:06:01+00:00

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If we wanted a relaxing holiday then we probably would have chosen to go a slightly different route to the one we are on. The last few weeks in the desert have been physically trying and mentally exhausting but we have been totally amazed by the hospitality of the people of Kazakhstan, and the scenery of their country. So far the further east we head the more we have been enjoying the experience of motorcycle touring/travelling and the more of an adventure it has become. After being in Europe the distances in this area of the world are so vast by comparison. People don't even flinch when they say its “6 days drive away”... Starting when we got to Slovenia the number of road side food stalls has steadily increased. Initially just selling fruit and vegetables grown locally they have now blossomed into people selling anything from car oil, fruit and vegetables, hay, good quality cooked food (normally soups or shashliks) and the favourite chai (local tea). It seems the roads are the arteries that the whole economy blossoms around. It's always astonishing to see the variety of good produce that these small road side stalls sell so fresh and cheap. No matter where we stop there are some things that are always the same, “b.m.v... they make bikes do they?” (and yes they say bmv not bmw)... they think we have gone and put some BMW stickers on some other brand bikes to look cool... much like you see Lada's with Subaru wrx and Porsche badges... of course you know they are Lada's based on the fact they are broken down on the side of the road with just some legs hanging out from under it covered in grease..... The other constant is that they feel that we “Westerners” are only on the road to be over taken... it must be something along the lines of.. its always safe to overtake a westerner.... especially if its around a blind corner on a hill with a cliffs for edges on a wet and oily road... the irony is that no matter how powerful they think they are we can still completely leave them in our dust even on the most shit road surface thanks to being able to dodge all the pot holes that they have to drive through... in the process breaking their suspension.. if we had a dollar for every car that has sped past us only for us to go past it about 10 minutes later broken down on the side of the road we would be very wealthy by the end of this trip... at the end of the day It provides us with hours of amusement warning each other of nut cases on the approach to keep each other safe.. for the most part we don't get involved in their stupid games but its fun to watch as an observer.

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Anyway enough about that crap.. and more about our story... or should I say our epic.. I'm pretty sure I can drag this article out to being at least a trilogy... maybe even add a few prequels and really screw it up star wars style... oh sorry forgot this is non fiction so its hard to create a prequel after the fact...

After leaving Shymkent we decided that we would attempt to make it to just outside of Taraz which was an easy 160km away, no probs we thought.. though given that we had left late and had no city maps we thought it would probably take us around 3-4 hours to get close to the next city... About 40km short of Taraz we decided that it was time to find a place to camp for the night. We turned off the main road and headed towards the huge mountains that we now had in the distance on the southern side of the road. After investigating one spot we decided that we would try and head to somewhere that was a little more secluded. After some investigation we decided that we would go up a big hill and camp on top looking over a reservoir and the 3000+ meter high peaks behind it... unfortunately it was not to be.. the evil clutch spirit came down to haunt Heathers bike half way up the steep hill resulting in a complete loss of power as the clutch gave way... in the process the bike was dropped but nobody was hurt despite the hill being so steep.. There was no where for me to stop so I had to continue to the top and then run back down the hill to help pick up the bike... with her confidence damaged she then got back on the bike and went down the hill safely without any issues.. using the momentum from the hill she managed to roll down to where we had first checked out a place to camp.. thankfully she just made it that far... no need to push yet.. in the haste we checked the clutch out no matter what revs we didn't get any traction and the bike just didn't move anywhere.. what a bummer we had thought about replacing the clutches before we left but thought it wiser to wait and see.. what a daft idea that was.. now we had broken down miles from the nearest town on a minor road where nobody went.. at least that is what we thought at the time.. hopefully it was not going to be too expensive to get a replacement clutch sent out from somewhere... while we sat in the shade and pondered our situation we started to email everyone to get some quotes.. it was about 4pm Kazakhstan local time which meant we had about 4 hours more “business day” before anything was closed.. maybe if we got lucky we could get some parts out that day to “address unknown”... yay!!!

I then went to find a place to camp further away from the road.. about 400meters away I found a nice place where the shepherds clearly came to relax in the heat of the day. A beautiful view out over the two valleys and a nice place to camp in the shade.. what a blessing.. there was even a load of fire wood for us to “tidy up”..... maybe this clutch thing was not such a bad problem after all... we hadn't really stressed at all about it given that we knew we could find someone to take the bike somewhere.. we just had to negotiate a fair price.. hmmm..negotiate. The campsite even had some owls as residents in the tree above our tent...

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I then went back to get heathers bike to push it to the camp site.. 400 meters never felt so far.. its amazing how hard it is to push a bike up hill along a sandy track.. in the end the he-man in me gave out and asked for Help and Sheira.. ooops I mean Heather came to the rescue helping to push the bike up the rough section and thankfully into the shade...

That night we pondered what to do over a camp fire watching a monster electrical storm hit the high altitude peaks to the south.. what an amazing lights show.. at this time we got our first email response... at 7:30pm local time we got a response from the BMW dealership in Ankara...

Companies</th>

Responses</th></tr></thead>

The bmw dealership in Ankara</td>

1</td></tr>

BMW Dealerships in the UK</td>

0</td></tr>

Independent parts distributors in the UK</td>

0</td></tr> </tbody></table>

slowly but surely we managed to get some light rainfall, during the night we heard our first wolf howls in the distance and woke to a beautifully clear and very crisp morning... with more beautiful sunshine... now it was time to find someone to tow or help get the bike to either Taraz or Shymkent so that we could work on the bike... After some tea I set off on my errands to get some supplies and find someone to take the bike into town... Unfortunately we didn't plan on having this exercise and didn't really have much money on us.. so the first thing was to find a bank where we could get some money, to buy some supplies and get some help... ummm sorry no banks in 60km... every town said that the next town had a bank... then the cycle continued.. after a few hours of going around in circles I found someone who actually told me that Taraz or Shymkent had the nearest banks... wow wasted 2 hours for nothing.. Oh well.. I returned with some food and water and sat back to enjoy the rest of the day while we waited for email responses..... on the way back the cross wind was sooo strong that I nearly got blown off my bike several times... when I got back we still had no responses from the dealerships or parts distributors in the UK... Another few emails to send to some other various distributors and to make some phone calls.... We thought that was enough for today, we just relaxed waiting for emails and took in the beautiful day by playing some cards and reading our books.

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That night we had another fire and relaxed... while preparing the firewood the farmer came by and told us to be careful and make sure we cleaned up after ourselves.. He had no problems with us staying on his land which was a huge relief... again there was a beautiful light show courtesy of another electrical storm over the same mountains.. The farmer went past several times, we think he was looking for some live stock that went on walk about.... that night the wolf howls got very close.. thankfully we think the fires we had kept the wolves at bay.

I woke early so that I could make the most of the morning with another effort to get some food, find some help and organise a tow for the bike to Shymkent... On the way to the shop I found the farmers missing live stock.. in the eaten out remains on the way to the road... poor goatie.. At the shop the now friendly shop keeper was more than helpful offering me some advice and giving me some tips to find help... it was great advice.. In the end we didn't have any more money so I had to go down to Taraz and find a bank.. but that had to wait until after

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breakfast/lunch... now starving I returned to camp.. goatie had been removed by the farmer... hopefully the wolves had had their feed and didn't need to come any closer tonight.. After a lovely lunch of horse sausages and eggs, I set out for Taraz to finally find a bank and get some money while Heather hard the hard job of sitting with the bike reading her book, hard stuff... 2 hours later I returned to the shop to get some more vegetables now that we could afford to eat again... hmmm veges... while at the shop the guy had organised for some people to offer some help... at the same time a guy rocked up on his Kawasaki and offered some help.. we rode out with our fresh supplies to the bike and camp site... he quickly identified the problem and did some magic to fix it... not a permanent fix but at least its going to get us to the next town to replace the clutch properly... we ended up having chai and chatted for a while with the help of a notepad to write down stuff because we didn't speak much Russian, and he did not speak much English... It was a great afternoon and his help was really appreciated, he was very friendly... In celebration we decided we had to have a big fire burning all our wood rations and geting drunk.... whoooooo hoooooooooooooo were going to Kyrgyzstan tomorrow! We are not 100% sure if there were any wolves... we didn't wake to any howels.. maybe that was because we were drunk from the vodka or maybe it was because they had eaten poor goatie...

One of the funny points to raise in all the various trips back and forwards between the different towns and the camp site there was a group of guys collecting hay... It was funny because every time I went past they seemed to be having Chai.. yet every time I went past they had more hay in the bak of the truck.. every time I went past they would be cheering at me and waving... it became quiet funny going back and forwards to all the cheers and waving... only once did I see them in the field and got cheered with the pitch forks as though I was just about to be on the receiving end of some sort of witch hunt.. the situation was very amusing.. in the end the shop keeper actually said that I could have got them to drive the bike to Shymkent no problems at all... I never stopped to ask as the bike was fixed before I got to that far down my list of options..

After 4 days here is how the score board looks for quotes....

Companies</th>

Responses</th></tr></thead>

The BMW dealership in Ankara</td>

1</td></tr>

BMW Dealerships in the UK</td>

0</td></tr>

Independent parts distributors in the UK</td>

0</td></tr> </tbody></table>

Kazakhstan Deserts Atyrau to Shymkent

2009-08-16T13:20:51+00:00

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In Atyrau when we filled up with petrol we got some very strange looks from the locals when we said we wanted to make it to Makat for the night. Eventually an English speaker came up and warned us that Makat was not a safe place to be. He said that it was full of drunks, drug addicts and bandits. We decided to take their advice and camped in the Desert about 60km before Makat... We camped near a salt lake and watched the sunset.. At the camp-site the ground was moving... Millions of little bugs all over the ground.. everywhere you looked there would be hundreds of these little bugs.. You couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on them.. Unfortunately as much as we had tried to find other places to camp they all had these bugs. It had been a long day and we needed to rise early to get some distance behind us.... The next morning we rode into Makat and from what we can tell the advice we got given was 100% correct. The road on both our maps goes straight through the town.. Unfortunately that is not how it is.. There is a turn off that goes back away from the way your going with a yellow sign about 8km before the town.. It bypasses the town.. We didn't see the sign because it had been bent away.. and 1h:15m later we found someone that gave us accurate directions and got the hell out of the town after being given directions by 4 different people..all of which ended in dead ends in dodgy areas of town..One of them even tried to fleece me of my money. To make matters worse in Makat the roads in town really shouldn't be called roads.. One of the pot holes was so big that the suspension on heathers bike bottomed out so much that the mud guard hit the Pannier rack and was ripped off being flung off back at James...

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It was the beginning of the road to hell.....the Makat bypass was actually a very deep gravel road that was very difficult to ride on, Thankfully we followed a Kamaz truck and went off-road through the desert to the side of the road until the deep gravel was over (about 10km from the bypass turn off)... This was the end of the good road or the beginning of the bad road...

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As soon as we had left Makat there was a complete absence of any cars on the road at all.. It was now almost 100% 4 and 6 wheel drive trucks... although the road was not so bad apart from the Gravel section near Makat..... Given that this was the main highway from Atyrau to Aqtobe we expected to be able to get some distance done.. how wrong this assumption was....

That night we had done 230km and had been riding for 10 hours.... there are almost no towns, and the towns that do exist are often just a collection of mud huts we found ourselves camping in the desert again away from the road so that we could be safe and secure. On the ride out to where we thought we could camp Heather's front wheel found a nice deep section of sand and she went for 6 over the handle bars superwoman style...I unfortunately didn't see this whole episode and was only notified by the “please come and help me” over the autocom when she plugged herself back in.... my first response was to laugh, then we both laughed unsure from the situation or just being tired, we then picked the bike up and she got back on to get he bike out of the sand pit... it was hell getting through the rutted dunes to a place where we could camp... we ended up finding a place near where one of the gas pipe lines cuts through the desert in what looks like it was once a military training area... there was some remains of a truck that looked as though it had been blown up with twisted bits of shrapnel everywhere,

Heather was taking photos of the sunset when about 6 wild horses and couple fouls came close to our tent...

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The next morning we rode out across the desert back to the road this time we took a different route hoping to avoid the sand pit that heather had found the previous day... Unfortunately this just made us find a separate sand pit which I hit. Bike jolted me off the pegs catching my leg between the ground and the bike, accelerating hard to bring the bike back around which I had hoped would take the weight off my left and stop it from being broken.. thankfully the trick worked and I managed to save my right leg from being broken and in the process getting a bad burn from the exhaust... typically right above where the boot had stopped was where I got burnt. Heather right behind me at the same section of deep sand had also come off.. I hobbled over to help her pick up her bike and we walked the bikes to some harder section so we could inspect the damage to my leg... it was burnt pretty badly and there was still skin burnt onto the exhaust.. all up I was lucky to have got away so lightly. During a small break Heather applied some dressings to the burn to stop it rubbing on my boot. Shortly after our accident we stopped in a small town to resupply our food and water... as is always expected now we get a big group of people all wanting to know where we are from, where we are going, and looking at the bikes.. they don't seem to see many a) Australians and b) people on big non-Russian/Chinese bikes. One of the ladies gave Heather some chocolate biscuit/cake things and a container of apple juice... while James got loads of new food supplies... It was time to leave/negotiate the sand track out of town...

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It was almost as though riding through the desert was not tough enough, dealing with Kazakh drivers and riders was just as bad. While in town negotiating a section of road a stupid kazakh rider with side car swerved into my bike sheering off the pannier on the left side breaking the locking mechanism and bending the metal clip. Luckily it happened 100meters from a Mechanic and a local friendly Kazakh who saw the incident was nice enough to help us by carrying the pannier to the mechanics to get it fixed ASAP. The whole process to fix the pannier was pretty quick taking only around 2 hours with loads of interested spectators. In the end it only required the replacement of two rivets and the bashing back into place of one of the mounting brackets... a bit lose though almost as good as new... now we had to find our way out of town.. the guy that helped us get our Pannier fixed gave us directions to take the first right next to the mechanics.... the mechanics gave us directions to head all the way back to Aqtobe and head down the main road... we ended up taking the first guys directions and found the road out of the town towards Embi pretty good once we got out of the town.. We are starting to realise that the roads between oil and gas sites are good and all the other roads in the area are not really roads more like dirt or gravel tracks through the desert.

