We promised the people of Asia that we would do the trip, and then go home and have babies. We have delivered on that promise, or at least Georgie has delivered. All is well with us, Georgie is smiling after the ordeal and the baby is well.

Simon and Oscar

Georgie started labour last Friday morning, we were in hospital at 3.30 on Friday afternoon, just before the snow fell. We tried for a natural birth until 9am on Saturday, when it became obvious that the baby wasn't descending properly - cause unknown - and the baby was starting to get distressed. We decided that a caesarean section was safest for baby and mum. At 10.13am the baby boy - Oscar Baatar McCarthy - was born and the reason for the difficulty became obvious - he was 9lb 15oz (4.5kg) - he was stuck!!

I got to hold the baby (big, blond, blue eyes) for 30 mins while Georgie was repaired. I got to see him open his eyes for the first time - poor soul having me as the first thing he sees!!

Georgie and Oscar

Yawning

Chilled

I have some recovering to do myself, and then some cleaning.

And why the daft names - well Oscar was nick-named 'Ozzy' before birth (Ozzy Unborn) and Oscar seemed to stick well with that nick-name and Baatar is the Mongolian word for 'Hero' (Ulaan Baatar – the capital of Mongolia – is names after Sukhbaatar, the ‘Red Hero’).

Simon (happy and still shaking)

We have 2 pieces of very good news we’d like to tell you all.

The most important is that Georgie is now pregnant – the baby has already been exposed to the throb of a BMW engine – got to get that training in early!! The baby is due in February 2006 – we’re both very excited, but scared - this big adventure is more difficult to back out of than the last!

Secondly, the travelogues of our trip to Japan and back have been published as a 360 page book, along with lots more previously unpublished stories, dozens of colour photos, 160 black and white photos, maps, etc. Have a look at:

www.sorebums.net

Thankfully the reviews are good:

“It's an excellent read, very natural and genuine. Recommended!”

“a great read for every real GS'er”

We hope to see you all on a trail somewhere or you can give us a wave as you pass the baby-clothes shop.

Simon and Georgie

Leaving Iran marked the ‘end of the unknown’ for our trip; but not the ‘end of the unfamiliar’. Spending a year and half in Asia had changed us and allowed time for things to change back in Europe. So this chapter is unusual in that we deliberately didn’t write it on the road; in fact it wasn’t completed until almost a year later. Before and during the trip we had talked to many travellers and heard about the problems that they had readjusting to normal life after their travels. Many people couldn’t settle into the hum-drum life at home and would return to the road again. We realised that the story of our journey would not end on our return to the UK but would stretch out until ‘all the strangeness of home seems normal again’. This chapter includes many observations about how we adjusted to the ‘weird life of Europe and home’…

One advantage of having a border crossing on top of a mountain range is you can bump-start your bike when the starter motor has just failed. Such a positive mental attitude was brought on by the knowledge that we were finally on the last leg of the journey and a cold beer was waiting on the campsite a few kilometres away.

That cold beer did greet us, did taste good and did go straight to our heads after six weeks of abstinence. We spent a few nights at a campsite that is famous with overlanders on the ‘hippy trail’ to India. Perched on a cool hill above the grotty garrison town of Dogubayazit (‘Dog-Biscuit’ to those in the know) the campsite hosts many long distance travellers as well as hardy souls about to scale Mount Ararat. We lazed around, visited the local castle and patched up the starter motor that had shed its magnets (just like the previous one had done a year before). The repaired starter managed to spin the engine about 50% of the time and lasted until we got to Milan in Italy where the bike got a very expensive and well deserved brand new starter motor.

The Castle at Dog Biscuit

I started to look for the ‘ghost of holidays past’, expecting a creeping desire to get home as quickly as possible; I often feel a pull as strong as a rubber band once the exciting part of the holiday is over. But this time things were easier; there was little at home to pull us back in a mad rush and we had a fixed schedule of visits to old friends through Europe.

The south-eastern corner of Turkey was significantly different to the parts we had been in before. The area was far less populated and the local Kurds seemed to share the feistiness of their Iranian neighbours. That area was one of only three or four on the whole trip where the local kids had used us for stone throwing practice.

Riding high over volcanic ridges, we headed for two sites called Nemrut Dagi, both supposedly associated with Nimrod, the architect of the Tower of Babel. The first Dagi was a volcanic caldera, providing a scenic campsite and a hot spring to bath in; we were clean again but smelled of sulphurous eggs. Onto the second Dagi to see an ancient temple complex and massive carved stone heads, followed by a steamed apple pudding made with fruit picked from the trees that shaded our tent.

Sculptures at Nemrut Dagi

We knew that the most logical way to get across the huge expanse of Turkey was to follow the southern coast, whilst trying to avoid the belt of holiday resorts. Several overlanding friends had warned us about the shock of seeing towns full of sunburned tourists so we shot along the motorways and bypasses, towards Olympos where we had stayed more than a year before. The guesthouse owners were surprised to see us again; Suliman the waiter was delighted and the owner was as grumpy as ever. I asked about the whereabouts of the owner’s cute white rabbit that we had petted the previous year: oh, what a tragedy... At the end of the previous summer a neighbour’s dog had taken to chasing the rabbit, so Suliman had taken the rabbit home to his village in the hills. Unfortunately a vicious cat took a fancy to rabbit meat and killed the rabbit; subsequently Suliman’s father shot the cat. Life in the raw!

We made our way to the western end of Asia and the port of Cesme where we had arrived sixteen months before. We almost managed to sneak through customs with an expired Carnet document, but a keen eyed official noticed the mistake and after a few hours Georgie informed me that we would have to pay a $5,000 dollar fine. I pretended to hand over the keys to the bike and after a few laughs, the customs officials waded into their rule-books and (amazingly) through the Turkish Customs Intranet pages; I wondered how long we had been away! Throughout the process a quiet old bloke acted as our interpreter and when I told him that we feared that the boat would leave without us, he told us, “don’t worry, I am the Port Manager and I authorise the Pilots to take the ship out. I won’t allow the Pilots onto the boat until you are on board.” We love the Turks!

The Intranet site presented a solution and we paid over a much more reasonable $50 fine. Fate was stepping in again, as $50 was the exact amount we had saved on the ferry tickets by using the bogus ‘Journalist’ identity cards we’d bought in Bangkok. What goes around comes around!

Two days on the boat and we approached Ancona in Italy, which to our delight turned out to be a lot prettier than we had imagined. And then up to Milan to meet Alessandro and Francesca, the overlanding couple we had met in Iran. In the time it had taken us to plod to Milan, they had ridden to India, helped to build a school, visited a family that they sponsor and flown home, leaving their bike to be shipped from Mumbai. Milan was a proper reintroduction to Europe. We arrived on Sunday and had to fight through a traffic queue to get off the motorway, and as if to tell us that ‘some things don’t change’; the queue was caused by people trying to get into IKEA. Our hosts started a trend of friends who were outrageously glad to see us home and sought to make up for the dirt and variable cuisine on the road by washing all our gear and feeding us huge amounts of fine food.

Food fest in Milan

Probably one of the longest lasting shocks involved with coming home was the weather in Europe. We had enjoyed and endured more than a year in hot climates with just a few heavy downpours and a couple of snowy days in Japan, but we assumed that our bodies would easily readjust to the colder climate. When locals in those hot countries had seen us walking around enjoying the odd spot of rain I had joked that “Englishmen are born waterproof and with antifreeze instead of blood”. But from the moment we left Milan and entered the Alps, we knew that our bodies had changed beyond belief. A couple of days in the Swiss Alps brought us back to camping on damp earth and forced us to buy new thermal underwear. The effect of the cold turned out to be much more severe than we had anticipated. Even though the subsequent winter was not particularly severe, we had to keep the central heating on high and I took to wearing a hat around the house.

I had forgotten how beautiful Switzerland is, but we both remembered how arduous it can be walking up and down mountains; we took the cable-car up one hill, walked along the top, picnicked on chocolate and cheese, and then took the funicular back down to the valley below.

Swiss Picnic

To the German border, where we encountered the first and last real challenge to the Enfield’s paperwork. “Where was this vehicle registered?” led to a twenty minute interrogation about the provenance, insurance and customs duty of Georgie’s bike. I had forgotten that the section of the German/Swiss border we had chosen to cross is notorious for giving motorists a hard time. To the west of Lake Konstanz the border twists and turns, with roads repeatedly cutting across the border. Germans often work on the Swiss side and know the backroads that avoid the border crossings and the spot checks often imposed on vehicles from the neighbouring country. We eventually satisfied our German border guard that we knew the law, did have insurance cover (even though the paperwork was still in the UK) and we would be paying the custom’s duty back in the UK.

Southern Germany was another wonderland, with smart people cycling and roller-blading through orchards full of ripe apples. We returned to see my old boss Ingfried and his family. More wonderful food, cycling to a village fair and smoking a Turkish water pipe with their son Marc. I let Marc ride the BMW, and thankfully his parents didn’t explode in fear of the consequences.

Next to Nuremberg, to meet our old friend Sabine and to visit the World War Two memorials. The gods smiled on us again. While Georgie took photos of me goofing off pretending to be Hitler on the platform from where he viewed the Nuremberg Rallies, I put my GPS down so as to get a fix on the platform’s location. And then I wandered off without picking up the GPS. That’s the GPS with all the waymarks and routes we had collected over the past seventeen months: I hadn’t backed it up at any time on the trip! It took thirty minutes for me to realise my mistake and I tore back to see if there was a one in a million chance that it was still there. I noticed a group of school-kids as I ran along, possibly the same school-kids that I’d seen from Hitler’s platform. It was worth a punt, so I ran to their teacher and… realised that I don’t speak German (except for the words necessary for ordering beer, food and petrol). So I babbled in English, explaining that I had “left a piece of electronic equipment up at the platform, and have your kids seen anything?” “What sort of equipment did you lose?” I fell back on the description I had used for the past 17 months “it was an electronic compass”. “Ah, a Garmin?” she asked, correctly identifying the fact that I was oversimplifying things for her and putting a brand name to my GPS; we were definitely back in the west! And lo, one of the lads had found it, and handed it over and in return I gave him the only small notes I had; fifteen Euros, made up of five Euros that we saved at the museum by using our dodgy student cards bought in Bangkok, and ten Euros we’d found on the ground right by the ticket counter. What goes around come around, yet again.

Spot the GPS?

Into Belgium for the first time on this trip, the ghost of Georgie’s old job in Brussels was laid to rest as we visited her old boss Roel and family. That’s where we were struck by a change that had happened while we were away. When we left, dial-up internet connection was the norm, and when we returned broadband connection had been taken up by the professional types we were staying with. Back in Europe we were repeatedly laughed at when we asked friends “can we use your PC to get our emails and can you log on for us” only to be shocked by the reply “just switch on, it’s logged on all the time”. They’ll be making bikes with fuel injection next!

Before the final leap over the channel to England I had a bone to pick with two girls from Gent. Iris and Trui were a major factor in Georgie’s decision to buy a bike and ride it home from Nepal. I decided to ‘let the girls off’ as Georgie and her worrisome bike had made it home safely. Cat and Luc, who we’d met on the way out in Turkey, came for a meal with the four of us; circles within circles.

Tough biker chicks and their ice creams

It was around that time that I realised that the return to Europe was not turning out to be the terrifying and shocking experience that we had feared. For the past seventeen months we had dealt with ‘a hundred bizarre things’ every day. Now the prospect of meeting relatives again, arriving home, getting jobs, etc. just seemed like ‘yet more bizarre events to deal with’; some we would plan for whilst others would jump out at us. But at least future bizarreness would be in familiar circumstances and we’d be able to address it using English rather than murdering someone else’s language.

The only way to return to the UK after a monumental undertaking is to sail into Dover; airports and other seaports just don’t compare to the sight of the white cliffs. Tears and lumpy throats welled up as we sat on the ferry from Calais to Dover.

Fearing that the UK customs officers might pull us for not paying import duties on Georgie’s Indian-made Enfield we had taped over the Nepali number plate on the front, which was written in Urdu. And fate dealt us another good hand; there had been a couple of British bike Rallies over in Holland that weekend, and so we disembarked along with a group of legal British bikes and sneaked back into the country.

Soremums - no more

The next few days were a blur of relatives and fine food. The animosity that Georgie’s mum had felt towards the Enfield was forgotten, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief having fulfilled my undertaking to get Georgie home safely. Let’s say that again. “Oh yay, oh yay, WE GOT HOME SAFELY”. What a good feeling. The total number of falls from the bikes was about eight for me and about three for Georgie, with the fastest being at about 20kph. I know people who would be happy to have so few ‘offs’ during a Sunday afternoon’s dirt riding!

The weight piled on somehow

And finally to Manchester where my house seemed to be exactly as I had left it, except for the balloons and welcome home bunting that the neighbours had taped up a week before. My brother Pad had told them the date that we were due to hit the UK, but omitted to mention that we’d be staying with family in London and the Cotswolds on the way up. So the house had been flagged as ‘they haven’t arrived home yet’ for a week. Luckily the local house-breakers seemed to have been on holiday.

Out with the bunting

And that was it, done. Kettle on, feet up on the sofa, put the telly on. “Job jobbed”, as my Mum would say.

Except that wasn’t quite ‘it’. We had all those ‘getting back to normality’ things to address. So almost a year after getting home, how did it go?

A key reason for getting home when we did was to arrive in time for my Mum’s 60th birthday; we arrived ten days before, which shows that the planning did come together in the end. What we didn’t plan for was my Dad being in hospital, nearing the end of a 10 year struggle against diabetes. A month after our return home he lost the struggle and died in his hospital bed with his wife and all his kids around him. We got home just in time.

The British winter drew in; not a particularly severe winter, but it really cut us to the bone. It seemed that our metabolisms had changed to tolerate the high temperatures we’d endured for the past eighteen months, and we were cold even once we remembered to wear more clothing.

Eating more helped to drive out the cold, but the rich western diet on top of more efficient bodies and a sedentary lifestyle soon drove our weights up. I returned to being the 100 kilogram monster that I was before the trip and Georgie grew heavier than she had ever been before. We faced up to the need for a disciplined approach to food, rather than the ‘eat whatever you can’ approach you can get away with on the road. One exception to the abstinence was an increase in Georgie’s home-made curries, using freshly mixed and ground spices; the trip was an inspiration.

Cars were bought; well actually one was exchanged for a case of beer, and we’re not sure if that was a good deal.

Then into the job market. One pledge that we made to each other was “we will get normal jobs that don’t force us to be away from home”, after five months of trying (and a short burst of working a in a call-centre – arghh!) I succeeded in the quest. Georgie was less fortunate and ended up having to get a consultancy job (which she loves) that takes her away from home (which we both hate).

Being back in the UK and in a work situation made us face one side-effect of travelling. We had become adept at discussing simple concepts in simple language; perfect for feeding ourselves and conversing with locals. But back home we were expected to discuss complex ideas using elegant language, but it seemed that our intellects had seized up through lack of exercise. It took months to get back up to a reasonable speed of articulation again.

The ‘five months off’ allowed us time to get back to some level of normality. We finally paid the customs duty for the Enfield and got it tested and registered for the UK. We organised the 5,000 photos from the trip and learned how to deal with recruitment agencies via the Internet. The BMW got some much needed love and care, but almost a year after returning home, I was still finding areas covered in brick-red Cambodian dust.

So it was time to plan into our next adventure. People would constantly ask us “so where / when are you going next?” We had toyed with the idea of riding down to Morocco during our first winter at home, or possibly to visit the Timbuktu music festival the following winter. But a few weekends away on the bikes proved that the wanderlust had been fulfilled, and that the decision to take a break from serious biking was well founded. Hearing presentations of ‘the joys of life on the road’ from other bikers at rallies did nurture tender shoots of enthusiasm for another trip, but these soon withered when faced with the energy that would be required to make the trip. No, the new big adventure seemed to be to follow our real desire and to get married and settle down.

So we bought two cats and made plans for our wedding. And at the time of writing this part, we have been married for 2 days, pretty much to the minute. Two days ago we gathered our families and few friends together in the English Lake District. I wore a light suit and a pink tie that coordinated with the trim on Georgie’s long slim dress. We swore our love to each other, laughed at the line in the ceremony about ‘…wherever our marriage takes us…”, cut a cake with a model of us on the BMW and danced on a boat sailing up and down Lake Windermere.

The Wedding Ceremony

The cake

The Reception

And that’s where our Big Trip ends and another long, probably-not-planned-enough journey begins. The next time we need to speak slowly in simple English may be to our children. Insh Allah!

The End (and The Beginning).

All of the travellers we had met said that Iran was a wonderfully hospitable country, with fabulous culture and sights. It sounded like a hotter version of Turkey, with cheap petrol but with just one social minefield; a strict female dress code. Of course our expectations were wide of the mark again; Iran is much feistier, challenging and tiring than we imagined.

Before crossing the border from Pakistan into the far south of Iran we had to get Georgie into fancy dress. Everyone knows that the country insists that women wear ‘the veil’, but what that actually means is not at all clear. We had received mixed messages about the dress code and how much flesh/body shape she could show. We knew that she didn’t have to wear a burqa (a full-length black tent with a face grill to look through) – the only place we saw that was rural Pakistan. But we were variously told to buy a ‘chador’ (literally ‘a tent’ to cover everything except the feet, face and hands), a manteau (a long trench coat), and a hejab (a hood, like a nun’s wimple). Others stated that wearing baggy clothes and some form of head covering (a full headscarf) was sufficient. Opinions were also divided on whether she would have to wear socks under her sandals, to prevent men from being driven wild by her sexy ankles!? At the same time we heard stories from travellers who turned up in the country wearing very modest clothes, only to be laughed at by the locals saying “we haven’t worn anything like that for years”.

The common theme seemed to be ‘wear baggies and some form of head and neck covering’. So to save money, indignity and stupidity (like wearing a trench coat in 44 Celsius weather) we decided to spend as little as possible before hitting Iran; once there we’d buy what the local women were wearing. All we had to do was get across the border without being turned back for indecency. To this end we bought a hejab (‘nuns on the bike run’) to go over her head and neck.

One thing we couldn’t work out was the logistics of ‘taking off the crash helmet and putting on a head covering without exposing your hair’. Our two female biking friends from Belgium (Iris and Trui) pointed out that exposing your hair like that would be like ‘someone taking off a T-shirt showing naked breasts in a shopping mall in, say, Stratford-upon-Avon’. Obviously a shocking prospect, apart from on a Friday night where in Stratford (like any English market town), girls getting their breasts out is a common occurrence. So the horrible nylon hejab was worn under the helmet!

So we crossed the border with Georgie wearing my pyjama top (the baggiest thing on earth), baggy hiking trousers and hejab. No complaints and no laughs; only a ‘boil-in-bag’ Georgie, gently simmering. Our passports were checked 10 times, the carnets 4 times and then out onto good roads as promised. The first police checkpoint showed a marked change from the laid-back approach in Pakistan. All of the police were young lads who brandished their Kalashnikovs skywards, butt on the hip in a much more threatening way than in Pakistan, where people just carried them like a handbag, either in hand or over the shoulder,

Gently simmering - Florence of Arabia

Into Zahedan, which set the scene for most other Iranian cities. The roads were full of Paykan cars; exact copies of the British Hillman Hunter from the 1970’s. They were boxy and crap then, and they’re boxy and crap now, but it did give the Iranian roads a strange time-warp effect. Many Paykans are shared taxis, which pull over at the drop of a hat and cause traffic chaos. And most roads in Iran share a common set of names – how many ‘Emam Kohmeini Streets’ did we to go down during our visit?

Back to the future in a Paykan taxi

Six hours into the country and Georgie was already pissed off with the dress code. We had heard that is was not acceptable for women to walk around their hotel corridors without the proper dress. So every time she wanted to go out and use the shared toilets (cheap hotel) she had to get dressed up again. What a faff!? She got really tearful and depressed and we started to consider getting out of Iran ASAP. But we decided to give it a few more days and buy some cooler cotton clothes. If after that time Iran was not so special, we’d shoot off to wonderful Turkey and go ‘on holiday’ there.

Next morning we discovered that the BMW had been tampered with overnight. The comical ‘Dog Horn’ that I’d bought in India (it sounded like a clown’s klaxon) had been stolen, one pannier had been forced and the petrol stove taken; all in a supposedly safe, locked area of the bazaar. We’d need to be more careful in Iran. Then I was off to the bank, as Georgie was disinclined to go out in the veil. Whilst faffing around for an hour I worked out how the Iranian financial system works. There are no credit cards so people who want to send money through the post have to buy ‘promissory notes’ from the bank; just like old-style Postal Orders in Britain. I bet you could buy a 1970’s Hillman Hunter copy with 1970’s style postal orders.

Then off towards Bam after filling up with that lovely cheap petrol, which turned out to be a really difficult thing to do. REALLY!! We eventually found a petrol station at the back of a truck stop, and there was a 100-car queue waiting for fuel. And you had to pay for the fuel before filling up - just like in Russia. Luckily we skipped the queue and I eventually got the hang of how much to pay. But why the queue for heavens sake? There can’t be a petrol shortage in Iran!

Queuing for petrol

Well there is no shortage of petrol, but there is a shortage of petrol stations. With petrol being 8 cents (about 5p) per litre, there is no profit to be made from selling petrol, so nobody opens petrol stations. Perfect logic. And to exacerbate the situation in Zahedan, there is a problem with petrol smuggling. People buy petrol in Iran and take it over to Pakistan and sell it for a huge profit. So the petrol station we visited has to record the registration number and fuel usage of everyone who buys petrol, to make sure they’re not smugglers.

And the problem with paying for the petrol? A curious Iranian custom in pricing caught me out. The currency is Rials, but most retailers usually quote prices in Tolman. A Tolman is equal to 10 Rials. So when a petrol pump man writes down 2600, he could be asking for 2600 Rials or 26000 Rials. It’s easy once you know how much things actually cost, but a pain to learn. We were to spend a couple of weeks trying to work out where this silliness originated. We discovered that there never was an official unit of currency called a Tolman, and the reason for using the Tolman was to cut down the number of zeros in prices. But causing all that confusion just to get rid of one ‘0’! It’s like saying that a £6,000 bike is ‘600 £10s’; daft! And reading the Lonely Planet guidebook, it seems that some market traders use Tolmans that are 100 Rials or 1,000 Rials. As clear as mud!

Onto the highway and 320kms across desert mountains and then a long pull through our hottest desert plain yet. We got the thermometers up to 52 degrees in the shade – that’s 126 Fahrenheit! And Georgie was still wearing that damned nylon headscarf under her helmet. Not surprisingly at one point she keeled over and the scarf came off for good.

At a lunch stop, Carsten and Katrina, a German couple on XT600s who we’d met on the KKH, caught us up. I'd left an old back tyre for them in the guesthouse in Quetta, and when we met up again it was mounted on one of the XTs.

The roads were fast and smooth but we only rode at 65 to 75kph, so as not to stress the Enfield’s engine. Loads of trucks and pickups overtook us, a pretty safe thing for them to do as the visibility ahead was generally about 15kms. For a country that officially hates the USA, there are many American products in Iran. Many of the trucks have long wheelbase, long bonnet MACK tractor units. There are numerous Chevvy and Ford pick-up trucks whizzing around and fire hydrants are copies of US ‘stick up from the sidewalk’ models. Dollars are easily changed, and most people dine out on burgers and pizzas.

The food in Iran was one of the biggest disappointments. Along with the weird burgers and rubbery pizzas, the standard offerings were sausage sandwiches, tough kebabs and baguettes filled with veggie stuffing. Almost like being back in Manchester! We were delighted to find that ice cream parlours are popular, but crushed when we found that the ice creams are all heavily flavoured with rose water, making even the chocolate coloured ices synthetically perfumed. On the up side though, there is always a plentiful supply of black or mint tea, and the fruit was superb, especially the grapes and plums. When we arrived in Bam we discovered that it is famous for its dates; the place is full of date palms with red dates ripening. But they were not in season and the dried dates were so sweet that you could only eat one before needing a gallon of tea to wash it down.

The other attraction of Bam is the old town and citadel (fort). The place is hundreds of years old and only made from unbaked adobe (mud and straw). This says a lot about the climate! It’s an amazing sight, but we were surprisingly unamazed. And we had the same feeling when we visited other sites in Iran. JADED! We had been out on the road for too long, losing the will to see the ‘10 million and tenth amazing thing’, and lacking the energy to deal with and enjoy interactions with challenging locals. I was tired of trying to work places out, just getting one place ‘sussed’ before moving onto another, even more confounding place: I wanted to live a simple, obvious life for a while. We both knew that it was time to go home, so our itinerary in Iran got butchered, bypassing places of minor interest, leaving only the juiciest morsels to tempt our spoilt palates.

Bam citadel - everything built from mud and straw

After a few days in Iran we were getting the hang of the women’s dress code. In traditional towns they wear the chador, basically a black sheet draped over the head and held tight at the front: it covers everything and looks swelteringly hot. Chadors seem to be designed without fastenings, so wearers have to hold the front together with their hands or teeth – “dooh!” Younger traditional women wear baggy trouser suits with a hejab; they look so much like nuns that when we got back to Italy I thought I saw an Iranian woman get off a bus, before realising that the woman REALLY WAS a nun. In modern towns the more rebellious girls push the rules and dress like 1950’s cleaning ladies – a light overcoat and a headscarf, pushed as far back on the head as they dare. Often they show enough hair to allow a pair of designer sunglasses to be perched on their head. I’d regularly see women in cafes walking around with their scarf and coat on, as though they’re ‘just off out’ for a cold autumnal walk down to the shops.

Wall to wall static cling

Armed with this information we went shopping for an Iranian outfit in the bazaars, only to have another 1970’s retro-experience. All of the clothes we found were horribly synthetic made from nylon or acrylic; not a stitch of cool cotton anywhere. So having realised that the dress code was not enforced with a rod of iron, Georgie rebelled and took to wearing her shalwar kameez and scarf. The nylon hejab was discarded (actually it was kept for fancy dress at home) and rather than wearing a scarf in a ‘Mrs Mop meets Jackie Kennedy’ way (hot and restrictive) she took to wearing it like a Bedouin turban. This is tied to give a tail that can be pulled around the neck and shoulders in public, but can be left to dangle at other times. Although we got looked at lots (as do all foreigners, especially big bald ones), there seemed to be no problem; the police never batted an eyelid and various people complemented her for brightening the place up. The issue of ‘taking the helmet of and putting a scarf on without exposing her hair’ also turned out to be a non-issue. She just took off her helmet and put a sunhat on pretty sharpish and nobody minded.

