Magical Azerbaijan…

Finally allowed off the cargo ship at about midnight, we now had to go through immigration and customs, immigration was fine but customs was a little bit long winded, the boys had to fill in forms, buy insurance and pay some sort of port fee…

We were all feeling a little tired by the time we were allowed to go-1.30amish, now what do we do?…

There’ll be no hotels open maybe a park bench?..
Hmmm so off we rode into the centre of town the streets we pretty busy for that time of night…
We did however notice a McDonald’s sign and it was open 24 hours, but first we need some local money, we found an ATM and asked a local man the way to McDonald’s, the guy very kindly offered to show us where it was and said to follow him…what a nice guy… the inside of macca’s was closed but you could order at the ‘Drive though’ area, so like a couple of wallies Arran and me walked through (with cars behind us) and ordered some food, we sat in the outside eating area, eating our burgers and having a drink, the wifi was pretty good, so we got to check emails etc as we hadn’t been able to do this for ages… some of the local cats decided that they would join us, they looked well fed, so i would say they enjoy a bit of burger!
The security guys were were very friendly and asked about the bikes and where we had been and where we were going, they said they could never afford to do this type of travel, but enjoyed our stories.

Aaran decided he wasn’t going to stay in Bukhara but going to head straight for Georgia, so we said our good byes again, and waved him off….we stayed behind at McDonalds and talked to the kids on Skype until we could see the sun starting to rise…
We then made our way back to the main hotel area in old Baku and found a little guest house ‘squashed’ in between a little alley way.

We checked in,paid, had a shower and went to bed for a few hours.
Feeling refreshed we headed out to do a quick tour of the old city.

We made use of their washing machine first though…

Baku’s main economy is petroleum…
Baku is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan,it’s also the largest city on the Caspian Sea and is 28 meters below sea level…which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world.

The city is beautiful, so well maintained..

The new builds compliment the old historic ones, the traffic on the main road though the city is horrendous, jam packed all day and most of the evening…

There was a lot of great art dotted around the city..

One of the guest at our guest house was telling us that the locals are really poor and paid very badly, and that the city’s beauty was a front to capture the rich tourists.
We really enjoyed looking around the old city, is a maze of small alleys,and historical buildings…

They are really flaunting their wealth here, this is just a subway under the road…

A shot of us in the mirrored ceiling…

Roof of some steam baths..

lots of old ruins in the old city…

Not far from our guest house, walking on the cobbled paths we came across Maiden Tower, (which is listed among UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites) no one really knows the monuments exact date of construction,but is said to be thousands of years old,it is 28m high and 16.5m wide.
One of the many stories of how it got its name is that a maiden that did not wish to be married, threw herself off the tower and and into the sea below!

The three Flame Towers are turned into gigantic display screens which use of more than 10,000 high-power LED luminaries, its said the towers cost more than US$350 million!
Last year Baku held the Eurovision song contest and the locals are proud of this…Hmmm i didn’t think Azerbaijan was in Europe, so not sure how that works!

This guy moved waving the flag..

It was made to look like real flames moving….

After a late night of chatting to a great German/Afgan couple Seb and Ham, who were heading the way we had just come on their tandem bicycle, we swapped currencies from where we had just come from, also swapping SIM cards, movies, while doing this we drank lots of Chai (we on the hard stuff now!) it was now 2am, and we needed some much needed sleep if we were to ride the long journey ahead of us…

Before we knew it it was time to get up, so after a cup of Chia we left for Georgia, after finally exiting the city carefully road to the border… Carefully as we had heard that the Azerbaijan police give big fines if you were caught speeding…
Aaran was fined for speeding not sure how he managed it…. Lol

Clive rode the usual speed he drives (fast) and slowed down when the signage told us to, so no worries there…
That was until we were not too far from the border and were pulled over by a cop, he wanted Clive’s passport and drivers licence and took Clive into the police station, about 15 minutes later Clive reappeared, and told me that the cop had asked for US$500 and then we can go ‘no problems for you’, Clive of course sad no then the cop said ok US$300, ‘No’ Clive replied ‘we have done nothing wrong so why should I give you money’ the cop then let him go… Stand your ground and don’t let the police intimidate you…

So upon leaving the police station with the same amount of money as when we were stopped, we rode off towards the border.

Wow… the border was packed, we’re gonna be here for hours if we stay in the queue behind all the trucks and cars…
No problem… we’re on a bike and it has its advantages….we rode down the inside of the waiting cars to the look of horror on a their faces, and were ushered through to immigration by some guards… 5 minutes later we were at the Georgia border…

With a strange welcoming sign..Welcome to Europe…
Not quite sure why they think they are part of Europe…

We are ‘Sailing’… on the Caspian Sea…

The next morning we left our hotel early to go and see if a ferry was going to leave today, the lady at the ferry counter wasn’t sure, but told us to put our names down on a sheet of paper, which was their ‘first come first served basis’…

We rode back to the hotel in light rain, the first we had seen for months and it felt quite nice, we finished packing our bags…by the time we had finished, got the bags on the bike it was back to sunshine…

Charlac hotel…

Turkmenbashi is dominated by this towering hill..

I still wasn’t feeling crash hot, but a lot better than yesterday..
We got back down to the ferry port terminal and was told to wait in the waiting room, a family of girls had been waiting there for two days and were all set up with food and drinks, but the ‘word’ was that the ship would be sailing today.…

We grabbed a bench and stretched out for the day, reading or snoozing…
I sneaked into the old port area, where there was lots of ships being scrapped…

The toilets were disgusting the worst we have seen on our trip and we have seen many….
They were squat toilets that were full of plastic bottles and overflowing with everything else, I couldn’t handle it and walked around the back of the building to go, the same as everyone else by the looks of it…

Later in the afternoon Arran turned up and was so surprised to see us, his face was a picture… he couldn’t believe we had beaten him there…

Late in the afternoon a ferry docked and unloaded its cargo of freight wagons full of oil from Azerbaijan…
Everybody was getting exited now, it looked like there would be a sailing tonight…

We were told by an Italian couple that had just got off that ferry and they were in the anchored up in the bay area on the ship for two days as it couldn’t dock and the food and water onboard was horrendously expensive and vile, so we stocked up on more supplies..