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Now that we are in the heart of one of the big Kazakh gas fields the smell in the air is repulsive especially if the wind is blowing in your direction... We are using this as inspiration to try and do as many miles as possible. However it was getting dark and we had to find a place to camp quickly.. After an exhausting day we had only completed about 190km in 8 hours of riding... at least we are resting well in the evenings and waking up refreshed.. it would be hell trying to do this tired. We need all our concentration to see the changing terrain, pot holes, gravel pits, sand pits and other trucks through the desert..We had been hoping that the road would improve once we had finished our “short cut” and got back on the main route from Aqtobe to Aral....which was actually a denoted motorway... the M32... After about 2 hours of riding in the morning we got to an intersection which was meant to be the M32.. we had to now head further south.. when we looked south the road was blocked with a sign saying no entry... after asking some truck drivers (Several to make sure we didn't get given the wrong directions) we discovered we had to follow a dirt track around road works for about 40km...40km of on and off again deep sand and poor visibility because of the sand/dust that the wind and other trucks kept on churning up. The heat had started to really ramp up as we headed south.. the temperatures had been pretty mild from Astrakhan (low 30's) but now it was all about high 30's and low 40's. The high temperatures and the deep sand made riding/pushing the bikes through a real challenge with both of us sliding off a few times and needing to pick up the bikes to continue. After one particularly deep section of sand where we came across a French group of guys driving from Paris to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in a 30 year old French Car.. Heather didn't want to fall off on this section to keep her cool in front of the spectators that had stopped and I was completely bogged with the bike sitting on the sand with the rear wheel spinning in the air... it was a challenge but we made it through. We had a break and gave them some advice on the route to take.... basically avoid the way we came and continue north to Aqtobe.. As we went to get back on the bikes it was Heathers bike that caught on fire..

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Heather retrieved a bottle of shaken soda water from the back of her bike when she opened it, warm soda water exploded all over her bike thinking it was about to catch on fire.. Thankfully Heather turned the ignition off quickly after the smoke poured out. The bike would not start after that and the bike's alarm system was going off every 30 seconds, deafening our ears. Knowing that it was an electrical fault made us very nervous. Electrical faults are rarely fixable in the field and require parts to be ordered in IF you can diagnose what part is faulty. The vibrations of the 1600km we had done on/off road so far in Kazakhstan had worn the insulation off some wires on her Datatool alarm...

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The wires then shorted out on the frame causing some excitement.... After narrowing down the fault to this we joined and re-insulated the wires that didn't burn out completely. The entire time while we worked on the bikes we had a family of desert mice/animals that kept an eye on us from in the grassy section.. it was pretty cool but they didn't really want to have any photos taken... and after about 2 hours we started on our way again.. This time we started looking for ways back onto the section of road that they had closed for road works... we successfully found a way back on and managed to maintain a huge 30km/hour for the next few hours until we ran out of energy and motivation to continue for the day... it was time to celebrate fixing the bike and doing such a hard days ride in the heat... Heather had organised a bottle of vodka at one of the days stop overs.... 480 Tehre for their top quality stuff... which works out to be around £2... We used this as part of our celebratory drinks with fruit juice which was cherry flavour... We had to use up the fruit juice because it had burst in her pannier anyway... thankfully it didn't spill too much and make everything sticky.. Lets just say it was the best vodka we have ever had!

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After 6 nights we had finally made it to Aral.. The road for about 160km north of Aral was great and we started to make great time again. On this section we stopped in the only shade we could find which happened to be a cow/horse poo covered bus stop. My leg where I got burnt was now stinging and it was painful to walk on... something told me there was a little problem with the burn..... After having a look at my leg we realised that it was now nice and swollen with red lines running up towards my knee and down towards my ankle. The burn itself was septic and had a beautiful aroma... this was despite using antiseptic cream etc... something was wrong.. it turns out the antiseptic cream had expired in 2002.... shit!!! while I was waiting for the burn to dry out and scab after cleaning off the old dressing and sterilising the wound.. two cars full of Kazakhs stopped to have a smoke.. the look of shock on their face and the directions they gave us to the hospital may have been a give-away that my leg was really in a bad way.. It was nice of them to be so interested and helpful when they saw my sorry state. We redressed the burn with gauze and bandages and continued on our way.. I would have to go to the doctors/hospital if it had not improved soon...

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Covering 480km in around 8 hours which was a new record for Kazakhstan. Aral as a town is not much to see and the road to the Aral sea was deep sand crossing dunes so we decided to give It a miss and only stopped off for more re-supply of our food and water.. At the store we got a packet of Chips to eat... only to find out that they are mushroom flavour.. yum you may say... well not really it was more like soggy old mushroom flavour.. I think its the first time we have ever not finished a packet of chips.. it honestly tasted bad despite being within the use by date etc.... maybe we mis-translated it and it was stinky sock flavour...

After Aral civilization starts again, there are now picnic areas (not that you would want to use them) , café's, restaurants and other stuff along the road that people actually use... before Aral it was all about self catering and d,i,y.. there is still a huge lack of shade and the desert is still along the side of the road despite now being green on our maps... the herds of goats have increased in size and the general numbers of animals (eagles included) have sky rocketed... shortly after Aral we hit the Syr-Darya

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which is the main tributary into the Aral sea.. with that came green trees etc for a small area along the banks and then more desert.. in this small green area we found our camp for the night... and what a mosquito infested spot it was too... in the morning we woke to have a swarm of mosquitoes covering the inside of the tent... it was time to do a mad dash to the bikes to get a mosquito coil to clear them out.. Heathers mosquito phobia is now at volume 10++ as she constantly seems to think she's being bitten by things.. thankfully this is a welcome reward to me as Heather is now my bug decoy.... ha ha ha... previously I would be the one being bitten and Heather would be spared... how lovely it is that the roles have been reversed for this trip.... We made a quick exit from the camp site without breakfast thanks to the swarms of Mosquitoes.. After only a short time on the road we both had so many mosquitoes and bugs squashed on our visors that we had trouble seeing the road ahead... swarms I tell you.. swarms.. millions of mosquitoes to splat.. Heather gets the mosquito killing award as her visor had so many if they survived the splat we could have trained a mosquito army.. After our mosquito infested night we decided that the desert was the best option and camped on the top of a hill looking out over a small valley.. thinking that nobody would be any the wiser.. about 2 hours later we had a Sheppard and his herd of goat/sheep come by on their way back to their secure pen for the night.. I talked to the Sheppard and he told me it was because of wolves that they had to keep them in the secure area by night.... he was saying that its been a good few years for him and his family because they have been unusually wet allowing for more goats and sheep to graze..so here he was herding his sheep and goats on a donkey with Gucci glasses and designer clothes and an i-phone.. I wish I had taken a photo but he was “no photo... no photo...”.. he was only 23 and had over 300 animals to himself.. his dad had another huge collection.. it just seemed like such an odd mix of cultures.. That night we didn't have a fire and it was the first time we had animals come up to the tent.. we suspect from the foot prints in the morning we either had foxes or a wolf or two come up to the tent although nothing exciting happened..

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That day we woke early with the goal of getting to Turkistan to see the Islamic monuments which are so widely regarded. Turkistan as a city is umm.. interesting.. the driving was absolutely crazy and nobody follows traffic lights or signs.. its complete chaos and very unsafe for motorcycles.. in the end we valued our lives more and left town pretty quickly without seeing the monuments. Its unfortunate.. we should have parked our bikes and taken a taxi.. oh well.. Its now all the way to Shymkent... only problem is we have a gale force cross wind to deal with for the 160km into town.. It really seems that nothing can be easy in Kazakhstan....After 2.5 hours we arrived and after checking a few hotels and getting lost a few times we found a place to stay... ahhhhh relaxation.. and our first proper shower in 8 nights..(yes we did wash in a basin but its not the same)...

Atyrau and the kazakhstan border

2009-08-09T13:16:34+00:00

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After our stay in Astrakan it was time to head off for Atyrau and the Kazakhstan border... Leaving Astrakan with the maps we had proved to be more difficult than we thought.... how hard can it be to follow some signs right?... well we got lost and ended up riding around for about 45 minutes until we found the right road.. We should really have filled up with more petrol in Astrakan before we left but they all had long lines and we wanted to make it to the border.. We had been told to expect delays of at least 12 hours to cross into Kazakhstan.. It was luckily not the case. We arrived and the line of cars was relatively short (maybe 15 cars).. All up it took about 2 hours which was a huge relief after our 16 hour epic at Sochi. At the border crossing the customs agent who was sorting our customs declaration (the legal paper work required to bring the bikes into Kazakhstan) said it will cost 4000 Russian Roubles for the declaration fee.... that's about £80.. I did not remember reading about any Kazakhstan customs fee's so I went to consult the lonely planet book.. I then came back with the book... Luckily the guy didn't speak or read English.. I pointed out that in the book it said that there was no fee... all of a sudden the guy was a little angry.. although he still wouldn't give me back my paper work until I paid him a fee.. In the end I negotiated 300 Russian Roubles and I got my paper work back.. what a tosser.. I still felt that if I had waited longer we would probably have got it all back for free.. However it was now around 4pm and we wanted to make some tracks into Kazakhstan before it got dark. In the end we got through and made our way about 160km before camping in the Desert... Heather found a place to camp in the Dunes and setup the tent. While I went and collected some firewood... (not enough.. Heather had to go and do the job properly and get some more firewood). We got warned in Astrakan that we needed to make sure we had a fire to keep the wolves away at night. It was so nice to have our first open fire since leaving the UK... During the night it rained which would have made it difficult to get out of the Dunes had it continued for any longer.. Thankfully it was not to bad and we made our way back to the road for an early start the next morning. The ride into Atyrau was pretty uneventful and we arrived around 10am. It was time for lunch, get some more supplies and some petrol.. The next few days we would be crossing the Desert to the Aral sea....

Sochi to Astrakan

2009-08-08T10:38:55+00:00

After our day in the hotel outside Sochi it was time to make tracks for the mountains. The Black Sea coast is expensive and we don't have the funds to waste. After packing up we took all our gear out to the bikes. The lady at the hotel reception thought we are trying to do a runner without paying so came out to get us back there quickly. It was only when we asked for a receipt that she understood that we had paid when we checked in I guess this was not the usual though we must have looked like dodgy tourists :-P.......

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The road from Sochi to Tuapse was a traffic nightmare despite leaving relatively early in the morning. The traffic was made worse now that it was August which is the peak season for Russians taking time off at one of the many black sea resorts. The road itself was relatively good quality considering what we had been told to expect although it didn't stop the Russian drivers from really showing off how great they are at driving. We saw 5 accidents of which several were head on collisions. At one point a truck had lost all its engine oil all over the road.. These things never happen in nice safe places.. On a hair pin bend going down a steep hill.. could never have guessed.. As James came around the corner he lost control on the oil, managed to just hold the bike up while sliding down and almost nailing it into the car in front... such a close call, not so lucky for a car which lost control and had a head on with a car on the other side, no one appeared to be hurt which was good. I got a massive bruise on my leg above my boot from trying to hold the bike up and getting hit with the break lever as the bike slid all over the shop... a true heart starting moment. The road itself winds through mountains with dense forest with huge views over the black sea.

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Once we got to Tuapse it was a relief to know we could finally get away from the Traffic of the Coast and head inland where the prices must surely fall...The initial shock to the system was that we are now paying less than £0.50 per litre for premium unleaded (95 octane)... down from paying £1.30 in Turkey. The road away from the Coast was uneventful thankfully and the scenery was brilliant as we worked our way up to several mountain passes. The hot humid weather on the Black sea quickly gave way to heavy rain fall over the higher mountain passes. One of which we decided we would wild camp for the night. We found a beautiful spot looking out over one of the valleys about 200 meters from the road... a high quality spot where we didn't get interrupted.

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The next day we tried to push on.. We finally made it out of the Caucasus mountains and down onto the rolling plains which would take us all the way to Astrakan. Unfortunately we both didn't feel so great as the food poisoning had returned. We decided that we would wild camp again regardless and got some food for the night. We camped on what appeared to be an unused road... well it wasn't unused it turned out it was a farmers track to one of his paddocks. In the end he let us camp there as long as we moved out bikes out of the way so he could get his tractor past... ooops.. The food poisoning was really starting to be an issue.. now it was day 5 for Heather and James was starting to feel rough too... It was time to bite the bullet and find what appeared to be the only hotel in the next big town so that we could recuperate for two nights. The Hotel was not to bad and we got blessed with a lady on reception who was trying to learn English.. It wasn't the greatest hotel but at least it was going to be our home for the next few days.... The town itself was a soviet dump.. we don't actually know the English name for it yet.... maybe more to come..

After two days in the Hotel trying to do as little as possible, rehydrate and start to get some energy back we moved on.. We had to get to Astrakan so that we could get the off-road tyres fitted. Our visa for Kazakhstan is valid from the 8^{th of August until the 7^{th of Sep.. that means we have 4 days to get there and get it all sorted.. We left the Hotel and made our way north East.. The terrain was now very flat and the roads had become very straight. This made the now very abundant police presence very obvious.. Unfortunately they still managed to get us.. Coming into a town we missed the sign.. Unfortunately that meant we got booked doing 89km/hour in a 50km zone.. oohh shit.. The police didn't like that one bit. According to the book the guy had that means we had to loose our license and walk home making this small town the end of our trip.. not a good situation to be in.. After some negotiation I offered to pay a “fine” now on the spot and ride away this time at 50km/hour... He said that the fine should be $1000US... there was no way we could pay that.. a) we didn't have it.. and b) we didn't have it... after a while his refusal to take Roubles subsided and we managed to get away with both bikes, our dignity and only 6000 roubles (£120)... which was the beginning of our next saga...}}

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There are no banks from where we got busted to Astrakan and petrol stations don't accept credit cards.. This meant that we had to get to Astrakan (500km away) on about 500 roubles (£10). This was not a great situation to be in.. we had to ride very carefully to be able to make the distance... Luckily our bikes had been filled up about 100km before making it possible.. Heathers bike had an additional 9 litres of fuel added a short time before we camped for the night.. We rode until about 7pm which was the first time we saw a place to hide our tent away from the road on the flat barren landscape... The interesting change that we noted was that all the faces now had a very strong Asian appearance as we moved further east.. Our camp site was a nice spot which had a huge view out over the Caspian plains (steppe) After a relaxing night we pushed on trying to make it the last 230km into town without running out of fuel.. the last of our money was spent putting 9 litres of fuel into James bike.. That meant we should be able to make it into town.. at the first petrol station that accepted cards we managed to fill both bikes up again.... about 500meters before the Astrakan

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city sign....what luck... now we had to find a bank to get some more cash out... it took us two hours of riding around in circles to find how to actually get into Astrakan main city centre.. the signs all say left when you come off the A154... its actually right and the road bends around and crosses the Volga.. yay for Russian road signs...Shortly afterwards we

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found a cash machine and got some money..now it was time for food.. (as we hadn't eaten breakfast because we had no spare money)...while we sat on the side of the road looking at the Lonely Planet guide a young guy came up to us saying that his dad was in a bike gang/group and he could help us find a place to eat/stay etc.... We had lunch and they joined us, then took us to a place to get the tyres changed. It took them 3 hours to do. Many of the guys would go off and then come back with their prized motorcycles which were really nice and beautifully maintained . The guy called a friend who then organised for us to stay in an Apartment overlooking the Kremlin in Astrakan right on the main road, they even organised us secure motorcycle parking just up the road... what amazing luck..... Then they took us out for dinner and drinks refusing for us to pay for anything, they gave us a mobile so we could contact them as our phone want let us call there mobiles... It was all hospitality we could only have ever dreamed of and it really made our stay in Astrakan really good. I would really recommend anyone going through Astrakan to take a few days out there and appreciate the city.