What she got away with wearing

Next a three-hour run to Kerman and gradually the BMW starts to feel even rougher than usual. I had problems keeping up with Georgie’s Enfield up the hills and couldn’t even manage 90kph down hills. But as usual the BMW was still running, so the problem could wait until we arrived in town.

The happy hookah

Into a very mixed bazaar – the usual dreadful clothes, some wonderfully huge cooking pots, beggars who’d ‘square up’ for a fight if you refused them, and a visit to our first busy teahouse. The function of Iranian teahouses is similar to that of cafes in France and pubs in Ireland; they’re a place to relax and socialise. Like Irish pubs, there are some really beautiful traditional buildings (which attract the well-to-do and tourists) and plain, utilitarian places where working men go to meet. All share three common themes: Tea, smoking and conversation. Tea, black or mint, is drunk sweetened from small bulbous glasses. Skilled Iranian tea drinkers don’t put the sugar lumps (chipped from huge sugar loaves) in the tea; they hold a lump behind their lips and drink the tea through the sugar. I can feel my teeth dissolving as I write! Smoking involves water-pipes, the smoke from fruit flavoured tobacco drawn through water so that even non-smokers like us could enjoy the experience. You barely taste the fruit flavour as you inhale, instead you get a burst of perfume as you exhale; mulberry flavour was in season during our visit – very pleasant.

Tea, chat and smoke

And then to our first up-market Iranian restaurant and thankfully it is possible to get decent food in Iran; you just can’t get decent street food. The olives (finally) and spiced aubergines were outstanding along with a lamb stew called ‘abghust’ or ‘dizi’. This gets cooked and served in a small clay pot. You strain the gravy off to slurp with bread, and then pound the meat to a paste and eat that with rice. Hurrah, we found a way to eat Iranian bread, which is disgusting, unleavened and sold folded like a newspaper. Bread is a fairly new introduction to Iran – somebody needs to sell them a giant pack of yeast (maybe disguised as a brewing industry?).

Next day a turn around the city’s 800 year old mosque (which somebody has restored to look like a 1960s comprehensive school in England) before bumping into a couple of German overlanders (Kai and Ulrike) and then getting to grips with the sickly BMW. The bike was showing the classic symptoms of perforated carburetor diaphragms; running rough, no power but idles OK. And I was showing the classic avoidance behaviour of not being able to remove the diaphragm chamber top from one of the carbs; cleaning the fuel lines, checking the spark plugs, changing the ignition unit. Eventually I bit the bullet and got into the one accessible carburetor and found that indeed the rubber diaphragm was perforated. No problem as I have a spares..... bugger!....wrong size. I had carried these spares for over a year and they were the wrong ones! There was no chance of buying any locally (especially as it was Friday) so a choice of bodges came to mind. Maybe a repair with a puncture patch, or perhaps fabricate one from a condom. Finally I settled on sticking the holes over with brown parcel tape, which actually held well enough until we got to a BMW dealer in Milan 6 weeks later. Three months later (back in the UK) I eventually got the top of the other carb and found that the diaphragm in that one was perforated as well – bloody unstoppable these Beemers!

Dinner with the Germans was useful for all of us. They sucked us dry of information about which roads to use in Pakistan and road safety in India (!) and in return they confirmed that we were not being unduly cranky in thinking that the Iranians were a bit on the feisty side. They also confirmed that Turkey and the Turkish are a lot easier to get on with. I sighed with relief, glad that my observations had not just been intolerance and fatigue. In all of the previous Islamic communities we had felt safe and respected, people acknowledging us with a smile, a nod and “assalam alaikum”. But in Iran we would be stared at and then assailed with a “hello... hello mister... hello” and various laughs from behind, and when you turned to see who was shouting, nobody would acknowledge. It was like being a pretty girl walking past a building site; shouts and catcalls and it SUCKED. The problem was reduced in bigger towns (further north) where a few more tourists visit, but we were never really comfortable in Iran.

Three more cities to do on our cut-down itinerary; a few days in Shiraz first. Yes, Shiraz is where the variety of grape originated and yes, mentioning the name did make our mouths water for a glass of wine, but a glass of beer would have been more welcome.

In Shiraz we started to interact with Iranians who wanted to practice their English. Two female students chatted to us. The one I spoke to was amazed that 'they' let Georgie ride her own bike, and I said that 'they' would find it difficult to stop her. When I asked about the overcoat and hejab she seemed genuinely at ease with it, saying that Iran is a hot place whether you're wearing it or not. As we sat in the gardens at the Hafez mausoleum a spirited 18 year old girl came to tell us that Iran is the best place in the world and talked about the wonders of Hafez; Iran’s favourite poet. She was so boisterous that when she asked the usual question about our religion, I gave her a full blast of atheism and ‘big bang theory’. “Why are all Europeans atheists?” she complained, reminding me of argumentative teenagers in the UK.

Other chance meetings highlighted the political tensions between the supporters and opponents of the country’s religious leaders. Luckily this gave us time to read up about the issues, we were to need the knowledge later....

A major reason for visiting Shiraz is its proximity to Perspolis, the ruins of a 2,500 year old palace complex. It was hidden in the hills until Alexander the Great came along 2,300 years ago and trashed it. Historians can’t decide on whether he deliberately destroyed the place in retaliation for the destruction of Athens, or whether he burnt it down during a drunken party! I prefer the ‘Rock and Roll’ theory; makes trashing your hotel room look a little low budget. The bits of architecture and statuary they have dug up managed to impress us. We were equally impressed with a couple of overlanders we met there. Francesca and Alessandro from Milano were on their honeymoon, riding a BMW F650 to India, intent on using money given to them as wedding presents to build a school for underprivileged kids!

One city down, two to go. The long ride to Esfahan was surprisingly cathartic. We were heading north-west – directly home. I dialled ‘Go to Home’ into the GPS and it told me that at our speed (75kph) it would take 74 hours to get home. That’s just 3 days!!! Unfortunately the GPS was assuming all sorts of silly things, like our ability to ride for 74 hours without a stop, the various towns, borders and seas in the way, and the fact that there’s no straight road from Shiraz to Manchester. Whatever, it did make us feel that finally we were getting somewhere.

More immediately though, we now found ourselves heading away from the sun; bliss. Overlanding raises some curious problems, one of which is discomfort from the sun. If you’re a lazy soul like Georgie and me, you start riding sometime after 10am. This is OK if you’re travelling east, because when the sun really starts blasting in the afternoon, it is on your back. In fact it nicely illuminates things from behind you and the only downside is that drivers coming towards you are blinded, so you have to be more careful. But when you come home (as we had been doing for the past 3 months) the afternoon sun is always in your eyes, and your face is constantly scorched. I now understand why Clint Eastwood had screwed up eyes in the Spaghetti Westerns; it was all that ‘riding off into the sunset’. Of course the way to avoid the problem is either to keep going east, or when you’re going west get up earlier and get your riding done in the morning. Neither of these suited us and so our turn towards the north was most welcome.

To me the name Esfahan sounds exotic, but it turned out to be the most normal place we had been for ages and had us feeling much more positive about Iran. It was all so modern, with real shops and more western attitudes. We had fewer ‘walk by hellos’ and more informed friendliness. People were calm and helpful rather than acting like overexcited kids. But still the driving was anarchistic. To add to the general buzz, we arrived at the weekend and the place was full of Iranian tourists, keen to visit the mosques and madressas, which we also enjoyed even though we were ‘mosqued-out’. For us the highlight was the riverfront where everyone goes to promenade in the evening; wonderful after six weeks in the desert since our last real river in Pakistan.

The waterfront in Esfahan

More than a week into our visit to Iran I was getting on top of my Iranian faux pas. It’s not mentioned in the guidebook, but this one is of Monty Pythonesque stupidity. In Iran, if you give someone the ‘thumbs up’ sign, it has the same meaning as giving ‘giving someone the finger’ Europe or the USA, the same as sticking 2 fingers up at someone in Britain. Just think about it for a moment, I’m a British biker communicating with all sorts of people on the street, finding my way, finding food, buying petrol. I speak no Farsi, so all communications are done in sign language. At the end of a conversation when someone has gone out of their way to be helpful, I say “thanks mate” and give him the thumbs up. And surprisingly his face falls or he looks really annoyed; and why shouldn’t he because I have just told him to F*** off. And the thumbs up is so ingrained in my habits, I can’t help doing it. Petrol pump attendant, thumbs up; hotel foyer bloke, thumbs up; little old lady selling food, thumbs up. Aarrgh; it’s no wonder they’re aggressive to foreigners, we keep giving them the thumbs up!!

And so onto our final city of Tabriz, breezily by-passing the legendary traffic chaos and superb museums of Tehran. We’ll take in Tehran another time, when we’re not driving and when we can face another museum.

The desert highway turned to motorway at Qazvin, and the motorway had lots of signs saying that motorbikes are forbidden, but there seemed to be lots of locals on it so what the hell. We were a little worried when we got to the end of the motorway and came to a toll booth manned by 2 blokes and a policeman. They were just interested in where we were from; in retrospect I think we might be the only people to have used that last kilometer of motorway, as all Iranians turn of the motorway and head across the dirt roads to avoid the toll.

More greenery as we headed north, adding colour to the open plains and distant mountains that we’d seen for the past two weeks.

Then it was the turn of Georgie’s bike to get sick. First it wouldn’t start very easily, but I put that down to her being so tired that she couldn’t kick the engine over fast enough; I could usually get the bike going first kick. And then it would cough and splutter a bit out on the road. But the problem wasn’t bad enough to stop out on the road – ‘if it’s not broken, don’t fix it’.

The crazy Iranian driving was increasing noticeably as we entered the Kurdish area of the country. One guy in a pickup undertook me and then, smirking broadly, pushed me out into the middle of the road. I booted the back of his pick up, but he didn’t hear it so I accelerated and kicked his driver’s door. The next 10kms turned into a battle royal as the van driver tried to make me stop so that he could beat me up. Eventually we got into a town were the road was too wide to cut me off; the tussle ended with him throwing his water container out at me across the road. We hightailed and hid in a car repair yard for 10 minutes to make sure he wasn't following us. After that, of course, we saw nothing but blue pickups in our mirrors!

We wondered if we would ever get to Tabriz when a freak windstorm covered the polished tarmac road with a layer of dust from a disused cement factory, and then a cloudburst turned the road into an ice-rink; the dust, old oil and rain forming a soapy froth. I was terrified and carefully pulled Georgie over to ride on the hard shoulder where the tarmac was unpolished.

We looked forward to the old bazaar in Tabriz, kilometers of alleyways and hundreds of courtyards that used to be caravansari. Instead Tabriz was a highlight because of the weird interaction we had with the locals.

As often happened on this trip, things got weird when one of us was out on their own. I left Georgie sleeping off the effects of 940kms over the previous two days and went to an internet cafe where I tried to coax my brother to get some insurance for our bikes and told the rest of the family that we were still alive. A very lively, young local guy came in and after a few moments chatting with the cafe owner, came over and introduced himself as an English teacher... what do I think of Iran and Iranians... what do I think about Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm’... would I like to come to talk to his class that evening... A million questions in rapid order, his English was good, but so fast that I lost 2/3rds of the words. I accepted the invite, aware that we’d not spent enough time with locals. He then went onto more politicised questions about the Iranian Government, whether I thought that it would be replaced soon, did I think that Iranians would be willing to die defending their country... Phew, not lightweight chitchat, especially in a cafe full of unknown people, any of whom could have been secret police. Before he left I told him that we’d come to the class, but we wouldn't welcome political chat, as we didn't want to end up in an Iranian gaol!

Evening came and the teacher (I’m not giving his name for reasons that will become even more obvious) came to pick us up at the hotel. It’s his first meeting with Georgie, so does he ask the usual ‘how are you?’ ‘how’s the trip?’ type questions; no, straight into “what do you think about the situation for women in Iran” and “how can Iranian women improve themselves’. She was shocked, dumbfounded and a little concerned. A taxi to the suburbs and up to a set of small class-rooms on 2nd floor of an anonymous building. Gradually the students arrived: a PhD computing student, 18 year old twins into technical subjects, a 16 year old technology student and a 43 year old engineer who was also a 4th Dan in Karate!

The meeting turned out to be a real ‘Loius Theroux’s Weird Weekend’ experience. Yes the lesson was about learning English, but the main topic for discussion were political dissent! We asked everyone to introduce themselves; the conversation turned to politics. They asked us questions, all about politics. The teacher would interject with quotes from ‘Animal Farm’ and explain how it compared to Ayatollah Kohmeini’s speeches before the revolution. The teacher was hugely excited and talked so fast that we couldn’t understand it, let alone the students. The thrust of the conversation was ‘we hate the current regime; what can we do about overthrowing it?’ There we were sat in a non-secure environment, talking about revolution with a bunch of Iranian students!! We expected masked policemen to burst in at any moment and drag us off. One of the students had already noticed that I share a surname with John McCarthy, a journalist who had been held hostage for 3 years in Beirut! It was so scary that it was funny!

After a while I got a bit heated and asked if they always talked in such way. They all agreed that political discussions were the usual fare! The whole atmosphere was revolutionary. I told them that it reminded me of the radical talk in Russia during the early 1900s, amongst students in 1960s France and in British trade union meetings in the 1970s. And the group’s feelings reflected those of the people we met in the street. They ALL asked the same question:

"What do you think of Iranian people?"
To which I’d diplomatically reply “Iranians seem to be very lively and emotional.”
"Yes” they’d say “the Iranian people are good, only the Government is bad."

As the meeting calmed down we were asked about Britain, but with a political edge.

“Why was David Kelly murdered?” which was news to us as we’d heard that he’d committed suicide. We explained about the political processes we knew about behind the decision to go to war with Iraq.
“What can you tell us about Bobby Sands?” Bobby Sands!!!; now there’s a name from the mists of time. He was an IRA terrorist who starved to death during a hunger strike in 1981, and these Iranians wanted to know the full story, right back to William of Orange. What a ‘wake up call’ for us! Luckily we could make analogies to various Muslim factions fighting each other.

The meeting broke up, but no end to the hospitality. The school’s secretary wanted to be hospitable and practice her English a little, so it was back to her flat for beans and meat while we watched illegal satellite. Is there anything more surreal than watching the Jeremy Clarkson’s Top Gear while sitting on the floor eating stew and talking Iranian politics.

Next evening we were invited out again, this time to a posh restaurant in Elgoli Park.
The park was swarming with locals enjoying the night air, and was still busy as hell when we left at 12.30! Our arrival at 9pm was ‘too early to eat’ so we sat outside on the terrace and drank tea. PhD man was there with his wife and 16 month child (born about the same time we set off from England and now walking and talking!). A journalist friend had joined us, just back from covering the Gulf war. His line of questioning was even more political than the others, starting with questions about Britain’s support for the ruling Iranian clerics.

After half an hour of trying to unravel the difference between Iranian ‘conservatives’ and the British Conservative Party, I got a bit fed up and had a go at the whole group for assuming that we were at all interested in political discussions. They were amazed but understanding when I told them about the British saying that you should ‘never discuss religion or politics with friends’. Again amazement that someone from a place where politics vaguely works can be disinterested, but I pointed out that the stability is the reason why normal people don't have to bother with it.

The questions still kept coming. “Will the US and UK come in and do a ‘regime change’ in Iran like they did in Iraq?” The rest of the group realised that the political questions were getting to us and spent the rest of the night keeping the journalist under wraps. But not before I spent twenty minutes winding him up with my false ‘Journalists ID Card’ that I bought in Bangkok.

Next day the run up to the Turkish border. Georgie's bike was now running rough when hot, and she was getting slower and slower; like down to 60kph. So we stopped to clean the carburetor. No effect on the burbling. So it must be the ignition; changed the condenser and points with instant results. Thank heavens for the spares we bought in India.

A full tank of cheap fuel, through the confused Iranian procedures and waited to get the gate to Turkey open. A final conversation with the border guard, practicing his English; the usual things; where are you from, where have you been, do you have children? No children sir, do you have a problem?

“The only problem I have is that you won’t open that bleeding gate!”

The gate opened, press the starter button; click, nothing; click nothing. The starter motor had failed again. So I pushed the bike over a second border, the previous being between Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan a year ago.

Two glasses of Efes beer beckoned us from Turkey.

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Number of weeks = 2.5
Miles in country = 1,800
Kilometres in country = 2,880
Total miles so far = 29,677
Total kilometres so far = 47,483

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My real regret with buying the Enfield is the state of exhaustion and pain it would leave me in each evening. One of the victims of this was my diary. Since Nepal, the entries were few and far between, to the extent that unfortunately I gave up early in Pakistan. So the sources of this newsletter are memory (oh dear) and photos.

As we travelled through countries, I would often muse over how I would portray them in our ramblings to you. Very early on in Pakistan I knew EXACTLY how I would open up this newsletter - DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE. Virtually every local we met expressed how worried they were about how the whole was nation being portrayed in the press - extremist, reactionary, pro-terrorist, Al-Qaeda harbouring and anti¡Vwesterner. What struck me so vividly in Pakistan was that you cannot, and should not, judge people by the politicians that supposedly 'represent' them. The everyday Pakistani that we met could not have been more happy to see us, they were respectful and polite even when WE pissed THEM off.

Our safety, as usual, was paramount, and not once did we feel threatened when owning up to being British, even though the Iraqi war had only ceased 2 months before. It was a tough decision in the first place whether we would cut short the trip by by-passing both Pakistan and Iran for 'safety' reasons, shipping the bikes out of Mumbai (Bombay) directly into Europe. Ever since Japan I had kept an eye on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office website which gave super-cautious advice on travel all over the world. It recommended that only people on essential business or 'non-white British' people should visit Pakistan. It also warned that if we got into trouble, the British Government could give little assistance as the British Embassy in Pakistan had closed. All in all it didn't look that hopeful but we decided to approach it from a different angle; we applied for visas to see if the Pakistani authorities would think it safe to let us in. We were relieved and amused when the Pakistani official in Kathmandu, inevitably aware of most visitor's misgivings, announced "I think you will enjoy our country". And as it turned out ... he was bloody right.

Leaving India (having avoided the monsoon and various of sources of premature death) we realised that we were about to enter a country that only half a century ago was part and parcel of that near hell until Partition became reality in 1947. I reckoned this would make excellent material for a nature vs nurture study. Could the Muslim Pakistanis really be any different from their Hindu neighbours? The answer was immediate and our judgment remained the same throughout - thankfully YES.

The tension between Pakistan and India has been evident ever since the bloody Partition. Recently it has eased as the two sides resumed talks. Unlike other international land borders there is minimal cross-border trading. The import/export that does exist has spawned a strange border ritual, where colour coded porters on either side meet and handover goods across the border line, and guards on each side make sure that Indians don't sneak into Pakistan, and vice versa. So a stream of blue pyjama'd Indians shuffled single file to the border gates carrying boxes on their heads and passed them over to their Pakistani orange pyjama'd counterpart who walked away in a mirror image.

International logistics in action

I wondered how long we would have to wait at customs and if we could avoid our first bribe. Word on the street was that a sweetener was required to prevent a long drawn out inspection of our baggage. Bossman eventually turned up, apologised for the heat then asked us 20 questions about how the guarantee on the carnet worked and why when he put in claims to European Automobile Associations they were never honoured. His speech and movement were laboured, I mentally diagnosed Parkinson's disease, so I helped him fill in the customs ledger and we were sent on our way - no inspection, no bribery - a result (question to self, why does it never happen to us, are we just nice people?)

During the short ride into Lahore we were befriended and escorted by several bikers. We entered a city suffering from heinous air pollution, the filthy 2-stroke tuk-tuks being the main culprit. Several years previously Bangkok had seen the light and only permitted 4-strokes, I hoped Lahore would go the same way. The old walled City with its bazaar and fort was a highlight. We spent several days wandering around the alleyways. Pakistan was our first really Islamic state and I endeavoured to dress accordingly. The shalwar kameez (cotton baggy trousers, long tunic and scarf) that I had bought in India was an immediate success. I was flattered to receive compliments about my attire from young women.

We were equally astounded by the number of people who approached us just wanting to welcome us to their country. Children would be sent to shake our hands and requests for photographs were at an all-time high. During a Sunday evening stroll in the Shalimar Gardens we meet dozens of children vying for our attention, inviting us to meet their parents. Though ridden with hair lice and suffering from skin complaints it was hard to ignore their gorgeous green eyes that reminded me of the famous 1984 National Geographic front cover of the Afghan girl.

Surprisingly a very common opening question would be "Are you a Christian?" Muslim Pakistanis were keen to know, and many Christian Pakistanis would actively seek us out. Simon, being a devoted atheist, caused a few shocked and offended reactions and we came to realise that it was safer admitting to being a Christian than an atheist in the Muslim world, since a belief in some God is better than no God at all! So Simon had to pretend to believe in God for the rest of Pakistan and Iran. It was refreshing to meet two proud lovers, escaped from their chaperone - he was a Muslim lawyer and she a Christian school teacher. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall when those two families met.

During our visit to the Fort I became aware of a group of young girls who were taking a great interest in me and it didn't seem anything like the zombie curiosity of the Indians. I bumped into them again and so took the opportunity to practice the general Muslim (Arabic) greeting of "Assalam alaikum" (Peace be with you). The girls were agog and seemingly asked me if I spoke Urdu. I was sorry to disappoint them. Little did I know or appreciate that the liberal city of Lahore would be last time that I would see women in this country wandering freely about and eager to interact with us. After that we would be in the countryside, and there we would only meet men - the only women we would see would be working in the fields and desperately avoiding contact with foreigners.

Hospitality in a bike shop

The Pakistanis are huge in comparison with their Indian relatives. Some of the men were the size of mountains - we got scared by one gentle giant (Bernard Breslaw lookalike) who couldn't understand why we weren't planning to visit his village 'in the back of beyond' - if he had really insisted we visit, we could not have fought him off. The fact that the Muslims eat meat and their Hindu counterparts are vegetarian must have something to do with it. The Pakistanis do prohibit the consumption of meat on 2 days every week, but luckily chicken is not considered meat (!!), so on those days you can still get your protein fix in the form of a fabulous chicken jalfrezi. My mouth is just watering at the thought of it.

In preparation for the imminent Iranian visit I realised I needed to buy myself another shalwar kameez outfit. Bagginess and modesty are a must in Muslim countries. T-shirts and standard trousers are out since the showing of skin or the mere intimation of the shape of a woman's body is a big no-no. I would never claim to be a shopaholic, but choosing a shalwar was great fun. There were literally thousands of backstreet boutiques selling DIY outfits in the form of pre-matched lengths of material that would combine to make the trousers, tunic and scarf. All I had to do was sit back whilst a group of boys ordered me a Coke then showed me hundreds of combinations, the choice was mind-boggling.

Shopping

I settled for a bright red/yellow/black tartan-like outfit; I wanted to make a statement. A tailor was summoned to measure me up, since we left the sewing machine at home, and the next day I picked my little number up. I was later mortified to read in the Lonely Planet that wearing red was in Iran is dangerous because it is associated with the enemy of Emam Hossein - Mohammed's nephew. Would I get lynched wearing the new outfit?

A little red number

Not to be outdone, Simon bought the typical male kurta pajama. He wasn't convinced by the shop keeper's assurance that he didn't need to try it on because "the size is perfect". However, the trousers turned out to have a waist of 245cm (96 inches) so he could get the bike in the trousers too. Hours of fun were had playing at being MC Hammer, and our fancy dress outfits are organised for the next 10 years.

STOP! Hammer time

"I'm 75 you know" perked up an elderly Pakistani gentlemen in the market "and British. I was born during the Empire, so therefore I'm British. By the way, Churchill was a great man". It's funny how our war-time politician has been so highly praised throughout our journey. And as for him wanting to be British, I did find that strange.

We tried to learn a little about colonial India and its subsequent partition in 1947. There was great bloodshed in the country as Muslims fled to the north west and north east corners of the region where Western and Eastern Pakistan (now independent Bangladesh) were created. I'm not quite sure how they ever thought the two geographical parts of the country could be ever be governed as one with India separating them.

Most people know of Gandhi, the Hindu figurehead during the Partition. Less well known is the Muslim leader at the same time. Ali Jinnah who remains Pakistan's number one hero. After the release of the multi-Oscar winning epic film Gandhi, Pakistan was unhappy with the portrayal of Jinnah, and in fact the film is still banned. To redress the balance, a film of Jinnah's life was released in 1998, but the project was plagued by controversy. Christopher Lee was cast as the lead causing arguments about whether a horror film star was the right sort of person to portray the national hero. Then rumours were spread that Salman Rushdie was to write the screenplay and finally the critics were incensed that a Hindu was cast to play the Archangel Gabriel (although no one seemed to mind that an Archangel turned up in 1940s Indian politics). As coincidence has it, I watched Christopher Lee being interviewed on Breakfast television only this week, to hear him claim that his acting role in Jinnah was the most challenging of his 50 year film career ¡V the DVD comes out soon.

Time to leave open-minded Lahore and marvel at the contrasts of modern structured Islamabad (the capital) and its sprawling chaotic neighbour of Rawalpindi. We hoped to enjoy safe passage on the new motorway, and we ignored the signs banning motorcycles and were encouraged by the gun clad policeman waving us onwards. Bliss, three empty lanes of asphalt all to ourselves - until we reached the toll booths where a female police official unceremoniously broke the spell. We pleaded with her in the stifling heat to allow us to use the motorway where we would be much safer away from the lawlessness on the Grand Trunk route. This she took completely the wrong way thinking we were accusing the Traffic Police of being on the take. "Sir, we are the only department who are 100% incorruptible". I suppose this didn't bode well for the rest of the country. Without the special dispensation to use the motorway ("you can go into Lahore and ask the Head of Police") we were forced to rejoin the mayhem on the Grand Trunk route.

Pakistan was another country with a distinct lack of road signs even on the main road to the capital. Stopping to ask policemen was a double edged sword; they were helpful and knowledgeable ("the road you need is behind you"), but keen to show off their power ("Sir, if you turn to go in that direction I have the power to fine you as you make that illegal turn"). When Simon remonstrated that we didn't have a reverse gear, the policeman donned his white gloves, stopped the traffic and allowed us to break a few rules.