There was mad rush when the ticket counter opened, there was a lot of confusion, the ‘list’ system was not very good…as there’s only a certain amount of passengers aloud on the ferry, it was clear there were too many people for this crossing…
I managed to get it across to the ticket lady that we put our names on a list early this morning, she then looked down the list and issued our tickets, Arran didn’t have his name down but we told the lady he was part of our group!

There was a couple of nice lady’s that were here before us that didn’t put their names down on the list, but I’m glad to say that I saw them later on the boat…

With our tickets issued we had to sort out getting the bike on board…
We had to ride the bike around from the front to customs after paying a ten-dollar dock fee…
Now we had to go through customs that was a long-winded affair, with no organization at all…
First we were told to go, then called back, twice…none of the customs guys had any idea of what they were doing, it was quite frustrating.

Finally we had to ride the bike up across the gangway that the freight wagons use, and because it was a special gangway, so another ten dollars….

We strapped our bikes down next to the oil freight wagons..

At 10.00pm we were finally on the ship and shown our cabin, because we were last on the ship with all the messing about with the bike we had the worst pick of the cabins…
There were a lot of trainee young men onboard that could speak pretty good English and were very helpful.
We shared a cabin with Arran, we were then told we were not leaving until the next day as it was too rough at sea…

But at 2.00AM, i heard the anchor being pulled up and were on our way…

The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world and accounts for 40 to 44% of the total lacustrine waters of the world…
The Caspian has characteristics common to both seas and lakes. It is often listed as the world’s largest lake, although it is not a freshwater lake.

The guys onboard said this part of the lake is very deep and that Soviet submarines hide here…

We slept well that night and woke up to clear blue skies and flat seas…

Lots of oil rigs in the distance, in fact dozens of them…

I wandered down to the engine room and found these guys working on a engine..

The ship on auto pilot as there was no one on the bridge…

Our escape route if it goes pear shape…

Chris slept most of the time in our luxurious cabin…

This was a Azerbaijan ship from Baku..
The food onboard was expensive and the menu was ever what the cook wanted to cook, Arran had the most greasiest chicken we have seen on this trip, thank god we had some supplies ourselves…
Chris was not well once we started moving, she was throwing up out of out port hole…lol…even though it was calm!
Thats Karma for not giving me sympathy for when i was sick!!!

We were now getting closer to Baku Azerbaijan as the crew were all on their phones now with a signal picked up…

Huge deck area at top…

The ship dropped anchor right on sunset and we were told we would dock tomorrow….

Going…

Going…

Gone…

We could see the city from the ship, it looked very modern…

We were quite happy really to spend another night onboard as we wouldn’t find a hotel this late at night…

At around midnight we were woking up to say the ship was docking and get ready, we picked our passports up from the captain who holds them during the crossing for some reason, rode the bike off the ship into the Customs area at around midnight….
Hello Azerbaijan…

Operation Desert Strom…

A fitting name for the title as our bike is a ‘v Strom’…

Arriving at the Turkmenistan border was very different to the Old and dark customs areas from the Uzbekistan’s side…
This one was clean, bright, modern and efficient, plus the customs guys were so friendly, which was a nice change from the previous grumps we have had lol….

We waited just a short while untill it was our turn…
First we had to mark on a map which roads we would be taken, then they worked out a fuel surcharge on that distance, which worked out to be $20, the fuel in Turkmenistan as its really cheap something like 24 cents a litre, plus we had to get road tax, third party insurance etc, i think it all came to about US$100.

Time was ticking away and the three of us were willing the customs to hurry up as they close for lunch at 1pm for an hour…
After a while of going to different areas we were told we could go… brilliant… then when we got outside the guards said its lunch you’ll now have to wait NOOO…
I spoke to the guard and explained we had a long journey ahead of us and really needed to get going, he thought about it for maybe two seconds and said we could go with no checks of our bags…
Quickly the three of us got on the bikes and got out of customs before they could change their minds.

We had to cross over a tiny beat up steel bridge that looked like it had seen better days, we had to pay a toll, – just over $7- now we could really get going…
Another hot ride (50 degrees plus) with not much in the way of scenery to view just desert, which had its own sort of beauty….

We pushed on until the light was fading, We needed to find somewhere to camp, but finding a suitable spot was proving hard…
Eventually we spotted a type of gazebo in a field about 30 metres or so from the road, on closer inspection we saw it had a day bed under it…
It was used by somebody for selling water melons during the day to passing motorists..
Running next to it was a small man made stream which must be for watering the cotton plants (Turkmenistan is the the worlds tenth largest producer).

We decided this is the best its going to get…
We at first we thought we could sleep on the day bed, but soon noted that it was covered in water melon juice and had lots of wasps hoovering around and ants, so it looks like we will have to set up the tents, as we were doing so a guy approached us.
Clive asked by doing a few hand signals if it was ok to stay here the night, yes it was, the guy disappeared for a minute then came back with a gift of a massive water melon,which he cut up for us and the boys devoured very quickly…
We quickly put the tents up, Which we were thankful for as there were loads of mozzies about- we all fell asleep pretty quickly.
We woke up to a glorious sunrise…

So we quickly packed up the tents and after a quick cup of tea we set off for Ashgabat, hoping that this would be the next pitstop for the night…
The ride was pretty much the same as the day before, long straight boring roads although at times we did spot a few camels roaming around….

The road had been melting and was soft to ride on..

Stopping for a much needed break at a little restaurant was a welcome break, Arran couldn’t get in quick enough, he was eating before we even made it through the entrance ….lol
We ordered some meet pies, Clive devoured his but I only managed a bit if the pastry, I couldn’t eat any more, to me it smelt strange and there was white pieces of something amongst the beef, not sure if it was fat blobs or lung… Anyway I wasn’t eating it…Clive devoured that one as well… Lol

Back on the bike riding through the desert we could now see the mountain border area of Iran, which was only about 20k’s away.
After many miles of riding past small towns, bucket loads of sand we eventually came to Ashgabat, as we neared the city centre….

This was a railway station, we could see the golden mask on the tower for miles outside the city riding in…

It felt like we had come to Liberace’s home town, this city is so over the top, so grand here and according to the Guinness book of records it has more marble buildings here than anywhere else In the world….
Ashgabat is a far cry from the rest of the country, which seems to be fairly poor.