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We had planned on getting an early start on Saturday to get to the boarder crossing with Kazakhstan... Unfortunately we slept in and woke up late.. This was a blessing in disguise as we managed to see the finish of the Volga Rally in Astrakan. It was right outside the apartment window... what luck.. it seems that Astrakan has blessed us..

We would like to say a special thanks to all the guys in Astrakan who helped us out. It really made our trip memorable...

Russia - Sochi and the Caucasus Mountains

2009-08-01T08:38:13+00:00

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After 25 days in Turkey it was time to leave... The ferry tickets had been purchased and the journey was about to begin.. We arrived at Trabzon at 9:30am sat in the park and had breakfast. Shortly after breakfast Heather went to check the exchange rates and do some odd tasks. James remained to look after the bikes. It wasn't to bad as we had company from two Irish backpackers Aaron and Craig. Who had the same idea as us by getting there early, so day went by quickly as we chatted about our travels. We organised some more Currency (US Dollars) Unfortunately we couldn't get any Russian Roubles. After that we had lunch and used the internet to make our last photo-less post which we have now added some photos for you guys to look at... at 2pm our epic saga began......

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We first had to check our bikes into customs so that we could get them cleared to leave Turkey. That took us around 45minutes. That meant we had to wait around until passport control at 5pm. Thankfully the Turks have a heart and let us back out of the port to sit in the park and relax for a few hours... At 5 we went back into the Port to do passport control. That took about 15minutes and it was time to board the boat.. This is where the Turkish efficiency ended and the Russian bureaucracy started. We got told by our ticket sales man that the ferry departure time was 8pm and boarding was at 5pm. Really what he meant was you had to pass through customs by 8pm for an 11pm departure. This was not such a big problem because Heather and our Irish friends scored a nice private area with a “balcony view” that we could leave all our stuff in we were all quiet chuffed with ourselves... After 8pm the boat turned into somewhat of a party. All the Georgians and Russians pulled out all the alcohol they brought on board (Alcohol Is relatively expensive in Turkey) and started doing what they seem to do well.... get very drunk... Heather and I bought a few beers from the kitchen and had a quiet one... not able to keep up with the locals we kept to ourselves somewhat thinking we would need the sleep for the next day in Russia..... When Heather went out to check on the bikes she witnessed the arm wrestling by the drinking crew. The boat eventually set sail at 1:30am around 2.5 hours later than the scheduled time.. not to worry I was fast asleep trying to make the most of the journey's calm seas....... at least until we got woken by the rough seas as we passed a small tornado.. (We were asleep though Craig one of the Irish guys took some photos of it! Then we decided to believe him).

At around 3pm we finally docked in Sochi.. We had made it to Russia.. now all they needed to do was find someone that could do passport control.... an hour and a half later we finally got off the boat and did passport control. This was a huge relief and was very easy. The whole process from filling out the form to getting the stamp in the passport took about 20minutes. Now we had the fun bit of trying to get our bikes off the boat.. One of the Russian guys on board spoke some English and was able to translate all the paper work for us and the two Canadian guys completing the Mongol Rally Race that we have seen so many of in Turkey.. Thankfully otherwise we would have been seriously screwed. Once all the forms had been filled out we had to buy insurance. We bought 90 days insurance for $50US the Canadians bought Insurance for 14 days which cost them $30US... Now we had to get our bikes.. well not really.. The boat that had our bikes had sailed off to another port area just down the road so that they could offload the heavy cargo and trucks on board... Now this is where the fun began..to keep it simple ill put it in point form..

There was a shift change at 7pm which we missed. </li>

The people on the shift didn't know about our bikes so we had to wait until 11pm when someone who knew about our bikes returned after their meal break. </li>

At 11pm we finally got to get access to our bikes. We got the bikes off the boat only to get to another customs check. </li>

They then checked that all our paper work matched properly VIN/Engine etc... </li>

A guy then took us back to the other port (where we had come from Passport control) to fill out the customs declaration forms and give us another document which meant we could take our bikes out of customs.. It was now 3.00am.. </li> </ol>

Thankfully with our new Canadian friends who also spoke no Russian.. All four of us had been completely demoralised by the epic 12 hour customs battle to get our vehicles off the boat.. In total from when we went through customs in Turkey it was over 36 hours later...for what should have been an 11 hour journey. (Not to forget heather had another bout of food poisoning which was making her waiting time especially tough). Now that we had finally made it out of the port with our bikes it was time to get a place to stay.. We had booked to stay in a Hostel but the address for the hostel was not on any of our maps so we had to go.. there was no chance it was worth going to a hotel for a few hours sleep.. we ended up riding with the Canadians sticking together safety in numbers! We pulled up at a Truck rest stop area on the main road.. pulling out our therma rest and sleeping on the side of the road for a few hours... ahhh ohhhh what a feeeling.. welcome to Russia..At least we had a friendly flea infested dog to look after us for the night.. It kept a vigil barking at any other dogs that came close to us which were loads.. Unfortunately we felt guilty because we didn't have any food for it :(

It was now 6am and we had managed to get around 2 hours sleep... It was time to get on the road again. We left the Canadians and bid our farewells.. Heather was feeling really sick now and we needed to find a hotel which had easy access to a toilet.. About an hour and a half later we found a hotel and found we didn't have enough cash.. now we had to find a bankomat..(atm in russia).. another 30 minutes later we got back to the hotel.. Money in hand and checked in.. ahhhhhh a bed.. ahhhhhh a shower.. ahhhhhh sleep.. It was now 2pm.. We had slept for about 5 hours.. feeling somewhat refreshed we had to now get some food... It wasn't an easy task to get food in a resort town.. it appeared to be restaurants or off-license/7-11 style stores.. not really aimed at the healthy living motorcycle touring types!! haha..

11 things you need to know about the Trabzon to Sochi Ferry.

Everything on the boat is in US dollars. </li>
The exchange rate on board is Terrible. </li>
When you have dollars you buy tokens which can be used in the Kitchen. Tokens can also be exchanged for Hard currency at the end of the Journey. </li>
No need for a Cabin.. Bring pillows, food and a blanket/sleeping bag and sleep in the food area (nice long flat seats). </li>
Fast ferries on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to Sochi. Alternative days from Sochi. (4.5 hours) </li>
Bring a good book. There is no alternative entertainment on board and no power sockets that we could find. </li>
If on a motorcycle bring something to protect your seat from their straps that hold the bike down. They don't have any and it damages your seat.. especially if you have an airhawk </li>
Nobody tells anyone anything. You have to ASK what's going on.. they expect everyone on board to just “know”... </li>
The crew get very drunk and just have arm wrestles before, during and after the journey.. not so confidence inspiring. </li>
Enjoy the journey.. and get some good sleep.. Customs on the Russian side is long, slow and painful (At least for people bringing in their own transport). Foot passengers have no issues. </li>
Bring your own toilet paper, soap for the loo. </li> </ol>

Goreme to Trabzon - A road less travelled.

2009-07-29T09:49:47+00:00

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After a few great days in Gerome it was time to move on. Our plan was to travel through Kayseri, Sivas, Refahiye, Macka. We had an unknown schedule for the ferry from Trabzon to Sochi in Russia because we kept getting different reports on when it actually sailed. Some said there was a daily ferry, Others said that there was only two ferries a week. Unfortunately the internet was only partly useful and we had to actually get to the port to find out when we could buy our ticket (or phone and speak to someone who didn't speak any english). Our first day back on the road after Cappadocia was an interesting yet trip through more volcanic area's where the scenery was dry and dusty with beautiful mountains jutted out along the horizon from time to time. As we headed further north and east the number of European number plates we saw fell to an all time low. The towns became more conservative. The fuel was getting more expensive and the food was starting to change more. We started to get more people selling honey and dried fruit with the various types of melons. The cost of Petrol has gone from 2.89TL / Litre for 95 to 3.24TL and I suspect its not actually 95.. Our engines just don't seem to be running quiet as well although its hard to tell given we have the extra weight of the tyres.

Our first night we had decided that we needed to wild camp again to save more money. Unfortunately after doing 16km along a dirt track looking for something we came up dry. We got back on the main road as it was starting to get late. In the end James found an old quarry area used when the road was being built. Behind that on the mountain was a place we could wild camp overlooking the patch work of fields in the valley below. Again we tried to refine the use of our mosquito net so that we could camp under the stars with no bugs attacking us.. It was particularly important at this site because it was heavily infested with mosquitoes and what appeared to be either midges or fruit flies..Heather became good friend with one as it bit her on her puffy eye.. Of course the relationship was doomed from the start when she killed it. Unfortunately the other mosquitoes didn't take the hint and kept attacking. Luckily we could retreat to our mosquito net for a good nights sleep.

In the morning we woke to an early start at first light. Yet again the joys of camping under the stars is an early start. We got on the road early and planned to have breakfast on route. In the end we found a picnic spot about an hour and a half later. It was a great start to a perfect morning (both weather and scenery wise). One of the side notes that we have started to realise as we head further east is that the military presence is rapidly increasing. Just after our breakfast stop we got pulled over at a military road block where all the guards had sand bagged gun placements. They clearly took security very seriously in this area. The tension was immediately obvious and I have no idea what it's all about. When we filled up with petrol after the road block the guys didn't even really welcome us at all.. It was all very odd. After the road block we headed up even higher into mountains doing 3 major mountain crossings all above 2000 meters with some spectacular views . With each mountain crossing as we head north the scenery gets one shade greener. We can see across the tops of the mountains that there is some heavy rain clouds and we are heading straight for them. On our final mountain crossing we started to get covered with rain. On the downward slope the rain became stronger and stronger before we came to our intended destination Macka. The scenry on the way down the mountain was amazing. With huge forested slopes on the mountains and raging rivers in the valleys. Anyway our next post will be from Russia as we have our Ferry Tickets for tomorrow... Sochi here we come!!!

Goreme, Ihlara Valley, Kaymakli

2009-07-26T09:41:58+00:00

</a> After a night looking at the stars and enjoying the panoramic views of Goreme from under our mosquito net. We awoke early to see that Heathers eye had swollen to such an extent it looked like she had been punched in the eye... her new name is now puffy.. the entire left side of her face had swollen around the wasp sting of the previous day. I said it was revenge because she broke her evil eye which was meant to ward away evil spirits. Her wasp sting was only the beginning of her bad luck.. now she had a swollen face, then the bungie cord snapped and the hook ripped through the skin between her thumb and pointer finger.. she had to wear sunglasses to try and hide puffy and she had dropped her bike three times in such a short period of time the day before..

</a> When we checked into Panorama camping in Goreme the guy who owned the place gave us a map of a recommended tourist route. The route allowed us to take in as many sites as possible without back tracking on ourselves. Overall the camp site was fantastic and was crawling with other motorcycle groups. One Dutch guy who camped next to us was very friendly and was on route to Syria with a guy he met on the Internet. We shared loads of ideas of where to go and what to see and gave him the map we got given when we no longer had a need for it. I highly recommend Panorama camping in Goreme to anyone looking for a place to stay on a budget we paid 25 TL per night. The view/Location is superb and beats and of the Hostels in town. There is a Bar, Pool nice area to relax etc..

</a> With Cappadocia on our must see list we had to make the most of our new map. There is so much history crammed into such a “small” area that it was going to take us a few days to really get out an explore it. Unfortunately we only had 3 days to really get the most of the area and only two remaining. Our first stop was to see the underground city at Kaymakli. It was built as a hide away to protect the citizens of the town from invading armies. The earliest such cities date back at least 4000 years. Kaymakli is one of the largest going down 8 levels and spread out some several hundred meters in each direction from the entrance. We bought a tour guide to explain all the different rooms etc and how the systems in side the cities worked. It was well worth the 35 TL that we paid for it despite having a very rushed feel. After visiting the city we headed towards the Ihlara valley which is an oasis like canyon that comes out of nowhere. Its very beautiful and has thousands of small </a> houses/homes built into the cliffs over the years. The area above the canyon is very dry which is a complete contrast to how lush and fertile it is at its base. A very welcome surprise from the dust on the way there. The canyon itself is not that long but what it lacks in size it makes up for in history and beauty. The journey to the valley was filled with yet more cities of a bygone era. It seems in this area of Turkey especially its a dime a dozen. Around every corner or on every mountain there was another city or fortress just waiting to be explored. Many of which are completely free and open to the public. Some of the more spectacular ones require an entry fee.

