I seem to have left some unfinished business as I haven't actually managed to get Thelma home from Mongolia.
So at the end of June (in fact shortly after the UK HU meet which was a great success) I flew to Los Angeles and picked up Thelma. I hotfooted it up to the BMW MOA Rally in Oregon - a massive event with over 5000 riders.

Christmas greetings to all those reading the blog around the world - it is still holidays here and i have to apologise for not sending this out earlier but I have been in an internet black spot (my parents' house) for the past six days.

The good news is that my bag arrived from Iceland Air - what lovely people, they had not lost it or forgotten I was waiting for it. Everything is intact and I have learnt a valuable lesson about what to take as hand luggage next time. Or at least, I hope I have learnt the lesson.My boyfriend got me a great present - a GPS tracking device so that he (and the rest of the world) will be able to follow me on my travels and have a rough idea of where I am when I'm not at home.

My Christmas Day involved not only opening presents but I also headed down to the beach and took part in the annual fancy dress swim in the sea. A bracing experience it was too. Particularly as the last swim I'd had was at the Yucatan where the sea temperature was 25 degrees (centigrade) and down here in Cornwall it's more like 8 degrees if I'm lucky.
A brief but memorable dip.

I'm finally home (or at least for the moment). I've arrived back to find Arctic style weather conditions and to discover that the airline have lost my bag. This is a bit of a problem as it means I only have the clothes I was wearing when I landed, plus full bike gear. Though I am still luckily in possession of the seven pairs of knickers.

The major issue is that my photos are all in that bag. I had been somewhat anal during this journey about always backing up my digital memory cards onto memory sticks and then had a completely brain dead moment in Seattle whilst packing ( I must admit my mind was more thinking about Iceland than packing) and I rather stupidly put both all the memory cards AND the memory sticks in one bag. Doh!!!!!!!

I've been waiting to hear what the airline have to say about tracking it down.

I've had a couple of emails from Confused of Camberley asking where on earth I am heading and what has happened to Thelma. One minute I'm bike travelling around Japan, the next I'm on a KLR in Guatemala and then I'm suddenly in Iceland.

Well Mr Confused (and I think there are likely to be several more people feeling the same way). I arrived in LA in early November with the knowledge that I should have been home by then but with the realisation that I was still halfway around the world from England. Having got to North America I decided I wanted to bike to Nova Scotia to visit friends there, however, even I will agree that this was an inappropriate time of year to head across America.

Therefore I've decided to leave Thelma in storage in LA for the winter while I fly home to spend Christmas with my boyfriend and the rest of my family. I will then stay in England for the winter months working and saving hard so that when the weather is warmer I can head back to California and ride Thelma across the States and Canada to Nova Scotia and ship home from an East Coast port.

I had an unreasonably early morning call to get to the airport, after a late night eating turkish borek. I was flying out via Seattle to catch up with friends there, but as I was delayed 24 hours by order of the US Customs Department, I missed the "Welcome Back Tiffany" party in the George and Dragon pub, arriving in time to witness the bleary eyes and hangover of Mick and friends at Vallantine Motorworks. At least Shaun the dog greeted me warmly and definitely seemed to remember me from seven years ago

Having acquired somewhat of a reputation for poor seasonal choice of destinations - Siberia in October and Death Valley in August both spring to mind, I managed to go one better and head to Iceland in December with the promise of an off-road ride as part of my stopover.

I was very nicely hosted by Haukur Thorsteinsson, who is part of Horizons unlimited and who, with his brother, runs Blue Mountain Motorcycle Adventure Tours, however to both our disappointment, the rain was lashing down and the wind was howling as I landed at Reykjavik. In fact the airport bus was almost blown off the road heading into town. We reluctantly concluded that actually a bike ride was not only impractical but downright dangerous.

I had to make do with a look around from the comfort of his heated van - I was particularly toasty and warm as I was wearing an extra layer of thermals (not to mention the seven pairs of knickers) all put on in expectation of bike riding in the extreme weather.

Iceland looked beautiful, unspoilt and a dream destination for bike travelling, with hot springs everywhere and the occasional volcano to look out for. I admired the photos on their website of other riders who had made the journey in more moderate conditions (though apparently I was unlucky with the timing as they'd had clear weather for a week before I arrived).

Their website is:

www.bluemountain.is

So, now I'm looking into the cost of the ferry from Scotland to Iceland in readiness for a trip there, maybe next year.

Unbelievably, snow has appeared on the hills around LA and the locals are all in shock at this Siberian-style weather, I feel it may be a sign that it's time for me to leave town.

Unfortunately though, Thelma has still not arrived, I've got all the Customs paperwork in place, and so she'll be stored here once the ship unloads. Chritmas at home is beckoning me, today I'm flying up to Seattle to catch up with friends there and then to England via that well-known hotspot - Iceland (the country not the supermarket).

I've been offered the fantastic opportunity to do some off-roading and a quick tour around Reykjavik while I'm there on my 10 hour stopover. The locals assure me the temperature should be above zero...

I'm not sure how I'll cope with the cold, it's only five days since I left the sweltering heat of the Yucatan, and where my room mates at the dorm thought it was particularly hilarious that I was going to Iceland as they were heading back down to the beach.

At the weekend, Ricardo Rocco got in touch, we'd last met on a five day off-road rally in Ecuador a few years ago, he is in town for a week and we met up at the Long Beach International Motorcycle Show in Long Beach. At the Show I was lucky enough to be introduced to (amongst others) Bill "Rocky" Mayer who creates state of the art, hand crafted motorcycle seats. Hearing my Princess and the Pea story about my bony backside and the KLR and noting the fact that Thelma is almost 18 years old (three weeks until her birthday) he has very generously offered to custom-make a new seat for me.

I'm very excited about this and I'm heading off to his workshop in Ojai to have my riding gait and posture photographed and examined and errr, have my bum measured. Rumours that I may also need to have a mould taken of my backside, are, I hope unfounded.

A gruelling 18 hour bus ride had taken me from the Guatemalan border up to the beautiful beaches of the Yucatan. Stumbling out of the bus station (still with bike helmet tucked under my arm), I jumped on a ferry to the Isla Mujeres, a small island off the coast of Cancun.

I found myself in a very sociable backpacker's' hostel, sharing a dorm with six blokes from five different countries. After there being just the two of us and almost no other travellers around it feels strange to be surrounded by other English-speaking people. I spent the next couple of days swimming, enjoying life on the picture-postcard beaches and sipping pina coladas (always my drink of choice in the Caribbean) as the sun went down.

But the paradise had to end and I was soon saying goodbye, heading back to the mainland and flying out of the airport and into LA which felt distinctly chilly after southern Mexico. I'm installed back in my comfortable bedroom at Evren and Erdem's apartment and answering their questions about my travels with Savas.

To my delight Kosta is also here, waiting to collect his bike from Customs. We're not sure what happened with the shipping agents that his bike is here and mine isn't when they were supposed to have travelled on the same boat. I don't think we will ever get a straight answer to that question.

Having travelled over 2500 miles with Savas and Gullu it was time to say farewell as I walked back across the border into Mexico with my bike helmet in hand. We had learnt quite a bit from each other, I've introduced him to wild camping and off-roading, and also the concept of the "kitty" (shared money) and what a woman means when she says she is going to "powder her nose". From him I have learnt several words in Turkish, a better appreciation of Mexico and met many of his good friends in Puerto Vallarta who had helped him out so much after his accident earlier this year. I was also pleased to witness the reverse cultural effect of religious awakenings. In common with the majority of travellers who head East, in the past I have been rudely awoken many times in the early hours of the morning by the often shrill and always loud call to prayer from the muezzin at the nearby mosque. I learnt early on to avoid hostels and hotels that were within sight of the minarets of a mosque. In Mexico, I was amused to hear Savas (who comes from Turkey, a muslim country) complain about hostels being too close to the catholic churches, and their bells waking him up. I felt a sneaking sense of getting my own back.

Due to a message I received from my shipping agent, we had to suddenly get a move on and dash for the border out of Mexico. This involved two days of hard riding through mountains and across the hot plains, being blown sideways by the katabatic winds and having a chance encounter with Jorge, a Colobian bike traveller on a Suzuki V-Strom., we fitted in time for a social chat over cold drinks in a shady cafe. Not so the Scottish GS rider who just rode staright past us with merely a wave of his hand, I was ashamed to admit that it was a British registered biker who had displayed such unsocial behaviour.

We were lucky, though we cut it fine in the border crossing itself, arriving at 3.45pm to discover that customs were going to close at 4.00pm. This meant I had no time to lose as i set off to find my way to the correct office and present my documents to be stamped out. Having checked things through they asked for a photocopy of my passport and directed me to the nearest photocopy machine at "la tienda amarilla sobre la colina" - the yellow shop on top of the hill. I rushed off up the hill sweating in the heat and humidity, knowing I had very little time. As they photocopied my passport, those present in the shop joined in with a chorus of "Hurry up", it seems that everyone knows (except us) that the border shuts at 4.00pm as I raced back down the hill clutching the precious copy, I was in luck and the customs officer was prepraed to be a bit flexible.

Having doublechecked the documents, he handed back the infamous $400 which I promptly handed over to Savas and we rode onto the Guatemalan side of the border crossing.

The initial stage was the fumigating of the bike by a guy with a backpack sprayer, which I think contained only water but they said it was compulsory and we would not be allowed to enter without this procedure taking place, and naturally we had to pay for the privelege. Immigration were fine, and although on this journey I may have thought at some borders that I looked dodgy using two passports, that was nothing compared to Savas, yes, he has two passports but his are actually stapled together which looks very suspicious. They didn't blink as they stamped him through, they also required a "payment", I could see this was purely and simply a bit of corruption because when I asked about a receipt it was not forthcoming, however as we still had to get the bike through customs, now was not the time to stand up to border bribery and for once I kept quiet.

Over to Customs, where Savas went in as the bike's legal owner, I should explain here that the bike is American registered and the Yanks have a strange system where there are two documents connected with each vehicle, the title and the registration document. When a vehicle is sold onto a new owner, only the title is handed in to have the name changed whilst there and then a new registration document is issued in the new owner's name, the previous owner also keeps hold of his or her registration document. Have I lost you yet??

The odd thing being that it is possible to cross borders with just the registration document, the title is not needed. Our method of getting the bike put into Savas's name was for him to present at Guatemalan Customs with his registration document, whilst we had crossed Mexico with my reg document. This seemed to go well until Customs demanded to see the permission we had obtained for clearing Mexican customs.

Damn, this was obviously all in my name, and could mess up the whole plan of me taking Savas's bike through Mexico for him. Savas played dumb about the documents they requested but they were insistent, so as he got out the Mexican permission, I discreetly slipped on my decoy wedding ring as everyone knows in Latin America a wife is not allowed her own property, it must also be the property of her husband and so we readied ourselves to try and argue along those lines. Savas looked a bit concerned at me trying to pass myself off as his wife, I think he has someone quite different in mind as a potential spouse.

Meanwhile I was also formulating Plan B in my head, because if we failed to get Gullu put in Savas's name here we would have to cross Guatemala together and make a dash for the next country - lawless El Salvador, and pretend to lose our documents on the border between the two sets of customs offices. I reckoned we could reach that border in two days, still allowing me enough time to get back up to LA.

By the way any members of the Aduana Guatemalteco (Guatemalan Customs) who may be reading this blog please ignore all referneces to switching documents etc.

A nail-biting 20 minutes later and we were relieved to see that they had ignored the fact that Gullu was in my name for Mexico and had put everything into Savas's name. What a relief as I was starting to think I might have to trail along with him all the way through the banana republics of Central America.

We set off for the nearest bar and drank cold Gallo beers to celebrate our successful (if a little illegal) arrival in Guatemala.

We have been travelling across Mexico at quite a pace since leaving PV and all is not well. The bike's name may well be Gullu/Rosie but it's not as rosy as my backside.

As originally suspected when I did my initial bike inspection in LA two and a half weeks ago, the only reservation I had was about the seat. Compared to my BMW it is fairly narrow and firm. This has led to problems on some of the longer rides we've done, where my bony backside (the Get Chubby in California Campaign {see LA blog}didn't have long enough to make much of an impact in that department) has led to not just a numb backside but pains shooting down both legs and pain in my spine. We've been trying a variety of seat softening counter-measures involving cushions, towels and sleeping bag. None of which were up to the task, the only effective option has been to use a semi-inflated thermarest and fold it a few times. Perfect, the princess can ride in comfort once more albeit from a loftier perch as I now tower over Savas as he rides.

After a great five days in Puerto Vallarta, we left this morning, waved off by Janet (who has agreed to ride again with me next year - she is now 70!), Bruce and the latest Travels with Thelma fans- Lana and Gary.

We have loaded the extra stuff onto Gullu, I was having a bit of a nose at the stuff that Savas had´picked up from his friend's apartment- including a Turkish flute. The bike is more loaded up now and we look quite funny clambering over the various stuff onto the back of it.

I have to rush as he has fallen asleep in the internet cafe waiting for me to complete my emails (shipping agent hassles and woes) as well as updating here.

I think he has done his homework and been reading my blogs as he did say, as we unloaded the bike this evening, that I wasn't to carry too many bags as I must not get tired!

We have now managed to travel 1300 miles without falling out (or off). He has learnt quickly that :

Tiffany tired is not good

Tiffany hungry is not good

and Tiffany tired AND hungry must be avoided at all costs.

We've got to Puerto Vallarta, where he has a shared apartment and I am staying with my old friends Janet and Bruce Cohn for a couple of days. Janet already features on my rogues' gallery and I am working on her to get her to join me for part of the West Coast to East Coast journey next year.

Meanwhile the margaritas are taking effect, It's getting late and I need to sleep, the rest of the journey details will have to be shared tomorrow. Including the riding through the cacti in the dark.

The plan was that I spend the two to three weeks whilst waiting for Thelma's ship to reach LA, visiting friends in the west of the States. However, having recovered from jet lag and Korean poisoning I met some of Erdem's friends including Savas from Istanbul and heard his travel story- h's trying to reach Tierra del Fuego by motorcycle from California. He set off southwards a few months ago and got hit by a pick-up truck in Mexico. He broke his leg and dislocated bones in his foot and so was out of action for quite a while. His bike wasn't so lucky and has had to be written off.