So now the task of finding a reasonable priced hotel didn’t look good, pulling up at one hotel we decided it wasn’t even worth getting off the bike to ask reception on the price,it was five stars…

Arran said that he didn’t want to stay in Ashgabat and would part, which was sad in a way as we had been together for over two months now, sharing rooms, meals and laughs, but we needed to carry on with our own trip and so did Arran…

We said our goodbyes and went our separate ways, we decided the centre of town was going to be way to pricey to stay in, so a quick ride around the city and taking a few photos we decided with out success that maybe the outskirts may have cheaper hotels….WRONG we didn’t see any hotels..

There were a lot of golden states of the President Turkmenbashi, dictating the golden years…

I think this one revolves, so the sun is always shining on him…

What do we do, it’s now the afternoon can we make to the port ofTurkmenbasy before dark…
We then saw a sign for Turkmenbasy-570 Kms…

We decided to give it ago and if we get tired we’ll camp somewhere…

Big Mosque just outside of the city..

So we set of down the wide smooth roads, that soon gave way to some crappy roads, but mostly the roads weren’t to bad, lucky Clive’s good at weaving!
The ride wasn’t very interesting, well it was desert..

We saw more camels and a few mini Sand tornadoes, once again only stopping a few times for cold drinks, not far from Turkmenbassy we needed to fuel up, so i went and got us some cold drinks, when I returned from the shop, Clive stated that he REALLY needed to use the loo, I told him where they were and off he ran, coming back white faced and looking tired…

Clive rested up for about twenty minutes before deciding to proceed to the port, the roads were really good now, smooth tarmac….finally…
Riding down a lovely smooth road when suddenly we went over a bump and one of the side boxes fell off the bike…

Stopping and getting off the bike I picked up the side box, that didn’t look too damaged, and soon as Clive put the bike on the stand it fell over… this day seems to be getting Worse…
An old guy pulled up in his car to help us, Which was great as Clive was feeling a little week, on closer inspection of the box we Noticed that the welding on the frame had broken, as there was no where around here to get it fixed, Clive did a quick fix with some Ratchet straps…

The road to Turkmenbassy seemed to go on and on, lucky for us it was still light.
A couple of policemen then decided to pull us over…. For what we weren’t sure…. It turned out they just wanted to say ‘hello’ and look at the bike… lol

Eventually we came to the port, but there was no way Clive was going to be able to board ship, he was was really feeling bad, so we decided the best thing to do was get a hotel for the night and rest so we rode past the port where the ferries were and headed into town….

-WARNING-DO NOT READ THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU GET QUEASEY-

All of a sudden, we came to a quick stop, as Clive needed to go to the loo, but there wasn’t anywhere, no bush, trees not even a car to hide behind..
So he crouched down by his bike, before i could say anything he had his trousers and jocks down by his ankles, i tried to shield him by standing to one side of him, thankfully it wasn’t a busy road..

I then noticed some boys in the distance heading our way…i then told Clive to hurry up…
Just then a car drove slowly pasted us waving and beeping his horn several times until i waved back at them…
I’m glad i kept my helmut on so they couldn’t see my embarrassed face, they must have seen what was going on as ‘it’ was running brown like ‘Niagara Falls’ under the bike…

I kept my head down when a few more cars went past beeping and waving also (friendly folk these locals), in the mean time the boys were getting closer…
I’m sorry to say Clive didn’t get a lot of sympathy from me as i was telling him to hurry as people were coming, but Clive really didn’t care who saw him…they must have seen what was going on…

Just before the boys got to us Clive was ‘done’ and had his jocks and trousers were up….
We noticed it was all over the bikes foot pegs, so we quickly threw the rest of our drinking water on them to wash it off….
We got on the bike and speed off…
I pity the boys as they walked past the area where the bike was!
Poor Clive he was feeling really weak and all i could think of was the embarrassment of it all…

The only hotel in town seemed to be a very posh and expensive looking one…

The Charlak…

I went to reception to see what it cost, as it turned out it was only $50 ,clive needed to rest and get cleaned up, which was very cheap for how grand this hotel was, Clive would have agreed on $500 on how he was feeling at the time….
I booked us in, Clive got cleaned up and slept until the following morning.
As Clive was feeling a bit better we made the decision to go and queue for the ferry, but not before we stopped to get supplies for the ferry….
We had read online by other travellers that the ferry food is expensive and is uneatable…
So armed with our supplies we head to the ferry terminal….

We did allow five days to cross Turkmenistan, we managed to cross it in two hot days…

Uzbekistan…The Heat is on…

After riding the short distance from Dushanbe on battered roads to the Tajikistan border, but first we had to get around a herd of cows….

At the border gate we were greeted by money changers…
After finally agreeing in an exchange rate that suited all parties we added a large pile to our already huge stack of Som-(Uzbek money) this money is crazy…

While I walked the 20 metres over to the border control office, Clive rode the bike, after showing the border guard our papers he then went on to tell Clive that he was going to fine him $20 US for not wearing a helmet that twenty metres between buildings, Clive protested and said that he wasn’t going to pay, the officer was insistent that we pay him the monies or we wouldn’t cross the border and we weren’t getting a receipt, so we got out a pen and paper and said we were going to write down his badge number with that he said just go…..

We got stamped out of Tajikistan pretty quickly, then rode on to the Uzbekistan border area where I was separated from Clive and Aaran.

I had to fill out a form that even wearing my glasses it was still hard to see what was written, we had to write down exactly every currency we were carrying and how much we had, what medical drugs we had, electrical goods etc, the young officer who I saw told me that as I was a traveller, that meant I was rich… I didn’t reply to his remark…

He proceeded to go through my camera asking who the people were on the photos, who I knew in Dushanbe, he wanted to know every country we had been to and where we are going….

It went on like this for a while then Clive appeared and then said I could go….

Now we could set off towards Bukhara, but first we had to pay to cross a bridge pontoon bridge first, before we even got out if the town we had lost Arran lol, so we waited for about half an hour, eating a tasty momos from a road side cafe…

Thinking he would ride past us, as we couldn’t go back and find him as most of the streets were one way…
We couldn’t wait any longer, so we set off towards Bukhara….

After riding for about 20 minutes or so we came across Arran taking photos of the desert, we frightened the living daylights out of him, when we pulled up along side…

Now we were altogether we decided we would do our best to get to Bukhara today, it was going to be along hot ride, the roads were pretty good so we shouldn’t have a problem doing the 540 klms.