Ankara to Cappadocia – Goreme

2009-07-25T09:37:40+00:00

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After a four days relaxing, two sets of new tyres and two serviced bikes it was time to keep moving south east to Cappadocia. We had decided that Goreme was going to be our base for a few days of exploring the surrounding area. Goreme is only around 250km from Ankara but we decided to take an extra night so that we would arrive early in the morning to make the most of the day. The ride out of Ankara was frantic with the “normal” traffic of Turkey plus the Ankara special.... running red lights. As we travelled further south east the terrain started to become more rocky and exposed. This is where heathers superb skill of being able to secure items to her bike became a jinx.. while going over a rough section of road all her water bottles fell off the bike rolling down the embankment.It was too unsafe to go fetch so that was the end of our water for the evening.. We decided to turn off from our back road blitz onto an even more minor road... this was where the fun started. We pulled over to take some photos on the top of a ridge which had really great panoramic views. The wind was so strong that it blew over James' bike.. This caused us a few issues.. not only did it get blown over it was now down a small slope almost upside down.. after trying for some time to pick the bike up without any success we started to unpack it. As soon as we started to do this two Turkish men on a little moped appeared out of nowhere.. they stopped and helped us pick the bike up.. much to their amusement and comments about us having too much gear haha.. all the same they took the opportunity to have a few cigarettes and admire the bikes.. during this whole scenario our small digital camera was broken... more than likely it was trodden on when it was on the ground after the bike dropped...ohh well down to only the SLR which makes taking easy snaps a real pain.

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About 2-3km further down the road Heather found a small dirt track leading up to an ancient burial mound. There was a Turkish camp setup next to one of the lower fields and the track looked fairly well worn. After about 500m the “well worn” nature of the track became more than apparent.. “well worn” by the rain creating some very interesting riding up a steep sandy track covered with loose rocks. Getting up was a challenge, any challenging riding we now call preparation for Kazakhstan and Mongolia... but it was fun all the same. We ended up stopping on a flat patch to do a reccy (reconnaissance) of the track further up the hill. We needed to make sure it was possible to get up AND back down with fully laden bikes. After a short walk we decided that we had gone far enough. Camping on the top of the burial mound would have to wait until another day... Where we had parked there was a nice patch which we decided would be our accommodation for the night around 1600meters above sea level. With a beautiful view out over the mountain and surrounding valleys it was perfect. The wind was still strong but we decided to erect out mosquito net between the two bikes and sleep under the stars. The night was clear and there was a real bite to the cool dry air.

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Perfect for sleeping... well actually it was not so great.. We both kept waking during the night thinking that the bikes would blow over... two squashed peas in a mosquito net pod. Ahhh the vision... I could just imagine the perfect headline.. two stupid Aussies squashed by own bikes in turkey.. another one for the Darwin awards. After a pretty weak nights sleep we awoke at first light to pack and get back on the road early so we could make the most of the day... (and so that we could vacate the area before anyone came asking why the hell we camped on their land).. This is where Heathers “fun” began. Going up the hill to the spot where we camped was fairly easy.. all the weight was on the rear wheel no problems.. However now that we had to go back down the mountain the weight was now on the front wheel.. This meant that the front wheel would basically guide our fate... into the ground that is.. It was very slippery and the front wheels kept on loosing traction and sliding out.. After several “almosts” it became a whoops.. drop number one for Heather. Caused by her bike sliding and her back wheel hitting a boulder forcing the weight to go off centre.. Luckily the bike fell fairly easily and the speed was low. The only real damage had been to Heathers confidence. The track down for James on the heavier bike was just as interesting having to ride slowly with the ABS off so to not slide out. All up to go the 500-800 meters back to the road it took around 30minutes. When we hit the road it was time to make way to Goreme.... After 2 minutes further down the road it was drop number two for Heather.. Two drops in less than an hour making it a new record. This time it was the sound of a little girl in the ear piece as she frantically tried to pull over.. However the only place to pull over was a gravel section on the side of the road.. The wheel went in and over she went.. she was screaming running around doing some sort of voodoo dance trying to get her helmet off.. It turns out that she was stung by the same type of wasp that James had the pleasure of a few days ago.. and geeee.. it really hurt him.. and this time the wasp had got her on the temple. We picked the bike up and pulled what was left of the wasp stuck to heathers temple out. Applied some cream.. Of course this being Turkey a guy on a donkey came past right at that exact moment and offered his assistance.. This time we didn't need it. The sting had started to swell slightly but Heather said she was okay and we continued on our way.. or way to getting lost at least.. the road signs in turkey are completely stupid. What looks like a LEFT actually

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means straight ahead.. at least that is how it was for Goreme. After going left for about 10+minutes we decided to do a U-Turn and go back to where we saw the last sign. Unfortunately the road was gravel and Heathers U-Turn was drop number three.. She just wasn't having a good time of it. With damaged confidence and a poor nights sleep its so easy to screw up.. We eventually made it to Goreme and found a camp site with a pool to relax and enjoy the view over the town..

Ankara

2009-07-22T15:26:45+00:00

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Before coming to Ankara (The Capital of Turkey) we had read in several guide books that it was not all that great. Coming here with low expectations has been something of a godsend. So far Ankara has really exceeded all my expectations. Despite being inland its been cooler and the air is much dryer. I guess this is because its quiet high. I think its around 1000meters above sea level. This makes the city much more pleasant and the city has a real energy in the area we are staying Kizilay. It appears to be the main shopping, night club, pubs, restaurant area which gives you some amazing choice for what to do at all hours of the day. Its could have been unfortunate that we are on a tight budget except for the fact that all the food etc here is so cheap. 2TL for a Chicken Donner kebap is just one example.. that's around 70-80p or around 1euro. Ankara feels very young and happening, Istanbul on the other hand was very relaxed but it felt much more established as a city. I would recommend anyone travelling through turkey to spend at least a few days here, even if its only to relax before going on to other destinations. Apart from that we walked around the city and didn't really see much that was of interest to us.. except all the shops and places to eat :)

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The reason we came through Ankara was actually so that we could get the bikes serviced and buy new motorcycle tyres. We took in the R1200GS first then when that was complete the F650GS Dakar. Both bikes got done at Borusan Oto Çankaya Uğur Mumcu Cad. No: 8 06700 G.O.P. Ankara Tel: +90.312.459 8080 Fax: 436 4010 cankaya@borusanoto.com</a>

However their service centre is not at that location as we found out the hard way. The service centre is at the following address

Borusan Oto Servis Tic. AŞ

Birlik Şubesi

Birlik Mah.7.Cad.No:43 06150 Çankaya ANKARA

Tel: +903124541500

They can supply Metzeler tyres at reasonable prices based on what we found while searching around. For a pair of Karoo tyres it was 250e which was more expensive than the UK but cheaper than many other places in Turkey. If you need more than one set you can negotiate.

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All up the level of their service was excellent. Anyway enough about the service. We thought that the driving in Istanbul was nuts.. and it is.. however in Ankara nobody gives a shit about red lights.. It seems that red just means go.. Couple that with the fact that the roads here are soo slippery from the light dust its like riding on glass.. There have been several hair raising moments where the back wheels have slid out.. Thankfully we have not had any accidents yet (touch wood)... Its something that came as a bit of a shock to Heather when she was doing a U-Turn for the first time..

Anyway there has been very little happening over the last few days.. more to come soon!

Troy, Anatolia and onwards to Ankara

2009-07-20T06:03:48+00:00

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After troy we had planned to follow the coast road down to Hierapolis to see more archaeological sights.. Fortunately we decided to ditch that idea and instead focus our riding on heading somewhat directly to Ankara. In doing so we cut several hundred kilometres off our total journey distance. This was welcome news as the heat was forecast to increase along the coast... After a long break at a small cafe just outside of Troy we had come up with a plan. That plan was to head towards Edremit and on to Kutahya. The plan was to now take 3 days to ride to Ankara where we would get our bikes serviced, receive some packages with some spare parts and organise some other bits and pieces before we embark on the next stage of our journey.

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The first part of our plan was to fill the bikes with fuel.. My bike was reporting on the trip computer that it had less than 2miles of range remaining. Heathers bike had a similar story with her fuel light showing as being on and had done so for about the last 40km... The only problem was there appeared to be no petrol stations along our route. Luckily just as we turned on to a more major road one appeared. We had some kids fill up our bikes while we relaxed for a while. Heather then realised that there was an area for washing cars.. We enquired how much it would cost to use... the response FREE... we jumped at the chance to wash our bikes for the first time since Austria... The thick coating of dust on the bikes made us look even more like hobo's than usual... It was really just an excuse for us to play with the hose and cover ourselves in a nice dense spray of cool water... oops and clean the bikes.. For the first time we could actually see the plastics properly on both bikes.. The local kids at the service station also helped out in little bits and pieces which was nice. Very friendly. Everyone loves the bikes the number of people waving at us as we pass has been amazing since Romania.

Shortly after our petrol, bike wash, wet t-shirt competition I was attacked by a wasp while riding the bike.. thankfully I didn't crash the bike as it stung me several times on the neck. Each time it stung I could feel it go right up into my head.. I managed to pull over and kill the wasp.. Started riding again only to find the pain too unbearable and have to pull over again and put some cream on it... I think its time to start wearing my neck protector.... oh well maybe some other day when its not in the high 30's... Heather only noticed that something was wrong when she heard a girly scream through the bike to bike communication system... The scenery as we followed along the road was fantastic. With beautiful winding roads and coastal views along large sections of the ride to Edremit.

After Edremit we headed inland heading towards Balikesir along the D230. It was a very nice ride... until we needed to find accommodation.. Unfortunately there was nothing for over 100km. Eventually we got to Balikesir and found a hotel... That was only after we rode along a dual carriage way multi-lane 10+cm deep gravel "highway" for about 20km only to find the road went absolutely nowhere so we had to do a u-turn and go back to Balikesir... We should have guessed when several turkish motorists drove past yelling stuff at us and doing u-turn gestures with their arms out the windows... who could have guessed what they actually meant??... At the end of this mammoth piece of engineering work the road literally stopped and turned into a shitty sand track. It would have cost a fortune to build the "road to nowhere"... we are still trying to guess why the hell the road exists. Maybe the surveyors screwed up and the road went in the wrong direction.. only to realise after they had spent all the money???

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After back tracking and getting to the hotel we had a relaxing meal and went to sleep early. The next day we wanted to get to Eskisehir which would be a longish day. This was something that worried us as the D230 had just disappeared into the "road to nowhere".... After a quick investigation the following morning we found the sign post to Kutahya around a corner with no real road name signs. The road was terrible but the scenery was absolutely stunning. The road follows around the side of some mountains a river in the valley with small towns and farms dotted all along the side. The riding style quickly became dodge the oncoming trucks, while trying to avoid the sandy surface and potholes that could swallow your whole bike... It made for interesting yet very slow going. Despite the danger it was an experience I really enjoyed as it made the riding very intense. Every break was very welcome..

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After riding for a few hours we stopped for a Turkish bbq sis lunch.. wow it was awesome. And the bill was only 14TL (about £5)... By far the best Lunch I think we have had since we started this trip. It was just near Kutahya on the D230... Sorry forget the name of the place.. I'll have to get the GPS references for anyone that is interested. We then started to head on... At about 6pm we had been looking for a place to camp for some time.. Nothing was coming along.. After a while we saw a big hill start to emerge with some tree's on it.. That looked like something that we needed to investigate. After exploring some random dirt trails we ended up finding a fantastic place to camp.. Being a beautiful evening we decided that we would camp under only the mosquito net.. Something that I have wanted to do for some time. It's so much less stuffy in the heat and its awesome to look out at the stars. After an amazing nights sleep I managed to get this paparazzi photo of Heather still relaxing under the nets...

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Gallipoli, Troy and swimming in the sea..

2009-07-17T09:00:06+00:00

After being in Istanbul for 8 nights it was time to move on. Our route from Istanbul was to head south west along the coast to the Dardanelles and Gallipoli. As we started to leave Istanbul the weather forecast appeared to be right, storms. As the storms came in.. we just missed them. We followed the sunshine south. The heat intensified as we got further away

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from Istanbul's storms. It reached around 36c.. In the heat we found a place to camp just near the a "beach resort" and bar.. Finally we got our opportunity to have a swim in the sea.. Wow the water was warm but nothing like the 24c that at the Black sea.. If I had to guess it was probably around 20c. Either way it was a welcome change after riding in the heat. It was nice to get out of the water, have a beer and relax... After a beer we went back to where we had camped to find that there was a 100% fire ban.. That included all stoves due to a recent fire further down the coast. No Flameage caused us a few problems 1) no restaurant and 2) can't cook.. Luckily the guy who ran the beach bar could cook us up some fast food.. In the end we had about 4 double gin and tonic's while eating some quality chicken nuggets.. hmm healthy food... It was worth it.. until we had to get back into our stinking hot tent... In the process letting loads of bugs into the tent which all had a field day with Heather... we now call her James' insect decoy. We ended up waking early completely dehydrated, with nothing to drink except a few mouth fulls of water... (Because in the drunken state the night before "we" (Heather) spilt it over James' sleeping bag.. Oh well.. time to do the

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next bit of our ride to Gallipoli... This is where our second food saga began.. Unfortunately there was nothing open that served food at 9am in the morning.. a few places served beer but not food.. thinking that hair of the dog was probably a bad idea we just ordered some drinks from the restaurants and had a late... late.. late brunch while we waited for the ferry... Anyway back to Gallipoli.

Gallipoli has become somewhat of a "right of passage" for Aussies based on what we read in the aussie news in London..

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Actually when we got there we didn't see any Aussies.. It seemed to us that it was a melting pot of Turkish people going to see where the Turkish had one of their great military battles of the 20th Century. I am probably guessing that most of the Aussies who come only come around Anzac day.. Every other hotel or motel has some Aussie name like "Sydney Hotel" or "Sydney Aussie Place Hotel"... Most of them seemed from outside appearances to be pretty dodgy.. much like our camp site of the night before.. After our drinks of coke and water for breakfast we headed out to Lone Pine.

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On the way up the dirt track from the coast I had just finished saying to Heather over the bike to bike radio's that this dirt track was likely to be snake infested... bingo around the next corner a big black snake about 1.5 meters long trying to get out of the way of my bike as I rode past... Luckily I just missed it.. It still gave me a rude shock. Lone Pine is one of the key Australian battle memorials of the conflict. Something like 4000 Aussies died for the biggest advance that the ANZAC's made in the entire conflict. It must have been pretty terrible as soon as they got to the top of lone pine there was yet another ridge higher only a few hundred meters further back.. Bob Hawke opened the memorial there while he was prime minister of Australia. The views from the memorial are fantastic along the coast with the brilliant blue waters.

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After having a small break in the shade at Lone pine we headed back down to Anzac Cove. Having heard the stories about the beach landing its very difficult to comprehend how steep it actually is until you see it in the flesh.

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The beach is pretty steep just by itself.. Then you take into account that there is yet another 200 meter slope just a short distance further.. It would have been a real shock for the troops.