Further on down the road we were pulled over yet again by an inquisitive doughnut brigade. "What now?" we thought. "We'd like to invite you to take a Pepsi with us". This was a case of wrong place, wrong time, it's not you, it's me. We had already lost so much time faffing around at the motorway we couldn't afford any more passing the time of day with strangers. We plugged on only to suffer another attack of hospitality at a petrol station where we stopped for a wet-down. I suppose my hanging out in the tiny patch of shade outside the gents toilet wasn't good PR. The manager lured us into his air-conned office with yet another drink and told us he'd seen us being turned away at the motorway toll booths. We all reminisced over curry houses in Rusholme since he regularly visited Manchester where his girlfriend lived. Small world!

Foreign bike alert at the next checkpoint. German number plate, XR250, lo and behold it was Ulli who we'd met seven weeks ago outside the Pakistani embassy in Kathmandu. The policemen presented us with a 'homemade orange drink' which we couldn't refuse, though dearly wanted to, then suspiciously questioned us on how we knew each other. The three of us agreed to ride into Rawalpindi together, but the presence of a slow moving police car in front of us seemed to suggest we were being given an unwanted escort. We kept our cool and waited for them to get bored. They eventually allowed us to overtake them, but in no time at all I looked in my mirror to see that they had mysteriously pulled Ulli over. When he was eventually allowed on his way, he explained that as motorcyclists we were being reprimanded for not driving to the left of the yellow line which was basically a gutter area full of debris and highly dangerous holes. Our monster bikes were supposed to follow the same rules applying to putt-putt mopeds. We appeased the jobs-worth officer until he was out of sight and out of mind, then we reverrted back to the main carriageway.

Our only reason for going to Islamabad was to obtain our Iranian visa. This was the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle for our big trip and traveling through Iran would complete the full circle back to Turkey. Our stress levels were kept to a minimum by making use of an internet visa agency in Iran. For a reasonable charge of 30 USD each, the agency made the initial application on our behalf for the visa directly to Tehran. This meant that picking up the visa in Islamabad was a doddle and avoided us having to hang around the Iranian embassy for days on end, like several frustrated tourists we met. So here I shall shamelessly plug the Pars Tourist Agency at www.key2persia.com.

Visas in hand we waved good-bye to Ulli who had been our dinner companion for a week and wished him well for his adventure into Afghanistan on his bike. And yes of course we had been curious about such a detour ourselves but never really tempted to stray, because of the dangers involved. A week before arriving in Islamabad, an Italian motorcyclist had been killed near Kandahar in Afganistan. Fortunately Ulli managed to survive his transit through the country.

Ulli joins us for a Pakistani dinner party

We were now to embark upon one of our major goals - ride the Karakoram Highway, aka the KKH. The KKH is a 1,300km road jointly built by the Pakistani and Chinese armies during the 1960s and 70s. It connects the Silk Road market of Kashgar in China with Rawalpindi. Its highest point is the Khunjerab Pass at 4,730m which acts as the border between the two countries and this would be our terminus since getting the paperwork for visiting China on motorbikes was beyond our budget and timescale.

We were pleasantly surprised at how quickly the metropolis of Rawalpindi disappeared and turned into rolling countryside. We followed the banks of an innocuous river most of the day until bang, we hit what we were waiting for, the 'Mighty' Indus. We could immediately see why the river was dubbed that name. Its force was indomitable and not once during the seven days that we were its companion did we see any vessels or fishermen trying to tame it.

The second day's ride took us to Chilas, a town that invariably we were warned to avoid. Not only was it claimed that the locals would be hostile towards foreign women, but the town was in the heart of a region known as Yagistan - Land of the Ungovernable. Even the British left this area well alone during the colonial period. To be fair though, the waves from men and children along the roadside (the women had all but disappeared) were no less forthcoming than anywhere else. The only oddity was at the frequent checkpoints along the KKH. Most posts were interested to know when you entered Pakistan and what your visa number was. Around Chilas all they wanted to know was when you entered their region and when you would be leaving it.

Every hour we rode the scenery became more and more spectacular. You could never describe it as pretty but just incredibly raw. The area is a collision zone of the Indian and Asian continents and the mountains are still being heaved up. There was very little traffic on the road so every time we stopped for a rest and water the sounds of nature were eerie. Apart from the roar of the river, Simon swore that the rustling of shale falling down the slopes was preceded by a groan and rumble as plates collided and imperceptibly changed the landscape forever. This was geology in motion, with the Indus carving a steep sided valley with fantastic but unstable rock walls that must have daunted the KKH engineers and navvies alike. As we moved further north, snow-capped mountains began peering over our shoulders and glaciers almost crossed the road. I wish I could adequately describe to you the colours, every imaginable shade of mauve, terracotta, brown and grey gave the impression the landscape could only be extraterrestrial.

Raw Geology - The KKH

Halfway up the KKH we were frantically waved down by an oncoming 4x4. "Are you Simmonds?" Spooky! The female passenger was Shadmeena, a female mountain guide, British Council worker and friend of our Belgian biking friends, Iris and Trui. We had hoped to bump into Shadmeena further up the KKH in Gilgit but when we'd emailed her she had explained that she would be flying back to Lahore. Amazingly her flight had been canceled so had to go by car. We were amazed to bump into her, but logically as there is only one road, the chances are pretty high. We were glad to cross paths even if so briefly. Unfortunately our plan to meet her British housemate in Gilgit was blown since she was en route on horseback to the region's most famous annual sporting event - a polo match between Chitral and Gilgit on the world's highest polo ground in the remote Shandur Pass. The BBC and Michael Palin were reported to be there this year so locals were hoping it might be televised live. Polo, believe it or not, has more supporters than cricket in the north of the country.

Gilgit was the main tourist town just off the KKH. Our guesthouse was a haven of tranquillity and travelers from all round the world seemed to congregate there with stories of derring-do. It was obvious through conversations how 9/11 has effected the tourist industry in this struggling region. Even though money must have been tighter than usual we received an unexpected invitation to eat at Yaqoob the manager's home one evening. He laid on a sumptuous feast for at least 7 of us tourists and never asked for a contribution. That act really summed up the innate nature of hospitality of the Pakistanis. Getting to know Yaqoob we inquisitively asked him who was the old fellow that hung around the guesthouse. He seemed to be permanently seated at the dining table with staff bringing out tea and food. Yaqoob wasn't sure exactly and explained his reaction by telling us a similar famous anecdote of an unknown man who for years regularly visited a home to receive refreshments until someone asked the head of the household who he was, "I've no idea", he replied, "He was a guest of my father".

Although open all year round, the KKH suffers from innumerable landslides that temporarily block the road. We were only held up by one such incident but came across several stretches of sand and rubble that indicated recent rumblings. The majority of traffic using the route was buses and brightly painted lorries that transported goods to and from the Chinese border.

The last Pakistani town on the KKH was Sost, a dire trading post full of anxious businessmen waiting for signs of their lorries crossing the border. Some were hanging around for days hoping that their specially permitted consignment of pork products for the Chinese communities in Pakistan would still be edible. It was here at 3,000m altitude that I had the most vicious of headaches that almost prevented me from reaching our goal of seeing China - the country we had skirted around ever since Kyrgyzstan over a year ago. Bunged up with painkillers and a couple more hours sleep we set off on our own bikes for the border. It was a steady climb to the 4,730m Khunjerab Pass and mercifully my headache dulled. The temperature dropped to a chilly (for us) 17C, the golden marmots were in playful mood and the one-man band border patrol security guard thankfully accepted our 'Manchester United pencil bribe' to allow us into no-man's land and as close as possible to the Chinese border to take our photos. With a tear in both our eyes we realised that we really were going home now. And not too soon, I had to say.

Can we go home now!?

We retraced our steps for three days then over the Shangla Pass into the 'beautiful' Swat Valley. How many times have we been duped by locals effusing over a particular area? For us the Swat Valley was a flat boring plain that grew onions and tobacco, but for the locals it was as fertile as it gets, so a place to be revered. Stark, barren, rocky landscapes were more our cup of tea, not the Vale of Evesham.

Only 277km by road from Kabul was Peshawar, a city dominated by the feisty Pashtuns, the world's largest autonomous tribal society. Historically they have been ferocious fighters and are obstinately proud of their heritage. Being so close to the border at the infamous Khyber Pass, Peshawar is home to many Afghan refugees. I thought this might be an ideal place to buy a hejab, a simple headscarf (like a baggy hood) to be worn in Iran. The design meant that I wouldn't have to awkwardly pin the scarf each time to cover my hair. We visited a couple of shops in the Women's Bazaar but no-one quite understood what was needed, the best attempt was a nasty black nylon scarf that made me look like a nun. We explained again to a shopkeeper whose face lit up. "Ah, madam, I think you are asking for a shuttlecock burqa, you just place it over your head, yes?" He sent his boy out to get one. My expression dropped when I was presented with a full-length burqa complete with embroidered face grill. I had been dying to try on one of these gross injustices to womankind. The 3-man tent was lowered over my head and I almost died. The sheer mass of material hung heavy and the restrictiveness around my face was stifling. With my vision through the grill impaired this was no longer a 'laugh' for me. No woman in her right mind should have to put up with the indignity of the burqa.

Georgie oppressed

Up to date road maps in Pakistan were hard to come by and the political situation changes daily. So we sought advice from the tourist board in Peshawar as to what route we should take to the Iranian border. I was pleasantly surprised to see a woman working in the office so plucked up the courage to ask her where the rest of the female population was. Ever since leaving Lahore we had seen but a handful. Even in the markets it was only men doing the shopping. The women, she explained, were at home. They can come out if they want to, but they don't want to. I doubted this apparent freedom to chose. I remarked that that surely they missed the ability to socialize in cafes as we had seen so many men do or just sit outside along the country roads and watch the world go by. And then she came out with the lamest excuse ever, basically ignorance is bliss and what the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over. "If a woman only has daughters she doesn't miss not having sons because she doesn't know what it's like to have boys in the first place." What pained me was that this woman was obviously well educated but her attitude was 'I'm alright Jack'.

We got the information we were looking for and were able to plan our route. We chose to by-pass Darra, a small, wild-west town whose inhabitants do only one thing - make or sell guns. For around $150 we would have been able to buy our own AK-47 and test driven it. We couldn't avoid the garrison town of Kohat having been prevented from entering a newly constructed tunnel by gun-totting security guys. Yet again the use of a modern road in Pakistan was deemed unsafe for a motorcycle. So instead we were re-routed over the mountain on the old road and found ourselves in a town full of military installations. The traffic police were shocked to see foreigners in the town and in no uncertain terms showed us the way out - no hint of a Pepsi from them.

The following 48 hours were to prove a test of resolve, resilience and nerve. I can't actually believe what we got away with. We could easily have spent a few nights in jail, but instead we came up smelling of roses. And we started to discover how Pakistan manages to spend 70% of its national budget on security...

... It all started when we checked in to our hotel in DI Khan. As usual I had to fill in the registration book and include our destination for the next day - DG Khan (NB neither of these towns have anything to do with The Sweeney or the BBC). I was surprised to be asked exactly what time we would be leaving but I gave an estimate nonetheless. After a restless night listening to the emergency generator turning on and off, yet more power cuts, we opened our door to be greeted by a soldier with a rifle (actually an Enfield rifle!) who seemed to be guarding the hotel. We thought little of it until he marched into our room asking us again what our departure time was. We politely requested that he leave. It seems that an open door in Pakistan is an open invitation for ANYONE to enter.

Riding at our genteel pace out of DI Khan we became aware that the police pick-up truck in front of us was keeping at the same speed. As a test we pulled over under some shade and watched the vehicle stop and turn around. "Is everything OK, sir?" they asked. We asked why they were escorting us. "Ah, it is for your own protection sir". Simon didn't want their 'protection' so asked them to leave us alone. They seemed a little uncertain but agreed to give up. No sooner had we regained our freedom than another vehicle was on our tail. We spent the rest of the day playing cat and mouse with the marked and unmarked trucks getting more and more frustrated and angry with them as they picked up our trail along their section of the main road. One option of course would have been to accept their escort, but since none of them could explain why we needed protection it became a matter of principal. So far we had felt extremely safe in Pakistan so why would things change now?

Tensions grew when we furiously waved down yet another vehicle. A couple of burly man-mountains in standard kurta pajama garb stepped out. We requested to see their ID. "We don't have any ID on us. But we are policemen because we have POLICE painted on our truck". We said we didn't believe them and that they could easily be Al Qaeda terrorists targeting us! At the next kosher police checkpoint we pulled over and made a complaint about the people following us. "But sir they are policemen, can't you see it's written on their bonnet?" Cue for Simon to get out his permanent marker pen and write POLICE on his white plastic hand guard. "Now I'm a policeman, so bugger off".

We were relieved to realise that we were reaching our destination of DG Khan. On the outskirts a huge checkpoint was assembled, the policemen excitedly waved us onto the by-pass. In the lead, I put on my Steve McQueen expression, boldly ignored all attempts to stop us and rode through into town. "Somebody stop me!" And they did just that by a small market place selling fly infested animal feed. Had we pushed it just that little bit too far? We demanded to see the Head of Police in DG Khan when they ordered us out of town immediately. He duly came along and then courteously invited us along to his station. I wondered how this would compare with our Turkish and Krygyz encounters. We entered a small compound to be greeted either side by rather overcrowded prison cells, their occupants peering out to see us through the grills. We sat down in the Chief Donut Eater's office. He offered his apologies for his men not wearing uniform but since it was a Sunday they were allowed to dress casually, this was also meant to explain their lack of ID. A plate of mangoes appeared which we messily ate along with the obligatory 7-Up. He produced a year-old police edict stating that foreigners were not allowed to enter DG Khan, so we would have to accept an escort to the next town of Fort Munro. We reluctantly agreed and rushed to set off before it got too late.

Doughnut brigade on their dress-down day

Twenty or so kilometres out of town the pick-up truck slowed down to let us past. This was clearly the end of their jurisdiction so we were left to our own devices again. It wasn't long though before we got stopped once more and told we needed to wait for another escort, but not before the bossman ordered up a huge water melon in our honour and ordered us off the bikes. "For God's sake will someone give the hospitality a rest, we just want to find a hotel". This time the policeman guided us all the way on his brand spanking new 'Honda 90cc Cash Deposit' ('Cash Deposit' really is the model name, painted across the tank), complete with protective bubble wrap still over the mirrors. How tempted was I to rip that off at the end? He guided us through the scariest and narrowest of single tracks which clung onto a cliff face.

Eventually arriving in Fort Munro we were taken straight to the police station for more registration. This must have been the most exciting thing that had happened for ages. The office was full of onlookers, well the door was open wasn't it. The officer had no absolutely no idea what information he required and where he might find it in our passports. Two 13 year old boys acted as interpreters. I thanked them and commented on their perfect English. "Well, we're from Lahore you know. They practically can't read or write up here". They later told Simon which school they went to. It meant nothing to me but Simon impressed them by recognising it as the same one that Imran Khan attended.

Having booked our obligatory escort for the following morning we eventually settled into an overpriced hotel, full of partying Pakistanis, including the Chairman of the English Department at Lahore University who guess what, wanted to offer us mangoes and whisky. We did learn here though why DG Khan was being less than friendly to foreigners - it was the home to the Pakistani nuclear industry!

The strap says 'Mashallah' - God has willed it
We say "whatever you say mate"

Our last moped escort took the opportunity to give his mate, with all his shopping, a lift down off the Fort. We thought we drove slowly but this was painful so we overtook and sped off into 'The Tribal Areas'. This was a pretty much lawless area of Pakistan that the government kept well out of. Granted, every adult male toutted a Kalashnikov as his accessory of choice, sported a healthy long black beard and a huge turban-like head dress. You felt like you shouldn't mess with these guys, but place a camera in front of them and their faces lit up with a broad smile and shining eyes.

Pashtun bikers

The roads were barely roads in the region. Stony and sandy tracks zigzagged across a ripped up road that was being rebuilt. We had incredible luck passing through the area during days without rain. An Italian father and son team travelling in a Land Rover a couple of days later had experienced several flash floods that prevented them from crossing river beds for many hours. I dreamed of owning an F-650 as my suspensionless Enfield hit rock after rock after rock. It only stalled once before a real river crossing and took a long time to restart. In the distance we could both hear gunfire.

I wish I had some suspension

We had been storing a couple of dozen pencils in our tank bag for 'deserving kids'. We tended to ignore the kids that shouted the mantra "Money, pen, sweet" with a held out hand. Fearing that we might end up going home with the blasted pencils I jumped at the chance of off-loading them at a school we rode past. The open-air classroom was a mixture of ages and surprisingly both boys and girls. The kids were dumbstruck as they saw us and found it difficult posing for a picture. As we rode away with a bag of mangy peaches I suddenly realized that all teaching was being done on slates with chalk. Oh well, they seemed grateful.

Local lads

Quetta was the last major city to visit, and a pleasantly organised and clean one at that. A service for both bikes in the forecourt of the hotel before 2 days in the desert of Baluchistan and onwards to Iran. Our last night (not of sleep though) in Pakistan was in Dalbandin. When we checked in at least we were warned that there would only be no electricity between 8pm and 2am. As we sadly listened to our fan wind down in the early hours our thermometers read 38C (100F)...

I wondered what temperature it would be in Iran ...

FINAL NOTE: For all those pub quizzers out there, how did Pakistan get its name? No, it's not because it means 'Land of the Pakis' but is in fact an acronym referring to Punjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sind with the suffix STAN meaning 'country' in Persian. How many pop pickers knew that then?

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Number of weeks = 4.5
Miles in country = 2,170
Kilometres in country = 3,472
Total miles so far = 27,877
Total kilometres so far = 44,603

"How on earth am I going to write India up?" A question I asked Georgie about a hundred times in the 5 weeks we were there. She struck lucky, getting nice positive experiences in Nepal and Pakistan to describe, but how should I handle our voyage through a living hell?

I bet a number of readers have stiffened at this point, having “visited and loved the country, although some parts were difficult”. I admit that we added a number of hardships to our trip (travelling on a bike, going to the most populous part and arriving in the pre-monsoon heat) that could have been avoided, but there is no denying that India was the most extreme place we have visited, EVER. And even though we chose a route that would take us through some of the highlights of Northern India, the downs far outweighed the ups.

So the usual style of travelogue (went here, did that, blew the bike up this way) is pushed to the end of this document, while I get India off my chest…

The first and continuing shock was the riding. As we crossed the border from Nepal, the “suicidal pedestrian” gene (“I’ll just wander out into the road without looking”) that we’d encountered throughout Nepal was completely absent, obviously bred out in a country-wide Darwinian Traffic Accident experiment over the past 50 years of car ownership. You step out in the road without looking and you die - end of dumb gene - fast evolution!

That was a relief until we discovered that we had twin scourges to deal with. First, Indian's are big on "Karma" - that is the philosphy of "if something happens to me it is because I did something before and one of the god's wants payback" and "if my Karma is good, I can do what I like with impunity". Second, Indian drivers’ road sense is based on the ‘walking through a crowded market’ ethic - “I’ll drive wherever I like, bump into things and push things out of the way, and if my Karma is good, I’ll make it home”.

So the whole road system is like a dodgem-car ride, and they play dodgems with trucks. On average we saw a freshly wrecked truck (with its load still onboard) every 25kms.

We knew in advance that this would be a problem, and had fitted the bikes with extra loud horns (Georgie’s bike now has 6 horns and mine has 4), but that still did not get rid of the problem of cars just pulling into the space that we were occupying. Cars would try to overtake us and the 3 buses ahead of us, then realize that the trucks heading towards them on the other side of the road would seriously threaten their karma and then they’d pull into us; time after time, every time. In such circumstances the local bikers all head for the side of the road and allow the bigger vehicle to be an idiot. But being stroppy euro bikers we stood our ground with horns blaring, to the AMAZEMENT of the offending drivers. They were even more amazed when I started to kick in their passenger doors as we rode (a dangerous thing to do by the way - you have to avoid kicking the wheels). In all but one of the 20 times I ruined car doors the drivers slowed down and started behaving properly. So much for being ‘ambassadors for your country’ - better to be a live hooligan than a dead ambassador.

The roads themselves were well surfaced but every time we got to a village or town, all the traffic would snarl up around the buses and taxi-jeeps that would just stop anywhere to drop and pick up people. I would put forward several sections of the Indian Grand Trunk Road as ‘a vision of hell’ - they combined heat, fumes, engine and horn noise, filth, death and infirmity with a 'humans going about their daily life’ - we even passed Hieronymus Bosch sitting by the side of the road, painting the carnage.

India was the first place on this trip where we have calculated the number of days driving left and triumphantly ticked the days off as we rode - like a prison sentence.

But hey we could avoid riding too much and we could enjoy India for itself, as long as the people and the sights were as wonderful as we'd been led to believe. Nasty surprise number 2! What a difference to the people in Nepal, where EVERYBODY greets you with “Namaste” (this ‘hello’ literally means “I salute the god in you”) and the same word is applicable in India. As usual when we stopped the bikes we drew crowds, but in India the crowds were big. People would stop on their bicycles, scooters would do u-turns and come back to see us; others would appear from nowhere, often filling the roadside and the road. People were actually willing to risk their lives standing in the road to see us. This should have been welcoming - but it wasn’t. We smiled, we said “Namaste”, we held out our hands to shake - not a reaction - just blank stares. It was like being ‘the next victim’ in a zombie film. The same happened in cafes. We’d enter an empty cafe and within minutes it would be full of people, nobody eating or drinking, just sitting staring at us; and no one willing to interact with us. Very intimidating and unlike anywhere else on the trip - it made Russia seem friendly - at least there were friendly drunks there! To keep myself sane I’d ask the crowd “is there nothing on the telly today?” That never got a response either.

And so with the riding and the people being a nightmare, all of the rough stuff that you can normally excuse or ignore in a third world country came crashing in on us. We were expecting poverty, poor housing, malnourished people and untreated disease but not in such abundance. And the rubbish and sewage everywhere was amazing. It took us a while to work out that rubbish is not rubbish in India; it's seen as a potential raw material for someone further down the social (caste) ladder, who might recycle it. The effect is like living in a land full of "the mad person down the road who collects rubbish in their back garden". The place is a huge rubbish tip - totally crazy.

And what about those "sacred cows" which famously wander around India, where do they come from? Simple really - people are allowed to keep cows for milk production (the god Krishna was a cow-herder and regularly chased the milk-maids), but once the cows dry up there is nothing to do with the cows and they are protected by law so you can't kill them. The only thing to do is to turn them out on the street, to eat some of that rubbish, to crap everywhere and cause even more traffic chaos.

India is a shambles with not enough money to go round. That wouldn't be a shock in a place that been seriously messed up like Cambodia; but India is a fertile land, democratically governed, with a history of good education and no significant wars in living memory - so what is with this country? Some serious reading was required, which was OK because it was too bloody hot, dangerous and smelly to go outside!

India has more than a billion people and around 60% of the population are farmers - that’s 600 million farmers - almost twice the population of the USA! And 50 million people die every year, and as each cremation uses about 300kgs of wood they go through about 15 million tonnes of wood for funerals every year. These numbers are scary until you realize the population density is only about 25% greater than the UK. So the country’s problems, although not helped by the large population, are probably not wholly caused by gross overcrowding.

What we discovered is that India runs on mass ‘avoidance behaviour’. That is the philosophy of ignoring a problem and hoping it will go away. And to reinforce that the major religions Hinduism and Buddhism (the foundations of India’s notionally secular society) are conspicuously rule-free. Do what you like, nobody will stop you - it's starting to sound like a school without discipline?

But what about the rule-makers; politicians, policemen and bureaucrats? No use looking to them as they are all notoriously corrupt, self-serving and arbitrary. The only institution that is universally respected and incorruptible is the army - they get wheeled out in dire emergencies when real law enforcement is needed.

So what do the poor bloody Indians do when faced by the daily mountain of intolerable obstacles? They do 2 things. First they shrug and say “what to do?” with an air of resignation, and wander away from the problems. The second is they build themselves sanctuaries to hide away from the pains of India. The rich build physical sanctuaries, and this is where many of the beautiful parts of India are found. If you’re a posh tourist you can get luxury transport from one sanctuary to another and avoid all the filth and chaos.

The poor have to find solace in religion and the two major religions (Hinduism and Buddhism) have a trump card for people who live an awful life. They both believe in Karma (fatalism - if something happens to me then I must have deserved it) and reincarnation. Now reincarnation seems like a good thing to rich Indians and westerners but not so good if you’re a poor Indian - who would want to 'go round again' in such an awful place?. But both of the religions have ways to make sure that you break free of the never-ending cycle of rebirth and get the hell out.

So where did all that leave us foolhardy travelers? Well ‘when in Rome, do as the Romans do’, so we shrugged and said “what to do?” and planned our trip to make life as easy for ourselves as possible, with as little riding as possible so that we wouldn't get killed and find ourselves reincarnated as an Indian peasants - argh!!

TRAVELOGUE

As you’ll have guessed, the number of highs and lows in biking in India for 5 weeks would take up volumes. So I’ll stick to the highs, so we should be done in a paragraph or two!?

The one thing that kept us sane in India was the food. Wonderful veggie curries and freshly baked naan, whenever and wherever you want it. Thank heavens for our rigorous training in curry houses in England. When we get home we'll look out for some new tastes we've acquired - paneer (buffalo cheese like mozarella) curries, dahl (lentil stew), maater (peas) and super sweet deserts. You can even order Maater Paneer curry - yes, cheesey peas!!

A disgusting habit in Nepal was replaced by a slightly less vile variation in India. In Nepal EVERYONE seems to enjoy hocking and spitting with the courseness and power of a Megadeath concert - really earth shattering when they start at 5 in the morning and continue all day. But in India they chew 'Paan' - betel leaf and nut. When this slightly narcotic mix is chewed, the mouth gradually fills with bitter, brick red juice which eventually needs to be spat out, staining the pavement. But it's not always convenient to spit the juice out, so people have to continue conversations with the mouthful of red spit. The effect is like talking to someone in a dentists chair "ay car eerly alk oo ell", "nurse, can we have some suction?"