The scenery was pretty amazing some of the rock formations were incredible…

Lots of trucks belching out black fumes…

As we riding through past some mountains a small landslide started, lots of dust and rocks but nothing major, it didn’t block the road or do any damage, but was fascinating to see!

A different story if you had been at the point of the falling rocks though.
We were having to to stop regularly to buy cold water as we couldn’t quench our thirst, the water we were carrying had gone hot, we weren’t surprised really the temperature for the day was 53 degrees….
It was cooler with our visors on our helmets closed, as soon as you opened them it felt like we were next to a furnace..

Lot of oil freight being moved…

Even though it was really hot there was no problem with either of bikes, but Clive’s soles of his boots were coming apart, the glue was melting…lol

We rode into Bukhara in the dark…

We thought it would get cooler, but it seemed to get hotter…

We followed Arran up a walking path that had low steel barriers either side of the path, as we rode through one of our side boxes clipped the metal bar and sent us and the bike spinning into a ditch…

We and the bike were fine so up we got, Clive was really tired and misjudged the gap i think, the hotel was just around the corner…
The hotel owner gave us a really good deal because we said we could pay in American dollars…:)
This hotel had a real old Bukarha style charming and cosy with all mod cons…too tired to eat we showered and went straight to bed exhausted, with the Air-Con at the arctic blizzard setting!

The following morning after a buffet breakfast, where we stuffed ourselves, the three if us went to the old city to explore, so off down the cobbled streets that were narrow, and at times felt like we were in a maze…the streets were full of charm, tiny houses and hotels everywhere, it didn’t take us long to find the old city…
Bukhara has been listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, when you visit you can see why!

there were some amazing doors at the front of peoples properties…

WOW…it didn’t disappoint, this place is amazing we had never seen anything like this (except in books) before….

Just near the Kalon Minaret, is the 16th-century congregational Kalon Mosque, which is big enough for 10,000 people, the court yard is so peaceful with just one tree that you can sit under giving some welcome shade.
In Soviet times it was used as a warehouse, and was reopened as a place of worship in 1991.

Lots of ceramics on sale..

And carpets of course…

lots of cars doing the mongolian rally in town…

Really old family tea house…

The Minaret of the Kalon is 47m tall with 10 m deep foundations placed on reeds to make it Earthquake proof and was built by the Karakhanid ruler Arslan Khan in 1127, the name kalon means ‘great’ in Tajik. In 850 years the minaret has only needed cosmetic repairs.
Also known as the Tower of Death, as for centuries criminals were executed by being tossed off the top…
The minaret is really stunning and only by seeing it you can appreciate that how one hundred years after its construction Genghis Khan would have been impressed by its beauty and that he changed his order to keep it while the rest of the city was destroyed in about 1218…

Uzbekistan was once part of the ancient Persian Empire and was later conquered by Alexander the Great in the 4th century B.C. Uzbekistan became Uzbek Republic in 1924 and became the independent Uzbekistan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925. Under Soviet rule, Uzbekistan grew cotton with the help of irrigation, mechanization, and chemical fertilizers and pesticides, that caused serious environmental damage!

We had a lot of things to cram in, but with it being hot it slowed you down….

Especially wearing this….

The Ark, a royal town-within-a-town, is Bukhara’s oldest structure, and was occupied from the 5th century right up until 1920, when it was bombed by the Red army. It’s about 80% ruins inside now.
This is an incredible looking ‘fort’ with sloping outer walls which i think would be easier to climb than a straight up wall, so we had a little try!

Part of the old wall…

Lyabi-Hauz, which in Persian means”at the edge of a pool”, is a plaza built around a pool in 1620, locals say is the most peaceful and interesting spot in town, its shaded by old mulberry trees.
In the park close by is a bronze larger than life statue of Hoja Nasruddin, a semi mythical ‘wise fool’ who appears in children’s folk tales.

After a enjoyable hotdog dinner we headed back to the hotel.

Arran had to get his boxes welded today, so we spent the day trying to get photos of the bike by some of these stunning landmarks..

It proved rather hard at times….

We later caught up with Arran for a cold beer and sat near the famous old Mulberry trees one that had been planted 500 or so years ago, its amazing that they are still alive.

Dinner was at a fancy restaurant next to lake…
Which was a little disappointing, we should have gone for the hotdog again, it was far nicer and cheaper… (money does not buy decent food!)

Kids were trying to sell Clive some balloons…

Leaving early the next day, we weren’t looking forward to another hot, sticky ride to the Turkmenistan border…

We have’nt done a crime but we’re Doing time in Dushanbe…

After an exhausting ride over the Pamir Highway – the ‘Roof of the World’, we arrived in the ex-Soviet Central Asian city of Dushanbe in the late afternoon after a day that was filled with various events…

A brief recent history lesson on Dushanbe in the 1990’s…
Peace was shattered when a brutal civil war claimed over 60,000 lives.
A former Soviet republic, Tajikistan plunged into civil war almost as soon as it became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, and is Central Asia’s poorest nation.
Dushanbe means “Monday” in the Tajik language, and the name reflects the fact that the city grew on the site of a village that originally was a popular Monday marketplace.

The civil war turned the remote mountainous republic into the bloodiest corner of the former Soviet empire, the once scary and dangerous country has now plastered over the bullet holes, and the tenuous Tajikistan is now safe for travellers. Which is good for us…..

Back to our events- we followed Arran past the tree-lined avenues to an address he had of a home stay.

We arrived to find that it was full, but the owners daughter who spoke very good English, said that she was in the process of having guests rooms built at her house, and even though they weren’t ready we could still stay there ….

Her family would all sleep in the living room while we had the bedrooms!

We followed her up through some very narrow, twisty and potholed lanes to here house, where she put fresh sheets on the bed for us, she showed us the loo which was an awful squat loo that they had built them selves and the shower which was also outside was a small tin shed with a water container on top and a shower hose fed through the roof and had a on/off lever to release the water-it was very clever, the only downside to that was the water was heated by the sun, it was only slightly warm, not sure how they manage in the winter!….

We stayed here for a couple of days, until there was room at the home stay….
The ladies whose house we were in was telling me that having guests stay with them was good as wages as in Tajikistan weren’t very good.