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After our stay at Gallipoli we headed towards the Lunch, Ferry and onwards to Troy.. The Ferry crossing was smooth and quick. Costing us 8TL each for the motorcycles it was nice and cheap. The ride from the ferry to Troy was steaming hot and there is no accommodation worth mentioning near Troy. It seems most people take Dolmus (shared taxi's) from the town where the ferry crosses. A guy found us sitting in the shade looking for accommodation and asked us if we needed assistance. He directed us to a place where we could sleep/camp on the beach.. YAY..

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That was where the fun began. He gave us directions to the beach and said that the French stayed there.. After riding for about 20km along a dirt track we decided to do a U-Turn... Right at that moment a car with French number plates drove past.. we decided to do an about turn and follow the car.. Thankfully we did and found a nice beach where we swam for a few hours to cool down in the late afternoon... We later pitched our tent on the beach... ahh Relaxation. Our second swim for the trip, This time in the Aegean Sea... The water was beautiful and warm. The sunset was fantastic. The following morning we woke early to go and sea Troy before the heat set in... We managed to get there around 9. We ended up hanging around an official tour so we could hear the inside story. te he he.. After this we headed out by about 10:30 to a cafe near by so that we could plan the next section of our journey.

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Istanbul as tourists

2009-07-13T06:27:31+00:00

After 4 days of working to complete all the remaining paper work we now had time to go and do more touristy stuff. First off the ranks was the topkapi palace. This is where the Sultans used to live for many years before they started to prefer more European style palaces which got built further up the Bosphorus towards the black sea. The palace was a really welcome change after we had been "Palaced out" visiting many of the European Palaces over the last 6years.

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The difference was immediately visible with open beautiful gardens and nice tile work that really sets the place apart from its European rivals. The view out over the Bosphorus was fantastic. The palace gardens provided a really nice cool oasis in the 36c temperatures which was such a pleasant surprise. The extravagance of the palace was also superb not being too over the top like some other palaces we have seen.

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After visiting the palace we decided to go and get some photos of the boats moored offshore in the sea of Marmara. We thought that the best time to get some images would be at night to really bring out the sheer number of boats. There must have been at least 300 boats all moored waiting to either go or come through the bosphorus. I personally have never seen so many huge ships in one place in my life. (Click the Picture below to expand the image). While at the coast taking photos I was amazed to see so many families still having picnics etc in the cool of the evening despite it being 9:30-10pm at night. It was very busy.

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The following day we decided that we would take a ferry tour of the Bosphorus and see the Asian side. It was interesting on the Ferry looking out to the City that has sprawled along the coast. It really reminded me of what it looks like in Sydney looking at the houses along the Harbour.

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The only difference is there are no mosques that I know of in Sydney on the Harbour while they are one of the big features of the Istanbul skyline. The ferry trip took around 5hrs:30minutes as we had a 2hour stop at some tourist trap place which seems to only exist for the sake of an Army Base and a ruined castle / fort right near the entrance to the Black sea. It would be a very strong strategic point that's for sure. On the way to the Ferry we found a shop which had an excellent range of plates that we found irresistible.

However we didn't buy anything... until we walked past the same shop on the way back from the Ferry and had another look. The guy discounted the plates by about 50% so we caved in and got two plates.. which lead us to our next scenario... Unfortunately the local post company PTT in Turkey does not ship Ceramic goods unless they are in a wooden box... but they don't sell wooden boxes and won't tell you where you can get them from... fantastic.. That lead us to the situation where we didn't have a means to get the plates home that we had just purchased. Thankfully just near our apartment there was a UPS office who gave us a special discount on shipping the plates back to Australia... lets hope they get there in one piece..

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Now its onwards to Gallipoli....

Istanbul, Visas and finally tourism

2009-07-10T14:39:23+00:00

After waking up early to get back to the Kazakhstan embassy after our rather annoying discovery that it was not open on Wednesday...

For anyone interested in getting a Kazakhstan visa in Istanbul the opening times are 10:30 to 12:30am on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday for submitting applications and from 3:30 to 4:40 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.. Its closed on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You MUST have your visa support/Letter of Invite printed out prior to submitting the application.

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We ended up riding to the embassy as we now knew where it was... It took us around 30minutes to get to there. Upon arriving there was already a line of people waiting... After waiting around in the line for around an hour only to find that we had to have a copy of our Letter of invite.. We had been told previously that we could quote a reference number and they would have a copy on file.. Unfortunately this was not the case, they ended up being nice enough to take our memory stick and print out the two invites to include in our application. All up it took about 1.5 hours to submit the two applications. We got told to return on Friday between 3:30 and 4:30 pm... Now it was time to head back to our apartment. After a brief lunch while a thunderstorm rolled in we headed out to the Grand Bazaar.. The humidity after the storm was almost stifling.. After arriving at the Grand Bazaar we were immediately inundated with the vibrant colours of the jewellery and home goods, energy and smells of the carpets, spices and leather goods and anything else someone could sell.. As expected we got touted for all these things plus more.. “perfume perfume.. get your perfume..” Luckily for us we had become immune to their touts after our previous trip to Marocco. The Markets in Marocco are much more chaotic and the touts much per persistent than in Instanbul.

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Personally I enjoyed the markets in Istanbul but they are no match for Marocco. After several hours of working our way throught he maze, seeing some of the same shops several times as we got lost a few times we found our way out on the opposite side... We headed down towards the coast through yet more markets, shops and touting.. In the crowds the heat was intense, it was a welcome blessing to get some cool breeze as we came down the hill. At the bottom of the hill ended up finding a small electrical goods store which had portable multi-band radios.. It was listed at 32TL and after being worn out by the other touts we agreed on 30TL which was hugely in their favour.. Anyway we got our radio and paid around 1 Euro less for it.. ho hum.. We are by this time absolutely knackered from the heat (36c) and the constant walking and avoiding touts.. We ended up finding a small restaurant that served some traditional Turkish food and beers with comfortable seats for us to chill out and watch the world go by for some time.. It was great to be able to sit down after being on our feet constantly in the heat for about 4 hours... mmmmmm beer.. mmmmmm Turkish food.. While we drank and waited for the food we decided to bring out our new little radio.. The waiter had a look at it and laughed saying it was probably only worth 5TL.... He then served us our food..But only after trying to come across as being cool.. and instead smashing the terracotta urn that the food was prepared in.. It all went down a little too easily and after about 2 hours we decided to head back to our apartment and get some more beers on route..

Beer, Radio and Cards.. we ended up sitting in our room watching the world go by on the water as the sunset listening to our new radio (which actually worked) drinking beer playing 10 of a kind... Ahh relaxation...

After a few beers the night before we woke slightly later than usual but it was already baking hot.. It was 30c at 8am. It seems that we are finally starting to adjust to the heat. We had loads of chores to do and chased up many of our missing bike parts, replacement bike tyres, banking etc. All of the pieces in the pie are finally starting to fit together which is another reason why we had to stay for such a long time in Istanbul... After a morning of organisation and preparation it was time to head back to the Kazakh embassy.. after the 30minute ride out we ended up arriving about 25minutes before the afternoon visa pick up opening times... There was already a line of people waiting in the heat it was not something that we expected... After waiting in line for around an hour we finally managed to get into the visa office only to be told that our visa's had been approved but we now needed to go to a Turkish bank and transfer some money into their account electronically and bring the receipt back to the embassy to pick up our passports. This was great news given that it was already 4:15pm and the office closed at 4:30.. The security guide was nice enough to give us a pretty drawing of the directions we needed to get to the bank.. After getting there the bank issued Heather a number for her in the queue while I parked the bike. There was a long wait and it felt unlikely that we would be able to get back to the embassy in time to get our passports today... which meant only one thing.. we would have to wait until Monday afternoon to pick up our visa.. ouch!.. it was not looking good.. It was great news when 5 people before us in the queue appeared to be no shows so we ended up getting in and paying the money in about 15 minutes it cost us 90 US dollars for two double entry visas (70 US dollars for single) making it with bank costs 320 TL.. That makes it record time for queuing since leaving the UK.. We raced back to the embassy as it was now about 4:45. It was a huge relief when the guard let us back in to pick up our passports despite being after closing time.. yay one for the win.. finally something went the right way..

Our trip home from the Kazakh embassy during Friday afternoon peak hour traffic was something of an adventure. The traffic which during normal times is crazy was actually crazy++. At least being on a bike we were able to filter around for the vast majority of the trip cutting the trip time down from what it could have been to only around 50minutes.. The traffic at the turn for the Sultanahmet was so crazy that they had police to enforce the lights as everyone was just ignoring the red lights and blocking the traffic. It was nice to see the police telling cars trying to push in to get lost...

The Turkish drivers really get angry when you can get in front of them on a bike.. especially if your on UK plates.. ha ha ha.. no match for a bike being able to go between the cars.. even when they try and box you in..

Given that most of our administration tasks had now been finalised we could focus on being tourists.

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Edirne to Istanbul the Gateway to Asia

2009-07-09T15:35:26+00:00

After leaving our campsite very early (before 8am) we decided that we would go directly into Istanbul to our accommodation in the Sultanahmet. We had all our maps sorted so that we could get in with the most ease.. We decided to just ride straight down the D100 all the way into central Istanbul. Well that is what we had planned anyway.. it was not so easy.. Unfortunately the traffic and driving in Istanbul was absolutely nuts. With cars going all over the place with no indication of what their next move, buses pulling out without caring who as coming along, it was very hazardous to motorcycles..

We ended up taking the wrong turn initially (I will not point any fingers though it was not James :-) and going through Bakirkoy which appears to be a big shopping district only about 10km from central Istanbul.. After this we managed to find out way back onto the D100 and head on our way.. We finally found the exit that we needed to take unfortunately Heather was busy looking at the truck that had over turned right at the intersection we needed to turn at.. oops missed another turn.. lets look for a place to do a U-Turn.. oops there wasn't one.. 15kms later and fed-up we ended up having to go and cross over to Beyoglu and did an illegal U-Turn across the tram lines.. At which time there was a police traffic man yelling as he ran across the road for us to stop.. oops we just kept on going pretending not to notice.. oh well lets go back and find that exit we missed before.. After finally finding the exit we started to look for our accommodation.. Well that's yet another case of easier said than done. The directions and the map on lastminute.com was not only wrong but it was completely wrong. After spending 2hours riding around the Sultanahmet in the 34c heat we managed to get some assistance from some Turkish people who knew their way around and they gave us the real location of where the accommodation was. “Easy”.. we ended up finding the accommodation about 10-15minutes later in the place that it was actually meant to be.. WOW!!..

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This is where the fun with lastminute.com started. We booked our self catering apartment through lastminute.com but we never actually received any confirmation receipt via email like promised... It turns out that the hotel was double booked for the first night. Our apartment hosts found us another local hotel for the first night and helped us park our bikes on the footpath outside the hotel in the old town... This was more than fun. The gutter up from the road to the foot path was abnormally high.. probably at least 40cm high which made getting the loaded bikes up a four person job.. Thankfully we had help from our hosts. We unpacked all our gear from the bikes and left it at reception while we went and checked into the other hotel..

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In our Hotel room Heathers special ability to break anything she touches came into force.. The first thing she broke was the room's curtains when she tried to close them she just ripped them down from the roof.. Rails and all... Then she opened the closet door and broke that too... while she was sitting on a glass table wondering what we should do, to which she also cracked that.. yay.. the triple combo. We then got transferred to another room which was much nicer and she didn't manage to break everything :) The hotel was basic but the staff really made the stay there exceptional. The friendliest hotel staff we have had to date (and with free internet). For some reason Heather kept on asking for other hotel guests keys because she kept forgetting which room number we had.. YAY!!

In the morning we woke early with the plan to head to the Kazakhstan embassy so that we could finalise our visas.. after taking the train to bakirkoy we then took a taxi to the embassy... Only to find out that its closed on Wednesdays.. YAY!!... Whilst stopped at traffic lights the taxi driver got out, went to the boot and gave us some Turkish wagon wheel like biscuits and drove us back to the station. As the journey progressed the taxi driver was popping pills and was getting more erratic than usual, kept wanting to drop us off at a hotel, we said no hotel, titanic hotel, no hotel, hotel, no hotel, hotel, no hotel we ended up just asking to get out, We ended up getting back to the hotel while the cleaning lady was cleaning up the room.. She had packed up all our stuff into a big pile as it was well after check out time.

This is where we made two trips to take our gear back to our now available apartment.. on the return for the second leg Heather tried to go into someone else's room because she didn't check the number and just saw that the cleaning lady was in there.. she had a big laugh at Heather which was rather amusing.. Heathers room number skills coming into force again!! Haha..

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Finally we had our own apartment and kitchen we could settle into our stay in Istanbul and get some relaxation...The apartment has a good view over the sea and all the boats which gives us a nice breeze in the heat making it all the more bearable at 36c...Its amazing how many ships off the coast would say over 50....

Bulgaria and the Black sea coast to Turkey

2009-07-05T10:58:12+00:00

</a>After a really long day travelling south along the black sea coast, we expected to be easily able to cross the boarder into turkey. Unfortunately there are very few boarder crossings with Turkey. The crossing that we ended up using meant that we travelled a few hundred kilometres back west so that we could cross just north of Edirne in Turkey.

The scenery was beautiful but in the heat of the day it was starting to get too much doing the additional 250km. Eventually we got to the boarder crossing.. Finally leaving the EU and moving onto the next stage of our trip.. We arrived at the boarder crossing at 6.15pm and ended up leaving after 9pm.. only three hours. At least we now have some idea of what to expect when we go through other more serious boarder crossings.

First of all we exited from Bulgaria, yet again our papers all got checked for the bikes, Then we got checked again by Bulgaria for some unknown reason while they let all the cars just drive on past... We then sat in one of about 30 queues to get through to the Turkish Passport control.. There must been at least 2000 other cars in the queue.. Because the queues moved only one car at a time we pushed the bikes for the 500meters from the first gates to the passport control.. This was our “Fitness Program” of the moment. We would think that pushing the bikes may have been embarrassing.. well actually the vast majority of people were pushing their cars too...At Passport control we had to go and organise our visa's which cost $20US each... Then we went on to Customs where we had to buy local Turkish third party motorcycle insurance which cost $30US for 30 days (per bike).After that we finally had all our stamps that we required to finally enter into Turkey at the third gate. YAY.. we are now in Turkey and its already dark. We hit the motorways heading towards Edirne where we took the exit to look for somewhere to stay. We found a campsite just outside of town on the D100 called “Omur Camping”.