Again as we crossed the border from Nepal, the geography changed. Out of the claustrophobic Nepali valleys and into wide open Indian countryside. The advertising painted onto buildings immediately changed from promoting instant noodles, to mens underwear - a nation united by the need for knickers.

And hello, what's this roadblock? Looks like the police and "hell, what you doing with that black paint?" Seems that there is a law that requires all vehicles to have the top 25% of their headlights to be blacked out. This is because Indian drivers have a weird philosophy about using headlights (shared by many other nations). Simply put the rules are 'never use your headlights because it uses more fuel. Don't use them at night unless you think you see another vehicle (without its lights on), then get the main beams on and blind the oncoming driver. Then turn you lights off again'. Consequently riding at night is even more dangerous, and riding with lights on during the day was treated as almost criminally negligent. People would literally run out of their houses making a flashing motion with their hands to tell us we had our headlights on. All other stupidity we might attempt on the bikes would be ignored, but riding with lights on - never! It seems to be linked to the national obcession with thrift - not once we were asked about the top speeds of our bikes (180kph has no meaning in a land where to go above 80kph is suicidal), but we were constantly asked about the bikes 'average' - its fuel consumption. All bikes in India are advertised on the basis of how far they can go on a litre of juice. 60 to 90 km/l seems to be par for the course, so the stereotypes of us 'rich westerners' were reinforced by the fuel consumption of 16km/l of the BMW.

Our first destination was Varanasi, a sacred site on the river Ganges. Hotter than a hot thing. Suddenly we were having to deal with 44 celcius. It took us too long to realise that we needed to upgrade to aircon rooms in hotels. The main reason for visiting the city was to see holy quays (ghats) by the river, where Hindus visit to bathe and collect water to take home. As I mentioned before Hinduism has ways of ending the cycle of rebirth, and a major one is to 'die in Varanasi and be cremated on the banks of the Ganges'. So some of the ghats are 'burning ghats', where you can watch newly dead people going up in flames. Weird - an American we met in Kathmandu told us of the shock of having to arrange a funeral for a friend there - "you literally set light to your friend and watch him burn". The serenity of watching the locals making their ritual ablutions was somewhat dented when we discovered that the Ganges water contains 250,000 times the maximum recommended level of poo bacteria, and we saw people bathing 10m from a corpse floating in the shallows - either the bacteria got him, or he was too poor to afford the 300 kilos of wood to be burnt. Whatever, the corpse was bobbing next to a fishing boat that was offloading some seriously huge fish - I wonder what they eat - note - don't eat the fish in Indian restaurants!

The other reason for seeing Varanasi was for Georgie to buy some locally produced silk for a wedding dress. An interesting experience, taking her to all sorts of back street weaving shops, run by terribly nice Moslems. Silk posted home, now all we have to do is avoid killing each other before the wedding.

Next to Allahabad, another holy bathing place - the famous 12-yearly Khum Mela festival when millions of people all visit to bathe together. We avoided any bathing and just visited the past home (sanctuary) to the Nehru family. We also enjoyed an evening of curries and powercuts with a fellow overlander, Paul Philips on an XT600, doing some serious daily mileages on his way to Nepal and then to southeast asia.

Next to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and Red Fort (both sanctuaries). Along the way we started to collect photos of various types of man-made (actually woman-made) dung-hills. We'd first seen cow-poo being collected for fuel in Mongolia, but in India they have perfected the practice. The dry poo is collected (there are always cows around, even in the heart of a city), and then rehydrated and mushed up by hand. The refreshed poo is moulded into 'ideal sized' pies and either left to dry on the ground, or preferably stuck to a wall. No wall is safe, we even saw poo pies drying on the boundary walls of the Taj Mahal! Once dry the pies are stacked and then covered against the oncoming monsoon rains - the prefered covering were either another a layer of poo, or a nicely thatched roof and walls.

Poo pies a-cooking

The Taj was serene and beautiful, with the lawns kept neat by cow-drawn mowers. The aircooling in our hotel kept us serene and beautiful, except in the long minutes between powercuts and the hotel's generators being fired up. We became very interested in emergency power supplies, UPSs and voltage regulators during our stay in India. Visits to the city's red fort (most big towns in India seem to have a Red Fort) and the nearby Fatipur Sikri satisfied our need to grand mughal (Islamic) architecture.

Then off to Jaipur - the legendary Pink City breaking new records for the trip as we rode into Rajasthan and 49celcius heat. As we're not superhuman we 'installed' aircon on our bikes. Every 40-50kms we'd stop and soak our tee-shirts (worn under our vented biking jackets) with water. The wind blowing over the wet cloth would keep us cool for an hour or so, until the next soaking stop. Aircon powered by Newtonian Forced Convection. And a side benefit is that Georgie won prizes from several impromptu 'wet tee-shirt' contests.

Jaipur was too hot to enjoy, and when we did venture out the people were a bit on the aggressive side. I had one guy ride his scooter straight at me to make me jump out of the way, in front of his friends. But I stood my ground and then pushed him and his bike into a wall - his friends were still amused. One thing that we really hated about India was the way that it turned us into violent psychopaths. It took some time after leaving to return to normality. Whilst in Jaipur we went to the cinema to see a Bollywood film. When chose one called 'The Hero', which had a lot more money and plot thrown at it than most Bollywood films, where boy meets girl and they do lots of jiggy dancing. The film was all in Hindi, but was easy to follow; a spy romance with the Hero thwarting some dastardly Pakistani terrorists trying to build a nuclear bomb. To underline the education of some of the rich characters in the film, they would break out into gratuitous 'English'. When there was an accident at the nuclear lab, one scientist shouted "oh bloody hell, total radiation!". Only two people in the auditorium burst out laughing!

Scooter with stabilisers

Next a little real sanctuary for us in Delhi. We had heard that there was an motorcycle overlanding English woman, living in Delhi and more that happy to have other overlanders descend and stay. This angel called Lisa (Lisa with the broken leg, to those in the know) not only responded positively to our self-invite, but also let us use and abuse her luxury life-style. Big aircon appartment, cook/maid, driver, swimming pool, satelite TV and video collection. Just the job - we are eternally grateful. With such facilities to hand, India remained locked outside and Delhi's tourist delights went unvisited. We did manage to tear ourselves away from the aircon flat to be driven in the aircon car, to buy some panniers, spares and sexy seating for Georgie's bike, but that was the only 'venturing out' we did.

When I grow up I want to be a Harley

Refreshed but by no means ready for the road, we had to tear ourselves away from Lisa's oasis. Launching into the Delhi traffic at midday was not a bright idea and almost provoked 2 cases of heat stroke, especially with the Enfield refusing to idle when stinking hot. Up to Chandigarh, which is India's version of Milton Keynes, with the most orderly traffic system and most cow/rubbish free streets anywhere in India. But it was nowt to write home (very similar to Salford) about apart from the concrete sculpture park full of locals having fun.

By this point the temptation to make a break for the Pakistani border (just 2 days away) was almost unbearable. But we decided that we'd give India more time to redeem itself (and we were afraid of a similar disappointment in Pakistan), and continued on our planned route up into the Himalayan foothills. Up to Shimla, an hill station built by the British as the India's summer capital when we ran the place. Very weird - for all the world an alpine ski resort in summer, with hotels perched on the side of a steep hill, all finished off with a small parish church, a labour exchange, a narrow guage railway and thousands of Indian tourists enjoying the cool climate. And there was a golf course in a nearby valley, which is now a golf course with a few more divets after we played a round. Being in the hills the course was more like an army assault course with concrete channels, forests to drive over and a public road to play over 4 times in 9 holes.

Next to McLeod Ganj and Daramsala, home to the Tibetan Government in Excile. On the way we entered real mountain country again. People were more communicative, the driving was less homicidal and the countryside was terraced and green - almost like going back to Nepal. And even better, McLeod Ganj is full of Tibetans - smiley happy people - a breath of fresh air. Of course, not planning to visit Tibet, we knew embarrasingly little about the country or its politics. We were shocked to find out the level of oppression of the native Tibetans by the invading Chinese.

In McLeod we were back on the 'Israelis on Enfields' tourists route. India and Nepal are full of young Israelis on holiday - it is cheap and safe. And many of them decide to go for a grungy, hippy roadtrip of a holiday. They typically fly into Goa or Delhi, buy a tatty old 350cc Enfield for $500 to $700 and ride it to the the north of India and into Nepal. At the end of their trip they return to Delhi or Goa and sell the bike back to the dealer or to another Israeli for about $200 less than they bought it for. The bikes are knackered at the start of the holiday and need lots of small and large repairs along the way. New parts are bought and fitted, and the bodging Indian engineers cause more faults while they are fixing whatever the original problem was. Gradually the bikes get overhauled, but they NEVER work properly - but what the hell, it's an adventure owning one for a while, and when your bike breaks down you're forced into all sorts of interactions with the locals. Perhaps that is where we went wrong - we should have got less reliable machines!?

!! ROADTRIP !!

To spice up our departure from McLeod, we had our second puncture of the holiday. Yes, only 2 punctures so far, comparing well with the dozens which some bikers seem to suffer. And the main reason we get so few is that we have tried to replace the tyres well before they get very worn right down. The bikers we have met who have moaned about repeated punctures are also the ones running round on bald tyres. As the yanks would say "go figure!".

To Amritsar, the nicest place we found in India. The city is the home of Sikhism, a relatively new religion which is a spin-off from Hinduism, with a load of Islam mixed in. Gone are the plethora of gods and in comes a proud, warrior-race ethic with rules to match. And what nice people Sikhs turned out to be. Respectful, helpful, well educated and prosperous. The rest of India should take note! And Amritsar is the home of the most sacred site for the Sikhs - the Golden Temple. We visited with more than a little trepidation, but were warmly welcomed by the other visitors and soothed by the Temple's atmosphere; musicians play inside the temple all the time and the music wafts over the surrounding ponds. Finally we felt relaxed in India.

Just time to have the Enfield serviced by the professionals - the main Enfield dealer in Amritsar. The prevailing heat and shop's well equiped workshop made it seem like a good idea to let the dealer do the work, rather than do it ourselves as we'd done in Kathmandu. However, we later found out numerous things they'd done wrong: They had used too much of the wrong grade oil in the primary drive. They sealed the oil filter cover with sewing cotton and shellac (REALLY!) even though the O-ring was perfectly ok (but latterly crispy with solid shellac) - we are still removing loose cotton and bits of shellac from the oil strainers. They misaligned the rear wheel and didn't have a clue that a chain could have a odd number of links when we tried to buy a spare (the 500 bullet has 95 links whereas the 350 has 94 links) - we spent an amusing hour watching their best engineers unsuccessfully trying to fit both a 94 link then a 96 link chain to the bike. At another main dealer we saw the 'engineer' removing the valves from a cylinder head with a hammer and screwdriver, even though he had a perfectly good spring compressor on the wall. The reason for resighting all this - if you're going to buy an Enfield and ride it home, learn to do your own servicing and you're more likely to have the bike running well as it crosses the Pakistani border!

Take me to the Enfield shop

And to round things off before our escape, we visited the nightly display of jingoism and strutting at the border between India and Pakistan. What a hoot!? The tallest soldiers from each country are selected for duty here and every evening they get dressed in 'number 1s', complete with wildly silly cockerel hats and then they formally close the border with as much 'ministry of funny walks' pomp as they can muster. One side slams the gate with a swinging gate, the other has a sliding gate. And to accommodate the crowds, both sides have built grandstands and recruit rabble-rousers to make the crowds cheer on their side more noisily than the other. The best thing is that when we talked about Pakistan with Indians and vice-versa, EVERYONE said "yes they're nice people - it's just the governments who hate each other". 55 years apart has not clouded the peoples' vision.

Pakistan beckoned and we could now allow ourselves to escape, full of hope that our past experience with Islamic states would be repeated and we'd find Pakistan a pleasant place to visit.

Number of weeks = 5.5
Miles in country = 1,636
Kilometres in country = 2,618
Total miles so far = 25,707
Total kilometres so far = 41,131

Kazakhstan

Highlights
- Almaty – a really pleasant, modern place
- Snow leopards in the zoo
- Chilling with other travellers
- Moving on again after weeks of being in the same area

Lowlights
- Incompetent visa agents
- Trashed bike engine
- Kazakh roads

From the last mail about Kyrgyzstan you’ll remember that we left with a decidedly “under the weather” bike. The starter motor was only functioning on 1 magnet when it should have 4, the carbs were still in need of a good clean out (so the engine was really badly balanced) and there were some nasty rattles coming from the engine.

So what is the most unprofessional way you can enter a country? Pushing a fully laden bike across no-man’s land rates pretty high up on the list! The starter motor would occasionally whiz the engine over, but at the border it decided to make us look like a couple of clowns from the state circus. After Georgie had done the paperwork (her usual function at borders, for which I am very grateful), the bike started ok and we rattled and spluttered into Kazakhstan.

Just 2 kilometers after the border the scenery changed and we finally start to cross “the steppe” – a huge plain that we had been avoiding for the past 3 months. Our trip through “The Stans” had been devised so that we’d go through interesting places (both visually and culturally), rather than just riding across the continent through thousands of kilometres of mind-numbing steppe, or further north through thousands of kilometres of mind-numbing Siberian forests. But now we’d have to do some riding on the steppe, on our way to do some riding through some of Siberia.

The Steppe

For anyone who has not experienced the steppe, imagine a huge plain, sometimes farmed with wheat, sometimes just left to dusty weeds. Unlike American prairies that have rolling hills and constantly changing shapes and forms, the steppe is FLAT, with occasional shallow valleys between 10 and 100 metres deep. You ride along the steppe seeing nothing but dry fields and distant hazy hills, drop into a valley, across a pot-holed bridge and back up to the dry fields and views of distant hills. Add a good dose of blistering sun (or icy winds in winter), a few scratty towns and the odd police checkpoint manned by bored doughnut eaters and that is all there is to see along a strip of land that stretches right the way from Hungary to the Pacific. Ok that’s a bit harsh, and there are small details that gladden the heart – the proliferation of insect life, small mammals and eagles that fly along with you and peer into your eyes as you peer into theirs’. But it’s not an ideal place to take a long holiday!

The noise of the engine didn’t seem to be getting any worse when we were riding, but was pretty deafening when we stopped – hmm – not good at all, but perhaps the tappets just needed tweaking? Ever hopeful but more than a little worried!

We arrive in Almaty and fight our way through the traffic. The stress of the traffic and the noisy engine start to get to me and then I can’t see any street names – how the hell are we supposed to find our way to a hotel? I pick a fight with Georgie (sorry – that was bloody silly) and then the oil pressure warning light comes on (for non-biking readers, this is VERY serious). Shit what a nightmare. Where has all the oil gone – the engine was full only 800kms ago; it can’t just disappear! There’s no alternative but to stick what oil we have in the engine and look into the problem later.

Georgie points out that the signs advertising “LG” products about 40 metres before every road have the street names on and things become a little clearer. Cheap hotel - $5 per night – safe again!

In my first mail about the trip I made a joke about “I might be surprised by Almaty and end up writing nice things about it”. Well here goes because it really is a good modern city with stuff to do, see and buy! And a bloody good job too as we were about to spend 10 days there waiting for our Russian visa to be processed.

Next day we have people to see and things to do. We have to register with the local police (more pointless admin, but vital to avoid a fine when leaving the country), we have to pick up our invitations for the Russia visa from our agent and we have to visit DHL to make them aware that a smelly second-hand starter motor is winging its way from England.

Off to the visa agent and hey, they don’t have the invitation – it’s in Moscow, but we need it in Almaty and we’ll have to pay $45 to have it couriered. Great – good start to the day. We paid $200 for the invitations and we don’t have them. I start pointing out that we have a contract with the agents to deliver the invites to Almaty but the agent (stunningly pretty but f******g useless) goes into “no my problem” mode. I decide to pay for the couriering and fight the agents in the UK, where professionalism eventually prevailed as they refunded my $45, but not until I pointed out that the local bimbo made a list of mistakes so long that I suspected that she had never processed a Russian visa before. If anyone is thinking of coming to Russia or Kazakhstan, you can mail us and we’ll tell you which agent to avoid!

So that put a delay into the proceedings – we’d be in Kazakhstan for a few days. Plenty of time to receive and fit the starter motor, which eventually arrived 4 working days after it was ordered. Great service from Motorworks in England (sales@motorworks.co.uk) and DHL. It’s funny how systems work sometimes. When we ordered the starter motor, we also ordered a new spare ignition unit (as I’d fitted my spare, having fried the original unit in Kyrgyzstan). I quoted the part number which ended with the digits “X3”. The sales guy at Motorworks read the mail and though I wanted three ignition units and I thought – “hey ho, I’ll return them back in the UK”. When the package arrived in Almaty we realised that the guys in the despatch department in Motorworks had got their thinking heads on, as they’d only sent one ignition unit out – great. But what’s this in the bottom of the box? It’s a “free electronic egg timer” – a nice freebie, but what bloody good is it to me on a motorbike in Kazakhstan???? It now resides in the kitchen of a chambermaid from Almaty.

Almaty – a place with posh shops, delicatessens which sell really good food, a proper camping shop, expensive restaurants, smart cars and tree-lined streets. The city nestles in the foot hills of the mountains that separate Kazakhstan from Kyrgyzstan, providing the residents with ski resorts in the winter and water throughout the year. The place still has the soviet legacies of concrete apartment blocks and a strong police presence, but the people there have embraced change and are living it up. Which all contrasts with most of the rest of Kazakhstan where money and water are in short supply.

Mr Stalin said he wanted a BIG monument

The Russian influence can be seen in the dress sense too. Girls wear next to nothing in the Russian style, and when the men bother to dress up they look like mafia or scruffy schoolboys; but who’s looking at the men?

And then a real shock – what’s that green weed growing by the cigarette kiosk. Bloody hell, it’s cannabis! And there on the verge, and there on the square, in the pleasure park, all over the place. In a former soviet republic – what is going on? And so started a bit of a mystery on this tour; we’ve spotted cannabis growing all the way through eastern Kazakhstan, into and through Siberia and now in Mongolia (I’m writing this mail in Ulaan Baataar). It seems to grow where people have been, like nettles would grow in the UK. Along roadsides, as a weed in fields of wheat, and LOTS around dachas in small villages. So was the use of cannabis a way of people surviving the communist system (which passed 12 years ago) or has it developed since? Did the authorities try to stamp out its use or did they turn a blind eye to it? Were people smoking the stuff or making rope and shirts from the fibres? I need to find out more about this when I get home, but if any readers have any information, I’d welcome a mail. Whatever the reasoning, I’m amazed that a plant that I thought was “exotic and tropical” seems happy to grow in Siberia!

Simon takes an interest in horticulture

The hotel attracted a flowing river of backpackers, mainly heading to or from China, via our bedroom which turned into a bit of an information bureau/tearoom – Georgie has never seen me being so sociable. We became friendly with three backpackers - Annette the Aussie, Helen the Kiwi and Marshall the Canadian. Marshall was a scream – a 6 foot 4 dyslexic, ex forest fire fighter, ex oil field worker, with an eye for adventurous travel mixed with the attitude of Dillon the hippy rabbit from the Magic Roundabout. When he heard about our trip he decided that he’d have to try the biking experience for a few weeks and I got pressed into helping him to find a suitable bike to buy or hire.

Finding any type of shop or service in former soviet countries is a real challenge. In some big cities there are “Yellow Pages” but finding such documents is difficult as they’re sold for about $40 so nobody has them. You can be standing right next to the most wonderful shopping centre full of shops and stalls selling exactly what you want. But it will be in a building that looks like a disused warehouse, an old public library or an apartment block, with nothing on the outside to tell you what might be on the inside. The secret is to ask the locals and ask lots of locals. Most will shrug and say “I don’t know” or more annoyingly “no, there is nothing like that in this city”, but the occasional person will tell you what you need to know.

So with that in mind we started to look for a motorbike. I had heard that there was an “avto bizarre” (car market) in town so we headed down there. After a small cock-up when we found out that the locals also call the bus-station the avtobizarre (silly as most people want to buy a ticket for the bus and not the whole bus!), we found a market full of stalls selling bits of cars and one stall with bike bits and hey presto, a 1988 Ural motorcycle up for $300. It ran, it rattled, it had vinyl “Harley-style” panniers. The front brake was lethally non-functional and the rear brake pedal would almost scrape on the floor before if gave any bite. But it had just been rebuilt (oh no, teething problems!) only 120kms before.

Marshall, Annette and Chug-a-boom

After a day or so of deliberating, discussing the possibility of putting a sidecar on the beast (so that all three travellers could ride on the bike and probably die together), the bike was hired for $40 for 10 days – not a bad deal. And so Marshall and Annette headed for the hills; the bike broke down and got fixed, and then got ridden through pastures and rivers. They slept in a field and were woken at midnight by a horseman who bummed a cigarette off them and sold them some milk. Last thing we heard was that they were planning a bigger trip – but we’re not sure how that went.

And so to fix the bike. Three hours to clean out the carbs – still full of mud and water from the drowning 2 weeks before in Kyrgyzstan. New throttle and choke cables fitted on one side. New starter motor fitted and wonderfully functional – Georgie can put away her running shoes. Drop the oil in the engine and gearbox – no water, grit or metal particles there. Remove the oil filter and sump – same result. Hey we might be in luck! Adjust the tappets, new oil in.

So where did all the oil go on the road to Almaty? Well there were a lot of hard deposits on the left hand spark plug and none on the right, so now I think that I have scratched the left hand cylinder bore and oil is gradually burning in that cylinder (although there is no vapour trail behind us and people riding behind us can’t smell burning oil). The rattling from the right hand side seems to be either piston slap or maybe something around the valve rockers – so I’m not worried about that. And the problem of burning oil – well we have to add a litre of oil every 600kms, which is a pain and an expense, but at least it is controllable and predictable. I don’t like the idea of taking the engine apart for a rebore (or even just new piston-rings) while we are out here. Not that I’m worried about doing it (it’s an easy process) – just finding a reliable workshop to do the boring will be a challenge and I’d have to take the bike apart twice – once to find out what is wrong and then again when the parts required have been shipped from England. All together too much hassle when I’m on holiday – the problem isn’t critical so I think we’ll just burn oil until we get back to the UK. And at the rate it is burning now we will consume between 75 and 100 litres of oil in the next year – oops!!!!

More time to kill in Almaty – let’s visit the zoo to see the Snow Leopards. Snow leopards live in the mountains to the east of Almaty and are one of the national symbols of Kazakhstan. The president has announced that he doesn’t want the country to be an “asian tiger economy”; he wants it to be an “asian snow leopard economy”. Nobody is quite sure what this means as the leopards have a reputation for being stealthy and secretive rather than bold and ferocious. But anyway they are pretty with a tail that is a long as their body and as fluffy as a giant pipe-cleaner.

We had the option of heading up into the hills to visit Medeo where the 2010 Winter Olympics may be held. It is supposed to be pretty and alpine, but we were “all mountained out” and couldn’t be bothered.

Eventually the visa invitations arrive and we fight our way into the Russian consulate to get our visas. 10 days after we arrive, we are ready to leave Almaty. But we still have to be careful. The standard of driving in Almaty was truly dreadful and we saw about 10 crashes in the few days we were there. Part of the problem was the pot-holed roads (making everyone swerve around all over the place) and the proliferation of trees didn’t help as drivers could rarely see the oncoming traffic as they pulled out of side roads. But the biggest problem was the fact that nobody takes driving tests – all you need is $25 to buy a black market driving licence and off you go, to wreak havoc on the roads.

Out onto the steppe again for a 1000km ride up to the Russian border. Luckily the hottest of weather held off but the roads deteriorated as we drove north. The towns also got rougher and were replaced by garrisons and airfields as we skirted along the Chinese border. One town we passed through used to have a steelworks, but it no longer produces steel and most people have moved away. The 20 or so massive apartment blocks that they used to inhabit have been stripped of everything, including their window frames, so their hollow stare follows you as you drive by. Reminded me of Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream”.

Shopping for bread the Kazakh way

We spent two and a half days riding up that stretch of road, rough camping along the way. The first night we pulled off the road and camped in some hills. I got the map out of its waterproof case to plan the next day’s ride and realised that we were actually only about 10kms from the Chinese border. The only thing between us and China were a few low hills. That night we collected and filtered some spring water – possibly “Chinese mineral water”!

The second night we camped on the steppe and discovered a lushly vegetated lake, full of fish, ducks, dragon-flies and kingfishers, all hidden in a fold of the landscape just 1km from the dusty highway. Again I tried to catch our supper using the fishing rod and some sweetcorn (good for carp!) while Georgie prepared a tuna fish and sweetcorn stew.

The final half day was on one of the worse pieces of metalled road we have encountered. The road up to Semey (Semipalatinsk in Russian) is as neglected as the whole of that part of the country. The only alternative route is through the notorious “SemiPalatinsk Polygon” where the Russians tested their nuclear weapons. The place is still dangerously radioactive in places (although people still live, get sick and die there) – not a good place to camp and drink the spring water. For the same reason we avoided buying mushrooms and berries from roadside vendors until we were well into Siberia.

Into and through Semey – a really ugly soviet mess at one end (with high voltage power pylons running through the centre of housing estates) and a smooooth new road and Japanese-built suspension bridge at the other end. Over the river and whooo – forests again – like someone had suddenly decided that the Siberian woodland would start “north of that river”.

A fairly informal border crossing out of Kazakhstan and there lay Russia. We should have been frightened, but we’d just done 13 countries and Russia was just “another border” – weird; a bit of an anticlimax.

Here's a 'bikey' description of the day Simon and I trashed the bike. Even if you don't understand the technie bits I think everyone should get the gist.

The run up to Altyn Arashan is described as a jeep track, which is so inviting when you're on a GS - "of course we can get up there". The locals (who drive jeeps and various pieces of ex-military hardware up there) looked at our loaded bike and advised us that we'd not make it. Now that's usually a good enough incentive for me to try my hardest, but this time it also fired up Georgie.

A local dirt bike

We decided not to take the spare tyre up with us (saving a massive 4 kilos from our total 450 kilo load!!) and we set off for the hills.

First problem, find your track; which we did at the 4th attempt. Obviously the beautifully rendered Kyrgyz maps were not wholly accurate. Later we discovered (using the GPS) that the grid lines on the maps were also inaccurate (about 3 kms one way and 800m the other way) - you wouldn't want to land a helicopter in the fog using those maps!