Ramadan had just started when we were in Tajikistan and the owner of the house was taking part,this was her first year of doing it, and she was finding it difficult but was determined to do it.
She was telling me that she can only eat during the times of 8pm and 3am other than that no food or drink is to be had, she also went on to tell me that as muslims they are not forced to do this, it is entirely up to them.
It was quite funny, they would have all their food layed out on the dinner table at 7.45 and sat at the table constantly looking at their watches waiting for 8.00 to arrive..

We moved to the home stay once the rooms were vacant, which was good as it was within walking distance to the city.

Lots of grand monuments and government buildings around the centre of the city…

Staying in Dushanbe was going to be a waiting game, waiting for our E-Visa for Azerbaijan (we applied for this visa in Bishkek) and until it come, we couldn’t apply for our Turkmenistan visa!

great name for a window cleaner…

Our first few days in Dushanbe were spent looking around the city parks,they love water fountains here…

Bens Azerbaijan E-Visa arrived first, so the next day he was off to apply for his Turkmenistan visa, which would take, five working days for express service!
While Clive, Arran and myself waited for ours…
It seemed strange that as we had applied as a group, the visas didn’t arrive together, but we just put it down to Ben being on a British passport and the three of us were traveling at that time on Australian passports.

Outside a art shop on our way to our coffee shop…

So while we had time to wait out, Clive had to do a few things to the bike, one important job was to change the fuel filter, hoping that this would fix the problem that we had with the bike while riding into Dushanbe….

Bike having surgery…

The culprit fuel filter, it should be white…
The back tyre on the bike was still had some tread left so that didn’t get changed, so we will still look like a tug boat….

We needed to see if the fuel filter that Clive had just fitted was the cause of the bikes problems so we went for a ride up to a lake we had passed while riding into Dushanbe, we couldn’t find a way down to the lake….

and ended up at a water power plant, the water flowed fast and looked freezing…

The water was really a rich blue colour full of tiny bubbles and crystal clear, it looked really deep…

I used the time to wash every thing that needed a wash and that could be washed, plus pumping some water from our Katadyn filter for drinking.

Pumping water with our filter…

Clear water on the left untreated water on right..

The next few days were spent in a bored haze, get up do some washing, write up some more blogs, play solitaire and sleeping on the day bed, our room was way to hot to go into during the day, as we had no air-con let alone a fan, it really was unbearable to go into…

In the afternoons we would drag ourselves out into the hot streets and walk to the coffee shop where we could have a cold beer, where we could publish our blogs and catch up with the kids via Skype….

A few days later I mentioned to Clive that it out seemed rather odd that we hadn’t heard anything about our e-visas, as Ben had done the applications all together as ‘one’ we wanted him (or we would) to contact the company who we got our Letters of Introduction got all our E-visas printed out through (they also dealt with the Azerbaijan visas as well).
With a bit of a push, an email to the LOI Company we were using, proved effective as a few hours later our E-Visas had been emailed to us, with the LOI Company blaming the Azerbaijan Embassy!
We’re not convinced of that, as Ben’s E-Visa was dated 4th July and our 2nd July!

Ben got set to leave Dushanbe as he now had his visa, even though Ben was leaving a week ahead of us we all still thought that we would catch up with him some where along the way, his bike is bound to break down again!…

While Arran got our E-Visas printed out we went to the car bazar to look for some cheap car mats, to stick onto the top of our bike aluminium boxes as the ‘Pac Safe’ security meshes were marking our bags with a horrible metal dust film with all the rubbing from the mesh…

The following day the three of us went to the Turkmenistan Embassy and applied for our visas,it would be another five working days before we could collect them.
Back at the home stay Clive carefully cut his car mats and glued them onto the ‘boxes’…this was as exciting as our days got sometimes….

Later in the day we went to the cafe to catch up with some emails and also talk to the kids on Skype, later in we went to one of the the currency exchange and brought some Uzbek SOM..
We only brought $100 dollars worth but ended up with a shoe size box worth of money…
We decided to splurge and have a curry at the Indian curry house ‘Nameste’ that was across the road from the cafe, it did the best curries 😛

Early the following day, i noticed something under Clive’s bike, oh my it was the tinniest kitten i have seen, with amazing blue eyes, we gave him some water and went around asking a few of the neighbours if they had lost a kitten, no one had, the kitten followed me everywhere at the home stay…

When Arran got up he said that that there was a bit of a commotion during the night with two adult cats chasing the kitten into his room, he thinks they were trying to kill it :(…when the owner of the home stays daughter woke up (she spoke very good english) we asked what could be done with the kitten, as we had already checked online to see if there were any animal shelters -which surprise surprise there wasn’t, she said she would take care of it and not to worry…i don’t know what they did with the kitten, and i just hope it went to a good home….

Arran had decided that he was going to do a bit of exploring and when he returned he was full of excitement and told us about his adventure, one of the things that he told us about was that he thought he went through the ‘Tunnel Of Death, the way he described it, it certainly sounded like it….
So the next day we decided to take his advice and check it out, we needed to blow the cobwebs off the bike anyway.
We packed up a little picnic and headed off out of ‘town’…
oh goodness why the heck did we not get out sooner….
Must have been the ‘black’ cloud hoovering above us…

We rode past a crystal clear river that twisted around the mountains that had houses, hotels and restaurants built on on the edge of the river and just about all of them had swimming pools…

donkey under there somewhere…

We carried on up the mountain going through dozens of avalanche tunnels….

Then finally at the top we were greeted by stunning views of the valley below…

About 50 klms from Dushanbe we came to what we thought was the Tunnel Of Death…

We covered our mouth and nose with a scarf, and followed a car into the tunnel….why?…so when the car in front came to the potholes we would be able see when he hit a pot hole when his tail lights dip when he hits them…

Pitch black inside…

The tunnel was cold, smelly,five KLMS long with no ventilation and the concreted road surface had the reinforcement bars poking through the ground, mountain water was coming up through the ground and was pretty deep in places, finally after about 20 minutes of holding our breath or trying to anyway we came to the end of the 5 kilometre tunnel, to be greeted by a dozen ‘suicidal’ cows that were sitting at the end of the tunnel in the middle of the road, so either they would get hit by a car/truck or die from the fumes that billowed out of the tunnel…

We pulled up to the side of the road to do a bit of ‘spitting’….
Then off we went for a ride around the mountain roads enjoying the scenery, and coming across what looked like a mine dug into the side of the hill.
Finally we found a spot next to the river to eat our picnic lunch, then headed back up the mountain and once again having to go through back through the Tunnel Of Death….