He had made friends in Mexico whilst recovering and they sorted out the paperwork for his motorbike. He then returned to LA, bought another second-hand motorcycle and set off once more, only to be turned back at the border as the Mexican Customs officials informed him his other bike was not accounted for and he could not pass the border with any vehicle until the paperwork was cleared. He's been told this process may now take several months.

He is stuck in America trying to sort it out and also looking into shipping past Mexico which is going to cost a lot of money and also take a quite a bit of time.

Once I'd heard all this, I said the answer is simple, I ride the bike across Mexico for him. Once he had got over his surprise at the offer, he said yes and within hours we were on the road together, heading to the Tijuana border crossing. Pausing only in San Diego to transfer the official ownership of the bike into my name at the DMV (DVLA).

The Mexican Customs procedure was a bit nerve-racking as we weren't sure if they would accept just the temporary ownership documents, Savas wished me luck as I headed in on my own. I presented my documents and after a few questions and a very long wait they passed me a form to complete, took $400 as a refundable deposit/bond for duty and asked for a name to go with the deposit.

When I asked whose name, they replied without smiling

"If you die, who shall we give the $400 to?"

I'm not sure if they have a lot of tourists meeting their maker in Mexico (though the roads do have a reputation for some very wild driving), but it was a bit unsettling to be discussing my imminent death with Maria from Customs.

When I walked back out to the bike with the documents in my hand to take the bike across Mexico, Savas high-fived me and we took off down the road before they could change their minds.

So this is how I happen to now be riding Gullu (Rosie) the Kawasaki KLR 650cc bike across Mexico to Guatemala. I'm on the wrong bike going in the wrong direction.

Savas is with me as well and we are sharing the riding though I suspect he was a bit white-knuckled to begin with as I don't think he takes naturally to being a pillion passenger and he has never been on the back of a bike ridden by a women before. I'd had a practice ride at the DMV carpark whilst we were waiting there and I don't think I inspired much confidence in him with comments from me such as :

"Now where do I put this key?"

and

"Oooooh this is a bit high" whilst struggling to get my foot on the ground and then had a tussle for a few minutes as I couldn't get the side-stand up either.

Several days later and I've got used to the height though the side-stand is still a bit of an issue, as it's too long for the bike - says the woman who rides with a ridiculously short side-stand.

In five days we have covered over a 1300 miles and I've introduced Savas to camping rough and riding off-road with two up on the bike. Hmmm, perhaps I should have enquired as to his off-roading experience, capability and confidence before I directed him from the tarmac down a sandy track then up a gravel covered hill, not to mention dodging the cacti and the cow carcass on the slopes.

I've travelled through extremes of temperatures on this journey but none more so than the other day in Baja California, Mexico. Although I had packed light for the trip down from LA, I had included my cashmere stuff from Mongolia and how glad I was. Crossing the Central Desert of Baja I think we must have been at a bit of altitude as it felt quite cold. I gradually added to the clothing I was wearing until I had six layers under my bike jacket (in Siberia it was seven) and I had my thermal balaclava on. And yet mid-afternoon, we reached the sea of Cortez and it was hot, so hot in fact that almost all of the layers were removed and I ended up down to my bikini to cool down by having a swim in the sea.

I took Thelma to the shipper's warehouse, this involved a ride through Tokyo's finest traffic jams. Lane filtering alongside the scooter boys and generally being first away at the lights meant I got through in just one and a half hours. I was pleased to find that the warehouse was expecting me - in fact they had a picture of me in A4 on the desk and held it up to show me- I was relieved to see it was one of the more flattering ones. I had a minor "discussion" with the shippers about removing my front wheel. And for once I lost the argument, unfortunately this means the wheel stays on.

Now for those of you who are wondering why on earth I would want to remove the wheel (perhaps fondly imagining me carrying it on the flight with my hand luggage so that I could at least have a part of Thelma alongside me on the 747?), the reality being economics. I am being charged by the cubic metre for the shipping costs- so the smaller I can make Thelma the less I have to pay. A sort of breathe in and hold it while you get measured activity. With a motorbike it means:

Lowering the height by:

Removing the windscreen- though in Thelma's case it rather unfortunately came away in three pieces in my hands due to the rough and ready treatment and falls in Mongolia and Siberia, the look of horror on the Japanese warehouseman's face was worth it!

Taking the top box off

Making the bike narrower by:

Removing the handlebars and strapping them onto the bike whilst being careful not to disturb the brake fluid line which could be nasty.

Reducing the length of the bike by:

Removing the front wheel and standing it alongside the bike within the crate.

The veto on the wheel removal is frustrating and I'm waiting to see how much extra it will cost me.

I then filled the top box with the extras that will not fit in my flight luggage and hauled it to the Post Office on Kawai's trolley to send it off -a heavy 16 Kg that will hopefully catch up with me in America.

Everything else I crammed into my tankbag and small back pack, I said goodbye to Kawai who has been such a great host and who has uncomplainingly eaten the weird and wonderful english-style vegetarian concoctions I have been cooking up in his makeshift studio kitchen. In fact it seems the meals have been what he has focussed on with his blog- he assures me he has only said favourable things about the food but he also knows I can't read Japanese so he might well have written anything.

For those who can read it, or want to see how the meals look

http://www.ftazul.com/Site/Blog/entori/2009/11/2_Tiffany_made_a_curry.html

http://www.ftazul.com/Site/Blog/entori/2009/11/1_wai_rentsuara_lairu.html

Before I took Thelma to the warehouse, we had a photo shoot, though the photographer seemed to focus a lot on the bits that are wrong with Thelma- the scars, dents and missing bits that are all evidence of her chequered history and which the Japanese bike riders with their immaculately turned out bikes find inconceivable. The photos were followed by an interview over cups of tea about Thelma, me and our travels. I'll let you know where and when that interview appears.

So now I am in the strange position of wearing bike gear and no bike to ride - all dressed up and no place to go.

Japan is an interesting country with some intriguing contradictions.

For example it is not OK to cough in public and definitely not OK to blow your nose in public- a bit tricky for me as I arrived with a cold and a cough from my Siberian experiences.
They are also a bit coy about the toilet, many toilet seats are heated so that you cannot tell if this is due to recent use by another person or not.
But then, in many neighbourhoods, the homes do not have bathrooms and so the public bath-house comes into play. In Tokyo I was using the bathhouse, my first visit (and, I hasten to add that the changing and bathing areas are separated by sex) I was led through the routine by a septuagenarian woman - showing me where to put my clothes, and indicating where to head next. This was into the steaming and warm area of the baths, where there was a row of taps at about knee height. I looked around to see what the others were doing so I could follow suit.

1. Grab a low plastic stool

2. Select a plastic basin

3. Position your stool in front of a pair of taps and sit down on it.

4. Fill your basin with warm water from the taps and wash yourself.

I committed a couple of faux pas (not unusual in my Japanese travels) by first of all not having a small towel, in appearance similar to a terry nappy, this is for washing with and wrapping hair in. I just used my hands like I do at home, and then I realised that I had selected the wrong basin, mine was smaller than everyone else's, and I had noted the Mickey Mouse decal on it, thinking to myself "Oh how the Japanese love their cartoons"

but had not realised these ones are meant for children. Never mind, I think I managed everything else without mishap.

After thoroughly washing and rinsing myself, it was time for the bath. There were three of them in the room of varying sizes, the smaller ones for three to four people while the larger one could hold eight of us.

I eased myself in and what bliss, the thermometer indicated a water temperature of 42 degrees, just perfect for lounging in. The baths are a sociable place and the women were chatting to one another.

I lay there in the steam thinking how strange, these same women would be appalled if I blew my nose in front of them and yet we're all in the same bath.

I've had a few emails asking me what has happened that I have ended up in Japan when I was only supposed to be going to Mongolia and then heading directly home.

Well, I haven't managed to lose my way and arrive here by accident- always a distinct possibility when relying on Russian road signs. It has become Plan B.

I have to confess that as I travelled towards Mongolia, I was enjoying life on the road so much (hardly a surprise) that when I looked at the map and saw how close to the sea Mongolia is, relatively speaking, only 2000 miles as the crow flies. I got the urge to reach the Pacific Ocean, as many of you know, I live on the Atlantic coast of Cornwall in England and so I felt it would balance out the journey to extend my trip from one ocean to the other.

Of course when I first started putting together a vague plan I was in the sweltering desert conditions of Kazakhstan and I hadn't reckoned on having to cross an icy Siberia- riding the equivalent of London to the border of Iran non-stop in such cold conditions. But I've made it, and then to find in the final city of Vladivostock that there's a ferry to Japan (I can never resist ferries particularly if they go to islands) and so I ended up on a boat bobbing around on the Pacific.

I am now looking at my onward travel options. I will be shipping Thelma out of Japan across the Pacific Ocean - we'll have to see where I will end up.

Unusually for heading east we had to put our watches back two hours after leaving Russia- I'm still trying to work that one out. The main disadvantage is that I was wide awake at 5.00am on my first morning in the tent. I met the others getting off the ship- the landcruiser was getting shooed away from every spot that it tried to park in, apparently there are a lot of restrictions for cars but not so with bikes as I had been leaving Thelma parked at all sorts of places in town.

Despite Fushiki, the port I had docked at not appearing on a single map, I was able to work out roughly where I was and so said goodbye to the others and went northwards and then cut across the mountains past ski resorts and amazing mountain panoramas whilst also keeping a worried eye out for snow. Thelma's lights have not been working since the Vlad accident and so I was having to ride the mountain tunnels with my thumb pressed on the high beam switch the whole time. It was either that or no lights- a risky business in the dark tunnels with speeding drivers coming the other way.

I am loving Japan, not just the fact that I am back to riding on the correct side of the road - they are such friendly smiling people here and even when they don't understand me (which is often as I am even worse at Japanese than I am at Russian) they are still going out of their way to help me.

I stayed with Chris and Misagi (Horizons contacts) in Miyota-Machi - in a lovely house set amongst trees and even a little pink garage for Thelma to park in. They have been great hosts, answering my myriad of questions about life in Japan ranging from are you allowed to overtake within a yellow line to why are the toilet seats heated?

They also proudly pointed out the live volcano that dominates the landscape and is just a few miles away, it has a constant plume of steam escaping from it - note to self, keep Thelma parked facing out ready for a hasty exit if the volcano erupts.

Whilst staying with them I took the opportunity to wash the Siberian mud and dust which was coating Thelma- this revealed a two inch chunk missing off the pannier rack. Another trip to the welder and what a great guy he was, full of Japanese "oohs and aahs" at the condition of Thelma's racks - he did an excellent job.

On the good ship M/V Rus Majur, with its fine complement of unsmiling waitresses and sleazy truck drivers. It has been quite an experience. Women are few and far between on these boats and after a few vodkas, the truck drivers obviously couldn`t see staright and made a beeline for us. I was sitting with Rebecca and Lorna who had arrived in Vladivostock on the Trans Siberian express, six days non-stop from Moscow. Rebecca the Kiwi also suffers from seasickness and was very interested in my accupressure wrist bands which work really well for me. I have never been sicj\k whilst wearing them, I made her a pair of hopme-made ones using a couple of paracetamol tablets and electrical tape from my tool kit. She seemed very pleased with them, but maybe she was just being polite.

Also with us were Mike and Linda - the South Africans on a global fisheries mission, making a documentary and travelling in their Toyota Landcruiser, they have had the longest overland route to get here.
www.marine-expedition.co.za
is their website.

The Russian guys didn't seem to get the hint as we sat and tried to chat to each other in the bar and then we saw the way the Russian women were telling them "No" - by literally pushing them away and so that was what we did.

Not unusually for me I was first off to bed and so missed out on the dancing that happened later, though I'm not sure I could have danced while coping with the motion of the boat.

Every mealtime on the boat we managed to get a "Nyet"answer from the waitress for even the simplest request, it became a bit of a joke. Though for those who were desperate just for a spot of milk in their tea, it wasn't funny.

The cabins were like hot ovens and when we asked if there was any chance of the air conditioning being switched don to cool them a bit we got a "Nyet" answer.

On the final morning, I awoke to find us moored in a huge bay and I watched as the sun rose over the mountains- my first in the Land of the Rising Sun.

I managed to clear Japanaese customs about six hours faster than the others- they were properly prepared and have Carnet de Passages (basically a passport for their vehicles) while I had nothing except a name to ask for - Mr Sakai of the FKK cutoms agents. And what a guy, he came onboard to collect me and took me in his car to customs and the insurance office, I was off the boat with Thelma within an hour. What a relief after the prolonged (two days) experience of clearing customs out of Russia.

A night spent camping in a nearby park- as I had told the others I would wait for them and their vehicles were stuck onboard still, we had a few drinks in a small bar that we found

Kirin beer- definitely a thumbs up but the sake, well the jury is still out on that one.

Which is a milestone destination as it marks the far eastern reach of the Eurasian landmass. I have been dipping my toes in the Pacific Ocean and soaking up the sunny weather and unbelievably blue skies above the city.

It took a while for me to realise what warm weather is after crossing Siberia, and I have slowly removed the seven layers of clothing I was wearing under my jacket.

The journey across Siberia and beyond has not been without its problems and mishaps.

The cold was intense, the tent was fine at night as I have a very good RAB sleeping bag (the ones they take on Everest expeditions) - no expense spared where my comfort and warmth are concerned. However the mornings and forcing myself to get out of the tent were hard- there were so many layers of ice on the tent that it was impossible to roll it up, I would just roughly fold it and then stand on it to make it vaguely into a shape to strap onto the seat behind me (no chance of fitting it into the top box where it usually goes).

Then I would find something to scrape the frosty layers off the bike seat and attempt to make my magnetic tank bag attach to the tank through the layers of ice on it before setting off. As the day progressed, the tent would be slowly defrosting on the seat behind me, leading to small pools of icy water under my backside (mmmm, not the most comfortable of sensations).

Meanwhile the pannier racks must have been more seriously damaged than I thought after the accident in Mongolia, or maybe it was more due to my hard riding over the rough road conditions in Siberia. I had to stop and search out welders not just once or twice but four times in seven days - a bit of a record even for me. The hospitality of the welders was overwhelming at times I was given cups of tea and cakes to eat while they got on with the work, and none of them would take any money from me, mainly I suspect, because they felt so sorry for me. I have now determined to learn how to do my own welding as it was ridiculous how much time I spent in the welding yards (and sometimes they were just farmyards).