Then a series of puddles through to the first climb which we'd been told "if you have problems with that climb, you'll never manage the big ones later". I slightly messed it up by rushing it so that I could get past a horseman, but otherwise it was "one-nil to the Eng-a-land".

Up alongside a raging alpine torrent, very pretty and pretty easy. Then across a small boulder field, where the river sometimes floods. No real problem.

Then we (I) get careless and have a little "get off" (our first one of the trip) after springing out of a stream and into the boulders at the side of the track. This bent the right hand pannier rack in a bit - easily "adjusted" with a 16 inch tyre lever; but the result was a couple of cracks in the steel rack - easily welded later, along with the split in the exhaust that just reappeared after a 1 month absence.

At this point I decide that the tyres are going to get off-road pressures (22psi front and rear) rather than road pressures - that helped a lot, with the tyres squidging over rocks rather than pinging off them.

Next some nasty little climbs with cambers that try to throw you down a 200 metre drop. Georgie gets to walk for a while and I console myself with the thought that "I'd rather do this on a bike than stuck inside a jeep".

Around a corner we catch up with 3 Belgians who we'd been staying with in Karakol - they're amazed to see us and we feel a little guilty for taking the easy option - later they where to have the last laugh!

More up and up - we meet a load of Czech hikers as we forge through a really boggy bit.

More bogs appear and the bike gets seriously cross-rutted (hey give me a break we're on road tyres!). No grip, loads of wheel spin and we push the heavy lump so that it occupies just one rut, which luckily had a firm bottom. But there's not enough grip to get out so we switch the bike into 2-wheel drive mode. This is a useful technique where the spare person (Georgie) pulls on the top of the front wheel, while the rider gives the throttle some grief and pushes the handlebars. That worked, the bike sailed out and Georgie got muddy hands, arms and sodden feet.

Next "the big hill you won't get up - if you stop you'll never get going again". And we could see the point the locals were making - it was a really gnarly little pull, with turns and boulders - nice on a light dirt bike, but a swine on a fully laden GS. And worse, we were now at about 2500 meters, and the carburation started to go squirley again: the engine normally has huge amounts of low-down torque, but now I had to rev the nuts off it and slip the clutch to get the low speed torque I needed. Half way up and all is going pretty well, except there's smoke pouring out of the clutch housing - "hell, I think it's on fire!!". Quick action needed, so I pull out the rubber bung that blocks up the timing hole, and pour water onto the clutch. That did the trick. Up the final pull. I reckon I stopped about 4 or 5 times on the hill and still managed to get up - lucky eh?

Over the brow of the hill and we see base camp - a few tents and some glorious views. Chug-a-chug we feel proud as we make our approach to the campsite - through the final puddle and "hell, that's deep" - right over the cylinders which isn’t normally a problem. The engine cuts and then won't restart - in fact it won't even turn over.

Too much mud in the bottom of the puddle to push out so I get out a webbing strap, tie it around the forks and ask Georgie and a local guy to pull. No good - too much suction on the wheels. Then the local guy beckons his brother - on a horse - to come over - a bit of lashing together of ropes and the 1bhp horse makes all the difference.

Rescued

So what drowned the motor, which is usually happy to swim for a while? Well water got into the airbox through the little one-way water drain valve in the airbox which is supposed to let water out but stop it from getting in – the 12 year old rubber had perished. Then the rotten muddy water got into the carbs, cylinders and exhaust. Hydraulic lock in the cylinders - no go. I decided that save for pumping the water out of the cylinders, the solution to our problems would have to wait for the next day.

Tent up, brew on, food on, bed and a worried Simon tries not to worry too much - not easy when you've just trashed your one means of transport.

Next day dawns brightish and I set to work on the bike while Georgie sensibly stays out of the way and does breakfast duty.

Silencer off (full of water), try to start - lots of turning and gurgling but no firing. More analysis and starting practice until the battery goes flat. Then Ivan, a Kyrgyz biker and local guide who we'd chatted to the night before comes over and explains that his jeep will be here in 30 minutes and we can jump start the bike from that!

The jeep arrives and jump leads are made up. More starting practice, with some firing but no running. I take the jets out of the carbs and they look like they've been dragged round a farmyard. Then we get some firing, then nothing. Analyse the electrics - no spark, where there had been a spark earlier. Surely not the ignition module - fit the spare - vroom - the beast fires straight up, even through the starter sounds more than a little unwell.

And that's how the bike stood for a few days until we rode it down the hill again.

Back in Karakol the bike got a little looking at, and some welding. And "let's take the starter motor off to see if we can lube away that horrible noise". And another "oh shit!" moment. The Valeo starter motor, renowned for its ability to shed its magnets had indeed shed 3 out of the 4, and they were now in 6 big pieces and a million little ones in the casing. There was no way to glue them back together - the pieces repelled each other - so it’s looking like we'd be bump starting for a while. One last possibility; let's see what happens if we just have one magnet in the motor. Hey hey, it sounds really ill, but it starts!! Georgie, you can take off your running shoes.

Magnetic fragments from the wrecked starter motor

Obviously the next thing to do is to get an email off to England to get a starter motor sent out to the other side of the world AND hope the bike can limp its way into Almaty AND survive the next 13 months.

I think we learnt a few lessons from that one – not to kill the goose that lays our golden eggs!

DISTANCE DRIVEN IN COUNTRY: 1,300 miles/ 2,080km

DISTANCE FROM HOME: 8,647 miles/ 13,835km

WEEKS COMPLETED: 14/74

Paddy fields (well just one and thats enough for me)
Ability to make nasty tasting drinks and salty balls out of mares milk
Ability to make even nastier tasting fizzy drink from boiled fermented millet and barley
Visit to police station no 3
Fish count to date = 1
Roadside stalls selling dried fish; yellow, red and black succulent cherries, watermelons
Horses

TRAVELOGUE

You may have gathered that we were both really looking forward to Kyrgyzstan, a land which is 94% mountainous, the average elevation 2,750m and 40% over 3,000m.

Now isnt that bliss after scorching hot deserts? Our 3 weeks in the country were action packed, heart stopping and nerve shattering. Simon described the place as having no half measures. He was right. This was a country that we will never forget

Kyrgyzstan is Central Asias most forward thinking nation and was the first to declare its independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Still much poorer than virtually all of its neighbours it has been able to stabilise its economy, hence no black market, and wise enough to simplify its entry requirements to foreigners. Religion is tolerated though the state is officially secular, unlike the Uzbekistan government which has banned the Muslim call to prayer and harasses those Muslims brave enough to attend mosques.

It is possible that tourism will be the trump card for Kyrgyzstan since it offers mountains, pastures, animals and people to die for.

The border crossing from Uzbekistan was comical this was their major international border into Kyrgyzstan and we approached it along a narrow track weaving our way in between the traders pulling barrows stocked high with goods.

They too would be crossing the border to the market on the other side. Standard procedures and numerous forms with the Uzbek customs, we expected the same on the Kyrgyz side. But the Kyrgyz authorities were so laid back it was unbelievable no registration of the bike, no declaration of money and no stamp in the passport, too good to be true. When would they start to extort money from us? Beckoned into another stinking hot corrugated army personnel caravan (the country is littered with them) we get asked to pay the Air Pollution Tax. Warning them that we only have dollars, the calculation of 1.2 x 100 / 45 is clearly too much for the struggling official and he waivers it! We like this country.

Petrol smugglers at the border

Our first destination is Bishkek the capital, not far on the map, but requiring a 3 day pull up through 2 passes of over 3,000m. Within 2 hours of being in the country we found ourselves at a rather official checkpoint where we were asked for our bike details.

These sounded rather familiar questions so dreading the affirmative answer that I received, I curiously asked if it was Uzbekistan on the other side. Thank you Mr Stalin for drawing the borders so ridiculously that we cant take the direct route to the capital. There was no way we were going to risk attempting to get back into Uzbekistan without a valid visa, so around we turned and made a massive loop, bumping our way along horrendously potholed excuses for roads until 3 hours later we rejoined our original road. We were exhausted and filthy and decided to find a campsite as soon as possible.

Normally on the look-out for tracks to take us into the hills we both spotted a glistening lake. After a small reckie we located a deserted bay away from the frolicking locals on the other side. Not surprisingly though we were joined by two other cars within 5 minutes. I was immediately struck by the apparent freedom of the youth. Not since Europe had we seen young people of both sexes, with a car, out on their own enjoying themselves. This really did seem a liberated country.

After 2 nights of rough camping our first reaction was to jump into the water. It was glorious. This really did seem an idyllic spot until we revealed our sleeping intentions to our neighbours. Horror across the girls face as she announced But the horsemen will come and will drink vodka and you will not be safe. Now this type of statement on the first day of visiting a country is not healthy for my vivid imagination. I immediately had visions of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, pissed up, ransacking the tent. Perhaps the most sensible decision would have been to stop cooking, pack up the tent and look for another site, but dusk was falling and we were both exhausted from the days riding. Umming and ahhing, we looked to the skies for help. It came in the form of the most amazing weather front approaching us. Seriously angry clouds broadcast the fact that a storm was looming. The winds built up and we decided that not even the most ardent alcoholic would bother leaving town and his booze booth to get drunk and drenched by the lakeside. So we stayed put while everyone else packed up and left us struggling against the wind to cook an over-chillied tough beef stew on a rather knackered Coleman stove! We watched the storm clouds moving closer and then all hell let loose. I prayed that it would last all night fearing the arrival of The Horsemen (pronounced in a deep voice). Of course it passed eventually and they didnt descend upon us, but we were left half sleeping, constantly listening out for horses neighing and our own vodka having no effect.

An early start the next morning, I was desperate to see the mountains that the Lonely Plant guide kept promising. We gradually started climbing as we hugged the side of a river flowing off a series of jade-blue reservoirs created as part of a huge hydroelectric power generation system. The rocky slopes became more and more impressive, not really surprising since we were in the foothills of the Tian Shan range which were formed at the same time as the Himalayas when India crashed into Asia. There was no traffic around, the roads were clear of potholes, all we had to do was find a TV to watch the World Cup Final on shouldn;t be too difficult, surely everyone knew about Brazil vs Germany? We stopped at Kara-Kul, sadly missing the graffittied greeting; Welcome to f*cking Kara-Kul that our guide book said would be well worth viewing. In our best Russian we asked for a bar where we could watch the match but got various useless responses. We gave up and decided we (I) could live without this event. We were nearly swayed into hanging around for 1.5hrs at the petrol station where the attendant kindly offered us prime bed seats squinting in front of a snowing black and white picture in the stations pokey attendants room. With Simon starting to feel queasy we declined and carried on with our haul to Bishkek.

The scenery was stunning and we started to get glimpses of summer pastures where cattle and sheep herds were driven during the warm months. The road was slow as the gradients got steeper and steeper. Large Russian built trucks laden with produce toiled to get over the summit avoiding the worst potholes.

Luckily, for us though, the Kyrgyz government was investing a lot of labour and money into improving (asphalting) the road that connected the north and south of the country. Currently during winter months bus services stop running and cars get through at a pinch and with a lot of pushing. Once over the summit we hit a recent patch of new asphalt, bliss we thought until we spotted an overturned tomato truck on a tight bend. Contents spewed everywhere, the drivers body was laid on the road with a blanket covering him. God knows how many other people were in the cabin with him, we had often seen entire families out on excursions with their father. It seemed ridiculous when we realized that if the road hadnt been fixed then he wouldnt have been doing the speed he was and hed still be on this earth today.

Sobered up we continued and found an ideal campsite on the verge of a large lake. I cooked dinner listening to Steve Wright on BBC World Service the only football coverage I could find was in German and thats one language I dont speak. Immediately after hearing the result on the news we were informed that there had been two fatal shootings in Bishkek. Great.

Needing more than the usual reheat of last nights dinner (Georgian sardine stew) we stopped at the first café where all we could recognize in the kitchen were eggs. We hoped to be presented with an omelette for our troubles but each got 5 greasy salty fried eggs instead. We washed this down with tea whilst being serenaded to by raucous Kyrgyz women. They heard we spoke English so thought we might like to hear their appalling renditions of Oh my darling Clementine and some wartime ditty that I vaguely recognized. Having said that, it was refreshing to see yet more examples of a genuinely happy nation.

Clementine

With our meal sitting heavily on our stomachs we started on our final stretch through the high passes to the capital. As the pillion, to keep my mind from decaying, I set myself mini projects on observation (theres nothing I cant tell you about car number plate systems in each country). I was surprised to note that 99.9% of all signposts indicated that approaching inclines would be 12%. I came to the conclusion that the Dutch Ministry of Transport had done a typo on its signs and had managed to flog them all to the Kyrgyz. The other extreme was during the stretches of new road where they had done some proper surveying, the resulting signs were to 2 decimal places, I distinctly remember climbing a 5.84% slope!

Our first 3,200m pass approached. The temperature dropped considerably, nomadic yurts started cropping up in the valleys and compacted dirty snow formed year-long bridges over rivers.. The yurt is the national symbol of Kyrgyzstan, its apex is shown on the heart of their flag. Seeing them for the first time was brilliant along with the horsemen in action. We couldnt stop waving, we were just as much a novelty to them as they were to us. A tear was brought to our eyes as we watched 3 galloping horsemen plunge into a river and wave enthusiastically at us. This was the essence of our trip.

The damp and cold required us to wear our biking trousers, so we took the opportunity to stop at a yurt-cum-café to get a bite to eat. I chose the yurt with the sheep entrails hanging outside as it seemed most authentic. Inside we drank a rather insipid broth and chewed at a sheepss ankle bone. At this point Simon was feeling increasingly shivery and weak from his oncoming food poisoning. He rested for a while and as we left he shrugged at the owner who suggested that the oil was leaking a little. As a precaution though we stopped to check it a few kms later. Holy smoke, the rear wheel was splattered with lubricant. Time to remove the useless oil cooler by-pass and reinstall the dodgy oil cooler absent since Seki, Azerbaijan. To our relief the fix worked and filled Simons body with adrenalin so he could continue the journey.

Cafe with the fresh entrails

The next pass included a tunnel. As we approached it we were waved down to stop. It seemed that the tunnel was closed, our hearts dropped as we assumed we would have to retrace our steps and find another way of reaching Bishkek. Luckily though, due to road works, it only allowed one-way traffic and we just had to wait in the pouring rain as cars and trucks eventually came through. The road downhill was a zigzag of sheer bends, fun for me but not for Simon as he contended with the greasy surface. Eventually we left the mountains and reached the plain. Bishkek was beckoning us, but Simons body wasnt interested. I worried for our safety as we wobbled into the centre. We made it, however Simon was a wreck and slept for the next 72 hours.

We stayed in Bishkek for 5 days whilst recuperating and organizing our visas for Kazakstan. Its a pretty unremarkable capital city but it served our purpose. Theres still a huge statue to Lenin which surprised me since I thought all monuments to him had been removed. Apparently though, because Kyrgyzstan wasnt as deeply Leninised as other Central Asian countries, it hasnt taken part in the wholesale, hypocritical race to cleanse all Soviet terminology from their nation.

Changing the guard

Bishkek biker

We stocked our panniers up with dry foods and swapsies for the herdsmen and headed for the hills and lakes. En route, our stomachs rumbling, we taste our first Dungan food. The Dungan pride themselves in making the best noodles, similar to the Chinese. They are obviously hand made since the thickness varies tremendously. I could hear a lot of noise from the kitchen and guessed they were making them. I peered inside just to take a picture, but the women gestured me to come in and have a go. In true Generation Game style I made a complete hash of first folding the prepared rope of mixture in two then pulling and slapping it on the table to make it thinner. The process should be repeated several times not my few efforts. At least it made them giggle.

Simon chose a route that took us initially to Song-Kol, a less visited lake at 3,000m. We needed first to tackle the 23km dirt track taking us over the 3,500m pass. There was absolutely no traffic apart from the 2 drunken horsemen who appeared from nowhere inviting us to ride their frisky beasts. Luckily they failed to see our 2 bottles of one dollar vodka sticking out of the backpack. It was during this journey that we sighted our first gofer (aka marmot/groundhog/fat bastard). These are the most wonderfully furry and chubby of animals (we saw a skeleton of one the size of a small dog). They scurry away at the slightest smell or sound of danger, whistling loudly to their mates to get in the burrow. However we managed to fox the little devils by inventing Gofer Gear turning the engine off and free wheeling down tracks. In this way we could sneak up on them undetected, we cornered one poor soul who was too far from his burrow and had to pretend to be a rock. Got me fooled until I slowly approached him, realized what he was doing, then hopefully got some fantastic photos.

Marmot in flight

Having crawled to the summit with me leaning down to the side of Simon as close as possible to the ground to stop us from doing wheelies, the bike suffering from altitude sickness and power loss, we turned the corner to be confronted by a herd of frisky, long haired, horned beasts. We had at long last discovered the yak, or at least the cross-breed between cow and yak that yields more milk. Scattered around the countryside they stood and stared at us in an evil way. A quick photo shoot and off into the basin where Song-Kol lay surrounded by impressive mountain ranges.

We watched the storm clouds move leisurely towards us, tickling the peaks, until we realized we were in danger and could spend no more time looking for the perfect campsite. Simon spun the bike off the dirt road onto the grass and parked it behind a small knoll. The temperature dropped amazingly quickly leaving me standing there like a lemon. The freezing cold hail stones literally stunned me into a daze as Simon put the tent up in record time. I slowly warmed up by stripping off and getting into thermals and dry clothes. That night we ate delicious Russian pea soup, then woke up the next morning to find snow forming a pelmet around the tent base.

Song Kol

The downpour had changed the dirt tracks into slimy quagmires. Our journey that day was therefore only 3km long and took us to the lakeside where our guide book claimed was an area jumping with fish. Whilst sheltering in the tent waiting for the rain to pass we heard a whistle surely not the gofers teasing us we thought. Poking his head out of the tent, Simon greeted a sodden horseman with dog. Have you got a fag? We couldnt refuse this poor guy, so out came the Malboroughs we had brought all the way from England to be used as bribes. Feeling sorry for the horse we offered him some sugar cubes, but they got hastily secreted away in his pocket. We discovered later that sugar was a luxury only for humans. Simons homemade bread was snuffed at and thrown to the dog!

Our horseman turned out to be a 15 year old lad whose family grazed sheep and horses at Song-Kol during the summer. He would return on various occasions scabbing cigarettes and urging us to visit his tents to partake in kumys, the dreaded fermented mares milk. We knew that eventually we had to take the plunge, so the following morning, he having refused our breakfast of rice because it was of the Indian variety and having already gulped down a litre of kumys we met him at his home. The whole family came out and we were presented with the guest sheepskin to sit on. His mother poured a lumpy grey-white liquid into bowls and surprisingly Simon took the first sip. Now I like yoghurt, but this was a most disgusting acidic concoction.

The real Marlboro man

His young brother delighted in gulping his down. We eventually managed to finish it, an experience we vowed never to repeat, we suffered repercussions for the rest of the day as our stomachs battled to digest it.

Oh the views

We spent another couple of days in the area in absolutely idyllic surroundings no tourists, max half a dozen cars, perfect weather, no fish. Eventually we had to leave because we were running low on petrol, so we joined the real world again and headed towards Issyk-Kul lake and Karakol to do some trekking. As we passed through the small villages, boys hung around street corners on their horses. The animals were definitely the equivalent of bicycles for these youths. Only about half of them would even have saddles.

Camelherder with Kyrgyz hat

We reached Karakol in the afternoon, erected our tent in the hostel, then hit the internet café to catch up on mails. It was whilst reading long family epistles (keep sending them), that some toe rag nicked my bumbag containing 2 passports, 150 USD, credit cards, jewelry I was dumbfounded. We had always been so careful with the valuables, but somehow they managed to crawl under the desk and grab the bag. Simon fetched our hostel owner who called the police. The place was crawling with feds as they took my statement. Luckily a young mountain guide, Taher, helped with the interpretation. A couple of hours later we were driven to the police station where we spent the evening sitting on cinema seats, watching the officer banging away on his typewriter very Cagney and Lacey.

That evening we learnt that the wife of the hostel owner, a fearsome woman, had telephoned the Chief of Police to threaten that if my bag was not found by the next day she would contact the President of Kyrgyzstan! Consequently that night ALL off duty policemen were recalled and sent around to ALL shops in the town to warn them of the theft and the possibility that kids may come in with large wads of notes. It seemed that everyone was worried about how this one incident might affect the tourist trade which the whole town relied upon.

The following day we busied ourselves in cancelling cards and contacting the British Embassy. Fortuitously for us we also carried second passports - top tip for any serious traveller. This meant that all we needed to do was arrange new visas. We obviously didnt tell the police this in case this decreased their resolve. I swear the whole town knew who we were because of the hassle we were causing them. At one stage we were in the Post Office and I was informed there was a telephone call for me! Talk about a grapevine. We returned to our hostel where the owner had taken matters into his own hands. He had placed an advert on the local TV station a slot every 30 mins during the evening for 3 nights, all for 9 USD! Apparently this is the traditional way of communicating lost and found. Well within 2 hours Taher and I were back in the station sitting next to 2 young boys who had found my bag when playing in the park. Their parents had gone to the TV station too. Unfortunately only half the contents were returned, the police officer questioned them some more to discover the parents had kept most items. The mother was sent back home to retrieve everything. By the time they got round to me, the officer apologised for the Force not working any faster but they had to take away resources to investigate the recent murder of 2 children. I tried to explain that their service was exceptional and that I would never be treated this way in England. It was now dark and with no light bulb I identified my possessions including credit cards, some burnt, with difficulty. But still missing were our passports and these were the most important items.

Simon and I were determined that this episode would not spoil our upcoming trip to Altyn Arashan where we would do some more communing with nature. That journey was eventful in itself and Simon will send a separate mail describing how he trashed the bike! We spent 3 days in an Alpine paradise, exhausting ourselves on a days horse ride and another days walk to two disappointing glacial tarns.

Proper sorebums!

The mountains were full of wandering horse herds, each with a dominant male. Each morning fresh milk was delivered on horseback. In the evening you could relax in a natural spa bath. We played with the GPS and for the first time we were closer to Vladivostok than home. We were also shocked to read that the bearing to take us home was not west, but north-west taking us over the North Pole! Now thats scarey.

With our visa for Kyrgyzstan running out we reluctantly returned to Karakol. And then another miracle the TV advert had worked and our passports had been returned directly to the hostel, all for a reward of 10 USD. We were advised not to involve the police since this would have me wasting a third evening at the station. Simon spent the afternoon trying to repair a very sickly bike (see other mail)

So the next morning we slipped quietly/noisily (wrecked starter motor) out of Karakol, mightily relieved to be returning to the capital. The only items still on the loose were 150 USD, a hand mirror and a months supply of contraceptive pill. Police are on the look-out for two rich vain young boys growing breasts!

Our final days passed quickly in Bishkek whilst we organised replacement parts for the bike. For this we have no qualms in plugging www.motorworks.co.uk and DHL who both provided us with an excellent and invaluable service and saved our bacon.

On the final day of our visa we coughed and spluttered our way to the border. All we needed to do was get to Almaty to perform open heart surgery on the bike

STOP PRESS TURKMENBASHI UPDATE: Thanks to Dad and Kenny for confirming to us that the Turkmenistan president is officially insane. He has recently announced that the months of the year and days of the week are to be renamed after heroes Himself will be January, his deceased mother and his political writings, which he compares to the Bible or Koran, will also be new months!

ROUTE: Uzbekistan

DISTANCE DRIVEN IN COUNTRY: 843 miles/ 1,349 km

DISTANCE FROM HOME: 7,340 miles/ 11,744km

WEEKS COMPLETED: 11/74

Okay, okay it’s been some time since we last updated you but the last few weeks have been eventful to say the least, which of course should make for good reading. Before I start on my review of Uzbekistan, thanks to all of you who have sent us words of support/sympathy for our efforts. It really is a lifesaver to know that we are not "alone" out here. Now let’s see if I can live up to Simon’s standards …

First, just a couple of additional anecdotes from the previous countries that I’d like to share with you.

Georgia – you may recall that the overall impression of that country might be summed up by "You’ll literally be dying to go to Georgia". Well, our usual preparations of reading the Lonely Planet guidebook beforehand, highlighted a village that we might like to take in, Nokalakebi meaning "a city used to be here", though it still does have a medieval stone lavatory which "is well worth a visit". Quite wisely however we chose to avoid it after realising that the whole country "used to be here".

Azerbaijan – as well as the "famous" oil and gas exhibition that the port of Baku holds each year, we were unfortunate to miss Azerbaijan’s first international tourism fair when the world tourism chairman officially announced to Azerbaijan that it has everything needed for tourism except tourists! Bugger.

World Cup hype and coverage has varied from country to country. Azerbaijan TV was keen to buy all the visual output but none of the sound. But hey you can’t show a match without any crowd noise, so what do they do but overlay a sound recording of a previous England match – from start to finish you can faintly hear the crowd chant "One nil to the Engerland, one nil ..."! And this is the same for all matches in the tournament.

UZBEKISTAN

IMPRESSIONS ...

Fat-arsed sheep
Traditional wedding – I’ll send you a description of this separately
"Double bed" tables
Young boys messing around naked in irrigation canals, five minutes later their sisters draw the same water for drinking
Squatting and spitting
Gold teeth
Samsas (lamb and onion pasties) and potato doughnuts
Yellow carrots
Market pram boys (barrow boys)
Police station no 2
Did I mention fat-arsed sheep?

TRAVELOGUE ...

Our exit from Turkmenistan was considerably less grueling and time-consuming than our entrance, except for a ‘job’s worth’ squaddie who insisted we wait in the scorching sun while his superior returned from the toilet. Into a kilometre of no-man’s land as we psyched ourselves up for the next battle; our guidebook warning us of dodgy Uzbek officials. As usual, we could not have been more surprised. No extortion or ‘taxes’ from the Kalashnikov wielding guards, just a friendly passage throughout. They didn’t even want to sell us any bike insurance, and when we asked to buy it they advised that it was worthless anyway!

As soon as we crossed the border I was struck by the difference in attitude towards farming. Here we found another Turkish style country where every inch of land was put to good use. Golden wheat (in the course of being harvested) had been planted in every conceivable nook and cranny, even under the trees in bursting fruit orchards.