While going down the mountain we could see lots of people swimming in the river, Hmm looks like a good idea so when we got to the bottom of the mountain we found somewhere to stop and decided that we should maybe take a dip as it was so hot,that thought was short lived as the water was freezing, you couldn’t even paddle, so we just sat on the rocks and dipped our toes in and enjoyed the sounds of the running water….

There was this weird structure on a abandoned bridge…

We met a English guy just outside town and had a good chat..

Old industrial area outside city had some great tiled pictures on the walls..

The day came when we could collect our Visa’s from the Turkmenistan Embassy, but first, before they hand them over you have to make a payment for the visa at the Pakistan bank in town, so off we went with our payment forms then raced back to collect our visa…
We spent the rest of the day packing for our early departure the following day to Uzbekistan….

Saying goodbye to our host..

Riding the Panmir Highway… High up in Tajikistan…

The ride up to the Tajikistan checkpoint was stunning,we even had a flurries of snow.

while at the border we found out there was a $10 fee for the entry of the bikes, we had to go into a small hut, where it was so warm the guard had a little pot stove to not only keep himself warm but his kettle.

Old bus full of locals….

The road was just a gravel track full of potholes, but worse were sections of corrugations that rattled the bike and our fillings out of our teeth…

We then came to a fast flowing river crossing, it didn’t look deep but the entry and exit points would give me trouble bottoming out so it was safer for Chris to get off and jump across some rocks to get across…

With the bike safely on the other side, I got off and helped Chris find away across, we did it but not without getting our feet wet in the icy water, so a quick change into some dry socks and we were on our way.

We were now riding at a altitude of over 4200 metres and beginning to suffer headaches..

We could see a town settlement not to far away by a lake and I had coordinates for a home stay that was there….

With us all now settled in after a hot shower, that was in a out building, and had a big boiler in a small room that was fired by Yak dung, the shower room was so hot, almost a steam room, just what you need after a cold ride.
At the Home Stay we were provided with a hot dinner which was very welcoming, bowls of hot soup with bread with some hot chai..

After getting rugged up for the night with loads of thick blankets that were supplied, it didn’t take long to fall asleep exhausted.

We were riding the world famous Panmir highway, the roof of the world at over 4200 metres, with fantastic scenery and we couldn’t be happier.

Breakfast in the morning was again bread and chai and we soon got on our way.
Bens bike needed a bump start, at this altitude it was finding it hard to run…

The scenery was just jaw dropping, we could see the road right the way into the horizon with not a soul insight…
We met some cyclist just outside a small settlement and had the usual chat, we later stopped in the village to buy some benzine(petrol) from a drum! it was only 80 octane, which isn’t good, but that’s all they have here….

With some lunch and a small fix to the luggage rack we were on our way again…

Yummy mo mo’s…

The road was very desolate, you wouldn’t want to break down here.

We stopped as there was no sign of Ben behind us for a long time, the agreement was whoever was in front would stop, wait for those behind to catch up…We sat on the road up against our bike getting a little protection from the cold wind, even though it was a desolate place it still held a lot of beauty..

With the half hour up we figured there must be a problem so we trudged back the way we had come and found Ben coming towards us, he said had to stop and tinker with his bike…again!
We were soon on our way and as it was getting late in the day, it was way too cold to camp so we would have to find the next home stay for the night .

We rode into the next village and we booked into a a rest stop that had about six beds in a dormitory style room, the beds were metal frames with springs across the base so it was like sleeping in a hammock… had a good nights sleep though.

Tyres for bike sticker,from Brisbane Queensland….

The young girl who ran the house cooked us two minute noodles dinner and lots of hot chai, again it didn’t take long to fall a sleep under a heavy load of blankets, plus we were all still suffering with mild headaches from the altitude…..Chris couldn’t get to sleep as she was having problems with her shoulder and used a hot water bottle to help relieve some of the pain…

The toilet block was very bleak has well, you wouldn’t want to be venturing out there at night…

The road started to descend slowly but the scenery was still out of this world..

As we were coming down into the valleys it also started to get a bit warmer now…
We stopped and had a chat with a couple of cyclists from France, who pointed out to Arran that his front tyre looked a bit flat..
Yep it was flat alright so we started to take the tyre off when a couple of friendly Germans turned up on old BMWs and proceeded to take over and fix the the puntcher….

We decided it was a good time to make some tea for everyone, we all had a good chat about the road ahead, they warned us of some big dogs just down the road that come out and chase you…
Well they were right, they came out and chased us for ages…

We also noticed kids picking up rocks ready to throw at us, but soon as i pointed at them, they dropped them, whats going on here, who do they thing we are the enemy?….some kids also made their fingers into guns and pointed them at their heads, gesturing to us…now thats not very friendly…

We stopped for the night in the town of Khorog at Panmir lodge, a well known stop for overlanders.
They only had a place on the verandah, but there was a hot shower albeit a bit dangerous how it was wired up..

Hmmmm. just loop the live wires over for a hot shower….

It was a great setting, there were ripe apricot and cherries trees where we could just pick and graze on…
We ended up staying two nights as the town was half decent with a few good places to eat…

Plus we all to do bits and pieces to the bikes mainly tightening of bolts,i found a bolt missing from my front mudguard that also held my brake line, so that had to be done before we left…
Chris had to see a doctor as well as her shoulder was giving her a lot of pain…she later emerged with the doctor saying she had a cold in her shoulder, the doctors english was a bit limited i think, Chris also came out armed with tablets…

There was great park in middle of town…

We had a decent meal in town next to the fast flowing river that looked icy cold…

We debated over dinner on how long you would last if you fell in …

About 4am chris woke me up to say she heard a loud rumble, then it happened again…SHIT…its an earth quake, all the dogs in the area were going nuts with barking, we lied in bed wondering weather we should get dressed and grab our document bags, would some of the big boulders that the resting on the mountain side, that was right next to our hut, come rolling down and crush us? instead we went back to sleep…
Arran and Ben slept through it!
The owner of the Guest House said they were waiting to hear if there had been any damage in the areas…

All bags packed and loaded onto the bikes we hit the road to Dunshabe the Capitol of Tajikastan.
This section of the highway skirted the border of Afganastan for a few hundred klms.
We were soon out of town and on to the ‘highway’ which turned out to be nothing more than a gravel track again with pot holes thrown in for good measure…

We could see Afgans going about there daily life on the other side of the river and we could here plenty of hellos shouted at us and lots of waving to us….