The guy who robbed me - well, I know his name and where he lives so he had better be scared because I will be back. He only took my solar charger for my MP3 player - I reckon he thought it was a mobile phone and had not believed me when I assured him I don't have a phone. The charger is actually useless to him as he didn't take the connecting cables. I didn't realise until 60kms down the road that it was missing and although the charger had been great in the Gobi, once I reached cloudy and drizzly Siberia its effectiveness was more limited- but hey it's the principle that counts.

And I arrived in Vladivostock on my arse as I had a high speed blow out (my first one) and it is a scary prospect on a motorbike, to suddenly lose all control of the bike whilst on a busy road. All I could see were the cars coming towards me and in desperation I leaned right over and threw myself and Thelma away from them ending up sliding down the road, watching Thelma preceding me, like a sort of dream.

Both OK-ish but the worst part for me was the realisation that no-one was stopping to find out if I was OK- not even those people who had seen the whole thing happen.

Since then I have encountered more nice people including the couple who did help me and took me back to their house, now who would have thought a 250kg bike could fit in the back of a Toyota Lite Ace?

I have also been to the legendary Iron Tigers' clubhouse- they are a Vladivostock institution- the main biker's club in the city. A great clubhouse with lots of workshop space to do work on the bikes and space to stay as well as the party rooms.
I had a look through the guest book - seeing the names of old friends and it also reads like a Who's Who in the bike travel world.
Andrey took us out and about for a tour of the city- unfortunately he didn't get to see Thelma as Customs had grabbed her for inspection almost as soon as I entered the ferry ticket office.
I have once more crossed paths with Kosta, the Bulgarian biker who I first met halfway up a mountain in Kazakhstan. He is also heading to Japan and so we have joined forces to get our bikes through the Customs procedures (more like rigmarole), with the handy help of his fluent Russian.

The days are chilly for riding and although I have an electric jacket and gloves- an essential in these sub-zero temperatures, one of the gloves is not working at all and so I am having to ride one-handed whilst sitting on the other hand to keep it functioning.
The night in the flat was a different one- more details to follow, but one of the guys ended up robbing me and things have been a bit mixed since then.

I have officially made it out of Siberia and into the region known as Vostock- where they are proud to announce that they are East of Siberia. This is the equivalent of the Wild West in America- where police are scarce and people seem to do pretty much as they please and there's a frontier spirit.

Having spent several days riding non-stop and camping I am currently over a thousand miles from the Mongolian border and staying in a flat in Magdagachy, with several Russians hanging over my shoulder as I attempt to update my blog, I don't think I am going to get far.

The pivo (beer) is being freely poured and it looks like there will be four of us sleeping in this room tonight, it might be more comfortable than last night, somewhere deep in the Siberian countryside when I was sharing my tent with an Armenian cyclist who had nowhere to stay and to convince me of his trustworthiness in the tent-sharing department, used his only english phrase -

"I love you Jesus"

I survived the night unscathed.

The good news is that I have a good road map of Russia now (see previous entry where I was using a rail map), I exchanged my map of the Pamir Highway for it with another traveller who was heading to Tajikistan. My Russian map is the full-blown road atlas which is proving invaluable as it shows where fuel is available- often the fuel stations are far apart and I really don't want to run out of petrol here.

I picked it up from DHL, got it fitted- huge thanks to Tony, Ray and the guys at LandDrill, especially the electrician for all your help.

Time for a final meal of dauphinoise poatatoes that I cooked at the hostel and we drank with red wine and I am on my way heading north to the border and then it's just the small matter of the 4000 miles to Vladivostock- word has reached me that October is considered winter in Siberia, and oh dear, today is 1st October.

Yesterday I visited the Christina Noble Children's Foundation- a charity that I have been raising money for - it was a very sobering experience, meeting some of the children they help and hearing about what some of them have been through, there seems to be quite a bit of child abandonment here - one boy was put on a train and his Dad jumped off again leaving him on it alone heading to UB, a lot of the children have been abused in one form or another.

The charity runs a ger (yurt) village for kids who are abandoned or orphaned and they also work with the street kids who live underground in the pipework system during the winter when the temperature can be -40 degrees centigrade for days on end.They use the manholes to gain access and only come out for a few hours during the day to beg and try to get food.

The rotor has gone on the alternator- this had been recently repaired but has now gone again and so currently I am waiting for DHL's finest to deliver a replacement rotor to me as quickly as they can.
I have got good company, some backpagkers and also Colebatch is in town - from the Sibirsky Extreme Project. He is my current roommate and has turned out to be as messy as I am.

He has been regaling me with stories about how cold Siberia is now- in response I have gone out and stocked up on various items of cashmere clothing (it's very cheap here)ranging from socks and gloves to a jumper and hat- I'n going to need it.
I have got 6000kms of Siberia to get across to reach Vladivostock.

I am 24 hours later getting back to UB than I expected as...I got lost in the Gobi, not a huge drama (OK it is half a million square miles of nothing), but I realised I had gone too far East - I had not been concentrating on the track itself as I was having fun and challenging myself with riding a 280Kg bike on sand.Then when I looked up I thought "this doesn't look right", but kept going just thinking I was being paranoid as I'd had a couple of false "I'm lost" scares on the way down.
Finally when I realised there really were no kilometre posts - usually an irregular marker but an indicator that it IS the right route, I then headed for the nearest goatherders to ask - well, they appeared to be beating their animals so I didn't want to hang around for long. And anyway, as is usual in the Gobi, there is a limited concept of roads and routes as it is all open countryside so you are never "lost" and the only information is a finger pointing in which ever compass direction you need to go- regardless of any tracks or otherwise on the ground.

So I took a deep breath left the track I was on and headed cross country. I stopped the next locals I saw - a couple of blokes on a motorbike who also pointed vaguely and told me I had 120 kms to go, and in case you're thinking I have magically become fluent in Mongolian, they wrote doen for me how far to go - I gave them the opening gambit of "km" and also the name of the town I was attempting to find, as yes true to form, I can't even seem to pronounce the towns correctly with that guttural, saliva in the throat rasp that they use,the town was called Mandalgovi (google images of it if you want - anything that is not a dusty, windswept looking place is the wrong Mandalgovi!).

I rode north knowing that at some point I would see the power cables that run alongside the road and eventually I did find some, but there was no parallel track and as I hunted around for one, my fuel ran out and I was onto reserve- about 30 miles worth left in the bottom of the tank now - oh dear.

I went to a couple of gers to ask for the route but they were locked up. I finally walked up to the top of a hill with my trusty monocular in hand and managed to spot what looked like several rooftops glittering in the sunshine, I took a rough bearing on them (Charlie Coates style) and returned to Thelma. I don't know what it was I saw but I didn't manage to find it, however to cut a long story short I stumbled across quite a main looking track and suddenly around a corner it was Hallelujah as power poles appeared alonside it and further on it had kilometre markers- I had managed to find the right track.

I spotted a lone hordeman herding his cows and asked him about petrol (benzine) - but despite smiling nicely the answer was ugui (no in Mongolian), 500 metres further on and I completely ran out of fuel. Evening was fast approaching so I put up my tent and waited for someone to pass- nothing came. I wasn't too worried as I always carry a few days food and water with me and also the horseman's ger wasn't too far away if I did need something (as long as it wasn't petrol).

In the end it was 18 hours until a vehicle appeared - a slow, lumbering bus.

I ran out and flagged it down- it was already very over-crowded but the driver let me squeeze on - everyone moved along a bit for me and I was given the second step to sit on- sharing with a plump, middle-aged Mongolian woman who kept falling asleep on my shoulder - luckily I only had about 30 miles of this until we reached town.

At the petrol station the woman doing the pumps grasped my situation quite quickly - she found a container adn then pointed me inthe direction of the next bus to depart - there was a veritable multitude of buses revving up -not sure which route they were all taking but it certainly was not the main road past my tent.

I got on to find there was plenty of space - I even had a whole seat to myself, and there was a bit of a party atmosphere on board - a communal bottle of airag (fermented mares' milk) was doing the rounds - it seemed rude to refuse so I had a few swigs of it.

when we reached Thelma - standing on her own in the desert, the whole bus disembarked to have a look and comment on this strange foreigner and her mini ger.

Fuelled up once more, off I headed- determined not to lose the track again. Just as a cold north wind started to blow.

I froze coming over the mountain range out of the Gobi- with banks of snow reminiscent of the high mountain passes in Tajikistan.

I have limped back into Ulaanbaatar and will be here for a few days.

Two days of being chauffeured around in a trusty Russian jeep which was fine until I looked under the bonnet and noticed it was all held together with bits of wire (and I don't even know much about engines).
Reminder to self, don't go lifting bonnets of vehicles you are travelling in unless you want a shock.

I had the highly unusual experience of seeing yaks in the middle of a desert - not normally known for their love of sweltering temperatures, these ones live in an isolated ice-filled valley close to the centre of the Gobi, usually the valley is covered with several metres of ice all year round except for a couple of months in summer.
Our driver Timbe was excellent at handling the jeep inthe sand and assured me I would have got my bike through it.
We passed remote gers in the most bleakest landscapes imaginable with no visible sources of water and not a scrap of greenery anywhere.

We camped by the largest sand dunes in the Gobi - over 300 metres high- incredibly dramatic in appearance though not to be repeated in the photos as a sandstorm blew up and our view of them was not good. The next morning the sandstorm had worsened and there was no sun for over three hours -so our plan to get sunrise pictures was abandoned; instead we struggled to get our tents down in the storm.

Our final destination were the Flaming Cliffs- a mini- Grand Canyon of red coloured escarpments and bluffs famous for their dinosaur fossils, once more the sandstorm beat us there so although we could see the cliffs, it was at great personal risk of being blown over the edge of them

have searched the town and haven't been able to find any other bike travellers- or even any tourists except two, I was hoping to get info about the potential routes and roads(sandy tracks if I'm honest) ahead and I got some limited words of advice that if I follow the electricity wires to the north west of the town I will eventually reach the next settlement after 100kms.

Which sounds fine to me, but the reality is that the sandy tracks don't follow the wires and so I will at times be out of sight of the main tracks - not a good idea if anything goes wrong and I need help. Though to be honest there is a scarcity of tarffic, in four hours I saw one car and two local bikes as I rode here the other day and that was on the main road from UB.

It's never a good idea to head into the desert alone- especially when you don't even have a GPS.

The two french tourists I met have invited me to join them in their jeep as they do a two to three day safari around the main canyons, sights and sand dunes of the area. Was I precious and saying "Oh no, I need to do this trip on my bike" - was I hell. I have jumped at the chance to be chauffeur-driven for a change.

A bientot as they say in France.

The mechanic has done a good job and Thelma is restored once more to the slightly battered condition she was in previously- with a bit of a cosmetic surgery job done on the windscreen.
With my route being led by dozens of gerbils all leaping out of the way I mademy way southwards across Central Mongolia.
I made the unfortunate discovery that my limited map of the country does not distinguish between paved roads and gravel tracks and I ended up on 400 miles of gravel and corrugations leading into the Gobi with just one town halfway along it. I have tried to make the bike lighter by sorting through all the stuff I carry- my luggage has been pruned and I only have the essentials with me, though I know others will raise their eyebrows at what I deem are essentials - as this includes a bag of apples, two beetroot and half a kilo of broccoli!

Vegetarians are not well catered for in Mongolia and I have nasty feeling that the Gobi Desert will prove even more so.

I was a bit cautious riding initially (my first journey since the fall) but then with the realisation that if I continued at that sort of pace it would take me five days to get to the Gobi I picked up speed a bit. Which was just as well as the sand started then - as I had been warned, there are quite a lot of sandy patches in the Gobi!
As I'm on my own, I am trying not to take too many risks, but also aware that I need the speed to get that gliding feel across the sand and not be wrestling with it, which isn't easy on a 280kg bike, and I have managed it so far.
Possibly due to this increased speed on rough tracks, the pannier racks on both sides have snapped big time - probably due to earlier damage from the accident two weeks ago and which was not obvious, so I ended up with a Heath Robinson-type arrangement at one point with both panniers piled on the seat behind me!

Luckily, as I have got less luggage now there is only me on the bike, I had left the topbox (AKA pizza delivery box due to its size) in UB so I had a fair bit of room to arrange stuff and made good use of that African standby - strips of inner tubes to secure them with.

I limped into the town of Mandalgovi and managed to find a welder who promptly got to work while a small crowd gathered to see this Englishwoman and her mangled pannier racks.

48 hours after leaving UB I arrived at Dalanzadgad, a one horse desert town (though it does have an Internet cafe). I am staying in a ger (yurt) while I work out which direction to go in next. The town has had no power for five days so even the beers are not chilled but they still taste good after the sandstorms and dust I have encountered to get here.

With Ian safely home in England, I could now turn my attention to Thelma who had been languishing in a shed in Eastern Mongolia for a week. Arrangements were made that I would go with the watchman from the Oasis hostel where I've been staying, and that we would go in a pick-up truck.

It turned out to be a very long day as my eight hour round trip to Ondorkhaan (which needs to be said in a Mongolian accent with a bit of saliva at the back of the throat) became a non-stop 14 hour slog in which I was squashed in the middle seat of the little pick-up truck cab wedged in between two Mongolian blokes who spoke no English, I had an exceedingly numb backside by the end of the journey and felt like I could barely walk. I was also feeling very nauseous- luckily I already had my travel sick wristbands on due to the nausea from my painkillers- I decided I'd better stay off the tablets for the rest of the day.

Our slow progress was partly due to the fact that the main road heading east out of the city was closed - as this is one of only two tarmac roads in the whole country it led to a long detour on dirt tracks and to my disappointment I found that after one and a half hours of hard driving we were still only 46 kms from Ulaanbaatar. I settled in for a lengthy journey, enjoying Baatar and Banyu's hatter about the various gers (yurts) and horse we passed. One of my main fears had been how well they would tie Thelma down for the return trip, but I needn't have worried as they did an excellent job using straps and various ropes.