After the collapse of the USSR each country had the opportunity to rebuild its identity. Uzbekistan decided that its hero would be Timur, the 14th century Emir of Samarkand who might be described as a cultured version of Ghengis Khan. He spent years rampaging about the neighbouring lands, slaughtering hundreds of thousands of innocent people, plundering their riches, capturing their artisans and putting them to work on the great buildings that still exist today. Statues of the ‘tyrant’s tyrant’ have now replaced virtually all the figures of Lenin. We thought that his grandson, Ulughbek, would have been a better choice for a hero, as he was much more of an intellectual and a brilliant astronomer, but the Uzbeks like a hero with a good dose of blood and gore.

Timur - the tyrant's tyrant

Our first port of call was Bukhara, a city crammed full of historical buildings; mostly mosques, medressas and minarets. Our guidebook suggested that the hotels would be grotty (no news there then) and the private hotels (offering bed and breakfast) would be quite expensive for our budget. However, as we chugged around the old city a cocky young 12 year old girl ran over and asked if we were looking for a hotel. Tentatively we said yes and I was dragged off to her home to inspect. Through a wooden gate, that looked like a builders yard on a council estate, lay a family house where the best room was rented out to tourists. It was all done unofficial, to avoid tax. Our room was a large 300-year-old ‘reception hall’ with carved wooden beams holding up the ceiling, mosque-like tiling and carved plaster on the walls. Sleeping arrangements were typical for the county; padded quilts on the carpeted floor. At $7 each, including a respectable breakfast, we couldn't complain and made this our base for 4 nights.

Doesn't look much, but it was lovely inside

Staying here among a family provided us an insight into Central Asian life. The first lesson that we learnt was that just because you live in Uzbekistan doesn’t necessarily make you an Uzbek. This family were proud to be ethnic Tajiks, historically ‘Persians’ and so related to present-day Iranians. Centuries of migration and Stalin’s more recent ‘divide and rule’ policy of redrawing national borders has meant that a large proportion of Uzbek, Kazak, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Turkmen people don’t actually live in those respective countries.

The home contained two families and was typically female dominated, with the men away in Moscow on ‘biznez’ for months on end. This left the women running the household. Our hostess seemed to have countless sisters who visited with all their offspring. Since the summer weather makes indoor living so oppressive, all entertaining is performed outside in the shaded courtyard. The sweltering days are spent lazing around on raised wooden bed-like structures covered with single quilts, sipping a bowl of tea or snoozing. All outside cafes uses the same furniture, sometimes with small coffee tables on top on which to put your food. As you might imagine they’re not the most comfortable sitting arrangement for a Westerner, but we’d love to build one when we get back home!

Whilst I was reclining in the courtyard, the family went into absolute ecstasy over my feet. I was asked to take off my sandals so that they could examine my feet and calves, which they declared to be "SOOO beautiful". A small (UK size 4, European 36), chubby foot (complete with scabs from mosquito bites and burnt skin) is apparently an object of great beauty in this part of the world, as are thick calf muscles and thunder thighs! Every time a friend visited, my thighs would be grabbed and discussed in Tajik. Simon even got give the nod for choosing ‘a goodun’. So Mum, at last I can say thanks very much. Of course the cynic in Simon believes they like the broad foot shape because it resembles that of a camel (spreads the load) and when they groped my thighs, they were only sizing me up for the pot.

The whole house’s water needs came from one tap located in the courtyard. The oldest boy’s single chore was to fill up buckets and an oil drum, the contents of which would be used for every conceivable purpose, including ‘flushing’ the newly concreted hole-in-the-ground toilet, and ‘bathing’ in their equally new hamam. I suppose I ought to mention loo paper whilst we are on the subject; it’s a highly sought after commodity, yet rarely used. Trying to find soft loo roll in most of these countries has been a major task and spanned several shopping trips. You can easily obtain a roll of recycled newsprint in a ‘papier mache’ style for a few cents, but neither of us could get used to that. More commonly though the locals didn’t bother spending any money but cut up their children’s school notebooks instead. On various occasions I marveled at their maths homework whilst squatting. Apparently this state of affairs is not recent; Simon tells me that British SAS troops had been known to rummage around Soviet army toilets after Cold War exercises in order to steal secret documents that the personnel had been forced to ‘recycle’ because they hadn’t been provided with any with loo paper!

Bukhara is full of fantastically preserved architecture. The mosques and medressas (Islamic colleges set around a cloistered central courtyard) are all ornately tiled with deep greens and blues and would be magically spiritual if it were not for the hundreds of souvenir shops inside them all vying for your business. The sad thing is that there were only a handful of tourists in the city during our stay; September 11th had really affected them.

A medressa

Leaving the monuments aside for a while, Bukhara will be etched on our memory for two very human reasons. The first started on our first full day in Uzbekistan I busied myself with getting money, a monumental task in itself. On my return Simon was nowhere to be found. Eventually someone explained he had left the house with his camera in search of the origin of some lively music, probably a wedding. Half an hour later a rather sweaty, giggly Simon reappeared.

"I've just been dancing with some professional dancers, the men made me drink vodka, and we've been invited to the wedding reception tomorrow night".

He had found the music emanating from a courtyard in back-street house and had been pulled in by the wedding party who were only too happy to have a westerner photograph the festivities. And the Uzbek men, like men everywhere, were keen to see what a stupid foreigner would do under the influence of vodka! Simon couldn’t refuse to drink or to dance. It appeared that he was required to tip the dancing women, so a 200 Sum note (worth about $0.20) was shoved in his hand to give them. Rather embarrassed, he scratched around in his pocket to look for his own money. Since I pull the purse strings on this trip, all he had was a $5 note that was supposed to be used to register us with the police. He handed this over to the dancers’ great delight, but was severely reprimanded by the wedding hostess for giving far too much!

Anyway the next evening we dolled ourselves up in our least grotty clothes and headed off to the home for our 6pm rendezvous. Surprisingly Simon managed to find it again, his memory not fully erased by the vodka. We were invited in and conversed in our usual stilted Russian. Tonight's festivities were to be held in the groom's family's residence (we never fully understood what relation the bride and groom were to our hosts). We took a 45-minute stroll to the other side of the city and ended up at what looked like a street party. A dozen tables laid out with nibbles and soft drinks; perhaps this would be an alcohol free event!

We sat down and made polite conversation as more people that Simon vaguely remembered from the previous day turned up. Men smiling with mouthfuls of gold teethed proudly waved to the westerner that they managed to get drunk.

Eventually the bride and groom arrived, shaded by a large embroidered cloth carried above their heads. As they walked past each table the bride, in a typically western, white meringue dress held her left hand to her cleavage and bowed in reverence to us. We were told that this is the sign of respect. A little unusual and unnerving, we accepted it as a one-off. However, it was NOT a one-off: for the next four hours the bride and groom remained STANDING at their table, with the bride regularly bowing to the guests!

Honouring the guests

And then the vodka was delivered in crates full half litre bottles. Strangely, the tradition is to drink vodka from bowls that we would recognise as tea cups in Chinese restaurants. Our male host poured and I wait to be passed a cup. No, no, no! First he had to attract Simon's attention (temporarily diverted by the arrival of the two professional dancing girls) to ask his permission for me to drink! Simon gives a quiet nod and I could join in the toasts.

Vodka

Now back to those dancing girls. What a sparkle in their eyes when they recognised Simon again. More dollars they thought, but our hostess distinctly ordered Simon not to give any more hand outs. They did a few traditional dances to the live band and then anyone could dance with them for a small consideration. The Uzbek dance style requires the arms and hands at shoulder level or above, and since the bank notes are so huge and colourful it's obvious when you want to pay. Until the music stopped the professionals prancing around with increasingly large wads of money in their right fists.

The Professionals

As the vodka kicked in we all danced more and more. And even I got money shoved in my hand! I made the grand total of 700 sum that night - $0.65. “I’m your private dancer, a dancer for money.......”

The Amateurs

During the dancing the guests gradually made their way to the bride and groom's table to present their gifts. Carpets are traditional, but obviously we didn't have time to buy one, so we gave a donation of $20 in a 'sealed envelope'. Simon had worked out the protocol; he popped the envelope the groom's pocket, and stood aside as the best man removed the envelope and passed it behind a curtain. We drank a toast with them then sat back down. The whole process can’t have taken three minutes, but by the time we returned to our table, our hostess was ready to thank us for the $20 gift. That has to be one of the fastest ‘grapevines’ ever!

At about 1am the happy couple was finally invited to the dance floor for their first dance. They stayed for a few more tunes then it was time to go. An old woman followed them into the marital home with some burning coals and the party was over. But as we made our way out, our hostess stopped and asked Simon to wait for 20 minutes as there was a little bit more tradition to be done.

As Simon waited outside I was taken inside to a small room and invited to sit down against the wall as about 8 women entered. In a ragged pile on the floor were loads of decorated padded quilts, pillows and throws. In the far corner, very carefully, my hostess and a couple of other women started laying out the quilts on top of each other. There were great discussions on what order to place them in and on picking the correct ones. Finally it dawned on me what I am being privileged to watch. I witnessed them literally building the matrimonial bed! I am still stunned that they have allowed me in.

A double bed was created about 40cm high. Beside it was a lower single sized bed topped with a pure white sheet; this was the first bed they would be required to sleep on. When everything was finished two middle-aged ladies stood up, embraced, and then launched themselves onto the big bed; I presume these to be the respective mothers, testing the bed. This act was accompanied by cheers from everyone.

Next the bride entered the room, now dressed in red, her face covered by a veil and she sat on the small bed. With our hands cupped the most elderly women burst forth with a blessing to which we all agree. And then we left the room ...

I returned to Simon, gobsmacked at what I had been allowed to see. For once I didn't have the camera with me which made it more special because all I have now are memories.

We staggered back to our 'hotel' in the pitch dark with Simon escorting all the young pubescent daughters, desperate to hold his arm. I carried on talking to our hostess, our conversation is occasionally interrupted by the conversation that went on all night between the host and Simon ...

Host (shouting): Simon!
Simon (shouting): Shto? (what?)
Host: Vodka! (accompanied by the vodka hand signal of a thumb pointing to the throat)
Simon: Nyet! (No!)

We arrived back at 2.30, spent 5 minutes trying to awake the dead inside to open up the door, and then stumbled into 'bed' very contented. We can’t wait for our first Mongolian wedding invite accompanied by the fermented mare's milk.

So that was a pretty special way to remember Bukhara, but the next day I topped it; but you’ll have to look at the postscript at the end of this chapter to find out how....

Our next city to visit was Samarkand. En route we stopped at a non-descript cafe for lunch where we started ‘talking’ to customers on another table. Our conversations in general are obviously very rudimentary unless the locals can complement their indistinguishable mutterings with sign language or drawings. A typical greeting is the following:

Them: “Atkuda?” ("Where are you from?")
Us: “Anglia” (“England”)
Them: “Atkuda?” (This time it means "Where are you going?" We’ve been told that it should sound like “Akud edyeh”, we’re hard pushed to spot the subtle difference in pronunciation.)
Us: "Japoniya” (“Japan”)
Them: “Shkolka dyeti?” (“How many children do you have?”)

There’s an assumption that we are married, and we always pretend we are because it is socially acceptable. Occasionally Simon is asked how many wives he has, since bigamy is legal in some of these countries assuming the man has sufficient funds to keep multiple families. The children question was interesting. Initially I wanted to say "We’ve got three; one in each pannier and another in the tank bag", because I thought it such a silly question having told them we are away for 18 months. But then I realised that we’re not spring chickens and actually we could have married and had children at the age of 17 (like the local women do) and brought them up already. Everyone we spoke to was upset that we didn’t have kids, but perked up when we promised to make babies on our return to England.

Back to our cafe neighbours who were over the moon when we revealed we were from England and even more so from Manchester. The entire Manchester United squad was reeled off to us and they swore their belief that the England tea would win the World Cup (still possible at that time having just beaten Denmark). The vodka bottle came out and we were forced into several toasts. Seeing their unquestionable passion for English footie we presented them with the usual Man Utd pencil. Oh the joy. The next 10 minutes we watched the four of them discussing how to divide it up fairly: the final decision being that they would cut it up! In exchange for the 35c pencil, one of them a farmer, suggested he slaughtered a sheep and make shashlik (kebabs) "as long as your arm". We courteously declined.

Samarkand, ubiquitous with the Silk Road, is another mosque and medressa filled city. One evening we embarked upon our first musical and cultural experience, an open-air concert in the courtyard of the Registan’s medressa. We were slightly confused when asked what time we wanted the performance to start, then twigged that we were the ONLY paying spectators. Slightly deterred we took our seats on the bed table and watched a 50 minute musical about a wedding and then got invited to dance on stage. At least we knew what to do from our previous real wedding.

On the outskirts of Samarkand there’s an observatory, built by Ulughbek in the 1420s. A guide at the site told us of Ulughbek’s great intellectual prowess and pointed out documents that stated that the observatory had been placed at exactly 67 degrees east and 39 north. We didn’t point out that the Greenwich meridian was established several centuries later!

The show

England got booted out of the World Cup.

The final city to visit was Tashkent. Instead of taking the obvious straight route we decided to take a ride into the hills near the Tajikistan border, rough camp for the night, then head for the capital. Uzbekistan had been such a scorcher it had been impossible to camp out, so we were hoping that in the hills it would be cooler. Oh dear, ‘the best laid plans’. Only 20 minutes into the trip Simon stopped the bike and asked me to check the tyres because he’d just ridden over some metal. I couldn’t see anything so we continued. An hour or so later, having eaten some samsas (meat pasties, cooked by sticking them to the inside walls of a mud oven) we discovered a rear puncture. Simon’s brain must have been working overtime because he suddenly remembered the Russian word for tyre repair shop. As luck would have it there was one 50m away. After one bodged attempt the puncture was fixed, the cause was an invisible 2cm of metal wire. Spurred on by the success we continued on our way for the hills. How we smiled as we saw disks of cow shit drying out in the sun. We grinned even more when we espied the young girls ‘harvesting’ them from the grazing fields!

Road signs in these countries are virtually non-existent even for major towns, if you do spot one it’s rusted and illegible. So we were relying on the GPS and a rather large-scaled map of Central Asia. We knew what town we wanted to aim for in the hills, most of the time we could make educated guesses, but there’s always someone hanging around to ask if in doubt. It’s often not worth asking policemen who would usually respond "Oh I don’t know, I only do traffic". So when we saw a policeman in one village, apparently waving us to slow down we waved back, slowed down a bit and carried on. Three kilometres km out of town he chased us down in his Lada – oops! We tried our usual pleasantries but he just demanded our passports and "karta" map, distinctly indicating that we would not be going any further. Simon showed him our standard map, since we had learnt how that usually brings a look of awe to most men, but that wasn’t good enough. We were to follow him back to the police station. Oh well, something else for the newsletter I thought.

I stayed outside the police station with the bike whilst a drunken looking police officer burbled and slurred to me. It turned out he wasn’t intoxicated from alcohol but from ‘nasvai’, a nasty finely crushed tobacco, mixed with spices, ash or lime and perhaps opium. Apparently you take a pinch and place it under the tongue or inside your cheek. It makes you produce loads of saliva, hence the hocking and spitting that accompanies it. He offers me some and I refuse.

Meanwhile Simon was having the book thrown at him. We had wandered too near to the Tajik border and the officer thought we should be travelling with an official map indicating an allowed route, similar to that in Turkmenbashiland. Because of our circuitous route we missed the police checkpoint that would have turned us back. He joked that we would have to spend the night in jail, so Simon asked to phone the British Embassy, and he immediately retracted his joke. We know that the official ‘karta’ was no longer required but it took him quite a few phone calls to get it confirmed. Once this was established he had to organise a police escort to make sure we left the area. However all available personnel were watching (or maybe marshalling) a big non-FIFA football match. He told us that we’d have to stay the night at his place along with wife and 3 kids! In the mean time we are fed a supper of tinned sardines and stale bread; mmm Simon’s favourite.

Four hours after the start of the incident we are called out to the bike and the officer asked for the Russian dictionary; a book that no-one so far had known how to use. He found and pointed to a word and Simon who read out "apology". With this our passports are handed back. Asking no questions we togged up and left unescorted, completed amazed a police officer has apologised to us. His orders to us were to head straight back to the main Samarkand to Tashkent road, however at 8pm it was now getting dark and we always avoid riding in the dark for many obvious reasons. We both agree the best option was to rough camp as soon as we couldn’t be seen. Turning off the lights, we took a small track off the road and set up camp in a wheat field behind a creaking combine harvester. Needless to say our night’s sleep was restless.

At dawn the next morning we struck camp and nervously headed for the police checkpoint that would undoubtedly be waiting for us, the police officer surely having radioed ahead. Slowing down, we raised our visors, smiled, waved and observing no request to stop, sailed through. Phew, close shave! We giggled together as we imagined the conversation after we passed: “Eerrrr? They were foreign! Where did they come from? Eerrr; shouldn’t we have stopped them?”

We stopped for a well-deserved breakfast at a cafe. Since there is almost never a menu our technique is to ask to see the kitchen to choose our meal. We ordered ‘shorpa’, a mutton stock with vegetables and meat. The mutton tends to come from the fat-arsed sheep, an extremely bizarre ovine creature; it grows an enormous deposit of fat under its tail. These two fat buttocks can grow to the size of a football, and wobbles comically as the sheep walks. Even stranger is that the fat is considered a delicacy, attracting a higher price than the meat. A bowl of shorpa though must be consumed quickly since the melted fat starts to congeal rather sharply, leaving a film of grease in your mouth and lips. We also tend to leave the chunks of fat floating around the top, much to the amazement of the staff.

Whitebeard on the road to Tashkent

Into the capital city of Tashkent, a rather ugly Soviet concrete jungle, we headed straight for the ‘recommended’ cheapest hotel. Unfortunately it is state run and when we arrived it was lunch-time, so reception was closed and we were told to come back an hour later. What service?! Simon meanwhile has been befriended by a group of Indian businessmen who revealed that their company has just bought the hotel. Knowing the state of our chosen hotel, they suggested we stay in one of their recently refurbished hotels on the other side of town. Since it’s the same price we couldn’t refuse. We were in fact the first guests staying in the room, so nothing worked, but at least it was very clean and comfortable. And we will probably also be the last tourists for some time since we were ‘evicted’ the next morning when the manager finally owned up to not being registered for tourists. We were asked to leave without paying and promising not to tell anyone. So it was back to our original hotel for a delightful 5 days of a non-flushing toilet, intermittent hot water, LOUD music from restaurant below and the joy of cockroaches.

Good museums are few and far between in this neck of the woods. However Tashkent managed to offer one for the girls (Fine Arts) and one for the boys (Railway). The latter was a bargain at 10c entrance fee and allowed us to clamber over the engines. The curator was a curious guy who was fascinated by our trip. Having asked the distance we would be travelling and the fuel economy of the bike he proudly announced that we would be using 3 tonnes of fuel; only a railway man would calculate it in such a way!

Simon finds another flat twin to ride

After two weeks in the country we broke for the border with Kyrgyzstan in search of the cool mountains. Here we passed through the Fergana Valley, an area reported by our Foreign and Commonwealth Office to be full of bandits. Apart from a lengthy military checkpoint as we approached the region, mostly caused by soldiers wanting to take photos of the bike, we had no difficulties whatsoever.

And so into Kyrgyzstan, the land that Hellmann’s mayonnaise gets transported to; but that’s a story for Simon to tell...

Postscript

The second memorable event in Bukhara happened when I proposed to Simon! Simon had proposed to me the previous autumn, and I had turned him down because...... Now it was my turn and a restaurant be the side of a 300 year old ornamental pool seemed like the perfect setting. Of course Simon couldn’t and didn’t refuse my offer. And now we’d be able to pretend to be man and wife with a little more conviction.

Where Georgie proposed to Simon

There’s a good reason for putting this important news in the postscript. We couldn’t easily tell our families about the engagement. The telephone systems in Uzbekistan were poor and expensive, sending such news in an email would have been all wrong, and we wanted a bit of ceremony to go with the announcement. So we sat on the news until Christmas, when we sent letters to our respective parents to be opened on Christmas Eve.

IMPRESSIONS..

- Desert, desert everywhere
- 5.5 million nice people and 1 mad man
- Everyone seems to consider themselves Russian (the Turkmen live in the desert with their camels and funny hats)
- Sturgeon and caviar
- No real tourist sites, but great to see how weird a place can be
- We’ve never had it so good and I’m alright, Jack attitudes over-ride political progress

TRAVELOGUE

What I really like to do occasionally is turn up in a place that I’ve not read too much about, and then get hit full in the face by a culture or landscape that I was not expecting. Like wandering into Yosemite in the USA thinking this is just another National Park and then realizing that it is one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Well Turkmenistan was one of those complete shocks. I had read about the country in the usual Lonely Planet guide, and got the impression that the country was just a sleepy desert backwater that was rediscovering its national identity after the Soviets pulled out 10 years ago. But I wasn’t expecting it to be an Alice Through the Looking Glass sort of place!

The visit started with a bit of an edge. Before we set off, we’d had more trouble getting a visa for Turkmenistan than any other country. First we had to get an invitation from a travel agency in the country (a standard approach) and we applied for the visas in London. Then just before we left, a new rule was introduced saying that we’d need a new Travel Permit which would be delivered to the port, to coincide with our arrival on the ferry. More bloody documentation and a bit of a pain as we knew that getting a ferry to Turkmenistan would be a bit of a lottery too. But hey let’s go anyway.

So as we pulled into the port at the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi we were not sure whether our mail message to the travel agent (in the capital Ashgabat) had been received, nor whether they would have been able to contact their agent in Turkmenbashi 600km away.

Turkmenbashi appeared to be a small hot little port underneath a desert cliff, searing in the evening sun. We moved up to the front of the ferry to get a better view and saw the boat’s courtesy flag the first time we’d seen the Turkmen flag; green with a crescent moon and star, and a red stripe with what appeared to be 5 carpet patterns on it. Surely not whatever, I had obviously not done my homework.

Turkmenbashi Port

The ferry docked and we made our way to the train/bike-deck where we waited for about an hour while one of the strange procedures was acted out. In Baku we had experienced the idea that we won’t sell you a ticket until the customs people are happy you’ll be able to leave and now we were getting the other end of the deal we won’t let you off the boat until the passport people tell us you’ll be able to enter the country.

Eventually we were allowed onto Turkmen soil and more special procedures. Then a miracle, we spot 2 smart looking Travel Permit forms with our names on them! So somebody has been working hard for us! The amazing thing about those forms is that the only people who wanted to see them were the entry port, and none of the other police checkpoints or hotels even knew that they existed.

We started to fill in forms; the Deklaratsi declaring the quantity of money and valuables we were importing, and customs forms for the bike. Then a strange gangling youth appeared and introduced himself as Daniel, our contact from the travel agency. He explained that he had been prevented from meeting us further into the customs compound because the officials didn’t like him wearing shorts and a t-shirt on the job.

Another hour or so of form filling it could have been much longer. For the first time ever we saw customs men really giving hell to locals re-entering the country all bags were completely searched one poor old dear even had her tea-bags confiscated. We were expecting the worst with our baggage we had enough supplies to keep us independent for 2 years, and all sorts of food including some salami if they found that in a Muslim state surely we’d be deported?

But luck and Daniel were with us; Daniel did a great patter about they’re harmless tourists, don’t give them a bad impression of our country. When they finally got round to looking at the bike it was about 11pm, and you could see their hearts sink when they saw how much junk we were carrying. So the customs inspection was limited to what’s in here, what’s in there? A little man was summoned from his bed to open up the port gates and we were out in Turkmenistan.

Mid-night in a strange, hot land a dodgy prospect. We had planned to go straight to a hotel (another Soviet-legacy monster), but Daniel told us that he and his dad had a little cottage about 10kms away - $10 just the job. 20 minutes later we are unloading the bike and 20 more minutes we’re eating fried sturgeon (like big cod with fat on it) and salad, all washed down with tea and vodka. Bloody hell, did we fall on our feet?! The smell of the cooking fish (or maybe the vodka) flushed out a few neighbours who spoke really good English and the party started to chug along nicely.

We learnt that Daniel worked for the state tourist board in Turkmenbashi, and commercial agencies such as Ayan use the state company when weird people like Georgie and I turn up on a boat. They also showed us (with huge enthusiasm) the kids camps that they organize in the mountains looked like hard work. Suitably chilled, fed and drunk we hit the sack.

Next day we decided to make a push for the capital Ashgabat about 600km across a flat desert. There seemed to be a few towns on the way that we might stay at, but when we passed through them, the decision to press on seemed a good one.

But first a trip to the market to do a black market currency deal. Georgie did the dirty work while I minded the bike. 20 minutes work gave us 4 times the official exchange rate. Sounds like you’re getting a good deal, but prices always relate to the black market rate, so the only thing to be said for it is you’d really get ripped off if you changed money at the bank!! Next a tank full of petrol at $0.02 per litre wow, let’s have a bath in it! Less than a dollar for a full tank sounds really good, but the Turkmen government see tourists coming and levy a fuel tax as you enter the country (we’d paid about $90 in various taxes the night before).

Turkmenistan's biggest note is worth 25 cents

Then off into the desert Georgie’s first experience of riding a bike in the desert; and it gave us the full work road signs for camels, camels, road signs for shit roads, shit roads, 44 degrees celcius, searingly hot winds from all directions, sand storms, no shade phew!!

A first taste of desert

A long day lay ahead - progress was pitifully slow (about 90kph) as the roads were so bad and we really only got going after 11am. Not good! But our spirits were high, the police checkpoints were nice to us and the change of scenery was welcome.

Caviar in a bus-stop

There’s a weird phenomenon in that region called the Caspian Depression when we arrived in Turkmenbashi, the GPS showed that we were below sea level glug, glug. And the whole area is sort of lower than it should be due to geological squeezy forces. It took us a long time to climb up above sea level to the general level of the whole country (about 200m above normal sea level).

Must be about time for my first mistake in Turkmenistan bang on cue I realize that we have traveled so far east without changing time-zone, that the sun is setting much earlier than we had planned for like an hour and half earlier SHIT! We’re going to have to do the last 70kms in the dark. But at least we have the new motorway to look forward to. Yes there it is!!