The road was very narrow in some places up against a cliff on one side and twenty metre drop down to the fast flowing river on the other side…

It was here we met the Australian couple again on their Triumph that we first met back in Kyrgyzstan, with a quick hello, it wasn’t a safe place to hang around with trucks squeezing past…

Only five minutes later after meeting them, we found out later that a truck had clipped them and sent them down the drop to the river, they went down four metres with cuts and bruises,only just hanging on from fallen further, their bike however, went tumbling further down and was smashed up quite bad…

Some locals helped them recover the bike and they paid a 4WD to strap the bike on the roof and take them to the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan so they could repair it….
Very lucky guys indeed….

We stayed in another home stay and had another tasty home cooked meal and fell asleep exhausted…
There was a Polish biker staying as well and he informed us that the long way around to Dushanbe was in better shape than the short way, so we took his advise…

I decided not to fuel up this morning as it was only 180 klms to Dushanbe and the fuel gauge was showing over half full….
Along one of the sections of bad roads, it looked liked some roads improvements were being done!
But the roads we had to go on were shocking and one hill looked like sand, so Arran bravely said he would go and check it out so me, Chris and Ben watched Arran ride down the hill and fall off into the ‘bull-dust’ not once but three times, we were all in fits of laughter, then road the other way around the road, when we meet up with Arran we had great delight in telling him how funny we thought his antics were…
The road started out great, a super slick fast tarmac road, boy this was great….

Then abruptly it ended, back on to the gravel pot holed tracks again..
At one part there was no road at all, just a vague path across a stream that was running across, it was at this point the bike stalled….the fuel gauge showed that there was fuel, managed to get it going but it was running like a second hand lawn mower….

I think the gauge wasn’t reading correct and i was almost out of fuel, even though it showed i had fuel on the gauge…
I think the fuel pump had sucked up all the crap from the bottom of the tank where i had been running on the bad fuel we have had to buy…

I had put all my spare fuel in and some of Arran’s, but it was still running bad, at one stage Chris got on the back of Arran’s bike going up a steep rocky road as it was too dangerous me wrestling the bike that kept stalling, it was hot and i wasn’t having fun at this stage with the bike playing up…

We stopped at a place where the locals were washing there cars and let the bikes cool down and had a drink from the water the was gushing out of a pipe, we were so thirsty, we didn’t care about filtering the water, the locals said it was ok to drink…

With us and the bikes cooled off the bike behaved its self and ran like a dream, so what ever that was blocking the filter had cleared its self…

We passed a fantastic looking lake and the reflection on the water of the hills was amazing, there was no obvious way down, pity…

We arrived in the City of Dushanbe late in the afternoon…to be continued

On the road again in Kyrgyzstan…….

It was a bit sad leaving our Krgyzstan family but it was great to be on the road again travelling on our bike…
We left the city of Bishkek and our destination for the day was going to be Tati-kol lake which is half way to the city of Osh where we could do a bit of camping….

The ride was great and soon as we started to rise in elevation Bens bike started to play up, here we go again…..
It was soon fixed and we could enjoy the ride again.
Krgystan has some great roads and the scenery is jaw dropping..

This lake we passed had this stunning coloured water…

We came up to a police stop sign and because we didn’t completely stop, we followed the car in front that rolled through, we were called back.

We were ushered into the office where we had to show passports, and then the officer kept demanding we pay fine of ten dollars because we didn’t stop at the sign…., we played dumb and we refused and he said he would keep passports until we did.
What made it worse was when Ben accidentally knocked his hat off the table…..
But as soon as we started to write his badge number down he gave up and told us to go….

We met an a Australian couple at a petrol station and had a chat about roads and border crossings, the usual things over landers talk about…..
We met them again a few weeks later, my god what a story they had to tell then…….

As we were getting close to the lake we stopped at a shop and bought a few supplies for dinner.

The lake was beautiful, but finding a way down to it proved to be difficult, there was a track down, but we got chased by a big dog wanting to keep our legs ‘teeth mark’ free we went another way!

We could see that there were horses down by the lake drinking, wow this is a great place to camp…..

We picked a spot and set up and started to cook a tomato pasta, which turned out to be great hit.

Our chosen toilet spot was in amongst the marjarana crop that grow wild around here…

We woke in the morning to a glorious sunrise and we got on our way early, as we had a long ride ahead, only for Ben to break down as soon as we left, he had tightened up the cylinder head bolt to tight this morning on his bike and striped the thread.

I tried to bodge it up by wrapping a sliver of aluminium can around the bolt but it only lasted for a short while. So Arran towed Ben back to the nearest town where we found a mechanic who did a good job of tapping a new thread….

While waiting for Ben’s bike to be fixed a group of Polish bikers stopped to say hello, and as usual stopped for a yarn and asked us where we were next headed…they said we would never make it in one day…hmmm we’ll see about that, so With a very late start now we had to race to our next destination the city of Osh…

Luckily the road was in pretty good shape and we got there early evening , despite being pulled over for speeding again they wanted a bribe, we said no and asked the policman to prove that we were speeding, where upon he pointed his radar gun at a truck that was going past and doing 58klm, we said what about him and his reply was that was his brother…..
We then said that we were his brother and he saw the funny side and let us go…

Glad we didn’t have to cross this bridge with the bike…

Outside the city we gave Vlad a call, a guy who lives in Osh who is a friend of our Krygzstan family.
He told us to wait at the big archway at the entrance to the city and he would be there in ten minutes to lead us to a decent hotel.

In the meantime we watched a couple of bridal parties have photos done at the arch….

Vlad turned up and in no time had us at a soviet style hotel with the weirdest lifts, they seemed to be very mechanical, not smooth like an electrical lift…
We all ended sleeping well after a exhausting day.

No exploring of city today, but we could see that there was a interesting looking fort from our hotel window….

After breakfast we all fuelled up and waited for Ben to purchase some oil for his bike, i think he ended up buying four bottles! thirsty little bike he has ….
We were now off to the Tajikistan border..