We had an interrupted journey on the way back as the driver stopped at a couple of gers, making enquiries, we then shot into the nearest town and parked up in a quiet corner near the market. My curiosity was raised further by the sight of a woman scurrying down the street with a carrier bag, she furtively looked around and then handed the bag over in exchange for some banknotes. Baatar quickly wrapped the bag in his jacket and stuffed it onto the seat between us. Intrigued, I tried to find out what it was but they were not very forthcoming. Twenty minutes later we passed a police checkpoint and shortly after that they opened up the bag and showed me some meat and the roasted head of something that bore a distinct resemblance to the roasted guinea pigs of South America. It was a marmot and they seemed very pleased with themselves.

Later back at the hostel as all the staff gathered round to share in the feast I was given the full story- roasted marmots are considered a delicacy in Mongolia and the animals are now an endangered species, the government has taken action declaring it illegal to kill them and that anyone found with a dead marmot is heavily fined. I can just imagine that appearing on my criminal record.

My guilt at feeling partially responsible for Ian's injury was eased a bit as I got up at the unearthly hour of 4.30am to accompany him to the airport this morning. He is coping well with his injury, although he has taken to the distressing habit of wearing his sandals a lot - even with socks so that he can do his shoes himself ( he is unable to tie shoelaces). He has some great bruises and one shoulder is at a funny angle and is much bigger than the other one giving him a hunched over appearance.

So if anyone is at Heathrow this afternoon, keep an eye out for Quasimodo.

Meantime, I have got a motorbike to retrieve from a shed in Ondorkhaan.

As some of you will have heard, Ian's trip to Mongolia has not gone well. Two days into our trip heading East, I was riding when we hit a patch of mud which for some reason spun us out of control and flipped the bike over. We both came off, as the ultimate sacrifice I provided a soft landing for Ian but he damaged his shoulder (I am more or less OK, just a bit battered and bruised).

It was evening, and a very quiet road so we set up the tent, had a cup of tea and went to bed. The next morning I hitch-hiked into the town (called Ondorkhaan), 20kms away and went to the hospital, truth is I was actually only trying to get a pick up truck to retrieve Thelma, but the message got a bit mixed. However the hospital were brilliant and I soon found myself in a jeep with a driver, a doctor and the driver's mate.
We arrived at the tent to find it empty and that actually Ian was sat in a truck nearby in the warmth of the cabin sharing a meal with the truck driver who was more than happy to meet a Westerner in this unlikely manner.

The doctor made a quick examination and put a sling on Ian (who's shoulder was pointing in two different directions). The men then all had a good look at Thelma - in fact the doc spent more time looking at the bike than examining his patient. They heaved the frame at the front back towards its original position. Thelma started first turn of the key and the driver's mate hopped on and rode Thelma back to town - grinning widely all the way- he had never had an opportunity to ride such a big bike before.
With my sore neck I was happy to take things easy in the jeep.

The hospital took x-rays and said his shoulder needs an operation and told us to go to Ulaanbaatar - the capital city (200 miles away). Or at least we think that is what they said as no-one spoke any English but the x-ray was clear enough.
We were quite happy to not hang around for further treatment as we had by now realised that they might have an x-ray machine but they had no running water at the hospital.

The transport side of things got a bit complicated and we ended up waiting 24 hours before we finally set off. Leaving Thelma locked up in the hotel's garage.
The hospital in UB took more x-rays and has confirmed the ligaments in Ian's shoulder are severely torn and that he needs an operation to pin them back together.
We are currently waiting to hear from his insurance company about flying him home as soon as possible.

Well it's been several days of catching up on my sleep, having long conversations with the other travellers here (at one point there were five bikes at the hostel) and trying to eat as much Black Forest Gateau as possible before I leave the luxuries and civilisation of the city.

Many thanks for everyone's messages of congratulations. I do feel quite a sense of achievement in having got here, 11 948 miles from Land's End to Mongolia, across deserts, over mountains across three seas, through hail, sand and dust storms, snow and searing heat. It really has been a journey of extremes, with one of the hardest battles being the struggle with a lot of bureaucracy, one of the legacies left behind by the Soviets in the 'Stans.

Life in UB has been extremely busy, with a lot of my time seemingly taken up in stationary traffic queues, there is an incredibly bad traffic congestion problem here.
Annie flew home from UB having had a very eventful 10 weeks and 6693 miles with me on Thelma from Tashkent in Uzbekistan through Tajikistan, Kyrgyrstan, Kazakhstan and Siberia to Mongolia. She has been an absolute star in every way, having to put up with some of the roughest road conditions I have encountered anywhere in the world, crossing some very high mountains- up to 4700 metres (16,00 feet) and facing up to the rigours of the deserts as well. Even more impressive is the fact that this was the first time she has ever travelled by motorbike.

Of course she has also had to put up with me, which is no mean feat in itself. Thank you Annie for riding with me.

I have now got Ian, my boyfriend as a sputnik (travelling companion), he flew in from England two days ago kindly bringing four tyres, a battery and a regulator with him. Ian will be travelling with me for the next month around Mongolia we'll be in search of the legend of Genghis Khan, not to mention in search of a meal that doesn't include mutton.

Utterly exhausted after an almost non-stop ride from Almaty (southern Kazakhstan) that has taken us two weeks. Feeling exhilarated to have reached Mongolia after three and a half months and even better to have met up with old friends whom I haven't seen for seven years as we have always been on bike travels at opposite ends of the world - funny to meet up with them here in Mongolia.

We had heard some horror stories about the Kazakh/Russian border, mostly from Mongol Rally competitors, who were giving dark warnings about seven hours spent just waiting in line etc. But in the event our fears were groundless, there was no queue as we crossed over accompanied by a Mongol Rally team from Sweden, we had plenty of food and water with us, however it took just two hours and we were done, into Russia, land of plentiful, cheap fuel (38 pence a litre), good roads and not bad food (so far).

We met up with more Mongol Rallyists for our first night camping - the Yak Street Boys from Sheffield and their motorcycling companions, Gayle and Craig on Yamaha Diversions. We all commented on how cold it was as we got into our tents that night, in fact we had started to dig out our thermals and fleeces again.

It was 24 hours later before we discovered that we weren't just in Russia, we had entered Siberia- a land famous for its icy temperatures and unfeasibly long winters, still not sure how we had managed to sneak in without noticing - there was definitely no "Welcome to Siberia" sign that we could see, but maybe they just save that for the gulags.

In the morning we had a shock when we discovered Thelma's battery was completely flat - even after it had been disconnected for the night. Unfortunately we only found out after waving off the Yak Street Boys and so we had a long push getting Thelma back along the muddy track ourselves and out to the road where we flagged down a car for a hefty soviet push start. We were off in search of an electrics boffin

We entered Novosibirsk, which turned out to be a huge city, knowing that we needed to find a motorbike workshop. Our hopes weren't high as we had met Sergei at a cafe on the way and when we asked him about a bike place, his reply was

"Don't you realise that we have ten months winter here each year? Nobody rides a bike".

We used our non-scientific but time-honoured and often proved method for finding a bike shop - ride into town until you spot a big bike then ask the rider where a mechanic is (remont in Russian if you're interested). Once more we were successful and were taken to NBS Motors, and introduced to Andrew who speaks excellent English. He welcomed us to "Siberia's biggest bike shop", ah, so we're in Siberia, that's why it's so bloody cold, we had no idea and thought it was further east. There were certainly no "Welcome to Siberia" signs,maybe they save them for the gulags.

We were pleased to find that NBS were more than happy to help us, and their mechanic soon got to work with our electrical system. The verdict being that our battery is dead (not news to us), and the bad news that there are no suitable batteries in Siberia. The good news being that after many phone calls and careful measuring of the battery compartment, Andrew had managed to track down a battery that would fit. Which was how I found myself riding 2000 miles with a cheap Korean car battery crammed under my seat.

As the shop was closing for the evening (8pm on a Saturday), Andrew once more got on the phone and found us the best electrics boffin in the city (if not in the whole of Siberia) - Kosta who gave up his Saturday night to track us done at Nastia's house and set to work on Thelma's electrics - the guy is a genius and incredibly helpful and generous with his time. it was 11.30pm by the time he started work on Thelma, this was followed by an Internet research session where he found out which locally available regulator would do the job, and then an early morning trip to the market to buy one (and a second as back-up) followed by a further fitting and testing session on Thelma, all so that we would be able to continue our journey without delay. We set off with a Russian regulator to complement the Korean battery.

But what else happened on that Saturday night? Andrew contacted his freinds and we found ourselves at a Bikers' Banya Party at Nastia's house. The Tomsk bike club were in town and there was a party on for them. For those not in the know, a banya is a Russian sauna complete with cold plunge pool and bunches of birch twigs to beat against the skin and cleanse oneself. Which was how we found ourselves in a sauna with burly bearded bikers brandishing birch twigs and singing in russian (them not us); before you start to get too hedonsitic a view of the proceedings, we were very English and wearing vest and knickers.

It was a great party, with Nastia being a wonderful hostess and insisting we stay in her house when we had been ready to put up our tent in the garden. We were sad to be leaving the following morning but Monglia was beckoning.

Spasibo to NBS in Novosibirsk

and also a huge spasibo (that's thank you in Russian) to Nastia for hosting us and Kosta for all the work on Thelma.

We are now about 100kms from the Russian border- can't be too precise as we are off our mapped universe so it is a bit of guesswork from here on in. Not having northern Kazakhstan didn't seem such an issue when we looked at our map back in England.

I have managed to scrounge a Russia map from a bike riding friend who we met in Tajikistan (he had already crossed Russia), but the scale is 1 to 8 million so not good on detail and also it turns out to show rail lines rather than roads so possibly more hindrance than help.
You'll soon find out when we end up in Moscow by accident.

We have had some help from another Spanish Mongol Rally team (the Boys from Bilbao) who we met on the road this afternoon- and later flagged down, they were only too pleased to take our panniers for a very bad stretch of road - the rack on one side had snapped and needs re-welding whilst the catch that holds the case on has started to crack on the other pannier so thought it best to get them carried until we reached town - repairs will be done in the morning.

Our journey across the Kazakh steppes was a relatively peaceful one until I decided that we would camp in the middle of one of the flattest places on earth just as a massive electrical strorm was brewing (in my defence, I would like to point out that we didn't know the storm was on its way when we put up the tent). It was very impressive and I even managed to get pictures of Thelma with lightning in the sky around her- I'll be posting those pictures when I get to a decent internet connection again.

At the top of Kazakhstan, we reached the town of Semey- infamous for its previous life as the testing ground for soviet nuclear bombs and still a very radioactive place - now where did we pack that geiger counter? Or did I turf it out to make room for the bikini?

The guidebooks say that they believe there is no risk to short term visitors, which is just as well as we ended up staying there for two nights- a last bit of luxury in a comfortable hotel before we reach Russia, and also a chance to get the pannier rack re-welded. The guy did a fantastic job and refused any payment, whilst his friend ran off to the supermarket and presented us with a bag of groceries to see us on our way- they obviously know something about food supplies in Russia of which we are blissfully ignorant.

Russia - Here we come.

We were ready to leave Almaty - having been helped a lot by Den and his bike workshop (www.2wheels.kz) as well as Fedor giving a hand with the front tyre - thanks guys.

Two battered looking cars pulled up at the hostel, Mongol Rally competitors, the onlookers who were watching in fascination as I serviced Thelma looked up and asked me about the cars, they were frankly astounded to hear that the cars were taking part in a race -

"But it's a Fiat Uno" they spluttered (or at least the equivalent in Russian), I pointed out that yes, it's not just about winning but having fun, a bit of an alien concept and they still couldn't believe it was true.

The cars were an Italian and a Basque team, and they were very helpful with our tyre- in fact so helpful that they managed to destroy two foot pumps in their attempt to help out. Sorry to Team GB about your pump- Halford's finest I believe.

The winds were gusting strongly as we crossed the steppes, with lots of tumbleweed blowing across the road, looking more like a cowboy western every day. Our first night out of Almaty, Annie was keen not to camp, mainly because of the strong winds and we managed to negotiate the use of a yurt. Not quite the romantic, out in the wilds surrounded by horses image that people might have of them as this one was right next to a cafe car park on the main road heading north- but it was bliss, lots of room for the two of us, though there was no guarantee that it doesn't act as a truckers' dorm and so we prepared for unwanted late night guests by piling our luggage against the non-locking door.

The next morning we found that we had a couple of problems, firstly with a battery that wouldn't start the bike, a plainclothes policeman was our main helper as we attempted to use our hairdryer type cables to get a jump start from a car, which helped a bit but we ended up with push-starting Thelma.

At the same time the rubber gaiter on the shaft had split again and so we headed to Taldqorghan, the nearest big town where we were lucky enough to meet Sergei Epinger and his son Marc. They are German and so could communicate with us - an amusing scenario for those who know how useless my German language skills are. But, I got my message across and after a couple of phone calls, Sergei's friend - Andre (another German speaker) arrived, he rides a motorbike and expertly replaced the gaiter on Thelma.

One ride out with the local bike club and my clean sheet with the Kazakh police is wiped out as we all got pulled over en masse. Not really surprising as some of them were riding extremely fast. I know you are going to want to know what bikes were out with us - ummmm, not sure except the R1, the Africa Twin and a very fast BMW.
Luckily the police were not interested in me when they realised I was a foreigner.

Everyone from the Almaty bike club made us very welcome and we were presented with club mugs (Live 2 Ride), which we are determined we will get back to England in one piece- currently packed away in the pannier.
We rode up the mountain to the dam at Medey, about thirty bikes gathered there including a Bulgarian riding to Mongolia who is also making a documentary about his trip and so did a quick interview with us. A fast ride back down the mountain to the city and then dinner at a restaurant where the meat was served not on skewers but on swords and they searched in vain through the ten pages of the menu for something that did not have meat in it - as always, chips and salad is fine.

We were ready to leave Almaty - having been helped a lot by Den and his bike workshop (www.2wheels.kz) as well as Fedor giving a hand with the front tyre - thanks guys.
Two battered looking cars pulled up at the hostel, Mongol Rally competitors, the onlookers who were watching in fascination as I serviced Thelma looked up and asked me about the cars, they were frankly astounded to hear that the cars were taking part in a race -
"But it's a Fiat Uno" they spluttered (or at least the equivalent in Russian), I pointed out that yes, it's not just about winning but having fun, a bit of an alien concept and they still couldn't believe it was true.
The cars were an Italian and a Basque team, and they were very helpful with our tyre- in fact so helpful that they managed to destroy two foot pumps in their attempt to help out. Sorry to Team GB about your pump- Halford's finest I believe.