Whoo it’s a motorway Jim, but not as we know it. What a wonderful piece of design. The Turkmen highways agency has brought in the finest road builders in the region (from Iran) to build a motorway from one side of the country to another a really big job about 1500kms across shifting sands, red hot desert marshy areas. And they do put down a super-smooth slab of tarmac. Just 2 problems first is when they put down one layer of tarmac onto another, they don’t leave a nice angled ramp, but instead you get a 10cm step BANG! Imagine what it does to your suspension and spine on an overloaded bike. But that’s just a temporary problem.

The bigger problem is that there are no underpasses or bridges along the motorway, so the road is a high-speed game of dodgems, with sheep, tractors, people, camels, you name it. crossing the road, doing u-turns (forgot to mention that there are no barriers in the center. And then if the tarmac step in the center of the road is too high to allow a dodgy drive across the motorway event, people drive the wrong way along the motorway either on the hard shoulder or the FAST LANE!!!! Sometimes we faced a car in the fast lane and tractor on the hard shoulder at the same time, and sometimes neither had lights on.

And while we’re at it, let’s design another major hazard into the motorway how about a level crossing, yes that will do. Really the motorway has a level crossing for the main railway line.

At the end of that my nerves were frazzled and we still had to find a hotel.

Ashgabat is described in the Lonely Planet as the capital of a poor country, surrounded by desert and arid hills, with a camel market frequented by nomads in funny hats. So I imagined an old, characterful, dusty, Muslim town like Marrakech. Not a bit of it much more like Salt Lake City hot and surrounded by deserts but with big buildings, VERY orderly traffic and expensive hotels. What I hadn’t read was that an earthquake in 1948 had gotten rid of all of the old stuff, which was replaced with standard soviet buildings

And then you start to realize that this place is completely divorced from reality. All down to the leadership of the President Saparmurat Niyasov, self proclaimed Turkmenbashi (Head of all Turkmen). It took us a while to work out what is going on but here’s the story.

In 1990/1 the Soviet Union collapsed and left all the constituent countries to their own fate. Some states descended into civil war, others suppressed political debate and became one party states, and others got round to electing parliaments who are now trying to do a better job of running things than the Russians did.

Turkmenistan held a referendum and voted to stay part of the Soviet Union, but the Russians said no really, bugger off and run your own country. So they did and went down the one party state route.

Now here is a twist that other former Soviet states don’t have Turkmenistan has lots of oil and even more natural gas, and very few people. So there is money; and will be loads money more if the surrounding countries stop fighting and allow Turkmenistan to build a pipeline to get the gas out to paying customers.

So what to do with all this money should we distribute to the people the country is 70% below the poverty level. No, sod them we’ll give them free gas, water, and electricity and they can do their own thing. So what shall we do with all this money? Let’s spend most of it on monuments to the president!! Yes what a good idea!!

And this is how the Turkmenistan (and especially Ashgabat) take on a surreal air. His fat, gormless face beams from huge portraits all over the land. There are gold-plated busts of the leader in all hotels. Every home has a picture of him. It gets worse. The country’s television channels have his profile, in gold, at the top. His cabinet meetings are televised a real treat as a bunch of stooges, yes-men all take down his every word without raising any objections.

A poster of Mr Humility

In the center of town there is a huge monument notionally to celebrate the country’s neutral status. But yes, there’s a 20m high gold statue of fat-bashy on top, and he rotates to welcome the sun in the morning and follow it round until sunset!! Really, I am not making this up. If you stand behind the statue at ANY time of day, the sun always appears to be shining out of his arse!

The tower of power with the rotating 'Bashi on top

There’s more a Presidential decree went out stating that all buildings along major thoroughfares must be clad in marble within 10 years. So a huge amount of money is being spent on changing the face of the old Soviet buildings. But I wouldn’t like to be next to those buildings when the next earthquake strikes all that marble is going to come off really easily. The state, has built a 7 lane Presidential Highway, linking the center of town with bashy’s palace up in the hills. I’ve ridden along it and it’s quite nice and very quiet, as the only thing up that way is the palace, the huge orphanage (where future civil servants are trained / brainwashed), and about 12 glitzy but empty hotels that are supposed to resemble Las Vegas.

We were gob-smacked for our 10 days in the country. Not only does the man have no humility, but more amazingly, nobody seems to mind or feel inclined to speak out. Hell anywhere normal would have people laughing at the jumped up little man. But the message of you’ve never had it so good and people’s residual ability to work the system (left over from Soviet times) is letting the strangeness continue.

I look forward to seeing how the country develops. And it makes me happy to think that I don’t have to look at the President’s face again.

Anyway, rant over for a while and back on with the travelogue.

After a day of staying in a pretty dreadful hotel (like how many cockroaches would you like for your $30?), we visited our agents and they helped us to move to the Sheraton for $50 per night (yes the hotels are desperate for business) ah air-con, a decent shower and a clean double bed makes me very happy! Mehri, one of the directors of the agency had some interesting ideas about developing desert touring in Turkmenistan. She’d recently arranged a 2 week horse-back tour for a group of British women (sounded like fun) and asked whether there would be a market for riding Ural sidecars around the desert. Phew now there’s a prospect anyone out there with really strong forearms fancy a holiday? I suggested that sidecar skills are a little out of fashion in the west, but riding enduro bikes might be fun in the deserts and mountains. So now she’s off investigating bikes and tours in places such as Morocco. If anyone out there really fancies opening up the desert touring market in Turkmenistan drop me a mail and I’ll pass your name on.

Off to the Sunday Tolkuchka Bazar and we’re surrounded by carpets, camels, sheep with hugely fat arses (the tastiest part!) and everything that people want to buy but don’t want to be taxed on. It was a really wonderful place, ranging over acres of sandy wasteland. We bought a truly huge sheepskin hat for me (which makes me look like I did when I had long hair back in the late 70’s hey man!!), a sheepskin for the bike seat and a length of suit cloth to wrap around the spare tyre to keep the sun off.

A white-beard in Tolkuchka Bazar

Simon gets a hair-bear flash-back

Fat-arsed sheep showing their tasty bits

And time to leave never, never land and head off to Mary, a town near to Ancient Merv. Merv sounded a cool place to visit at one point it had been home to more than a million people, until one of Ghengis Khan’s sons came and killed literally everyone. Merv had gone through several such ups and downs (pretty major down, having a million people slaughtered!), and now the guidebooks promised kilometers of deserted cities.

Georgie decided to miss out on the trip out to Merv, as she’d been laid low for 36 hours with food poisoning. So I went to the museum and city. And what a disappointment! Supposed to be one of the highlights of Central Asia, and all that is there are a few huge city walls made from adobe (mud bricks) and a few mausoleums. Most disappointing was the lack of romance and atmosphere. I was expecting deserted cities and what I found was farmland and grazing herds.

Ancient Merv's amazing wall of mud

So that was it, the last place to see something old and monumentally interesting in Turkmenistan and there was nothing really to see. The only tourist site in the whole country was the capital, being wonderfully, unintentionally, weird.

By now both Georgie and I had resorted to antibiotics to clear the stomach bugs (and boy did that work a treat) and we longed for the Uzbek visas to come into date. We headed off for Turkmenabat (Chardzev) next to the border. We passed up the opportunity of walking round a nature reserve in the middle of the desert looking for 1.5m lizards it sounded like a good idea in the air-con’d hotel room in Ashgabat, but something else in the 44 degree heat of the desert. We did however stop of lunch in the café nearby and read the visitors book documenting the trails of a decade of tourists and amazingly cyclists riding across the desert. They’d suffered everything from our 44 degree heat to snow-storms bunch of silly buggers, and I state that from the position of Chief Silly Bugger.

One last $6 hotel, a couple of cheap meals (to try to top up our bodies after the recent poisoning) and we’re off to the Uzbek border. It’s a strange feeling being glad to have experienced a weird place, but having no desire to stay there anymore. And it’s a much better feeling going into a relatively normal place like Uzbekistan. Georgie will tell you about that soon.

As we leave Turkmenistan England have just qualified into the last 16.

IMPRESSIONS........

- A really buzzing (if poor) place
- Real traffic going somewhere
- Thriving markets
- Cultivated fields
- Less fences and more action
- Respectful wonderful people
- Weird procedures for booking ferries

TRAVELOGUE.......

We chose to enter Azerbaijan by a quiet boder crossing in the north-west of the country so that we'd be in the right area to see the Caucus Mountains - hey these people are real Caucasians! The crossing was a little slow, but when you've set aside a day for the crossing (always a good idea), what's the hurry? Everyone was pleasant, nobody wanted bribing and the World Cup was on the TV in the border post.

For the first time ever we underwent a medical test before we were allowed in the country. First the doctor asked if we were "OK"? A bit of a trick question there. Then he enquired about vaccination documents - and then he waved away that question when we pointed to the panniers on the bike - the certificates were in the botton of one - he didn't want to wait an hour for us to find them. Then a cursory thermometer under the armpits and the most interesting part of the procedure - a radiation test. Out with the little electronic gadget and whizz it over our bodies, one at a time. And bizarely Georgie came out 20% more radioactive than me. Only later did I realise that she was sitting next to the TV and the discrepancy was probably due to the beta radiation the TV was giving out!

And so out into a beautiful lush countryside, with all the usual domestic animals, but the Georgian pigs had been replaced by water buffalo wallowing in muddy pools and ditches. The farmers were gathering in hay and one of the funniest sights ever has to be seeing a Ural sidecar outfit piled about 3 metres high with hay. I wanted to wait around to see what happened when the exhaust pipes got hot.

Buffalo pretending to be African

Into the first town and we decided to try to find a bank for money-changing. As soon as we stopped the usual crowd of men gathered, but in stark contrast to the crowds in Georgia, they kept respectfully away from the bike. Huge enthusiasm and friendliness - money-changer summoned - money changed - invited for tea - stories of our trip. We were happy to be in Azerbaijan. A blessed relief!

The warm welcome

Immediately we started to regret our decision to shoot through Azerbaijan as quickly as possible. The guides that we had read before leaving had pointed us towards staying in Georgia for a couple of weeks and Azerbaijan for a couple of days. WRONG - we should have done it the other way round!

Thence to a small old town called Saki, where there is an old Caravanseri (a silk-road coach-house for camels) converted into a hotel. This was to be our base for the next couple of days allowing Georgie to see the first England match in the World Cup. The hotel was a weird combination of beautiful restoration and spartan living. The electricity would be off most of the day and the only water in the room was freezing cold (straight off the mountain), but it was cheap, the restaurant was good and it suited us.

It's worth mentioning at this point a curious ploy found in Azeri restaurants. You order some food and they bring it out, along with other dishes "you might like" - often little things like cheese or jam. You have to send back the extra dishes or you'll have to pay for them - even if you don't touch them. Bloody cheeky, but it happens throughout the country. We've not found the practice anywhere else (yet!).

I did some bike maintainence (!) including removing the leaking oil cooler and replacing it with a by-pass pipe.

We visited the local mansion - a "Khan's Summer Palace". Beautiful glass and latticework, and we discovered that there is a difference between Sultans, Khans, Emirs, ... But like Dukes and Earls, I'm too disrespectful to remember who's above whom.

The bike was parked outside the hotel and so got a lot of attention from the locals, including from the local bike club - a 3 man band. They invited us out on an evening's ride-out - an offer that could not be refused. This time Georgie decided to join the party, even though the format was undefined.

The bike club turned up, lead by Elgar (or a Russian version of that name) on his Jawa 350. I later found out that the front brake on the Jawa didn't work (when I was riding it at about 50kph, going into a corner!). The other 2 members were on Minsk 125s - very similar to BSA Bantams. We never really caught their names, but they looked like characters from "Dick Dasterdly's Catch the Pigeon" - weird old helmets, goofy smiles and odd-ball antics. One brought along a huge video camera to capture "the day the foreigners fell off".

First we had to ride round town in convoy, to show all the locals our machinery. Then a challenge - the local "big dirty hill". We all stopped at the bottom of a limestone track, with a hairpin half-way up. The recent rain had turned the fine limestone powder into a firm porridge, but it looked do-able. We then had 10 minutes of them asking us "problem da?" and "problem yes?", and we replied "problem nyet" and "problem no". So they'd have to go up it and we'd have to try. The pull was a bit squirly, especially with road tyres and touring pressures, but we got up it cleanly - much to their surprise - English honour upheld!

A ciggy and photo stop and it's back down the hill (and I thought we'd be dirt riding all night). This time the porridge was more of a problem, clogging our bikes' front mudguard until the wheel almost stopped turning. The wheels on the 2 Minsks clogged up completely and had to be "sledged" down the hill. Ten minutes of poking out the mud with shitty sticks ensued.

Minsk man at the top of the dirty great hill

More riding round town and we were off to the local beauty spot / health spa for tea and cakes with the boss-man.

Later Elgar revealed that he's been a tank driver most his life, fighting in Ngorno-Karabak, picking up hand-grenade wounds in his back and legs in the process. Now that's close quarters fighting!! We swapped addresses and headed for the hotel. I have visions of a long stream of waifs and strays from the former Soviet Union turning up on my doorstep in Manchester, much to the amazement of the people who I've rented the house too - huh huh!!

Next day it is a 350km push on to Baku, where we plan to get a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan. And the heavens opened, and stayed open most of the day. I was already soaked to the skin by the time I'd loaded up the bike, and didn't get dry again until a day or so later.

We spent the day riding up and down valleys that funnelled the rain down the roads. Sometimes there was so much water running down the roads that you couldn't see the pot-holes at all. Then my old "whitewater kayaking" experience came in handy - reading the lumps and bumps under the water from the shape of the waves on the road.

One valley we went through was an eye-opener - like riding through an abbatoir. As in other places, when one roadside stall sets up, another dozen identical ones are sure to follow. This valley seemed to think that it was a good idea to slaughter and butcher sheep on the edge of the road. First we saw carcasses being cut up, then a very freshly skinned carcass, then one half skinned. And all around were live sheep waiting to meet their makers (or at least unmakers!). Luckily we avoided any views of some poor animal's last moments. A mile later we stopped for lunch and enjoyed four REALLY fresh lamb kebabs.

More miles and the countryside lost its vegetation and the Azerbaijan that I had imagined came into view.

Then into Baku, a pretty nice place, like an Soviet/Islamic version of Liverpool - but here the rain stopped as we arrived rather than starting. What to do at 6pm for "2 drowned rats on a Beemer"? Hotel and relax, or find the ferry port and see what's up? Off to the ferry and our first (but probably not last) experience of an "alternative booking process".

We really didn't realise that it could be so difficult to book and get on a ferry. In Europe we're used to a 2 stage process: buy a ticket from someone then turn up at the allotted time and get on. You might have some negotiation about special discounts, maybe some customs shenanigans to go through, and perhaps the boat might be run late - but all really within the bounds of the imagination. Not here! All assumptions were up for discussion.

Over the next 2 days we were to discover that the concept of "what time does the ferry leave here and arrive over there?" are alien - after a while you stop asking, and later you realise it all depends on "when the train arrives and gets shunted onto the boat". And the best way of finding out when you'll arrive is to use your GPS to calculate an ETA.

How the train gets onto the ferry

The idea of a ticket for the bike and 2 people is just as weird - hell let's buy a ticket for Georgie and a "Bill of Lading" for the bike rider. Ticket sales - well first you have to go through customs and passport clearance (!!), because there's no point selling you a ticket if your documents are not in order. Port tax - a little man will catch you as you ride past his office and tell you to come back 2 hours later!

Buy a cabin for the boat for $100 each as a foreigner - alternatively 'pretend you're Azerbaijan' and only pay $60. No, don't do that (good advice from Lonely Planet) as a crewman will rent you his cabin (complete with girlie pin-ups) for $10. We were later told by a friend that the captain rents his cabin out for $20, and for a few dollars more you can enjoy his personal services, if you're a female passenger!

Cabin with girlie pin-ups

On the day we arrived in Baku we spent about 2 hours trying to nail-down the procedure, before giving up and deciding to come back the next day.

One last challenge for the drowned rats before retiring - get into the hotel - an old ferry boat moored in the centre of Baku. The Kompass Hotel also has a seedy restaurant and disco and is a brothel - lovely. The room checked out ok, even if the plumbing in the loo was a bit smelly, baggage up to the room, and so to security arrangements for the bike. Ride the thing up the stairs, through a door and onto the ferry's old car deck. Seemed like a bloody stupid idea, but once we press-ganged (nautical note there!) a bunch of spectators we managed the feat. It was all very improbable, but by that point in the trip "the improbable" seemed to be "the usual".

Up the stairs into the brothel boat

The big win of the day was a curry house for dinner - ah bliss.

We managed to sleep through the sounds of Azeri "bizneezmen" and Russian tarts dancing and arguing and next day we rejoined the search for a procedure at the port. We arrived at about 1pm as the only vehicular passengers (save for the trains that turned up some time after midnight) and we managed to get onto the boat by about 6.30pm. Some sort of record in itself? We quaffed the beer we'd brought along and waited for the boat to sail........

Next morning we woke up and to our surprise we were at sea. But no engine noise and vibration like on a normal ferry? A quick investigation on deck revealed that the engines were quietly turning over and we were making a heady 10 knots (compared to about 25 on a normal ferry). Oh well, settle back, enjoy "the cruise", soak up some rays and fritter the day away.

We knew that the lush vegetation of Georgia and Azerbaijan were behind us and a long stretch of desert lay ahead in Turkmenistan ... mmmm

IMPRESSIONS OF THE COUNTRY...

- Crazy and mixed up
- It was very apparent that the Soviets had pulled out and no real government had got to grips with the place
- Big swooping handshakes, and kisses on 2 cheeks
- Corrupt officials in some places and really nice ones elsewhere
- Wonderful, generous people and sneak-thiefs
- Expensive but terrible hotels
- Powercuts
- A little country, but with such bad roads that it takes days to ride across
- People with no concept of property (will you put my crash-helmet down and get your hand out of my pocket!!!)
- Wonderful fat black sunflower seeds
- The worst bread known to mankind
- Groups of men in restaurants proposing toasts and getting blathered on vodka
- Good vodka!
- Road-side vendors all copying each other and being unsuccessful
- Fresh cherries tied to sticks, nuts on strings covered with sweet goo
- Pigs wandering free everywhere, and tasty pork shashlik!
- 4 hours time difference from London, just so that they are not on the same time as Moscow

TRAVELOGUE...

We approached the border with great trepidation as another biker we met had been turned back. 15 minutes to cross the Turkish side, with the officials all being really nice to us (as they were when we entered the country).

Then through the sliding barrier to be processed by the Georgians. The passports and visas were ok and we got charged 3 dollars each and 10 for the bike. So the names of the Georgian officials we checked with in Trabzon would not be needed.

That bit took about 20 minutes.

And so onto a 2 and a half hour lesson in incompetent corruption with the Georgian Customs Officers. We knew that the region we were going into is being run as a little thiefdom and officials are allowed (or encouraged?) to extract money from hapless foreigners. The weapons against this is pleasantness (to everyone who asks about the bike or the trip) and stubborn pig-headedness.

Customs officers at 3 stages of the process tried to extract money from us, and we either professed ignorance (ya nye ponimaiyoo) or asked for receipts, until one by one they got bored with asking and let us through to be worked over by the next person. In the end it was quite amusing as we rode out of the border post with some jerk still shouting "seven dollars, seven dollars" at us.

Slowly, slowly into the Achara thiefdom - keeping to the 50kph speed limit to avoid the attentions of radar cops. A few times in Georgia we came round the corner of a road to see a cop with the radar gun out looking happy as he saw a "fast" bike coming, only to realise that we were well below the 80kph speed limit. Listen boys, if you want us to go quickly, you'd better get your bloody roads fixed!!

We drifted along though a subtropical landscape, filled with lush vegetation, sad old villas with peeling paint. Big old Russian cars and cyrillic writing added to the impression of "hey, we've just arrived in Cuba".

Moist Georgia

Up to a little town called Kobuleti - described in the Lonely Planet guide as "Georgia's most popular seaside resort". Not when we were there!! And then as we searched for a hotel we drifted into the "spider's web" which is the police checkpoint at the end of Achara region.

The sun had just set and we were still ok, but getting a little tired. And the police decided to try to extract 20 dollars from us "for registration". They had a go at Georgie for about 20 minutes (while I was entertaining the guards around the bike) and then we swapped over so that they could shout at me for 30 minutes. And then the nicer guards who we'd been talking to outside came in and helped to extract us from the mess - it was very obvious that they were saying "come on guys, these are nice people" and "they're not gonna give you the money".

Passports retrieved we sat on the bike and asked one of the nice cops "what now - hotel in Kobuleti or the next town?". He indicated that we should leave Achara while the going was good - we took his advice and drove through the concrete barriers!!

Riding into the dark, on a shit road surface with cars that had no lights and various farm animals wandering around. All very dangerous, so we rode slowly. I started looking for somewhere to rough camp - all around us were forests and fields, with a few homesteads here and there - seemed perfect camping terrain, just got to find a likely looking track off the main road...

Around a corner and there are 4 cars parked up, so I slow down for what I thought was another police check point. About 30 metres from the cars I hear what I think is gun fire - surely they can't be firing at the Lada that has just passed them - must have been a back-fire! Then a long burst of automatic gunfire - SHIT!! We freeze and decide what to do. I decide that if they were firing at us we'd be dead by now, and if we turn and ride off they might think we had something to hide (and then we'd be a good easy target). So we ride up to the cars shouting "Kargi? Kargi?" ("Good? OK?" in Georgian, thank goodness we had spent the time learning a few local phrases) and the guys with shooters all look as surprised as us.

We'd managed to stumble across the local Mafia, out after dark on a Saturday night testing their weapons!!!!

Now that idea of rough camping - SOD OFF!!

Note from Georgie: Mum, I promise you we're safe and that has been our only "incident" so far.

Now a piece of luck. We arrived at Poti and Georgie spotted a hotel (though heaven knows how as there was a power cut at the time). 30 minutes later we're trying to get to sleep by NOT thinking of the day's events.

NOTES FOR OVERLANDERS

Note 1 - Later in the trip we met a Turkish truck driver who told us that the smart way you get into Georgia is to take the ferry from Trabzon to Poti, cutting out the Achara Region all together.

Note 2 - A couple of follow BMW rides (Luc and Catherine from Belgium) came through the border a few days after us and had all the same shit as us. They then tried 3 times to get into Russia from Georgia and were refused, because of the tension in that region. They later got the ferry from Trabzon to Russia.

So a shakey start, but we are in the country that is famed for its food, wine and hospitality - let's persevere. Off to Kutaisi, with a National Park were we can camp and dinosaur footprints. Dinosaur footprints - yes, camping no, not allowed. Bugger! So we spend a night in a tatty but not cheap hotel - and I start to get a serious longing for a field with a view - the weather is perfect for camping.

Local bikers

In the evening we wander around Kutiasi and the locals come and befriend us. Really nice people with nothing to do in the evening and no work to do in the day. They give us sunflower seeds and a bottle of the local "village wine" - white with a strong taste of scrumpy cider. And I offer to take them for rides on the bike the next morning - my riding style must have got bad reports as none of them turned up at the hotel for a ride.

Third day in Georgia and I am starting to get seriously cheesed off with the place. In town while Georgie is getting money from the bank, a crowd of lads gathered round me and the bike - not unusual, especially as I was parked outside a college. But it all got a bit unruly and they started to try to pillage the luggage on the bike - I beat a retreat leaving them in a cloud of expletives. Oh give me a nice respectful MUSLIM country rather than this notionally Christian hell-hole!

We warily visit a couple of the local churches including Gelati monastary, which has really good ancient murals. And then a slow ride towards Gori - Stalin's birthplace.

More perfect camping country, and this time we're not to be diverted; not even by the hotel that had "camping" written on it but didn't offer camping. That was quite funny really, and one of 2 times when we got tripped up by language mistakes.

We asked the owner for "Camping?" and he seemed to say "Da camping, I'm a Turk". We see our opportunity to communicate in the Turkish that we'd learnt. But he didn't seem to understand and beckoned me to ride the bike into the hotel's foyer and tried to show us the rooms in the hotel. "No, No, we want camping" and point to the sign, which has a picture of a truck and "TIR" written on it. Turned out that place offered "camping" for "Ototurk" - the Georgian word for "truck", and the owner was not Turkish at all!

The other linguistic cock-up was when an official asked for "papers of your vehicle?" and we heard "purpose of your visit?". He was bemused when we told him "tourism".

A field somewhere had our name on it, and after a bit of searching we found it, with a view of the distant mountains, the sound of frogs mating in the drainage ditches and a pair of old cow-herders with about 20 milkers. The old boys greeted us like old friends, with big handshakes and a whiskery kiss on each cheek. After the usual introductions (this time in my pigeon Russian) we revealed that we are English. "Da, Karoshaw - Winston Churchill!!" - more hugs and kisses.

The old boys' memories of the war-time alliance seemed to seal the friendship, and we broke out the Christmas pudding that we had carried all the way from England. They seemed to like it. Eventually they wandered off and we thought about food and tents. Then a visit from the 2 owners of the land and their 3 lads. More handshakes and kisses and this time football talk when we revealed that we come from Manchester. More Christmas pud all round (2 pieces that we later found on the floor - obviously not to be a major export to Georgia!) Then farewells and to the tent - a much better day all of a sudden.

Next day off to Gori - a grim town and about the only place in the world still in love with Stalin. We went to the museum - full of old photos, a few artifacts and a deathmask laid out in dark room to look like a ultra-low budget version of the inside of Lenin's Tomb.

The low budget tomb-alike

Our minds are constantly drifting off to the next country (Azerbaijan) and the fact that we can't go there for 5 or 6 days because our visa doesn't start until 1st June - big mistake.

From Gori we investigate "the ancient capital of Georgia" - Mtksheva as it sounds like a good place to visit Tbilisi from (and the guidebooks says that the traffic in Tbilisi is dreadful). Nope - bugger all there - like Ripon on a quiet day. We decide to brave Tbilisi traffic, which turns out to be far less terrifying than Trabzon.

Eventually we find the hotel, a miracle as it doesn't have a sign outside it and the Georgians have recently replaced lots of major street signs (previously in Russian and Georgian) with new ones in Georgian that even the locals can't read.

Three nights of battling the old bag that owned the hotel over hot water, money and privacy (every morning she'd burst into our room and demand "money, money"). We're ready for the off.