Omur Camping... well lets just say a few things about this “special” campsite.. Its location was perfect for us to be able to go into Edirne and do some bits and pieces like organise accommodation in Istanbul.. It is by far the biggest rip off campsite that we have seen to date. They charge in Euro even though the local currency is now the Turkish Lira.. Not only do they charge for the tent, bikes and people like most campsites they also charge to use all the facilities.. 5euro to go for a swim, 3euro for a dog, 5euro to use the washing machine etc.. It was all very expensive given that we could have used the pools etc for free at all the campsites we have stayed at previously... No suprises that the place was dead quiet and people only stayed the absolute minimum time possible.. The other value added “feature” of the site was that they a huge population of killer mosquitoes just waiting for you in the showers, toilets, bathrooms, tent, outside, anywhere actually come to think of it...

The temperatures are now sitting around 30-36c which is a big increase to what we got used to in Romania and Bulgaria. The roads in Turkey are much more civilized and people are much more aware of what is going on around them so far... Its a nice improvement but riding in these temperatures is definitely not for the faint hearted. We will need to start planning our days around much longer lunch breaks to take advantage of not being in the heat of the day...

Edirne is a beautiful city which we had to stop at not only for our organisational tasks but we had to have our first Turkish Kebab... How could we resist.. especially after such a long day previously getting out of Bulgaria (10am until 11pm).

Sibiu and onwards to the Black Sea

2009-07-04T10:50:33+00:00

So after a long day riding from Transylvania down through some beautiful mountain scenery

and fruit orchards. Where we bought some fruit and vegetables from a few road side farms, we bought 1kg of red cherries for 1lei (about 20p).. Still amazed me, the farms scales only did 1kg so we had more cherries than we could ever eat before they went bad... We ended up finding a hotel in a place called Sloboza. The hotel was excellent with a nice restaurant. Just after we sat down for dinner a huge thunderstorm which had been threatening to hit us while we rode came in. It knocked out all the power in the area including the hotel. This was rather amusing as the restaurant couldn't give us our bill.. the solution was to have a few more drinks while the electricity came on.. Unfortunately with no electricity and no wind, lots of still water the mosquitoes came out in force...Heather then wanted to go inside where it was all dark.. Unfortunately its not so great to be drinking in the dark.. We ended up moving seats out closer to the open area's hoping that the mosquito problem wouldn't be so bad. It

was to great amusement of the other customers watching heather trying to keep the mosquitoes from biting. After a long night we managed to do many of our internet and maintenance tasks in the morning. Then we finally left for our final leg of the Journey through to the Black Sea at Constanta. The ride to the coast was more boring flat roads with almost nothing of interest to see. Some of the river crossings and looking at some of the lochs for huge commercial shipping lines to use made for interesting interruptions to absolutely boring scenery... The one constant that we did have was the same friendly Romanian people everywhere we stopped..

In Constanta we found a Supermarket and bought some food for Lunch and dinner, the hope was to find somewhere that we could stay along the coast.. When we stopped at a beach to have lunch the stench of the industrial black sea was horrendous. It was like the sewerage was just brewing for about 150km along the coast. While we looked for accommodation... we kept riding south then all of a sudden we found that we had arrived at the Bulgarian border which was much closer than we had anticipated. This meant it was the end of our Romanian stage of the trip and we entered Bulgaria.. The first boarder crossing where we had to show that we actually owned our bikes. The boarder was rather confusing and it wasn't so easy to understand how it all worked. Our passports got taken only once and our bike paper work got checked out.. Then they had a stop sign just down the road with a Bulgarian flag.. However there was nobody there.. Odd.. Let us hope that it won't cause problems with us getting out of Bulgaria and into Turkey.

</a>After crossing the border with Bulgaria you don't have to buy the Vingette if your on a Motorcycle, however cars and other vehicles are all required to buy the tax. There is a tax stop about 500meters further on from the border. With all the now familiar rip-off exchange shops... We didn't exchange any money there and ended up riding for about an hour into Bulgaria to find a bank. The police presence that we had in Romania was immediately blitzed by the cops in Bulgaria. It seems that they take road rules very seriously and the speed limits are all over the shop.. Going from 100km to 40 or 30km per hour for no apparent reason. The road quality in Bulgaria has so far been terrible, much worse than Romania and I would recommend anyone to ride with care if they do travel here, they have loads of fine dust on the road which can be like riding on wet glass.

After we got some funds we bought some petrol and went looking for a camp-site or some accommodation for the night. We ended up finding a “camp site”.. well that's where the fun began. The stench that we could smell at Constanta was actually the water. The campsite was pretty nasty but it was great to go to sleep on the beach with the sounds of the water and the nice cool sea breeze. Unfortunately our stay was to be only one night... At about 4am James was woken with an emergency run to the loo.. The joys of Food poisoning most likely from some dodgy water despite being very careful. Heather was soon to follow with the awful stomach cramps and loo runs.This was what sealed the fate for the campsite. We made a hasty exit to find a hotel where we would have immediate access to clean toilets. As we travelled down the coast to Varna we went through a few resort towns and nothing really caught us despite the desperation of needing to fnd something QUICK!!..

We ended up finding a 4 Star resort that had some availability called the Edelweiss Hotel near “golden sands” on the Bulgarian coast just north of Varna. The hotel room was such a relief.. After finding an ATM and supermarket we stocked up on reserves so we could hibernate while we let the food poisoning pass... A terrible day was had by both of us feeling quiet ill. Every cloud has a silver lining..

After spending a day to get over the first onslaught we managed to go exploring and found the resort and around the town and beaches to be a really nice surprise with loads of great restaurants and shops all along a very nice long beach.

The touts trying to get business into the restaurants have some ingenious ways at their disposal. One of the restaurant touts was a true classic.. She was singing a song “yummie yummie food in your tummie.. go and eat and drink here and get the best food in your tummie that's really yummie”. It's funny when the same guys recognise your on a return trip or walking around aimlessly looking for something and try every time despite knowing that your not interested.. I guess no harm in trying. While we walked around the beach area we heard a big crack sound and a whole half side of a tree just fell over.. It was very lucky that nobody was hurt/crushed by the tree coming down so unexpectedly.. It was really unusual, Unfortunately we didn't have our camera or phone on us to really take in the scene.

If we had raced through Bulgaria like we had planned to after the first two days experience we would never have been able to really appreciate what Bulgaria has to offer. I think that the black sea coast resorts can really offer more for your money with good multi-language skills in absolutely everywhere. I would come back here rather than going to many of the Spanish resort towns...

Hungary to Romania... Transylvania

2009-06-29T09:53:22+00:00

</a>After the mosquito infested campsite we decided that we would make a quick exit from Hungary and head into Romania. Hopefully to warmer and mosquito free weather.. It was a good plan.. We got to the boarder with Romania with ease... It was rather amusing to see how long the queue space for the boarder crossing was.. It must have been 5-10km long.. eventually we arrived at the crossing and had our passports stamped and made a quick exit from the boarder crossing.. After crossing into romania you see immediately that there are all these people trying to attract you to their "booth". However the Romanian Vignette (road tax) is not required for Motorcycles so we sped past. Don't listen to any of the scammers who are waiting for you at the boarder to 1) change your currency, 2) get you to buy a vignette.. Its cheaper to buy the fuel, currency and vignette (if your driving a car or truck) away from the boarder.. You can get them about 5km up the road at a service station for a better price with less hassle..

As you travel further into Romania the price for fuel drops significantly.. I think they expect everyone to think wow this is cheap and then buy.. The price difference can be around 20cents/litre away from the boarder.

The road from the boarder into "greater Romania" was pretty boring across a huge flood delta where there was nothing at all worth seeing.. There are ATM's to take cash out about 5km from the boarder too so you can get the money for your stuff there without paying the crazy exchange rates.. often 25% less in your favour.

After hearing that the roads in Romania are really really bad we found that the main route in from Hungary to Romania was actually just recently fixed, with freshly painted lines. It was really nice riding despite being boring and flat across the flood delta. We headed further into Romania and found that there is a real shortage of camp sites.. Or at least there are no camp site signs. We eventually found one really nice camp site which is run by a Romanian man and his Dutch wife. The money from the camp site goes to a local orphanage (childrens home) which is a great cause, the kids also help run the site. Everyone was really friendly and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is travelling through Romania and wanting quality affordable accommodation. Their web address is www.routeroemenie.nl</a>. Fundatia TDS, Cornel en Anna Tarniceri, Minis 298, 317137 Minis - Romania. Telephone 004 0742768111. Email : Camping.route.Roemenie@gmail.com. There is a huge list of things to do in the surrounding area so you can stay for several days and really enjoy the area. Unfortunately we couldn't stay for more than one night as we needed to get to Istanbul for the 6th of July. While camped we met a dutch couple that had spent the last few months (may and June) travelling around Turkey in their VW camper. They gave us some awesome tips and places to stay while travelling through Turkey. Its one thing that has been really good. Friendly campers at many of the sites giving us tips and tricks to avoid being scammed or show us where to go or not to go.

At the campsite we also spoke to a Belgian guy who had been spending his summers travelling around Romania for the last few years. He was telling us about the wolves, bears etc and how its not wise to camp in the forest in Romania. We also read more in the news about people being mauled by Romanian bears.. not something that we wanted to really experience so we have decided its going to be only proper campsites for us.. at least until we get to the coast.. We have never heard of bears swimming in the black sea.. although maybe they do! who will know until we actually get there...

After heading out of that campsite we headed to Deva and onwards to Sibiu in the heart of Transylvania. We found a wonderful campsite just outside of the main city where we have decided to rent a cabin and stay there for a few days to take in the area and explore (read meat drakula.. aka DrakHeather). Unfortunately its not a full moon.. dammit maybe next time.

In the previous post we made comments about the Hungarian Drivers.. Well that is nothing.. since getting to Romania they must seriously have a death wish their driving is horrendous. We have seen so many completly wrecked cars and several accidents where cards have swiped eachother.. Everyone tries to drive in the centre of the road which is horrid as they just try and push motorcycles off the road.. not by intention I hope but its crazy. And the over takes are shocking.. We just have to give them space and let them past so we don't get caught up in their shit driving skills. At least we are staying carefuil and hopefully it will improve as we head towards the coast and Bulgaria and Turkey..

The Romanian Countryside has been very beautiful. With many people waving as we ride past and everyone has been super friendly so far.

I think the Romanians are very proud people and their history is very rich. So far Romania takes the cake as being our top country so far on this trip. While staying we visited the Roman Basilica Michelsberg Burg.

Hungary, money and festivals..

2009-06-26T09:02:49+00:00

After waking up after a night with our joyous money experience we had our priority to find some Hungarian Florint and fast.. We needed to pay for the campsite and get some money so we could actually Live.. The one good thing was that we stocked up on food before we left the Lakes in Croatia.. At leat we could eat.. After going back to all the banks in Town to see if it was some error the night before, unfortunately the banks in that town all sucked big time. All the ATM's said they accepted maestro cards.. Unfortunately they just don't accept UK cards. After hunting around I was directed to a place that would exchange our Croatian currency for Hungarian Florint.. Finally we had some cash that we could pay for the accommodation with and live with... It was time to clear out of the place and start heading towards Budapest and onwards to Romania..

After such a long day getting from Croatia into Hungary we wanted to have a fairly short day and relax in the afternoon.. We came across a little town that we later found out was about to host a Hungarian Festival. We decided to camp there for the night and see what the festival had in store.. Unfortunately when we found the campsite it actually looked more like a umm... construction site or maybe more like a ghetto.. anyway we headed back to Information to find some alternative place to stay. We ended up taking a room in a guest house just down the road from Information right near the centre of town.. what a great place to stay the room was huge with a nice balcony and free washing etc.. It was a great place for us to spend a few nights and relax and see the festival. In the end we caught up with all our chores and did the washing etc.. no more stink.. Whooo Hoooo.. The festival was very traditional Hungarian and was very local centric. It was nice to see such a display and to really recoup after our long day and bad weather in Croatia. It was such a nice change. Every day in Hungary we would have steaming hot weather with huge thunderstorms in the afternoon to cool things down which was awesome to see the storms roll in..

After this we moved on staying in the biggest mosquito infested campsite to date... I guess we can call it preparation for Siberia.. The area of Hungary we now found ourselves in was full of thermal pools and beautiful country side.. It was also our first run in with the Police.. Whoo hooo.. I was shitting myself as we didn't know what he speed limit was in this area of Hungary.. Luckily for us they just wanted to give us some random breath testing.. This was a huge relief. They checked out our passports, bikes and then our alcohol blood level.. I think it was Heathers first RBT.. We both came back with 0.00% blood alcohol which was nice given that the allowed blood alcohol level in Hungary is 0.00%.. Onwards we went through the lakes and to the campsite. We spent the evening through the now regular storm playing cards and drinking tea.. After the storms had passed we went for a walk around the Beautiful little town near the campsite. It was nice to see that the Hungarians really take pride in their towns and everything was very neat and tidy.. Unlike Croatia.... okay enough croatia bashing..

The one thing that we have been finding as we head further east the driving becomes more "special".. we thought that the German riders in the Alps took the cake.. unfortunately that was just a taste test of what was to come.. In Hungary we have witnessed so many close call head on accidents at 100km/hour + between impatient drivers trying to over take trucks only to realise they have no power half way through the over take.. shit there was a few moments where I thought I was about to witness a massive accident. One in particular the truck had to swerve off the road as the trucks the car was trying to over take had to break hard to let the over taking van get in.. it was so close im pretty sure it was less than 50cm between a fatal accident and a complete mess where we would have surely been hurt.. So far we have seen 3 cars that have crashed down an embankment or into a tree or slid down a slope in Hungary.. not to mention all the dodgy over takes..

Zagreb to Hungary

2009-06-24T08:43:53+00:00

After leaving the lakes and setting our destination to Zagreb the Capital of Croatia we arrived late in the afternoon. After about 2 hours of riding we found no accommodation at all. We thought we will pass Zagreb and head towards Budapest in Hungary... "There must be accommodation somewhere between Zagreb and Budapest... in Croatia".. well we found out after riding for 6 hours that there was nothing worth talking about or even remotely worth staying at anywhere north of Zagreb towards Budapest.Although it must be said that Zagreb is a nice city and I would highly recommend going through there to anyone...