It was hard but we finally made the break after several fantastic weeks. We followed a really picturesque valley road heading west away from Bishkek and with a couple of snow-covered 3000m mountain passes as a reminder of how cold we have been at times, It should be much flatter conditions from now on. A final lone Golden eagle flew over as we approached the border to Kazakhstan, but here we ran into a problem, the soldier wouldn't let us pass and announced Kazakhstan was closed. We went back to the nearest village where, fortified by a cold coke and a snickers bar we proceeded to interrogate everyone in sight. But they were all agreed, the border was back the way we had come - blocked by our friend in combats.
This was a first for me, a complete inability to find an international border crossing. Finally the poor woman from the shop, perhaps sesing we would be there all night, wheeled out her grandmother who spoke good English and who was happy to tell us that we needed the international crossing not the local one and proceeded to give us directions to the appropriate village. After much coaching for me in the pronunciation of the village name - something like Tamagotchi, we headed off and with only two more u-turns managed to find the familiar unifroms, attitudes and barriers that indicate an uneasy border situation.
Leaving Kyrgyrstan was no problem, however customs on the Kazakh side had a different set of priorities and made me wait as long as possible, without even putting up much of a pretense of helping, merely passing my documents around and looking at them from all angles.
As I had already been through Western Kazakhstan I sort of knew what to do and pointed out the vehicle forms and the customs declarations that I needed to fill in. Finally, finally when they twigged that they would not be getting a single Tenge in bribes out of me, they grudgingly handed over the forms which I filled in really quickly in case they changed their minds and we left, heading west into our final 'Stan.

A week of camping out at the lake has spoiled us- beautiful sandy beaches, clear turquoise water with no-one and not even any buildings in sight. We collected driftwood for camp fires at night, I must admit we were also spoilt as Leon and his trusty van and sidekick Iwan were with us and so we had lots of freshwater available from the gerry cans in the van and had done a lot of food shopping in preparation for camping.
We visited a a very salty small lake - like a mini version of the Dead Sea - so saline that we were floating without having to tread water. The lake is also home to sulphurous mud- thick, viscous black stuff which is good for the skin allegedly- we coated ourselves with it and really stank. No one could get close enough to see if there was any improvements in our complexions so maybe that is the way it works.
We met a family with a young female Golden Eagle which is being trained by a hunter to help him hunt wolves, foxes and other animals- incredible to be close enough to touch it and see its massive talons, apparently they kill wolves by swooping down on them and breaking their backs.
We have now left the lake and are in Bishkek- the Kyrgyrz capital with its bright lights and big city atmosphere along with Internet access and a hostel full of interesting multi-national travellers.

Horseriding for a day though the world's largest walnut forest on horses that had wooden saddles, not the most comfortable of rides with my notoriously bony backside.

Riding some of the best roads I have been on - steep mountain tracks, challenging enough to be enjoyable and high enough to experience eagles swooping in at 3000 metres for a closer look at the bike

Tobi and Claus catching us up having ridden from Germany to Kyrgyrstan in nine days! just the thought of it is enough to make my backside go numb again.

Tobi collecting dry cow dung for a local style fire - more smoke than any flames unfortuantely and that was only with a bit of petroleum assistance.
Lunching in a yurt with a family who invited us in when we turned up in their village looking pathetically hungry

Trying kymys - fermented mare's milk the nomadic families don't cultivate anything but have lots of horses so they make their alcohol from the milk. Kymys has a poor reputation but to be honest it was OK, tasted a bit like scrumpy (rough cider) but with a yoghurt after-taste. I was ready for seconds but thought I had better not as I still had 100kms of riding to do that day.

Camping at 3000 metres and the rain freezing to the outside of the tent.

Followed by swimmimg in the lake at the same altitude- a brief but refreshing swim, the others would not believe me when I said it was a similar temperature to the water at Porthcurno.

Trying to get close enough to the yaks to get a good picture but getting a bit spooked by the nasty look in their eyes and so retreating.

Doing a river crossing very nicely but then dropping Thelma in a big muddy puddle (whilst transporting a dozen eggs)

Annie opting out of the river crossing on Thelma, searched for an alternative and ended up on the back of a very small donkey with a young child perched behind her "driving" the donkey through the stream (sorry Annie, through the raging current), this was made all the more comical by the fact that Annie was wearing full bike gear including her helmet. The piece de resistance of the performance was when she fell off on the other side of the river and landed on her backside - a great crowd pleaser as always.

We had a final couple of days in Tajikistan staying at the remote town of Murghab - a very bleak place where there is nothing green and all the food has to be imported as nothing grows. It was a sociable time as first we saw Al and Dave from the 'Stan Clan, my Horizons bike riders' group- they are on a whirlwind ride through to Vladivostock (Pacific coast) via Mongolia and have just six weeks left to get there- which is a lot of hard riding.

We then had Tim and three other friends from the GS Club come through and stay over - they are doing a journey similar to mine but have gone in the opposite direction - they left England the day beofre me and raced across Russia to reach Ulan Baatar in 18 days, a saddle sore experience. They are now heading back to England and should be there in five weeks I think. They have got a landrover as support vehicle so they've got a few more luxuries than we have, it was really nice to see familiar faces, especially in such a remote area. Ever the hostess, I cooked up a big pan of mashed potato for tea and fed them all. We then had a bit of international money market dealing as we exchanged currencies for the various countries, at one point there were five different cuurencies on the table.
Two days ago we took the final road heading north towards the border - there was a very high pass, 4700m which was a bit chilly, Thelma wasstill pulling strongly though which was good news. At one point a golden eagle was soaring overhead, but it was a bit camera shy. We also had to ride through some herds of yaks which were scattered across the road and they were in no hurry to move out of our way as we rode at walking speed past them.
They are incredible, almost prehistoric-looking and a bit fierce in appearance, as always a healthy respect for any animal (says the woman who ran away from an anteater because it gave me a funny look).

The border crossing was very straightforward, a half-hearted attempt by the guard to extort money and we were through which is good as it is the second highest border crossing in the world and oxygen is at a premium, we were not keen to hang around, especially as there was snow underfoot and friends had been caught up in a snowstorm here a week ago (soemthing I had neglected to tell Annie). Kyrgyrstan almost straight away looks very different to Tajik, incredibly green, yurts dotting the hills and herds of very healthy looking horses roaming around.
We camped in the hills for a night before heading into Osh, the country's second largest town with a fantastic bazaar so loaded with produce we have dubbed Osh the Land of Plenty.

In many ways it feels like I have been transported to Penang - there is the hustle and bustle of south east Asian commerce, lots of street hawkers selling stuff from indvidual pram wheels, to second hand saucepans and baby clothes, there is also a lots of street food which I am enjoying; "yuk gusht" is the phrase for "no meat". There is also an amazing range of nationalities here, we had lunch with some Uzbekis, dinner with a Tartar (Russian) and morning tea with Kygyrz poeple, and as we are very close to the Chinese border there are also a lot of Chinese poeple here.

The Uzbeki family have helped me out with the dodgy Daewoo repair, which as I suspected did not last very long, I now have a part from a Zazda, soviet-made car; Rakim the mechanic was extolling the virtues of soviet machinery and quoting Brezhnev as he replaced the part. I will have to see how this new part fares, I don't think the roads here will be anything as bad as the ones in Tajikistan.

We had reunions and rough riding along the Afghan border, as we encountered other travellers we'd previously met and tackled tracks that were steep and narrow and which were covered in sandy gravel. Our loose front indicator went flying off along one precipitous track, I had to retrace our route to find it. Not that indicators are any use out here as they are never used, but I know that in Kazakhstan and Russia, the police are very keen to pull foreign motorists over on the slightest pretext and a missing indicator will be a big bribe.

It is now safely re-attached with trusty gaffer tape to the rescue once more, one of my bodge job specials, the local Tajiki drivers have already re-done my rear indicator, they thought my twigs and tape repair was hysterical and highly ineffective (which I'm inclined to agree with them), so they have done a much better job.
Tape is also holding the windscreen on- I don't think there is much point in repairing the windscreen properly until we are on roads that make it seem unlikely we will drop the bike - so that might be in about another 10,000 miles.

We took the long loop round through Wakhan Valley - seems like it was nicer and more interesting than going straight across the Pamir Highway- which is all tarmac, though the tarmac was a lovely treat after the high and incredibly remote mountain pass out of the Wakhan Valley.
We were spotted some camels at 3800 metres, I didn't know camels lived at such heights - I think they are wild ones, they were on the Afghan side of the border. We also had a wildlife spotting of ... Siberian beavers (or according to Shaia, an Israeli backpacker we met) that's waht they are, they're golden coloured with long tails and live in holes in the ground, they moved too fast for us to get a photo or a clear look at them.
More soldiers playing silly games and they tried to hold us up on the Wakhan Valley - only two of them and my theory is that they're not going to waste their expensive bullets (if they've got any in the first place). So although they had stopped us and pointed a large gun at us I told them
"This is NOT a checkpoint, you get no documents"
and we rode on - I did advise Annie to duck down in the unlikely event that they might start shooting.
The only place to show documents is at the proper checkpoints where there are barriers across the road and there is a some sort of officer in charge, not the young conscripts that are out on foot patrol and answerable to no-one.

We bumped into my support van from the Kazakh desert halfway up a Pamir mountain - he had even remembered to bring hot chocolate as requested, we again went in opposite directions after a beer evening - Baltic 7 the beer of choice, though transporting 10 bottles of it three miles up a mountain side in my topbox probably wasn't such a good idea - lager-scented sleeping bag anyone?
Out of the valley and onto the plateau that forms the Pamir Highway - it reminds me of the Bolivian altiplano - a high altitude area, ringed by mountains and fairly flat for hundreds of miles. We had our first sight of yurts and also a yak, though to be honest it was just the severed head of one - it looked huge. They took it off to the kitchen before Annie managed to get a photo of it.

We had heard that the route we were taking would be challenging and they weren't wrong. First it was incredibly hot as we followed the river with 1000 metre cliffs on either side and no greenery anywhere except the very occasional oasis village.
The track deteriorated and was very tricky to ride with dried river beds to cross, some still with rivers to cross - I reminded Annie of the key point when crossing a river - keep your mouth shut as sometimes the water has a nasty habit of flying up and straight into the helmet.

We crossed a bridge with broken metal plates covering it like crazy paving but with sharp edges and big gaps to negotiate - not nice on two wheels. Then we reached a bigger river, Annie got off to walk while I promptly dropped Thelma in the deepest part - a bit too blase about it, I should have done a recce first and walked through to judge the depth and uneven boulders underneath.
Luckily a lorry driver who happened to be washing his lorry mid-river waded over when he heard me screech "Annie" and between the three of us we got Thelma upright and onto dry land. I checked for signs of water entering the engine, which mainly consists of looking at the air filter under the fuel tank to see if it looks wet - is anyone has any other top tips about what signs to look for, please let me know. If water has been ingested and then the ignition switched on the engine can blow up, so the consequences are pretty severe.
I nervously turned the key and Thelma started first time - great, the only damage seemed to be a missing mirror which is probably halfway to Kabul by now. On the plus side however, the neutral light which has not been working for a couple of weeks was once more operational, obviously immersion in fast flowing water was the key; maybe I should have washed Thelma more regularly.

The next river was a nightmare to look at - much deeper with massive boulders, very fast flowing and to add an extra spice it flowedover into a 20 foot drop. I wasn't taking any chances with this one and carried some of the bags across first whilst also doing a thorough recce- the water was very deep in places, and I was almost knocked off my feet several times, the riverbed was also extremely uneven and covered in slippery rocks and boulders, we watched a land cruiser struggled to cross. The shallowest part was right next to the 20 foot drop off and that would be the line we would have to take.
We enlisted the help of two blokes who were passing, and explained with fairly graphic sign language what was required of them ie to accompany me and the bike across and to ensure the bike did not fall over. However they were unprepared for the speed that I neede to tackle the water with and got a bit left behind, just about managing to catch up as the current got hold and Thelma started to tip over. They grabbed the pannier racks and struggled to keep their footing as I slid off the seat and revved up to try and drive Thelma onwards, a few slippery rocks kept us stationary briefly before we got some momentum going and I roared up and over them and across to the other side - we had made it!
I felt such a sense of relief and achievement but also a feeling a dread, how many more of these were there.One of our helpers did quietly ask if we were heading to the Pamirs, and when I replied yes, he just raised his eyebrows, not a good reaction I thought.
I kept that little exchange from Annie - she was ferried across with the lastof the panniers by a kindly jeep owner and didn't even get her feet wet.

Next we faced a waterfall which was landing on the road, luckily this looked worse than it was, though I did get completely drenched.
Cars and trucks were being held up as there was a semi-official one way system in place for some stretches of the road ie east to west on the even hours and vice versa on the odd hours, but the road workers deemed that we were OK to pass through which led to more hair-raising encounters with massive chinese lorries on the narrow track going round sharp bends, once more we almost ended up in the river below a number of times.

It really was a tough ride. We had a break in the shady garden of a friendly family- it was the first sign of habitation we had seen for 40 miles and we were desperate for water- which turned out to be only available from the stream running through their garden- needs must and we glugged it down.

As the sun was setting we reached a restaurant with outdoor eating consisting of two shaded platforms covered in carpets which we sat crosslegged and ate out of a communal plate of rice - also known as plov or pilau in this area. The woman who served the food enquired if we needed somewhere to sleep and showed us what was basically a trucker's dosshouse above the kitchen- a stuffy room with five narrow beds side by side. We were so exhausted that we said yes and then negotiated to have the room next to it with mattresses on the floor and the hopeful possibility of no room mates (truckers or otherwise). We dropped off to sleep straight away - it was 8.30pm; a late night intruder was shouted at until he left the room - there was no way of locking the door so I stacked some of our stuff in front of it.