We had to ride up and over a small pass and the scenery yet again was stunning..

We stopped for a drink and this kid wanted a race with the bike,we went very slowly to make it look like he was winning, he ran for ages…

While stopping to take this picture a herd a wild horses were being rounded up…

The scenery was now changing and getting colder and bleaker..
This is obviously a road less travelled has the road was very broken up…

The road was also getting very lonely looking now…

We saw these in the distance….

On closer inspection they were old radar domes, we could of been on the moon with the scenery around us…

We soon came to the Krgystan border and were stamped out, the Tajikistan checkpoint was further up the pass..

Shortly after leaving the checkpoint we stopped and talked to a cycling couple and we ended changing our Krgystan money for their Tajikistan money so it was smiles all round ..

We finally came to the border post to get stamped into Tajikistan, a few flurries of snow started to fall, we then had to go and see one of the guards in his hut before we could go, it was a welcome to be in the warm hut next to the wood burner, with a ten dollar custom fee, hmmmm not sure about this, but he gave us a receipt so it must be legal next we were stamped in and off into the bleak surroundings….

A Rainy Night in Georgia…

There was a huge sign that said welcome to Europe..huh…we thought Europe started at Istanbul, Turkey…

The Georgian Immigration was very quick, show your passport and that’s it….but the bike was a different story they wanted papers for the bike, the only papers we had was the Carnet, which apparently wasn’t what they wanted to see, we have no ‘other’ papers Clive tried to tell them we don’t need anything else but the Carnet….

Anyway after a bit of humming and haring they allowed the bike through,they were very good about it and we had a few laughs with them…
We rode the long empty road heading towards the city of Tbilisi past lush rolling green hills.

As we approached the outskirts of Tbilisi i could see some buildings, they were ugly blocks of flats and small houses amongst them, there was nothing appealing about them at all, i was disappointed as i had heard Tbilisi was beautiful and full of character….

We continued through the streets and came upon the Mtkvari (Kura) river which is lined with tall shady trees and on the opposite side of the river was a small cliff face with houses and the Metekhi Church it looks like its hanging off the cliff…

This is what i have heard about, the real city of Tbilisi, oh my-its fantastic….

Daylight was fading fast and hotels here were stupidly expensive, so with choices being limited we went off to Mcdonalds for a coffee and to use the wifi to see if there were any hotels close by…
We found there were three hotels near by, they were more our budget allowed but we we didn’t have a lot of choice, it was pay up or sleep in the park!

We did however find a nice little hotel in a quiet street, we were dog tired and it was late so we got showered and went straight to sleep, after all it had been a long ride from Baku, Azerbaijan, it had a great buffet breakfast and secure parking for the bike so we were happy …

The following day we needed to see as much of Tbilisi as we could so on the bike we set off for the old city.
This place is beautiful, way nicer than i had expected, twisting cobbled streets, with quaint houses with little balconies that colourful flower baskets hung gracefully over, carved wooden balconies leaning at rakish angles, many gift shops and cafes, this place really caters for the tourists, but not in a tacky sort of way…

A strange thing to say, but we have not been in a ‘tourist’ area for a while, it was weird, you could tell we were nearing Europe…

Some really modern architecture being built…

What a great wall…

With lots of walking around, we decided that we would go on the cable car that whisks passengers up to the Nariqala fortress and amazing views of the city below…

Lots of new modern building integrated with the old, it all mixed well together, its a great city.

‘Mother of Georgia’… Who towers over the city,a stunning twenty-metre aluminium figure of a woman in Georgian national dress, in her left hand she holds a bowl of wine to greet those who come as friends, and in her right hand is a sword for those who come as enemies.

Old lady coming out of church…

This was a bank…

City square..

After a full on day out we head back to our hotel we didn’t need any dinner as we had a big lunch, but something light would be nice, so on the way we brought some crackers, tomatoes, cucumber…all we need now is some cheese- just near our hotel we noticed that there was a stall with handmade cheeses that weren’t refrigerated! .. i asked if they had any cheddar and to my surprise they did….
Hmmm it didn’t look like any cheddar i had seen before, it was almost white and seemed to have lots of air bubbles in it, to me it looked a bit like a white chocolate aero bar….
I brought the smallest piece the lady could cut, but it was still way to big…just as well Clive loves cheese.
We also brought some local beer to share, all set we head back to our hotel as it started to rain….
After a shower we decide to have our mini feast….holy crap that cheese is strong, you only needed a crumb and it exploded in your mouth, even Clive struggled to eat any, needless to say it got binned after a few mouthfuls…
The beer wasn’t much better either, it was disgusting we both couldn’t drink it and made its way down the sink… lol

Following a delicious breakfast we left Tbilisi feeling guilty for not seeing everything this beautiful city has to offer, but we certainly enjoyed what we saw.
Our next destination was Butumi a seaside city on the border with Turkey by the Black Sea…the roads were great as we left Tbilisi, but you couldn’t say the same about the weather, the skies were dark and the rain came down, thankfully for only a short time.

Warp speed…

We past many small old soviet style towns, that were charming…a step back in time you could say, especially when you past donkeys pulling old wooden carts…

We rode into the modern city of Butumi, and passed a large US Navy vessel moored up in the port!
As the day was hot and we were by the sea we decided an ice-cream would be nice, we passed a very unusual looking Macdonald’s…so doing a u-turn we headed in to our ‘favourite’ restaurant for ice-cream.

Every thing was very modern here…

Now we just need to find somewhere for the night,everywhere we asked were fully booked out (it was high season), so we rode along for a while enjoying the sea view and before we knew it we had come to the Border, not wanting to head in to Turkey this late in the day, we turned around and rode back a little way we had come.

We saw a old disused military air field it was massive and had lots of hedges scattered around, so we could do a bit of stealth camping, but first we needed some supplies…armed with enough food for the night we rode across the airfield and headed past the cows and found a great little spot in-between some black berry bushes, and set up camp.

Lots of bunkers dotted around …..

Had to go back down the road later and take a photo of the very unusual border checkpoint on sunset…

With a great night sleep we were up early,had a bit of breakfast and packed up and rode back across the airfield….

Past all the grazing cows, that now inhabit the airfield, back onto the road to ride the ten minute ride to the border with Turkey….