</a>All the hotels wanted into the hundreds of euro's per night for "4 star".. which was more like minus 4 star in towns which would scare even clint eastwood away as dirty harry.. Many of the towns looked seriously like they are from some sort of movie set with all broken down factories and run down roads. I'm sure its not as bad as we are claiming here but at the time in storms and stuff it looked scary. We ended up riding all the way through to one of the termal pool towns close to the boarder in Hungary. The campsite was very nice and the area/town near it was very pretty. The difference between Croatia and Hungary was immediately evident. Only a few kilometers and everything was nice and tidy, the roads improved and the towns became clean. Its not that we didn't like Croatia it just not really what we expected and the weather made it really terrible for riding. So after 4 days of terrible weather and reports saying it was to last for another 4-5 days we headed north to where the weather looked to improved.

The joys of different countries with different currencies.. It was something that we didn't plan too well primarily because we didn't expect to be out of croatia so soon. So we had to get Hungarian Florint.. Unfortunately no bank would take our UK cards to get money out.. and at 10pm at night the currency change places had closed hours ago. We only found this out after Heather had been left at the restraunt and ordered some pizzas and beers only to find out we had no money to pay for them about 20minutes later. I went to 9+ banks and 5 different shops etc to ask people about money. Unfortuantely nobody spoke english.. and none of the abnks took our money. It was a very embarrassing situation that was starting to brew.. No money.. lots of food and beer and no english or hungarian skills.. We ended up having a serious problem tryin to explain to the guy that we could only pay in Croatian or Euro's.. He didn't like that idea after intially saying yes he went back on it after we had eaten and drank all the beer... wow.. now we are properly screwed. In the end the bill was less than 8 euro's including all the beers.. Because he didn't have enough change and wouldn't exchange anything we ended up having to pay 20 euro and just leaving him to sort it out himself.. We felt like real dickheads... although being a dickhead comes really naturally :)

Croatia... and umm more weather and broken buildings

2009-06-23T12:02:05+00:00

After some shocking weather in Slovenia and some wild camping in the Forest we stayed in a Hotel for our second night in Slovenia.. The first for our trip so far.. How nice was it to have a real bed to sleep in finally.. We didn't realise at the time though that our wild camping experience the previous night was actually in a bear area. oops.. maybe wild camping is not such a great idea in the mountains around the Balkans... after all heather thought she heard noises in the night.. maybe it was some bear trying to sniff around the tent.. Maybe it was the central heating system that kept it away after all.. Who will ever know.. one thing we do know for sure is that we are not going to be wild camping so much any more until we know there are no more bears.. ohh.. maybe the odd koala then.. After we camped near the Plitvice Lakes National Park</a>. From there we went to see the baracs caves</a> and the lakes. On the way to the National Park we came across a town called Slunj where we got our first glimps of what we should expect in the national park.

Just before the town in the middle of the forest we saw this beautiful little setting.

It was good to have a day off and relax while the really bad weather passed. Unfortunately our plan to let the weather pass was not so great.. looking at the weather forecast its going to be crap weather for 5-7 days.. depending on who you believe (the bbc or weather.com). The caves looked pretty cool but they have nothing on many of the caves I've seen in Australia (Jenolan for example). It was still a nice suprise and the tour guide was excellent. I would recommend anyone going to the lakes to make the small detour (10km) to see the caves.

One of the stark differences between Croatia has been the number of buildings in a terrible state. Many of them pitted with bullet holes, shell's or with little memorials of families that have died there during the conflict. It was very depressing seeing all these comunities of just ruined buildings all over the area. There are so many ruined buildings they probably out number inhabited buildings 5 to 1.

Its crazy but its a real reminder of how shit war must really be. Now we have seen the lakes and the caves we had planned to go down to the coast and travel for a while. With the shit weather we are going to head north instead to Hungary and then east to Romania missing the Dalmatian Coast. Maybe next time if there is one we will make it down there.. or if the weather improves in the next 30 minutes our route will be back on track...

Italy to Slovenia.... Weather not included.

2009-06-21T18:48:41+00:00

Well well what can I say, yesterday was very hot at 'only' 34 degrees (Celcius), I was sweating by the time we got into Slovenia, after only 2 hours ride from where we camped in Italy. We went to the petrol station and was surprised to see that the Unleaded petrol was less than 1.10 Euro/ litre which when we were paying 1.33 Euro per litre 5 miles away in Italy was a lovely surprise.And even more lovely when you think that in France some places wanted 1.429 Euro/Litre.We had to pay road tax on our bikes which was 17.50 Euro for 6 months (Bugger)..We got to a forest which we had lunch on the side of the road, I threw off my jacket as I was baking hot! My shirt was wet it was so hot though the blow flies and mossies made me pay for it whilst biting my Naive arse. We saw a great camping site so decided to get some water and camp there the night. Went into “town” which was a couple of houses and a few shacks for Slovenia, there was the castle in the rock face/cave which we had planned to see it this afternoon though we put it off until tomorrow because it was late and the “town” resembled a western movie ghost town. The only missing part was the tumbleweed and the tune. We were going to take photos though thought there would be plenty of time... not to mention heather had not charged the battery for the camera since we left the UK and we had no power captain!!!.

Morning sunshine! I think not, I was awoken during the night to some “showers” and what I thought was a bear (heather), though I thought it would pass.. a little morning shower. By 7am it was raining hard and thunder and lighting was seriously above us cracking away, was quite scary at first thinking we may be struck... fried aussies in a tent.. what could be worse... thinking of the bikes. James said we should wait until 10am until it passes, though the only thing he was passing was his so called “central heating” which I could have done without whilst stuck in a tent. We played some cards while hearing the massive cracking of lightning overhead which wasn't appearing to be moving on like any other storm. I decided that I wanted out... I wanted out now.. ASAP.. I was over James' so called central heating which frankly I was almost passing out and playing cards was hard whilst you couldn't actually sit up. James seemed to be Hypo on the electricity storm (and central heating) as he was jumping around like a jelly bean and hiding under the covers (read sleeping bag and liner)!! (I think he was actually sniffing the glue) I finally got him to emerge from the tent. We packed up quickly in the pouring rain, which was the fat hard rain by the way. Everything was packed, though where we were wild camped was down a hill in the forest. It was seriously slippery though we finally without any drops got the bikes out (Thanks to James' mastery of offroad skills and central heating aka Turbo's). We decided to forget about the castle in the rock under such seriously shit weather and carry on to Croatia. To give you an idea we had to travel 36km on a clay dirt road down what most people would call a cliff.. However the Slovenians call it a road... however interpretation is what travelling is all about.. or lack there of.

We got out of the “campsitte” and started down the mountain... every kilometre was getting more and more windy... which we did not appear to be affected by in the forest. By the time we got back to the main town it was a serious gale wind with debris all over the roads (whole tree's and Slovenian Drivers). We decided to move on anyway. We got onto the motorway which just getting on to was a struggle. I almost stopped before merging as I felt I was getting blown off the bike and road. Going 30kms per hour I had my hazards on, seeing all the debris in my path trying to avoid while still not being blown off the bike. At one point I stopped, went to the guard rail while the wind was pushing so hard that my bike was getting banged against it. I stopped to cry for my mummy... it didn't help. I have never ever felt such gale force winds and we were far away from the 34 degrees C of yesterday. It was 11 degrees and the wind chill factor was freezing fingers. James was literally blue. I literally almost felt like crying a couple of times as I thought I was going to get blown off my bike. Whilst I called for my mummy and prayed to god. It finally calmed down (read there was some wind protection on the road). and we exited the motorway. On the other road the wind decided to push us the other direction into incoming traffic, ok so we have had to deal with guard rail winds, oncoming traffic winds, frontal winds and from my prospective James' winds! (read turbo) I have had almost enough and am exhausted whilst only riding 2 hours. Taking into account the wind speed indicator said the wind was going 100km/hour..,

p.s... I'm now in a hotel drinking beer very drunk writing post.. oops me drunk who would have guessed... ha ha.. heather inc.

cencenighe agordino to meccanico del moto

2009-06-15T10:23:32+00:00

After waking up at 5:30am to get our day started so we could find a mechanic we coasted down the hill into cencenighe agordino after being told that there was a mechanic in Agordo that would be able to fix the BMW F650GS..We initially thought that it would be a good idea to get to town then find someone with something that could transport the bike to the mechanics.. However after successfully going the 1.6km down the hill from our campsite into town we had the bright idea to see if we could make it another 10km down to Agordo....

After spending 4 hours going to various mechanics in town and asking around.. (with a few Latte Macchiato's in the mix) we got told that we needed to go to tecnomoto in Belluno because all the mechanics in Agordo either had too much work or didn't do electrical problems. Which was around 30km away.. Could the bike make it another 30km of doing no left hand turns with the engine running.. With James in the lead we cruised the 30km down the hill from Agordo to Belluno to get into town and find round abouts.. f... Of course just to really mix it up a little they required us to do left hand turns !!.. With the electrical problem getting worse.. the bike was now not starting so easily when it went off during a left hand turn.. This of course had to happen on one of the busiest round abouts in Belluno. With heather walking her bike over to the edge of the road so she could straighten up the steering again so she could start on the journey to tecnomoto... After a 30km trip taking around 1hr 20minutes we finally made it to tecnomoto. We waited in line to ask about getting it fixed only to be told there was a bmw dealership 300meters further down the road which would be better suited to fix the problem than them..

So after several false starts getting back onto the road from tecnomoto we found ourselves on route to a bmw dealership... where nobody spoke english.. This was really turning into an interesting day.. The guys at the dealership eventually found someone who spoke some English so we could explain our problem to them.. They agreed that they could have a look at it that day, but it wouldn't be fixed for a few days due to their current work load.. This lead us to another problem we had.. What do we do with Heather and the Luggage from her bike while I go and find accommodation. The BMW Dealership called us a taxi and we went in loops trying to find a campsite... In the end heather had run out of money and had to sit on the side of the road waiting for me to find the campsite with all her luggage.. At least she had a book to read in the 32c degree temperatures..

After about a further 5km James found the campsite unloaded most of his luggage at the campsite reception and returned taking a further 7 trips back and forwards to get the luggage and Heather to the campsite.

It was not sweltering with humidity more than before and we both sat down for a well earned beer and pasta for lunch at the campsite restaurant... Ahh the saga had finally almost come to an end.. At around 6pm we got a call from the dealership saying that it would take at least until wednesday to resolve the issue... At least we could have a few days off camping on the side of a beautiful lake to relax..

The same scene just before a huge electrical storm.

Just before going to bed last night we went for a walk to watch the Electrical Storms coming in while at the same time working off our pizza's for dinner. While on the walk we saw the most amazing site where there was hundreds of fire flies glowing.. We thought we may have had some dodgy mushrooms on the pizza but it was real.. Fire Flies.. Unfortunately the photos didn't turn out well :( maybe next time.

Italy Trento to cencenighe agordino

2009-06-14T10:00:50+00:00

After spending the night at a great campsite very close to Predazzo on route to Lago di paneveggio for yet another mountain pass to cross. The camp site was the first we stayed at which had a proper restaurant serving fantastic Italian cuisine. We drank loads of good wine and ate pizza for dinner. Which is where we found our new mascot. Gnomie the wooden hobo 15.

The following morning we woke and went for a walk into town before starting our journey again. On route over the mountain pass James came around a corner only to find that the corner was actually a foot thick gravel pit.. oops off he goes.. Thankfully a big Itallian Harley rider was there to help lift the bike and get us back on route.. Its amazing how friendly the Itallians have been so far... Its been very good.

The hope was that we would get to Cortina D'ampezzo. Unfortunately we stopped for lunch just outside cencenighe agordino. Where we stopped we did a small offroad section down to the sides of a beautiful river so that we could enjoy some nice scenery while we ate some food. Away from the noise of the road. Well that's when things started to get interesting...

Heathers bike developed an intermittant electrical problem that only existed when her bike turned left. We took the front display and head stock apart trying to find what was causing the dodgy connection. Unfortunately we couldn't isolate the problems further than the fact that her ignition block had something wrong with it....

Given any normal area we could have just got back on the motorway and cruised into a normal town to find a mechanic to replace the bits. Unfortunately this is the alps.. straight roads don't really exist which makes riding more fun... especially when you can't turn left. No more mountain passes for us until we get this problem resolved... On the bright side of things we had to wild cam so we could be near the bikes.. Of course this was because we didn't want to pay the £130 excess for getting recovered on a Sunday from over 100km from the nearest recovery company that BMW would recommend. That's probably ontop of some crazy other charges based on milage. In the end we camped in an amazing spot where we think the locals may not have been too happy for us to be!... Ooops.. we explained our situation to one friendly local who had the same bike as James and he seemed cool with it.. However I think the other locals had different ideas... At least we got an amazing view..

Austrian alps Italy and the Stelvio pass

2009-06-13T08:18:51+00:00

After leaving our last campsite in Austria just near the boarder we crossed yet another beautiful mountain pass and came to our into our 7th country on our route... Italy.. Wow what a remarkable difference between Italy and Austria.

The roads and towns in Austria all seemed so picture postcard perfect. As soon as we arrived in Italy there was a difference in the quality of the road surface, the towns all seemed to be a little more run-down.. Although it had more character and the mountiain passes that we had gone over in Austria all seemed small by comparison.. We call it practise mountain passes for what was to come. After about an hour and a half of riding we got to our planned destination.. The start of the [Stelvio Pass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stelvio Pass) what an amazing mecca for motorcyclists and car enthuthiests.

The road was so busy being a German bank holiday that it was almost a traffic Jam going up and to a lesser extent down the other side. Being so busy it was creating some very dangerous situations where crazy German bikers would overtake going around the inside of the many hairpins on the wrong side of the road with clearly no visibility of what was coming. Absolutely stupid moves by not one but many tens of riders. I was shocked at some of the idiots riding up the moutainand what they would do to get passed people going slightly slower. It has to be said that it was just the start of what would become the norm in the Italian Alps.. Stupid motorcyclists going wayy to fast on the wrong side of the road around blind corners.. And they say the Germans are "smart".. ha ha ha.. I call it survival of the fitest.

After a long day riding we completed only about 170km but in that time we did 6 very amazing mountain passes the biggest of which was Stelvio. However the others seemed to be much better.