IN Dushanbe (Tajikistan capital) for several days as we waited for our visa extensions- a gentle lulling back to the comforts of civilisation such as running water, fridges with chilled drinks and the ultimate gastronomic high of a Lebanese restaurant serving felafel and hummus. Vegetarian food is not easy to find here and my excitement at spotting veggie kebabs at a open air restaurant was somewhat tempered when I also spotted the lumps of mutton fat threaded onto the skewers.

Several other travellers passed through town while we were there- mostly people in search of visas eg for China and Pakistan, we also saw Corinne the Swiss cyclist I had met in Samarkand - she had actually cycled through the tunnel of hell on her bike.
I took Thelma to a mechanic to get the rubber gaiter that Ann had brought out with her fitted. The plastic bottle substitue that Vlad had used as a temporary measure had stood up well to the rough condiitons we had put it through.
I stayed to watch and learn from the mechanic-it's a job I have done before in the heat of Mozambique, and i was perfectly happy to let someoen else do this messy and tricky task. Or at least I was until he split the gaiter - I was speechless when I saw what he had done. There are no BMW parts available in Central Asia and he had broken my only hope.
He didn't seem too concerned and rummaged around his workshop coming up with something similar from a Daewoo which he quickly cut to size and fitted. It looked OK and he assured me it would last all the way to Mongolia and back to England- yes, I thought, it has to. I promised him a return visit if it didn't work.

Looking ahead to our onward route I found conflicting opinions about the roads. There are two routes, one heads due east and is the most direct though high across mountain passes to the Pamirs while the other (heading south) is twice as long; apparently all the public transport takes the southern route.
Nobody could give me a clear answer about the dangers to be faced on the eastern route- poor road conditions was the most common answer, I suspected there was more to it than this. One bloke I spoke to - whilst I was using his office desk to re-inforce my map with sellotape, was a bit more forthcoming, despite the fact that he only spoke two words of English.
He pointed to the eastern road on my map and mimed men wearing long robes with little hats and beards taking potshots at vehicles -
" Mujahadden?" I said.
"Da" he nodded and enquired if we had mujahadden in my homeland.
I thought of some of the more fervent Cornish nationalists and agreed that yes, we have something similar in my country, maybe on a different level though as they tend to wield letters to the editor as their weapon of choice rather than Kalashnikovs.

As we had not remembered to pack our bullet proof vests, Ann and I decided that we had better take the southern route and had a final cold beer to celebrate getting visas and leaving the city.

Korjand to Dushanbe
Annie had thought things couldn't get much worse until she woke up the next morning and I issued her with a thermal balaclava, nearly losing one pillion rider to hypothermia in Armenia I don't want to risk another one.
I'd woken feeling better though weak and felt able to move on - not in any mood to hang around mad man's hotel if we could help it.
As always when we were getting Thelma ready to leave, a small crowd gathered and asked where we were going - an incredulous look when I announced Dushanbe and the crowd said "on that bike over those mountains?" making high mountain gestures in the air - I managed to distract Annie as they did that - it's a need to know situation and I really don't think she needs to know that we have two huge mountain passes ahead of us, and anyway as she has currently mislaid her reading glasses (my now blind navigator) she has not been able to read the route description in the guidebook so is blissfully unaware. I had told her the thermal balaclava was for the dusty conditions.So far it had been almost unbearably hot, like riding in a convection oven set to full heat, but I knew this would change.
The tarmac was good to begin with, scenic mountains, dry, dusty valleys and occasional oasis towns. Roadside hawkers including blokes holding out writhing snakes, not sure what people were buying them for. 100 miles further on, a police checkpoint and they indicated a rock and gravel strewn track leading upwards as the way to Dushanbe. Now I am no hero, this was not an optional side route we were taking but the only road from the north of the country to its capital city; Tajikistan just does not have the infrastructure that many of us take for granted. And to be honest I would never have chosen this as a road for someone's second day on the bike but as I said we had no choice, we had to get to Dushanbe as quickly as possible to get our visas extended.
It got very bumpy and then the snow appeared, small amounts at first until it was banked up at the sides of the road, melting and falling onto the track in front of us. The surface got more slippery as I was faced with the unenviable choice of slippery mud or slippery slabs of ice on a narrow dirt track at 3300 metres altitude. The lack of oxygen was starting to give me a headache and I was desperately conscious of the fact that I had donated my last square meal to the customs sniffer dog yesterday and had eaten only a bit of dry bread since then - I decided to not dwell on my weakened state and just focus on the road as we lurched towards the edge of the precipice. I stopped in time, straightened Thelma and apologised to Annie as I then gunned it up the final straight - we had made it to the top, now all we had to do was get down the other side - and for those who know my feelings about downhill stuff, it was not a pretty sight. I got Annie to walk about 15 yards at one point as there was so much snow across the track, it was downright dangerous.
The only other traffic were a few lorries toiling along and lurching from side to side, they gave us grins and a wave as we passed- I left the social side of things to Annie as I tried to keep our skidding to a minimum as we descended through the slush and ice.
Finally we reached the bottom and stopped at the local equivalent of Frankley Services- with chai (tea) houses on either side of the track. They were full of truckers who stared open-mouthed as we pulled off our helmets and they realised we were women (or at least vaguely recognisable as women under the dust and gime not mention bad helmet hair). A pot of tea served by the friendly propietor who led us into the kitchen, the only choice was soup - bubbling away in a huge cauldron, ignoring the lumps of mutton fat bobbing aorund in it I said it would be fine (just don't tell the vegetarian society).
Refreshed, we set off once more, the cafe owner had refused payment which was very sweet of him. Just one more big mountain and then it will be downhill all the way and maybe we will see tarmac again I told Annie. In fact there were some great startches of tarmac- so fresh they were still hot and sticking to our tyres- as the chinese road workers made space for us to squeeze through along their foot paths whilst cars and lorries had to wait 30 minutes or more at a time. In Ayni we stopped for fuel - a bit hit and miss, no indication of octane level (there is a lot of 80 oct here) and it was served out of a 10 litre glass jar.
The next part of the route headed uphill again, getting more steep and then extremely rough, I had to get Annie to walk a short section that was particularly steep with loose sand and gravel, it was a toss up between her helping to keep the back wheel in contact with the ground and therefore giving more purchase or having Thelma a bit lighter and potentially easier to manoeuvre. We watched open-mouthed as Ladas went trundling down the hill in the opposite direction.
Eventually the tunnel of terror loomed up beofre us, I had been pre-warned about this, it's an Iranian constucted four mile pitch-black flooded tunnel with deep pothles and a delightful carbon-monoxide atmosphere. At least it meant we didn't have to go all the way to the top of the mountain in the snow again.
We paused and a cement mixer lorry came along and beckoned us to follow him through - what a gent. He even put on his light at the back to act as a small spotlight for us, the upside was that we could see the watery surface ahead though the downside was that we had to choke on his fumes all the way through and at times when it would have been safer for us to go a bit faster we were trapped behind him going slowly- Thelma is more stable on uneven ground at faster speeds. Within 50 yards we had lurched into a vary deep pothole that soaked us and I almost dropped Thelma, I think it was only the thought of trying to pick up a 250Kg bike in 2 foot deep filthy water in the inky blackness that spurred me on to a superhuman effort to desperately keep her upright.
After that I watched the truck's wheels intently (a bit hard with my eyes stigning from all the fumes), looking out for that tell-tale lurching. It seemed to take forever, but finally we ere out into fresh air once more and now it was definitely downhill all the way.
We reached Dushanbe at 6pm that evening, it had taken us 10 hours to get there and we were exhausted.

A traumatic start to Annie's journey with me and here is how it unfolded-
Day One - only 30 mins later leaving the hotel than planned - the reception machine bounced back Annie's husband's credit card (nice gesture Terry, but we ended up having to pay cash).
Accompanied to the border by Vlad and Masha in his car - the only Toyota Prius in Uzbekistan apparently- but as I am sooo bad at identifying cars I still had problems trying to spot him and follow his lead- which obviously does not reflect well on my observational skills as most of the vehicles here are Ladas. We also had Jenjy (Eugene) and his girlfriend Anne as outriders on his Suzuki GSXR.
So a speedy trip to the frontier in convoy- as we said farewell and thank you to them at the border - Vlad looking Thelma over, noticed that the rubber boot at the top of the shaft had split - whoops, we had taken a look at it the previous day and it had looked fine.
We didn't have the time on our visas to return to Tashkent to fix the problem and so an emergency roadside repair was required - Vlad used my penknife to create a cover out of a plastic water bottle and then sellotaped and cable-tied it into position - a bit rough and ready looking but it would have to do. We have the spare part with us and will get it put on at the next major city, unfortunately that is 400kms and a couple of high mountain ranges away.
At the border crossing, the Uzbeki guards were very thorough in their search (which as we are leaving the country seemed a bit odd), they x-rayed every bag and started searching through them by hand as well- the sort of treatment I have only seen at an Israeli border several years ago. It was going to take a long time so drastic action was required - I went very pale and vomited copiously at the entrance to their office - not surprisingly they quickly decided that their search was over and they urged us to continue our journey (yes, Annie did take a picture).
Before we copuld leave though, the cleaner came over and stroppily thrust a brush and pan into my weak and clammy hands. I was unable to stand up at this point. Luckily the sniffer dog came to investigate and liking what he saw, proceeded to eat the vomit on the ground which made me feel better as he was looking a bit emaciated and I knew that this was defeintielyone meal that included the five food groups.

The Tajiki border guards were much nicer and quicker (maybe my reputation had preceded me), 30 minutes with them and we were on our way with a cheery wave (and was that a look of relief on their faces I saw?).

The good tarmac road was a welcome start to the country as both of us now had ominous stomach cramps, it was incredibly hot and we were keen to stop - but it was 50 miles before we reached the city of Korjand and the relative sanctuary of the excitingly named Leninabad Hotel - a multi-storey canary yellow masterpiece of crumbling soviet concrete.
Our room was on the second floor and the lift was broken (ah yes this is another fact of life with ex-soviet buildings), I think it was the climb up the stairs that did it but we had only been in the room two minutes when I was once more explosively sick, in my desperate need to stop the vomit hitting the beds it went all over me including down my bra. Annie was speechless and for once did not reach for the camera.
It got worse, the shower didn't work - oh dear I thought as I attempted to wash myself using the water dribbling out of the taps in the sink. We both crashed out asleep for the next 14 hours, we were obviously in a bad way, as neither the raucous wedding party nor the stadium concert with Wembley-sized speakers across the road didn't waken us.
However what did wake us at 10.30pm was the very disagreeable manager pounding at the door and trying to get into the room whilst demanding money and passports. I pulled on some clothes- only slightly damp and sour-smelling (we had left all the luggage on Thelma parked out in the car park) and went out to reception to deal with him- which turned into a drama when he suddenly started demanding almost 50% more for use of the room than we had agreed- he became very aggressive and loud (yes Abi that was him NOT me!).
And because it was now almost 11pm and I felt like I was going to vomit again I just had to pay up - a very horrible man, so anyone going to Korjand, please never use the Leninabad Hotel.

Poor Annie - her first day on the road - I had embarrassed her and poisoned her and now she was having to sleep in a sick-room with a ranting mad man lurking outside the door.
I gave her the option of flying straight home.

I waved goodbye to Leon and his fridge, heading eastwards through Bukara and Samarkand- both as stunning as all the pictures and text suggest.
I manged to arrive in Tashkent 12 hours before Ann's flight was due from London which I thought was pretty good timing having crossed one and a half continents to get here. Ann (or Annie as she is also known) is due to travel with me until Mongolia - or until she gets tired of my singing on the bike.
She's had an intense introduction to life on the road - first a dodgy black market money transaction where the bloke tried to rip us off- money in Kazakhstan is tricky as the largest bank note is 1000 som (about 70 cents) so just doing a bit of shopping involves carrying a huge wad of money and counting out 166 banknotes discreetly in the middle of the street is not easy.
We had a good night out in the Biker's Bar (for those in Tashkent it is the VM Bar opposite the Plaza Hotel, Yuri the owner is very friendly) which led to us not making it to the Internet cafe before it closed to give a rundown on events before we left Tashkent, however we are probably barred now as we left with money owing on our bar tab - whoops.

It was a hectic five days
Five days without running water let alone electricity and internet and here is why...
I collected my Kazakh visa in Baku, Azerbaijan then made a dash for the ferry and my luck was in - straight onto it - the only other European had been waiting eight days...
It was a basic service on the boat - I never did manage to find the shower, but luckily it was only a 24 hour journey (sometimes it stretches to four days) I arrived in Kazakhstan it was 11pm at night we docked, we cleared immigration at 2.00am to then be told that Customs was closed until 8.00am - so I set up my tent in the carpark outside the Customs building- one way of being first in the queue.
Unfortunately the 8.00am start time was optimistic to say the least and it was gone 10.00am by the time anyone was even available to look in our direction, in fact it was 1.00pm in the afternoon before we were allowed to leave the customs compound- my solo travel had now grown to include Leon- an Austrian night club manager driving a VW 4-wheel drive van and Vasily from Moscow driving a big Audi 4 wheel drive something, he had Russian Mafia stamped all over him and we couldn't shake him off, he seemd to feel that we were his pet westerners and that he needed to look after us.

I had the huge expanse of the Kazakh and Kyzylkum Desert stretching away into the distance and had decided on safety in numbers and suggested to Leon that we team up for the desert route - he was happy to as he has little desert experience and so in return for carrying my panniers in his van I rode as his outrider and Vasily well, he insisted on accompanying us but would race on ahead to each roadhouse stop and wait there drinking vodka and beer until we arrived and then would announce "go, go" and charge off once more.

the desert - camels, scorpions, snakes and kamikaze gerbils which insisted ion racing across the road almost under my wheels.

It was a hard, hot, dusty ride but not as bad as I had thought- like the better parts of the route north of Isiolo in Kenya. We lost Vasiliy the first night, he had gone on ahead, so after that is was just me and the van carrying the cold beer - oh yes, I made sure I didn't lose sight of that and when a shower was produced on the second night I was in heaven, I can see now after 12 years of bike travel why people have support vehicles, and have I mentioned the chocolate m&m's in the fridge as well?
As always camping out in the desert is a delight- the starry skies and the peacefulness.

What can I say? The wine is good (a bit of trial and error at first), the beer is very good and the people are very friendly.
I have had my friend April with me - US diplomat who I stayed with in Rio, it's good to be able to return the hospitality favour and host her on an episode of bike travel in Georgia and Armenia.
She has loved it, even the mechanical issues and the coasting towards the border on petrol fumes when we got that crucial travel formula slightly wrong -you know the one- Fuel/Local Currency/Distance to Border.
Although in my defence, I had been given the wrong directions for the border and we ended up in the no-go military zone between Armenia and Azerbaijan -an area known for its minefields.
"Just don't put your feet down" I advised April.

I am now solo again, but not for long as an XT600 rider- Leon has turned up in town and spotted Thelma - he guessed it was me.
I am in Borjomi, a town in the south west surrounded by mountains and home to hot springs, a great place to stay and chill - it's like the Coroico of Georgia.

The news about Turkmenistan is not good - they have closed the borders to foreigners and so I am going to have to re-route via a ferry to Aktau and then the not very nice road across Kazakhstan and into Uzbkistan that way- I've seen the pictures and Thelma and I are not looking forward to it. I will also need to get a Kazakh visa in Azerbaijan (no Embassy here).

Having gone quite quickly across Europe to make the ferry out of Odessa, I am now relaxing by the coast in Georgia.
The ferry was fine, I had opted for the economy cabin which means sharing with three others - I was a bit concerned the other three would turn out to be farting Ukrainian truck drivers (call me Mrs Picky) - however the receptionists felt sorry for me and put me in a cabin on my own - luxury. The Georgians on board took me under their wing, trying to fatten me up by urging more food onto me and they also did some language lessons so I now have a Georgian twang to my Russian. The food itself was a bit odd- everyone was pulling funny faces - well, cold noodles and sausage isn't usual for breakfast in anyone's country - it took me two days to find out that there was porridge available.
Arriving at Georgia, I didn't get off to a great start as the ferry docked at 9.00am - maybe I was a bit too optimistic when I presented myself for check out at 9.30- only to be told that I should go back and wait in my cabin for "one or two hours, or maybe three or four"!
It was 1.45pm by the time I got out of the port and then, the car that was showing me the route out of the docks area reversed into me! not a good start.
I was pulled over by police within 30 mins on the road- oh no I thought- ex-soviet style again, having had the Ukrainian police try to sting me, but how wrong I was, they just wanted to chat (which was very limited with my poor Russian vocab) and then they asked me to pose for a quick photo and they waved me on - how friendly was that I thought.
The roads seem pretty good, although there are random cows wandering around which I am having to dodge on the road, it reminds me of India. I have managed to meet up with another rider through Horizons so we are comparing rides so far - it has taken him two months to get this far whilst I have whizzed through in two weeks.
I also seem to have acquired Giardia - not pleasant to be with at the moment!

Waiting for news on the Turkmenistan visa- some visa companies are saying that the border has been closed - not sure what will happen after Azerbaijan.

It's been a while since I've hit the road - I was very ill (Stills Disease), in hospital for quite a while and then off my bike for a year , but I was one of the lucky ones and have made almost a full recovery- or at least enough to get back on Thelma and take off once more- this time destination Mongolia.
12,000 miles across Europe, the 'Stans and Russia to Outer Mongolia.

I am writing this from sunny Odessa on the Black Sea waiting for the ferry to Georgia, I have been assured that it will leave at 11.00pm tonight but this is the Ukraine so we shall see.
I left home just over a week ago and had the excitement of getting through three rear shock absorbers in the first four days!!
A bit of a record even by Horizons standards I think, though two of them were second-hand and the garage pointed out that it was broken beforeit was fitted to Thelma.
- never mind, I got a Wilbers (recommended by Horizons contributors) shock in Germany for a very good price and seem to be doing well with that.

I am also the proud owner of a website showing all my previous journeys and my current one, keeping friends and family up to date. I will also be blogging on here, as without Horizons, life would be a lot more difficult on the road.
I'll probably be meeting up with other travellers later as there seem to be quite a lot of people going across Central Asia, but I am on my own for the majority of this trip with a couple of friends joining me for different parts of my travels.

Yes, I am still riding Thelma- my trusty 1992 BMW R80GS- she is going well, although her horn has stopped working, something to look at when I dock in Georgia, as from my experience a horn is essential for overseas bike travel.

My website addrees is
www.tiffanystravels.co.uk
feel free to post comments on my website and sign the guestbook.

Twenty four hours later and Tobi's bike went in the luggage compartment of a bus from Laayoune to Tangiers (about 1500 kms) he also took a bus, while I rode on through torrential rain - the frst rain I had seen since setting off six weeks ago, it turned some of the desert road into a quagmire of mud, the following day I was hit by vicious sandstorms, then the bolt on the broken shock absorber snapped - whoops!

In Marrakesh, another bike traveller (Sam) helped me to pack old rubber bits around the spring on the shock absorber to try and make the ride a bit safer; everyone seems a bit shocked at the state of the suspension. We also replaced the broken bolt.

Having been delayed by these repairs, I then had to get on my way, a last minute chance to buy some Moroccan slippers and it was hit the tarmac with a vengeance time, making it to Madrid from Marrakesh in 26 hours.

North of Madrid I was in extremely snowy conditions – riding along with wistful thoughts of the heat in the desert. In Bilbao I bought another battery, caught the ferry and arrived home in one piece.

For several days now it has been Ethel to the rescue as first Tobi ran out of fuel and then got a puncture.
Whilst the major event of the last 2 days is that he has broken his gearbox - it happened on the desert highway - we then had an epic of a day (too long to go into here) involving a refrigerated lorry, the police and a team of Japanese people in a minivan.

The upshot is that I ended up TOWING Tobi on his R100GS (that’s a big 1000 cc bike for those of you not in the know) for 125 kms - it wasn't much fun as I had my nearly bald desert tyre on the rear and NO suspension, and naturally the desert winds were blowing as well.
Ethel coped well though and we reached the nearest small town where the bike was transferred to a ...Mitsubishi taxi - bit of a squeeze but we managed it and got to Laayoune – the biggest city in southern Morocco at 10pm that night.

Plan X
To rebuild the exploded battery in Nouakchott -as I had discovered that the replacement battery had turned out to be a dud and actually there are NO 12 volt batteries in this country. Loo and Gary (bike-riding friends from Cornwall) had arrived in Nouakchott with a tube of weld stuff and so the operation to rebuild was undertaken.

The next morning I set off with some trepidation - 450 kms to cover to reach tarmac and Morocco - with a dodgy battery and no suspension. Thirty miles into the desert we realised that the battery was leaking, and so I have put a sanitary towel on it. It seems to be slowing the acid leakage, Tobi has now taken to rolling his eyes whenever I say I have got an idea.
We ended up camping in the NO-Man's Land between the Mauritania and Morocco borders - us and about 50 dodgy-looking people trying to reach the Mecca of Europe.

We crossed the last of the sand and entered back into Morocco – the last country before Europe.

I am in Nouakchott and the sand storms are blowing. it's like being in thick fog but more painful.

Ethel and I limped into Mauritania from Mali -her suspension has gone - Ooooh yes, just 300 kms south of Timbuctoo so it has been a painful ride over hundreds of kms of corrugated dirt tracks and as for the sand - trying to steer though it while the bike is like a bucking bronco is almost impossible at times.

reached Nouakchott and relative sanity (as well as cold beer courtesy of the chinese restaurant- getting quite a liking for this rice beer)

We returned to the hostel where they have been storing my jerry cans for the next bit of desert crossing.
Met an English Honda rider at the hostel - complete with badly broken collar bone and ribs where he attempted the desert crossing.....hmmmm, gives me food for thought as I contemplate what lies ahead. It then turned out that he is a fellow Horizons rider - Simon Fitzpatrick, who has been stuck here foir a while waiting for his collarbone to heal, the good news is that he is having the third operation this evening, which is to remove the pins and so he is hoping to continue his journey next week.

There have been a few ups and downs....

There is not a lot I can do about the suspension, so I am concentrating on the chain - meeting everyone's expectations I have been abusing it badly (as I only have experience of shaft driven bikes) and it has fallen off a few times - usually at a dicey moment.

I knew it was time to change it and yes, I DO have a spare with me. A German bloke called Herbert staying at the hostel has tools and know-how and so helped me with it, all was going well until he took the angle grinder to the old chain (assuring me that is how they are removed) there was suddenly a loud pop noise and the battery exploded- luckily both Ethel and the various spectators are OK.
Whilst Herbert continued his demoltion of my pride and joy I had to take to the streets in a taxi in search of a battery aided and abetted by Hassan and Barry - local guys. Finally ended up with one that is half the depth and a bit wider but have squeezed it in, got the filling with acid bit correct and then was overuled by the blokes present about charging it up... so I have a flat battery stuck in the battery compartment - oh well, open another rice beer.

Other parts of the bike are safely duck taped on; and we are going to set off early in the morning for the final bit of desert - actually I should re-phrase that as the final bit of "sandy desert " as there is tarmac in Western Sahara - whilst Mauritania is a country with just 4 tarmac roads.

The good news is that the bike dropping tally now stands at:
Germany 10
England 6

so I'm not doing too badly.

We finally wearily rode into town last night at 10 pm having had to negotiate the final 70 kms in the dark due to having been delayed by various problems - my chain jumping off the sprocket at one point, and something simple like trying to find a solid piece of ground to do repairs in the desert is not easy.
Then my headlamp fixings both broke -thanks to an earlier bodge job fix-it from Clive (when we were in Bordeaux 3 weeks ago) I knew all I needed to fix the headlamp was a piece of wire,
however where do you find wire in the middle of the Sahara at 6pm on a Tuesday evening?
A burst of inspiration - my bra!
Yes the underwire worked perfectly, we did the repairs and rode on through the night with a headlamp working well and a semi-functioning bra!

As we reached the welcocome to Timbuctoo sign, we expected to see the lights of the town twinkling in the dark, however, all that was visible was a large expanse of water - nobody told me there was a big river to cross- I thought this was the desert.
Touaregs appeared beside us and directed us down the sandy river bank where they then started naming cash sums to get us across the river- we did some tired bargaining - all the while I was worriedly looking at the limited selection of vessels available
They assured us that two GS bikes could easily fit in a dug-out canoe and they were right- though the boat was extremely low in the water and it had been a nerve-wracking experience to watch them loading the bikes on.
The boat journey turned out to be one of the highlights of this trip- silently drifting down the River Niger with a full moon above us and the knowledge that I was almost at Timbuctoo.
The final kms from the river were on tarmac - a relief for us in our tired state.

It feels great to have got here- and they even serve cold beer.

Time to rest, watch the camels and then think about coming home.

nk

We got the Mali visas in Dakar and have been on the road for the last 4 days.

The first 80 miles in Mali- from Kayes (for those of you with an atlas) were bloody hard, it took us 24 hours. Hopefully the photos will do some of it justice as we had to scale some rock faces (I kid you not) and there was a particularly memorable moment when Ethel and I were in mid-air halfway up one rock face;

We are now in Bamako,the capital of Mali and have been promised tarmac for the next 500 kms which will be a relief after the dust, sand and rock we have been on.
We took what turned out to be the back route from Kayes the border town, it was mostly a footpath with various obstacles including a couple of rock faces to scale - I just hope that the photos will do it justice.
The "real" route goes to the north of Kayes and is longer but less risky - we would have taken that one if we had known about it.

The running tally at the moment is Germany -5 England -6
...... that is for the number of times we have each fallen, I have got 3 indicators attached with duck tape and it seems like more parts are falling off by the hour!

I have got dust everywhere, more sand ahead as we continue to Timbuctoo

Well, I have fairly quickly arrived in sub-Saharan Africa and all in one piece.

I got here (Dakar) on my birthday which was also the day the Dakar Rally arrived in town and so we were weaving our way through the typically African virtually stationary traffic alongside the huge trucks and strange-shaped sand buggies, chatting to the British drivers as I passed them.

The ride down has been looooong and hot, almost completely on tarmac until Mauritania where it was time to hit the sand.

The Hein Gericke Tuareg desert gear has performed superbly in the hot conditions, the others I am riding with are most envious - it is the first time I have used light-weight desert gear. It helped to make me a more convincing Rally competitor as we blagged our way into Senegal through the maze of passport and customs procedures. We had to create a convincing distraction as Tobi's bike is 13 years old and therefore officially he is not allowed to bring it into Senegal.

So far, sand and camels have been the main obstacles - often at the same time which makes for perilous riding and much cursing. I am getting the knack of speeding over the surface of the sand for the smoothest ride.

At one point, out in the middle of nowhere, with only sand for miles and miles, a landrover appeared in the distance, driving erratically (which seems the norm here) it came all the way over to me, stopped and two Berbers jumped out to ask for a light! It seems that nothing changes wherever you go in the world.
We have had some fantastic evenings camping out amongst the sand dunes and enjoying the peace and quiet of the desert.

Ethel is running really well - one day I got an amazing 300 miles from her small 17 litre fuel tank which was great. The next stages are going to be tarmac until Mali where conditions will once more deteriorate.

Currently rough camping on the beach 5 miles outside of Dakar with some German surfers I met in Mauritania, improving my surf technique while I wait for my Mali visa to be processed.

I crossed France with three other GS bike riders I had met on the ferry - also members of the UK GS Club, I relaxed and sat back as their GPS systems guided us down avoiding motorways, a luxury for me to just follow another bike and not be doing all the navigating myself. I was really lucky with the weather and had sunny days every day while travelling through France and Spain.

Barcelona was fantastic as everyone seemed to be convinced I was a competitor in the Paris -Dakar Rally. The atmosphere was electric in town as hundreds of vehicles rolled in.
I watched the special stages on the sandy beach - visualising myself on the desert sand in a week's time....

New Year's Eve and a send-off party for the competitors who are setting off on this 10.000 kms course- I said goodbye to Nick and Simon (friends who are competing) and promised to buy them beers in Dakar in two weeks time.

Maggie had flown out to Barcelona and we rode down the coast to Malaga where we managed to track down Kieran with his KTM.

Maggie then flew home and Kieran and I took the ferry to Tangier where Tobi was waiting with his BMW R100GS, yes this is the intrepid trio that is about to undertake the desert crossing ahead- an Englishwoman, an Irishman and a German. Lets hope we can put up with the smelly feet and bad jokes.