The top of one had at least 3 meters of snow still on the ground at 2600+ meters above sea level. The glaciers that we saw up there really amazed Heather and I. The big problem we discovered about these mountain passes was that the concentration required to go up and down was immense. Let alone the physical side where we have to wrestle the bikes with all the luggage up and down. It really took it out of us.. While crossing one more mountain pass we saw a nice little area that we could camp in the forest. It was a nice little spot at around 1800 meters above sea level.. The mosquito problem was immense but that just meant we had an early night so we could rise early and do yet more mountain passes. The alps has been a real highlight for us so far on this trip. Having been several times before, but never on motorcycles its really come into its own. I would highly recommend anyone with a motorcycle to ride the alps. Its roads and scenery keep the mind going at 110% the entire time.

Another major shock to the system was that the tunnels down the southern side of Stelvio don't have lights on and have close to hair pin corners in them. Which is very dangerous especially with cars and other motorcyclists going the other direction.. Not to mention wearing sun glasses.. Its crazy.. but then that's what this adventure is all about.. living to tell the tale.

Freiburg.. Freiburg.. Austria...

2009-06-10T08:50:13+00:00

After our eventful night camping in freiburg where we got a huge downpour resulting in a very wet morning. After a brief breakfast we headed in to town where we used the internet cafe to update the previous blog post... That was just where the fun began. After our blog post we realised that the time on our laptop was still setup as UK time. We raced back to check out of the campsite before it closed for a few hours at 1pm... After getting out about 5minutes to 1 we went to hein gericke to get a new mirror and headlamp for heathers bike.. She broke her mirror when she dropped her bike all the way back in Belgium.. We managed to find a mirror that almost looks the same for a bargin price of 32euro... sweet.. the people in hein gericke thought it was strange that she did not need two matching mirrors.. well they found out why about 5minutes later when we went to leave heather dropped her bike again.. In front of the shop.. in the middle of a very busy road. Not only did she drop her bike but she also broke her pannier rack.. whoo hoooooo success.. nothing like some broken bike bits to really make this an adventure. After struggling to pick up the bike the hein gericke staff actually came to the rescue and helped get the bike up.. and repaired.. Thanks!!!.. They stayed out the front to watch heather successfully leave about 30 minutes later with her bike in one piece.

After finallly getting out of town we rode some amazing black forest roads which I can highly rate for anyone who is into beautiful scenery and amazing roads. I will upload the gpx files from the GPS with the exact routes soon.... After being so hot in freiburg it was artic cold across the top of the black forest mountains. We ended up finding a camp site on a big lake near the Swiss border... for you guessed it.. crap weather.. it rained pretty much the entire night and when we woke it was still raining. We cooked breakfast in the annex of the tent and prepared to get going.. As soon as we put on our over coats the dam weather started to improve.. typical. The over suits turn into ovens when the weather is good.. hopefully they will be useful when we are in Siberia in 5months time... Its odd thinking.. 5 months here we are only in our second week and we have another 5+ months to go worst case...

This leads us to our trip. After leaving the camp site on the lake we took our third ferry trip for the journey. Crossed the lake on route to Austria. After reaching Austria we did some minor bike service tasks and headed for our first proper mountain pass. The "Hof" which we managed to get across without any incident.. mountain passes 0 bikes 1... Now we are sitting in a beautiful town in the Alps chilling out and taking a day off to do some hiking in the beautiful scenery..

After leaving our first campsite in Austria we got to look down on our first real panoramic view of the valley where we camped.

Here is an image of the storm coming in at the campsite.

Luxembourg to Champagne to freiberg

2009-06-08T08:36:04+00:00

We stayed a day in Luxembourg to get some stuff sorted... Here are some photos of the City.

And the old town centre.

After the initial GPS problems that plaged us until Luxembourg (Thanks to Ed for making the maps available) we managed to actually get somewhere... that somewhere was Champagne in France. It was great riding via Verdun to see the war memorials and where the trenches had been in World War One. We also played Where's Heather..

One thing that’s been a constant on this trip is the string of absolutely brilliant roads, winding past scenery so gorgeous that boredom doesn’t stand a chance. So far, we’ve clocked just over 900 miles (that’s 1,450 kilometres for the metric-inclined), and every mile has thrown something new at us.

After a fantastic night with Natalie and her family, we geared up to hit the road… but the universe had other ideas. It just wasn’t Heather’s day. Her bike’s battery was as flat as a pancake, and push-starting it in the pouring rain became the morning’s new cardio. After a solid workout and a lot of muttered words, we ended up borrowing Natalie’s jumper leads to try and bring the beast back to life. One little snag—where on earth did BMW hide the battery? Cue us half-dismantling the bike in the driveway, only to eventually discover the genius German engineers had tucked a positive connection in just the right spot. Now, all we needed was a halfway decent negative ground. A few more soggy attempts later, and—bingo! “Sparkie” roared back to life, much to our soggy, triumphant delight.

Just another day on the road, right?

Now that we had two running bikes it was time to set off for Germany.... If only it was that simple.. Thanks to our wonderful friend the weather.. we managed to ride about 150km before the weather was soo poor that we ended up wild camping in the Forest near Flirey</a> on the D958

</a>

After a very wet night we managed to ride out on the very muddy tracks.. The weather had not much improved and the days riding was slow and steady to Freiberg in Germany. This lead us to our second ferry crossing. From France in to Germany!.. Totally unexpected but a welcome break for the 30 second journey. One big problem with this section of the trip was that there are no petrol stations which accept UK mastercards or maestro.. A really nice “surprise”.. on the up side at least it shows that the R1200GS can do over 400 miles on 32.5 litres of fuel if you ride like a sissy... riding behind heather makes that pretty easy.. te he he

Having stayed at the http://freiburg-camping.de/</a> camping site right near the centre of town. Highly recommended except that its so expensive.. 21euro for two people.. for a dam tent!!! dam I feel like scrooge.. We got over it fast enough as soon as we hit one of the beer halls in town for some great beers and quality German food. If your in the area and are interested here it is Martins Brau erste freiburger gasthausbrauerei Http://www.mbfr.de</a>

Days 1 to 3

2009-06-04T12:37:16+00:00

So here we are… day three of our trip. After an initial rush to Dover, where we missed our original ferry… YES, great start… and by only 5 minutes. We ended up being moved to the 2:30 ferry, thankfully… Arriving in France, we rode for around 2 hours to the night's accommodation,, covering just over 200 miles on day one. The relief to finally be on our way is immense.

Day two… or should I say the first full day of our Holiday. No more rushing around preparing, no more farewell drinks, no more alcohol… whoo hooooo… detox… 10 pints down to 0… feeling it now… grumpy mode has set in… withdrawal from the booze, I say… or maybe it's just the pent-up frustration of months of planning and frustration with visas not working out as easily as we had hoped. I guess that IS the adventure… the rest of the trip should be a “walk in the park”… Heathers still has not realised that I am just here to annoy her… ahh feel the freedom of being on Holidays… 6-7 months of nobody else's company… ha ha ha… she’s looking over my shoulder saying she would not be surprised. Ha ha ha, more fool her, te he he… anyway, enough about us… Let's talk about the trip…

The GPS crashed…

giving us completely bogus directions in a huge 120km loop… nothing like technology to really let the trip. So far, it's been a complete nightmare using the GPS; despite using it several hundred times in the past, it must start speaking French as soon as it crosses the channel. All I have to say about this is f.garmin… fill in the dot with whatever suits!! As I am sure many people have heard me say in the past… It's blasphemy to call support… It's a sign of a shit product… oops, oh well that must be Garmin. It's caused me to break my cardinal rule of not using support. At least we had some humour on route… Heather had a bus-load of boys mooning her as the bus drove past… she had a little giggle. Ha ha ha… got to love being a kid… could not imagine having a group of oldies going past mooning… that would be seriously twisted… At least it livens up the motorway miles… that and the GPS asking us to do U-turns at 130km/hour when you can’t. Heather also managed to show off her ultimate Skills… while pulling over to take some photos of a really sweet panorama, she dropped her bike… of course, what most people do is to stop and pick up the bike… not our trusty Heather… she takes the photos while leaving her bike smashed against the gutter… At least we get blessed with a few really helpful Belgian teenagers who helped pick up the bike so we didn’t have to take all the luggage off… the only casualty was her left mirror… RIP mirror. At least she got some good photos to make it all worthwhile… Having read that people in Belgium are not helpful, we have been completely surprised by how helpful they have always been with us… Maybe it's because they know we are stupid!!! (or not English)

Day three started with some amazing riding around in yet more circles thanks to our trusty GPS… I know, fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, fool on me… at least the scenery was beautiful on route with some amazing flowing roads with some of the most amazing forest to reservoir roads I’ve ever ridden with huge panoramas of the countryside. After finally getting completely lost, we ended up being helped by a really nice Belgian guy who gave us access to the internet in his house to print out good old Google Maps directions… yes, we are on our way again to Russia, we come… with some love on top in a liberal dosing…

Score Board…

</th>

Heather</th>

James</th></tr></thead>

Wobblies</td>

2</td>

6</td></tr>

Wrong Directions</td>

Problems with O2</td>

0</td>

16</td></tr> </tbody></table>

Mrs Lamb: I would like to add that James has had more wobbles, and to put icing on the cake, he stepped on bubble gum. I almost laughed as you could imagine, add on top of his frustration.

Visa joys

2009-05-21T09:01:55+00:00

Well, we are on the final leg to get our Russian visas, cutting it fine as always, though we like to live on the edge! The only visa that fits our journey is the 1-year multi-entry business visa, costing us £1000, so we are praying we get it, as that's a big financial hit to our trip budget. We do have a backup plan in case things don't work out, but we feel confident with OBT, the agency we've chosen, as they come highly recommended. The process has been a rollercoaster of paperwork, waiting, and uncertainty, but it’s all part of the adventure. Securing visas for such an ambitious route requires patience and persistence, and we’re learning a lot along the way. Each step brings us closer to the reality of our journey and adds to the sense of anticipation.

We have just one final visa to get, and that is for Kazakhstan. Because we require a double-entry visa, an official invitation is necessary. The company handling this for us has informed us that we can only apply two months before our intended entry date. This has meant adjusting our travel plans and spending a few extra days in Istanbul, which we don’t mind at all. Istanbul promises to be a fascinating city, rich with history and culture, so we’re looking forward to exploring its vibrant streets, sampling the local cuisine, and discovering hidden gems as we wait. These small changes to the itinerary remind us that travel is as much about adapting as it is about planning, and sometimes the unexpected stops turn into the most memorable experiences.

less than a month to go...

2009-05-05T12:25:54+00:00

The trip is less than one month away, and it's almost finally upon us. We have planned to leave the UK for good on Sunday, the 31st of May.

It is crazy how the time has been flying by. Only a week ago, it felt like we had 2 months to go. Now we have 26 days, and all the emotions are flowing. It's been two years of planning/saving, and it's all coming to a head. Soon it will be all about riding motorcycles and being day-in, day-out tourists on our little adventure... but until then, it's all about paperwork, planning, and preparation.

Bikes

2009-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

For our Journey we will have two bikes so that we can both ride separately. This should ensure that we both get more enjoyment out of the trip. It also provides us with some fall back if one of the bikes breaks we can go and get help. The two bikes we will be using are

BMW F650GS Dakar

The F650GS is one of the overland bikes of choice today. Being a single cylinder engine with a good size capacity it offers the rider great simplicity with a good mix of power and torque. The F650GS is also very fuel efficient often averaging around 4 litres per 100km without any effort.The F650GS is capable of handling rough off road tracks while at the same time being comfortable this is a characteristic that makes it perfect for Heather.

BMW R1200GS Adventure

The R1200GS is another common bike on the overland routes. Its comfort on the open road is well respected. Its got a mild mix of off road ability with a great street presence. Originally purchased so that we could both travel on the same bike (larger bike more comfortable). Now that Heather has her own F650GS (so she can enjoy the trip more) its now down to being a solo effort which it should handle with ease. With 33 litres of fuel in the standard take we should be able to get a very long way between filling up. 

Modifications

Both Bikes have the following modifications.

Autocom communications unit</li>
Crash Bars.</li>
Engine Protection.</li>
Heated Grips.</li> </ul> The F650GS also has

Scorpion Exhaust (No catalytic converter so we can use Leaded and Unleaded Fuel).</li>
Touratech Rallye foot pegs.</li>
Touratech Zega Aluminium Panniers.</li>
Scotoiler automatic chain lubricator.</li> </ul> The R1200GS also has

Garmin Zumo 550 GPS.</li>
BMW Adventure Panniers.</li>
Stainless steel headers.</li> </ul>

Hoboworld

Vladivostok to Fushiki Japan

Vladivostok

Khabarovsk to Vladivostok

Russian Border to Khabarovsk

Ulaanbaatar and back to Russia

Ulaanbaatar

Altai to Ulaanbaatar

Khovd to Altai

Olgii to Khovd and the start of the Gobi

Mongolia and the Altai mountains

Siberia the Russian Altai to Mongolia

Kazakhstan Altai to Siberia

Kyrgyzstan Tian Shan, Karakol and the Kazakhstan border

Bishkek to Issyk kol and the Tian Shan

Kyrgyzstan mountain passes and crazy drivers

Kazakhstan Hospitality

Shymkent to Taraz... the long way

Kazakhstan Deserts Atyrau to Shymkent

Atyrau and the kazakhstan border

Sochi to Astrakan

Russia - Sochi and the Caucasus Mountains

Goreme to Trabzon - A road less travelled.

Goreme, Ihlara Valley, Kaymakli

Ankara to Cappadocia – Goreme

Ankara

Troy, Anatolia and onwards to Ankara

Gallipoli, Troy and swimming in the sea..

Istanbul as tourists

Istanbul, Visas and finally tourism

Edirne to Istanbul the Gateway to Asia

Bulgaria and the Black sea coast to Turkey

Sibiu and onwards to the Black Sea

Hungary to Romania... Transylvania

Hungary, money and festivals..

Zagreb to Hungary

Croatia... and umm more weather and broken buildings

Italy to Slovenia.... Weather not included.

cencenighe agordino to meccanico del moto

Italy Trento to cencenighe agordino

Austrian alps Italy and the Stelvio pass

Freiburg.. Freiburg.. Austria...

Luxembourg to Champagne to freiberg

Days 1 to 3

Visa joys

less than a month to go...

Bikes

Land Rover

Paper Work

Route

Equipment