I've been home for over a year now and so it is definitely time to get out and about once more...
so, where to go this time, well, I still have a vivid memory of when I was twelve and discovered that Timbuctoo was a real place - and NOT just a place name made up by grown-ups, I decided then, that one day I would go to Timbuctoo.

Quite a few years have passed since that decision, and now I'm a bike rider and so I'll be riding to Timbuctoo.
As Thelma is a bit heavy in sand for me, I've bought a second-hand F650 GS to tackle the Sahara Desert with...
for those who are fans of Thelma - don't worry, this is just a temporary retirement for her during the winter weeks that I am away.

I'm going to set off from the UK on 27th December, the first port of call will be Barcelona for the Start of the Paris-Dakar Rally, which combined with the New Year's Eve celebrations will mean quite a party.
I'll be going to the BMW party, and then nursing my hangover I'll be continuing southwards, in search of a ferry to north Africa and warmer weather.

Well, having got used to life in one place and acting as an unofficial agony aunt to others either on the road or considering their travels. I am not actually heading far this year, my wrist healed well - though the doctors did tell me off for the extra damage I had caused by riding for another 4 hours after breaking it - and yes it was a bit painful.
I'm off to Belguim next month -the Tesch Rally in Malmedy where I've been invited to give a talk - 17-19th April if there are any HU readers who might be heading there - it would be great to meet up.

Then of course there will be the HU Meeting in Derbyshire in July.

See you all there.

A shipping agent was found and discarded at the last minute as they tried to double the price when I had reached the point of no return. But finally I had tracked down JJ Mari - shipper extraordinaire and also a bike rider himself - he made the shipping a straightforward and easy process (virtually unheard of in S America) and then before I knew it, having once more battled with the downtown Venezuelan traffic; I was strapping Thelma down on a pallet at the Lufthansa warehouse and saying goodbye to her.

A few days later and Thelma and I were reunited at Heathrow Airport where the customs guys rolled their eyes at my excitement at seeing Thelma there - on time and in one piece - a first with ALL the shipping I've done.

Of course as I left Heathrow I promptly drove on the wrong side of the road - whoops I thought as I noticed all the signs seemed to be backwards!
I didn't quite head straight home though as I popped in on the GS Club UK guys' annual Hog Roast (which was on my way). I was persuaded to go for a quick off-road ride with them and managed to break my wrist in the process.
So, the finale to all my travels this time was me having to go home with my arm in plaster and leaving Thelma in Hampshire (still 300 miles from home).

I have so many people I want to thank who have helped me out on this journey - I think I'll be listing them another time. Also thanks to all those who have been in touch through the HU site - it's amazing to realise that so many people are rading about my travels. Hopefully, I will get the book written...
It's great to be home with family and friends, but somehow I know that my feet (and Thelma's tyres) will be itching again before too long.

After searching the Horizons site and emailing various other travellers I know who have passed this way, I came to the sad conclusion that
a) no-one had shipped home to Europe from here
and
b) I was going to have to do it the hard way
I hauled my way through the phone book, I must have called over 20 companies as I struggled with the intricacies of the Caracas public telephone system - not to mention the fact that the phone booths always seem to be home to hordes of mosquitoes - I would set off from my hotel each day, armed with spanish dictionary, cold drink, mossie repellent and all the reserves of patience I could muster.

In some cities in the World, the shipping agents are all conveniently situated in one street (or so it seems, eg Madras, Cape Town etc) but not in Caracas - scattered over the whole city, it meant I had to telephone them - not easy when your Spanish is not always up to the technical terms and anyway they just cannot accept that a woman has a motorcycle AND she wants to send it to Europe. The inevitable question of how did I get my bike to Caracas in the first place would always crop up, and I could hear the snorts of disbelief as I patiently retold how I had crossed the border overland from Brazil (luckily, no-one ever asked how I had got to Brazil in the first place).

and I am not talking about the mad drivers -the Venezuelans manage to make the Brazillians look like good drivers.

Caracas has a a somewhat unsavoury reputation as an unsafe city (even by South American standards) and I have been commiserating with everyone else here at the backpackers' hostel as nearly all of them have had something happen to them - knives, guns, getting grabbed and pickpockets-

Then, last night, and ironically I was actually walking along with Peter the Swede (having been wandering around on my own for weeks) when I sensed something was up and told him to move away from me - he had been on the receiving end of some of my self defence lectures lately so he did as I said and then this bloke suddenly lunged at me and grabbed my (cheap) watch - which amazingly didn't come off. I was SO angry with him that I ran after him to hit him - but then he looked so scared when I got him cornered that I just shouted at him. Meanwhile Peter the Swede is standing there with his mouth hanging open not quite taking in what was going on!

Hopefully that little incident will be a warning to all the local muggers not to mess with me.

Seeing Rio by bike was great - can`t go wrong if I just follow the beach roads up and down the city I thought - hmmmm, that was until Sunday when all of those beach roads become one way, which led to a few tricky moments.
After a few days of tyre searching and beach life at Copacabana and Ipanema, where the people were very impressed with Thelma, and I quickly got into the local habit of just parking anywhere on the pavement - though it's a bit of a different prospect when it's a BMW trying to discreetly trundle along the pavement as opposed to the 125cc bikes that the locals ride.
The tyre search was frustrating at times because to begin with I felt like I was invisible in the bike shops - they just don't seem to expect women to be actually wanting to buy anything so they would look around me and through me for a `real` customer. Also the word for tyre is pneu - exactly!!! Just how do you pronounce it? - well it sounds like PNAYO which for some reason just doesn't want to roll naturally off my English tongue, so I would then appear tongue-tied as I attempted to explain why I was there. Eventually proving successful and in possession of a Michelin I was able to leave town saying goodbye to the comforts of my friend's flat overlooking Ipanema Beach. Looking ahead to days on the road and camping again.

I was down to my final jaffa cake, I'd had four hours of Portuguese lessons (though the Brazillians still have a good snigger at my feeble attempts at their language), I had watched the Grand Prix on the telly - while quarter of a million locals trooped through the pouring rain to go and watch it in person at the course nearby and, most importantly Thelma´s gearbox seal was installed -
-- time to leave Sao Paulo

A farewell from the BMW garage who have been great and their many customers, I haven´t seen so many BMW bikes since I was at the BMF Show in England last May.

I made it to Rio just in time to meet Lew, Achi and Punky (Horizons Celebs!) before they left for the States. I got a photo of Punky perched on my tankbag as if he is riding with me.
I am staying in what feels like the lap of luxury - a friend's flat overlooking Ipanema Beach. The sun is shining and life feels good - it's great to be back on the road again, even if that currently means daily battles with the mad traffic of Rio- I generally tag along behind a bike courier as they frantically weave and dodge between the cars, buses and trucks. Little realising they have got a big BMW right behind them. I get a good reaction as people notice my map on the topbox and give me a big smile and a thumbs-up - at that point they then realise that I am a woman on a bike and their eyes almost pop out of their heads; I take full advantage and make use of the space they have created and whizz on ahead.

A huge state with thousands of miles to travel in, glaciers, mountains, forests and the occasional town.
Siobhan had her first experience of riding a fully-loaded BMW with two people on it, yes it´s heavy but it´s well-balanced.
First we headed south to Seaward for its annual 4th of July celebrations where the whole town parties, in fact the town was so full that we had trouble finding a space to camp in- every available bit of land is turned into camping areas, luckily some local bikers called us over and made room for our tent.
The main focus of the $th July celebrations is a race up to the top of the nearest mountain and back down again with the competitors sliding through the ice and snow fields at an incredible speed. This all appeared a bit too much like hard work for us and so we contented ourselves with watching from the bottom, with cold beers in hand.

Off to Deadhorse next, via Fairbanks and a visit to George, who, for 40 years has been running BMW´s most northerly outpost in the world. He operates out of what appears to be a forest with various classic bikes and cars in amongst the trees. He had been expecting us - word had travelled that we were in Alaska and he checked our sticky clutch for us, talking non-stop the whole time (part of his trademark service). With warnings to look out for the trucks on the dirt road north off we set, following the Alaskan pipeline into the Arctic Circle. We were accompanied by a German guy on a Honda Silver Wing which had worryingly bald tyres. He had been staying at the same hostel as us, and for some strange reason, he believed me when I told him that his bike would be able to reach Deadhorse no problem - in my defence, I have to say that I met one bloke who had taken his road bike up there complete with a trailer.
The road soon turned to dirt, though it wasn´t as bad as we had feared it might be. The first night we camped by the Yukon River and were mobbed by mosquitoes, we both donned our very fetching head nets which are essential up here and Siobhan rigged up her mosquito net suspended off Thelma´s handlebars so that she could smoke in peace.
The nextday we entered the Arctic Circle, surprised at how warm it was, we filled up with petrol at the last garage in Coldfoot, taking an extra gallon in a can as it is 245 miles of nothingness until Deadhorse.
The road was slippery and muddy in places, though for me, the worstparts are the roadworks-huge mechanical contraptions on the loose and a very unpredicatable road surface, often very soft where they have just laid fresh dirt and not yet flattened it.
The midnight sun was amazing - one of the benefits being that there is no hurry to get the riding done before dark as it never gets dark. In fact two bikers that we met were just setting off on their "day´s" ride at 11pm at night.
We met a few other bikers, some of whom had experienced snow the previous day - yes this is the middle of summer up here, but there are still no guarantees about good weather. I was making full use of my layers of clothing and also my electric jacket and gloves.

We reached Deadhorse, and set up camp a few miles outside of town - it is too dangerous to stay in tents any closer due to the bears that roam the town. Oh yes, more bears to contend with, this time the Arctic Tundra Grizzlies. We cracked open some bottles of beer to celebrate our arrival, some fellow bikers had warned us that Deadhorse is a dry town and upon seeing our stricken faces at the news had given us their remaining beers.
The nextday we headed into the town itself where we were treated like celebrities and befor ewe knew it word had gone around that the Motorcycle Mamas were in town. We were invited to meet various people and to take part in the Fun Run that evening. We hadn´t really planned on staying longer but the warm reception and the fascination of getting to know such an unusual community meant we stayed on.
The Fun Run was more of a walk for us - we took part wearing our bike gear (mainly because we didn´t have anything else to wear) there were some in shorts and running vests who sprinted the whole 5km, we felt we didn´t need to prove ourselves and just concentrated on completing the course. The police and security guards were out in force, to protect the runners from the bears- hmmm, what better incentive to actually run I thought.

The next day we headed off after posing for photos and featuring in a few video shots.
So, now heading south for the next 20 000 miles, keeping the sea on my right I can´t go wrong. I was amazed to see a familiar face a few hours out of Deadhorse - Philipp Jokisch from the GS Club in the UK on his GS 1100. I had last seen him in a pub six months previously- just before he left the UK for Tierra Del Fuego and now, here he was at the end of his long journey just as I began mine.

we headed back into Anchorage, camping on the edge of a glacier en route, and regretfully deciding that it might just be a bit too dangerous to ride Thelma onto the glacier itself.
Siobhan flew back to England whilst I did some trekking in the backwoods and then took the ferry from Alaska to Washington State - three and a half days of camping on the deck, watching amazing scenery go by and whale spotting, definitely a boatride to be recommended.

I originally set off with my friend, Becky Lincoln, for a simple trip to India, and now, five years later, I am on my fifth continent; I obviously took a wrong turn somewhere.

Here is how it happened. Becky and I originally came up with the idea in November 1997 to travel to India by motorbike, despite the fact that neither of us had any previous bike experience. After a crash course in How To Ride Bikes for complete beginners we got our licenses and a few months later set off on a second hand motorbike - a BMW R80GS - christened Thelma.

We started with £2500 between us, an 800cc bike from which we could only reach the ground with tip-toes and a vague journey plan of heading East until we reached the sea. We traveled through France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Iran and Pakistan finally reaching India after four months on the road. We had numerous adventures along the way including camping rough while bears and wild wolves roamed around our tent in Romania - and this was before we had even left Europe.

Traveling through Iran we had to wear chadors as it's illegal for women to appear in public not covered up with these huge black sacks complete with long head scarves. Putting them on over our leathers felt bizarre, but that's how we had to dress for the month we were there. We drew crowds wherever we went as the Iranians had never seen a woman on a bike before; at one point we were arrested by the security police after a short chase through the town (we hadn't realised they were police).

Pakistan was our favorite part of this trip - a beautiful country with fantastically friendly people - who invited us in wherever we went. The foothills of the Himalayas were a stunning sight as rode through them, and we managed to get to 4800m and still be on a road although surrounded by snow. We had various mechanical problems on the way which we always managed to overcome, partly through luck, a lot of help and a steep learning curve, although due to on-going electrical problems we did end up having to push-start Thelma all the way through India - no mean feat as she weighs quarter of a ton! We spent three months traveling the roads of India - you've not seen anything until you experience the horrendous driving conditions in this overcrowded country.

By this point we realised that we wanted to continue our journey and headed onwards, going through Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore and eventually reaching Australia where we rode across the continent via the outback, where there were only kangaroos and 150 feet long road trains (huge lorries) for company. We worked hard to save money and whilst Becky returned to England to start University I shipped Thelma to Cape Town where I worked for two months and persuaded another friend, Maggie Dunleavy (Ireland) to fly out from the UK and ride through Africa with me.

This part of the journey included the countries of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt - the classic Cape Town to Cairo route with a few diversions. Crossing the Namibian deserts we had an accident where I was injured and unconscious for a while - Maggie's worst nightmare come true, but within two days we were back on the road.

Throughout Africa, the road conditions were the most appalling I had encountered anywhere - mud, sand and dirt being the main road surfaces - we had a few falls but made it through successfully, even managing to cross rivers that came up to the petrol tank.

Some of the highlights of Africa - riding through a herd of elephants in Zambia and swimming with the dolphins off Zanzibar as well as the immense sense of achievement at actually reaching some of the more remote areas after tackling roads that were allegedly impassable - not bad when you can't reach the ground properly.

Arriving back in Europe during winter wasn't a good move, we arrived via a ferry from Israel to Greece and ended up crossing the Alps in a blizzard, before the freezing journey across France in December without the starter motor working.

From deserts to snowstorms in a week.