Tbilisi

There were a couple of highlights of Tbilisi - leaving aside a very friendly internet club (sad that that could be a highlight), the main one was the "Georgian Folk Architecture Museum". Staffed by underpaid but hugely friendly people, showing old cottages gathered from around the country. It was full of interesting wells, clothing, furniture and the largest collection of wine making gear I've ever seen. We tried freshly made maize-meal bread - Georgie liked it but I though it tasted like MDF.

We asked one of the guides (George - the resident artist) about Georgia and its prosperity, trying to get to the bottom of the "faded glory" villas we saw everywhere. We asked "when was the heyday of Georgia", expecting him to say "1930 or 1960". He replied "in the 12th Century" with complete sincerity. It seems that the propoganda aimed at giving Georgians a sense of history has over-ridden recent advances and future potential. Come on guys - snap out of it!

We make a break from Tbilisi to a small town near to the Azerbaijan border so that we can get the hell out as soon as posible when our visas kick in. And having completely written of Georgia we get stopped at another police checkpoint. With a little fury and really heavy hearts we think "we can't be bothered with this - just leave us alone". And then the policeman turns out to be a real sweety. First he buys us ice-creams (or rather orders the local vendor to give us some) and then when I point out his cap badge to Georgie (because it still has the Soviet Hammer and Scickle on it), he takes he badge off and presents it to me (and he gets a Manchester United pencil in return).

Nice Cops get their piccie on the Internet

Finally in the town of our choosing for a night, we suffer soviet legacy for one last time. The Lonely Planet states that Lagodeki has one old soviet style hotel with rooms for 4 dollars and suites for 6. Well that is really cheap so we are expecting a dump and a dump we find. Water in the rooms is mainly staining the walls. The hotel's one working shower is in the basement in the old sauna room. We have to shower by candlelight after paddling through pools of water from leaking pipes. The price is a stupid 10 dollars and later they try to get another 10 out of us so we tell them to piss off and threaten to leave.

Showering by candlelight - how romantic?!

That night we felt no quarms in cooking in our room (the town has no cafe). In the morning, we investigated the rest of the hotel and found it to be completely trashed except for the floor we were on. In fact the best part of the hotel was the 4th floor, where the foyer window was completely missing, allowing a great view of the mountains through clouds of swallows that were nesting in the foyer. Georgie said she felt like a war reporter taking photos up there.

The view towards North Ossetia

Azerbaijan looked like a good bet. A very good bet!!

As we crossed the border out of Georgia into "no-man's land", a sign-post stated "the Georgian Customs Process is Free of Charge". A marked difference to the other end of of the country.

And the World Cup starts in 30 minutes ...

ROUTE: Bursa to Turkey-Georgia Border

COUNTRIES VISITED: Turkey, Turkey and Turkey.

DISTANCE DRIVEN: 4,817miles - 7,700kms

WEEKS COMPLETED: 6/74

WEATHER: Freezing (at night) to 34 degrees

OBJECTS BROKEN: Centre stand, exhaust brackets, rear tyre, the speed limit (42mph or 70kph for bikes - yeh right!!!), thermarest mattress delaminated

MINOR MIRACLES: Finding a bike shop to order a new tyre

FOOD TREATS: Honeycomb, meat and butter filled pide, fish cooked over a fire

So now it is Simon's turn to describe our journey. I'll give some impressions of the place first and then some of the daily highlights.

The first impression is that Turkey is HUGE and varied!! Our whole trip will take us 130 degrees east, and we have done about 15 degrees in Turkey. The countryside is really varied too, not just the beaches and scrubby hills of the south coast. We've seen hills, pastures and wonderful white water like the European alps, barren plains like those in Russia, strange rock formations like in Yellowstone and Bryce Parks in the USA. We've also discovered that a lot of Turkey is over a kilometer above sea level. This makes for clear, cool riding days but bloody cold nights. The first time we rough camped in Turkey (at 1300 metres - the height of an alpine ski slope!) we didn't bother to put the fly-sheet on the tent (my mistake 'it won't rain so why bother').

It was freezing that night and our breath condensed on everything - wet, wet, wet! In the morning there was frost on the bike seat - lesson learned.

Then there are the people - we met a few touts in Istanbul and Pammukale, but other than that they have been hugely hospitable. I have paid for just one cup of tea in a month - and anyone who knows me will know how much I drink. If you stand talking to someone for more than 1 minute, they sneekily send out for tea and a glass get pressed on you - wonderful! Sometimes the shops have a little intercom to the tea-shop (I kid you not) - what a country. And the people work so hard. The shop people generally do 12 to 15 hour days and the farming folk are out hacking at the floor with adzes and carrying 60kilo bails of tea on their backs!!

Riding is a mixed bag here. The roads are pretty good but there are some really poor patches. You can be rolling round the lanes and then hit what is really a quarry road for 10 metres to maybe 10kms. Pretty tiring 2 up. We have found hat about 400kms (250 miles) is a maximum for a 8 hour day's ride - sounds pretty slow, but hey we're on holiday and the roads aren't straight!! The traffic in most big towns is usually pretty hellish but few people drive from town to town (partly because the petrol is as expensive as in the UK), so the traffic outside town is light.

WIND - what a windy place we're in. All that sun and hills with little tree cover makes for very windy country - all thermal stuff. Day break is calm, early afternoon sees 20 to 30 knot winds and things calm down again after dusk. Georgie has learnt to tuck in behind one shoulder or the other to minimise the buffeting of cross winds - now I need someone big to sit behind!!

The language barrier is coming down, mainly because Georgie is forging ahead with Turkish. Normally she does verbal crowd control\entertainment while I do techie stuff and 'man to man' eye contact and nodding - which is very important in a male dominated society. But when Georgie is not around I get on with the communication task just fine - sign language and messages scribbled on the back if my hand are the main media, combined with smiles and friendly words in any language.

Being dirty most of the time is becoming more comfortable for Georgie - but things will get worse as we move away from places with decent water supplies. Luckily Georgie doesn't mind showering in cold water, whereas I use it as an excuse to "lengthen the period between routine maintenance".

So that's the general bit. Now here's the detailed travelogue. Georgie left off in Bursa and so I'll go from there:

We left Bursa at a previously unheard of 8.30, crawled out to the edge of town with lotsa of traffic and then realised that we were alone on the road as soon as we left town. A hour or so's ride and time for breakfast in a soup kitchen - a good bet for a cheap nosh early on as those cafes have portion sizes and prices fixed by the state. And Turkey has armed policemen to go around and check portion sizes too - makes the UK consumer protection look a bit weak. First problem of the day; as I put the bike onto the centrestand, I held it at the highest point twinge of sciatica) and the right hand stand-leg buckled. Bugger - now we'd have 17 months of travelling with only a side-stand - inconvenient most of the time but disastrous if we were to get a puncture. Soup first - think of a fix later....

Many more miles and finally we arrive at Pammukkale - famed for its Travertine Pools (big white calcite encrustations on the side of a hill) and some ruins. The place was full of touts jumping out - trying to get us to stay at their hotels. Reminded me of the Tour de France when fans of particular riders jump out and shout at the riders as they climb the alpine sections. Luckily our bike weighs half a ton and looks like it weighs half ton, so the touts jump out of the way pretty quick too.

Camped over night - the only thing to report being the number of Turks it takes to light a gas boiler - must be a joke in there somewhere. Anyway I keep them hard at it until the thing worked - "I've paid my lire and will get my shower".

Next day took a ride to Aphrodisias - an ancient Greek and Roman town with lots of temples, tombs and fantastic stadium. We were both "a bit ruined out" having seen lots of bits of tatty marble before and our imaginations were a bit ragged. But Aphrodisias was worth it.

Next day we did the Travertine pools as Pammukkale. A bit of a let-down as they were swarming with tourists clad in swimming costumes. Compared to the calcite pools in Yellowstone Park, they came a poor second - I'd rather look at a weird rock pool with an elk basking in it rather than one with a fat tourist!

Not a good start to the day and then a few hours later it seemed to get worse as we got pulled for speeding. We were doing a long stretch across a high plateau, with the odd hill here and there to add some interest - and hey we got up to a heady 110kph (about 65mph). At a police checkpoint we were read a script - "you were going very fast - radar 104kph". We were pretty sure that we'd been doing about that speed, but 4kph over the national limit (100kph) is a bit slender, and where's your radar mate? Then the big shock - the speed limit for bikes in Turkey is 70kph - 42mph. You cannot be serious!! All of a sudden I can break the speed limit in first gear!

So we argued the toss, demanded to see the radar car and video footage - he had us bang to rights. So we paid the fine (about 30 dollars) and demanded to be told where the police station is so that we could check the law books.

Ten minutes later we're being shown into the police station by a nice young man(who knows we're coming). Into his office - I see his automatic pistol - I see his television showing a day-time cookery program. Wow, in Turkey the traffic cops don't just eat doughnuts, they learn how to cook them too.

Then we're ushered into the boss's office. Lots of commendations on the wall, same cookery program on his television. He urges us to sit down. Would we like some Coca Cola? Yes, the young policeman turns waiter. Cologne for our hands? Cigarette - we can choose from a plate with 4 brands, and then he looks afronted when we profess not to smoke. Chocolate? Out comes a big selection box of chocs. Bizarre, but we decide that this is the way he wants to play it. I notice that he has a revolver with an ornate carved handle and I ask him to turn to show Georgie. Out comes the gun, out come the bullets and he presents it to Georgie. "Turkish?" she enquires? "NO - American 45" he replies.

Eventually we get to points of law and he shows us the books that say that the speed limit is 70kph, and explains to me the concept of a 10% tolerance. Then he sees us on our way.

Well at least we had our money's worth out of them.

Then onto Olympos on the south coast, through highland areas similar to Glen Coe but with sunshine (difficult to imagine but have a go) and down through wooded valleys like those around the river Conwy in Wales - the Fairy Glen with sunshine - whatever next?

And all of a sudden we're having a proper holiday. A few days off camping by the beach, splashing in the surf, fishing, sunbathing and eating cafe food. Proper relaxation, which I allowed myself to take as I knew we'd be having a much harder time in the near future.

Again we felt ruined out so we didin't bother paying the 5 quid each for the Olympos ruins. Last year the Turks have realised that their tourist sites were under valued so they boosted the prices by about 1000%. So now even their tattiest sites make The Tower of London look like a cheap day out. Fair enough as they're trying to rebuild a country after the recent earthquake, but a bit steep when you take in 2 or 3 sites in a day.

A better bet we hit the COMPLETELY FREE chimeara. Weird and delightful - the location of the mythical eternal flame. There is a steady stream of methane out of the ground near the top of a hill. This ignites and surrounds you with 50cm high flames. Really good fun and the cause of many childish pranks and photos.

Then a complete about-face, and we start to head northeast - we feel that we're making gains on the goal of Vladivostok. We found hypermarket with 2 styles of tyre pressure guage - hurrah - one more broken thing replaced. The goal was Cappadoccia, described as a sort of Fred Flintstone wonderland in most books, but more than a day away.

Camel Coachhouse

So around 6pm we stocked up with water from a roadside spring and looked for somewhere to camp. And suddenly at the side of the road was our first ruined caravanserai - a "coach-house for camels" that was used in the days of the "silk road". We were VERY tempted to camp inside it (although it was a bit spooky), but the deciding factor was the proximity to the road. So we rode down some farm tracks for few hundred metres and set up camp. That night the menu was gilt-headed sea bream for Georgie and veal for me, cooked over an open fire, all served with rice and olive oil. Top nosh!

Home from home

Next morning a slow cold start and a trot through to Goreme in Cappadoccia, across some really barren uplands. As we arrived the day took the first of a number of weird twists. We arrived in town on the main street and outside a cafe was a German BMW R1150GS and UK Honda Dominator. So we stopped to talk to our first fellow "overlanders" (oh I feel all grown-up all of a sudden). And blow me if I don't know the German lad by email!! It's GS Georgie and his mate Dave Broughton. They're on their way to Iran. We're all staggered by the coincidence and agree to meet up later for a beer.

Dave and George

Campsite found, tent up, off to the internet cafe. There we find a mail from Catherine and Luc, 2 Belgians on BMW R80GSs. They are friends of our other biker friends from Belgium (Trui and Iris), and they're on their way to Russia too. And they are in a campsite less than a mile away. Well I was expecting Elvis and Lord Lucan to come down the street next! While Georgie did some mailing I rode up to frighten Luc and Cat on the bike. They had only sent the mail a couple of hours earlier - another dinner with lively chat. We may meet up with Luc and Cat later in our trip as they leave Mongolia (maybe with Herbert, another mad Belgian on a beemer) as we enter it.

Cat and Luc

Cappadoccia is really Flintstones country. Volcanic tufa (like pumice) carved out by erosion into spries of rock, and by men into underground cities. We spent a fun couple of days crawling round underground passages (and got so dirty that the Turkish tourists wanted to pose with us for photos) and catching up on mails.

Goreme

The next few days are at a slightly slower pace as Georgie got a bit of a stomach upset. All drinking water through the water filter in the future. The roads are a bit better and we enjoy hours of swooping bends up and down mountain passes - Georgie finally experiences real twisty biking. Two more overlanders appear (aussie Phil and German Filli?) and we share experiences. It sounds like they both got baked alive in Iran and Phil got a little heated with the number of people in India.

Another night camping rough, this time not so well hidden and we get a visit from the farmer who owned the land and his mates. He was very friendly and responded well to the odd Turkish word that Georgie fed me from within the tent. Then all of a sudden he got very agitated and started banging the ground with
a stick and shouting "elan, elan, elan". What the hell is wrong with him? Does he want money? Does he want us off his land? Out with the Turkish-English dictionary and we discover that he is warning us about snakes!! Is that all!? Thank heavens or Allah - take your pick.

Another long day's ride took us to near Trabzon, but not near enough to take in the 2 sites we wanted to visit, so we decided to get a campsite us a small valley. The first site we visited spent ages pondering how much to charge us for camping and showers and the final amount came out at about 8 quid. Taking the piss as we'd been getting hotel rooms for about 12. So we tried a trout farm next door and they wanted no money at all for camping - most odd!

Next day we turned tourist again, visiting Sumela Monastery (built into a cliff) and the summer house used occasionally by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk (THE hero of all Turks). And then we had the option of staying in Trabzon or knocking off a few kms towards the Georgian border. Well, Trabzon seemed more than a little grotty congested traffic, dockyards and brothels, so the choice was easy. We headed for a pretty, alpine town called Ayder.

That was fun - we negotiated with the owners to use their lounge / kitchen to cook our own dinner. Luckily Georgie realised that the salami stew that we were planning would not be welcome in a Muslim house (oops!) so we featsed on tuna stew. The fun part was watching the curious reactions of the girls who ran the hotel. We had not really encountered any Turkish women to that time - the outside world was a male domain! They were fascinated by me doing the washing up after dinner, and seemed horrified by my use of a tea towel rather than rinsing the plates. They showed how to eat sunflower seeds without ending up with a mouthful of seed shell.

Off the next day with our loins girded for an assault on the Georgian border. A quick stop at a bakery turns into a free tea stop, and as I relax I notice a mark on the rear tyre. This rapidly turns out to be a tear in the rubber between the treads, about 2cms long, down to the canvass. And guess what, the tear has 8 friends and another 10 or so hiding under blisters in the rubber. SHIT! We are in trouble!!

Splits on the tyre

The tyre (an Avon Distanzia) was a free replacement after the previous tyres were recalled with similar problems in the sidewalls. I was relying on getting clean across Asia to Japan on that tyre and there was more than 50% of tread left to go.

But at least we were in a 'civilised' country. If we had been in Georgia we really would have been buggered. The problem was that few people this far east in Turkey ride big bikes, so bike tyres are like gold dust. We head back west to the first decent town. Everywhere sells tyres but they are for cars or trucks. Eventually we stop at a shop which really want to help us and we are invited in.

The guy phones round loads of places but with no success. It seems the only place where will be able to get them is Istanbul. For those unfamiliar with the geography of Turkey, Istanbul is at the other end of the country some 1100km away.

As we ride towards Trabzon, the most major city in miles, we discuss the options. We first think we have to take the ferry - only a 2 day sailing and apparently ones sails tomorrow. Then Georgie suggests that I take the coach (only 18 hours) and leave her in Trabzon. Whatever we do we are buggered for 5 days.

And then a major miracle happens, I spot a bike shop, and it has even got a BMW outside. Pulling over as quickly as possible we park up and I rush inside. Five minutes later I reappear, beaming from ear to ear. 'I think they can get us some to arrive in 2 days time!!!' So we ordered 3 tyres (a front and rear Metzler Enduro4, and a rear Enduro3 as a spare).

Carrying a spare on a fully laden bike two up is more than a little awkward, but I had been toying with the idea and now it seemed like good idea.

Thanks to Allah again as literally a few hours later and it would have caused us no end of grief and cost.

And hey presto, we were back in our favourite Black Sea resort, with 3 days to kill. Lots of mailing, journal writing and eating various types of fast food. I even initiated Georgie at a Russian Cafe that serves up meatballs and cabbage soup to the "Natashas" (Russian prostitutes).

Finally the tyres arrive and I go and get them fitted. Luckily Dursun the shop owner makes me really welcome - free tea and lunch. After we spend 10 minutes playing trampauline on the first tyre without managing to break the bead seal, we decide to get a local professional outfit to do the job.

Finally when all was completed Dursun tells me that he will come to the hotel at 8pm to go ride bikes - all very mysterious! Georgie decided that she'd give it a miss, in case he decided to "see how fast these Brits can ride" and I meet him as arranged. He's on a 1974 BMW R60/6, with a plastic bag full of "Eriks" (small crunchy green plums) hanging off the handle-bar. Well this could be a cozy tryst - just the 2 of us and a bag of plums. 10 minutes later all is revealed as we pull into the Trabzon Bike Riders Club - yes a bike club. A right old mix of machines from Suzuki 125 to a GPZ via XSs. Some of the guys even owned classic Horons (dutch I think?).

A few of the bikers spoke English and all were amazed by the trip. After loads more tea swapped email addresses and hugged goodbye. I will post details of the Trabzon Club and Dursun's business on the Horizons Unlimited site.

Next day, a final struggle with the repacked luggage. The spare tyre was attached and didn't look too out of place on the outside of one pannier (if you can believe that), and that daunting border crossing into Georgia awaited us. That will be in the next mail - when we discover the meaning of corruption and Georgie meets Soviet Legacy for the first time.

ROUTE: Manchester to Bursa

COUNTRIES VISITED: England, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Turkey.

DISTANCE DRIVEN: 2812 miles/ 4500 km

DISTANCE FROM HOME: 1727 miles/2779 km

WEEKS COMPLETED: 4/74

WEATHER: Too hot. Ever since Italy it's been mid 20s to low 30s (tan on face, hands and feet doing nicely)

OBJECTS BROKEN: 2 x water carriers, petrol stove fuel generator, light fitting for tent, tyre pump, air gauge, mobile phone charger.

MINOR MIRACLES: Simon eats fresh tomatoes, fish, yoghurt, honey, and enjoys them all.

FOOD TREATS: The tenderest calamari, lamb chops cooked over fire with freshly picked rosemary.

Welcome to Georgie's first rant and rave newsletter from the SoreBums duo. Sorry it's taken so long to go to press but since we left Ol' Blighty some 26 days ago (not that I'm counting) life on the road is taking a little getting used to and to some extent I'm feeling a tad guilty relaxing in an internet cafe in Bursa, Turkey when I ought to be outside admiring the architecture of the first capital city of the Ottoman Empire.

Anyway, here goes my epistle. When reading this, please take into consideration that as well as it keeping you informed of what we're up to in far flung countries, it is also serving as a permanent journal for us to refer back to in the future. Therefore, I'm sure not everything within will interest you but I hope at least some of it will inspire you - that's assuming it doesn't end in disaster. This log is also based on my memories of events and do not necessarily tie in with Simon's, however that's my perogative as the author!

By means of internet interest groups this will probably end up going around the world and we may be talking about your country. When recounting our stories or making comments about what we experience, it is not our intention to disrespect your culture, if it sounds like we are, then I'm afraid it is purely due to the short amount of time we are spending with you and our probable ignorance.

If you were able to read all of Simon's original notes, you may remember his reasons for undertaking this trip. As for me, well I recall the first ever conversation that I had with Simon, I revealed to him that my dream was to go round the world on the back of a motorbike. And here I am ...

In the begining......

So we eventually left Manchester a day later than planned in the early hours of Sunday 14 April 2002. A few days previously, Simon looked at the junk and dust still remaining in his house and realised that we weren't going to make the Saturday ferry if he wanted to leave his home in a decent enough state to rent out. The first trial packing was completed about 6 hours before we left and miraculously it all fitted! I can't believe that all I have gone away with for 18 months is just 2 trousers, 3 T-shirts, 1 blouse, 1 sarong, 1 jumper, 1 rugby shirt, 1 ski polo neck, 1 shorts, 3 socks, 5 knickers, 1 bikini, 1 sandals and the biking trousers, jacket and boots - thank God for Rohan and packing cubes!

Clothes for 18 months

RULE NUMBER 1: Don't forget to take a copy of your itinerary with you. As a result of the last few day's mayhem Simon managed to pack away his PC without printing the plan, so a last minute plea to family got one sent out to us. It has also got left in hotels along the way.

Driving down to Harwich was probably the coldest stage so far, the heated gloves and socks were a godsend and kept me conscious on the back of the bike. Arriving at the ferry port it suddenly dawned on both of us what we might be letting ourselves in for. Although Simon and I had been organising this trip for the previous 8 months - arranging visas, closing down 2 homes, planning routes, getting vaccinations etc I could never really imagine what the feeling would be like actually leaving. I have to say there were butterflies in stomachs and tears in eyes, corny but true.

Butterflies at Harwich

The ferry ride allowed us to write our first entries in the private journals and for Simon to read his final publication of Trailbike Magazine. Opening it for the first time, he stumbles across a review for the new BMW GS Adventure (for the non-bikers amongst you our bike is a MUCH earlier model than this one and designed for off-road) along with a picture of it stuck in some mud. The caption reads 'Thank God it's Surrey and not Outer Mongolia ...', now this is an omen, but good or bad, Simon ponders!

Docking in Hook of Holland, after a few more hour's ride, our first night sees us already camping in Germany having successfully avoided any passage through Belgium - this of course would only have made me slightly edgy having worked there for 3 years.

RULE NUMBER 2: Always carry a spare generator for your stove. Since we intend to do a lot of camping, one of the most important pieces of equipment we carry is a Coleman stove. At a recent GS rally in Belgium, Simon proudly showed the range of spare parts we are carrying, one of which is the fuel generator for the stove - 'Of course it's the first thing that goes, mind you I've haven't had a problem in 4 years'. Famous last words. The first time he tries to brew up he discovers it's bust and has to use the spare. And ever since day 2 of the trip we've been trying to source a new spare just in case. However I'm sure it doesn't help Simon's pride to be told by a polite Swiss shop assistant, 'But sir, your stove is VERY old'. I have to admit to the layman it does rather look like a family heirloom, nonetheless the culinary delights we have concocted so far on it would belie that fact.

We managed to meet up with friends in Heidleberg, Lake Konstanz and Basel as planned then headed to Italy through the St Gotthard tunnel. It is now that we start to hit 'interesting' driving with Simon's biking prowess undermined by Italian scooters cutting him up. We could shrug that off quite easily, but it started to get a bit more tense when we experienced the motorway driving. I'm sure there's a tax on usage of brakes and indicators in Italy. Cars would scream up from behind and nestle in our 'slipstream' until Simon spotted them and quickly got out of their way with adrenalin pumping round his bloodstream.

We only spent 5 days in Italy stopping in Lecco, Siena, Cassino and Zamponeta - of course our aim here is to get from north to south as soon as possible in order to get the ferry from Bari to Greece. Cassino was a sleepy town, our interest in was the historic World War II Monte Cassino connection - almost utter destruction of the monastery. Simon's uncle was also involved in that area during the war. When we were there we stumbled across an open air underwear fashion show, unfortunately for the models it had been raining for most of the day so by the evening time it was pretty cold and they didn't look too pleased about it.

The Polish war cemetary at Cassino

Sign posts in Southern Italy left a little bit to be desired. At several places we ound that Foggia could be reached by any road and this proved a problem when we needed to get there to camp for the night. Choices, choices, and when we ventually got there we headed straight out again, I'm sorry to say that the place did not feel safe.

On our final day in Italy Simon decided it was time to undertake bike maintenance. I began to wonder what was checked before we left since this session revealed minimal water in the battery, barely any oil, and a broken tyre pump! 'Well I checked you were on the back before we left, wasn't that enough?' was his retort!

The overnight ferry took us from Bari to Patras and allows us a 'leisurely' ride into Athens. It was just those final 5km into the city that really got my nerves going for the first time. Rush hour London North Circular driving with attitude. So many motorbikes weaving their way through the traffic. We tried to keep up with them but the width of our panniers luckily (for me) forced us to give up. During this effort we had our first lesson on the use of the horn. Before you understand that the horn has various meanings - main one of which is 'get out of my way I coming through' you can be let of for believing you are continuously committing major road traffic offences. Jumping out of seats both of us kept looking from side to side and backwards as horns blared out. Miraculously we found our hotel for the first time of asking and with hugh sighs parked the bike up permanently for 4 nights (an old university Greek friend that we met up with during our stay confirmed our decision to walk everywhere when he announced that every weekend 200 people die in Greece as a result of road traffic accidents).

Tourists at last

Athens is biking and tat heaven for Simon. I have never seen his head turn so often at the sound of phutt phutt phutt. The city is full of big trail bikes and the Africa Twin is slowly seducing him, as are the back street shops. Whole streets are dedicated to objets d'art that he drools over - sheet metal, welding equipment, buckles, rivets, knives (he's bought a 'flick saw' for cutting down trees in Siberia!). Meanwhile I'm falling in love with the camomile scented Agora, tortoises roaming around Keramikos, learning the cheat's way to make souvlaki/kebaps and café frappé.

Always hold tortoises away from you - they pee!

Another ferry transports us from Piraeus to Xios which is only a stone's throw away from Turkey. Boarding the ferry introduces us to the Greek interpretation of 10 minutes. This is the time we had to wait until motorbikes could board. Two and a half hours later we are the last people to get the green light and then all hell breaks loose as a dozen bikes screech onto the deck. Ten minutes later the ferry leaves - on time. Rather wearily we are chucked off the boat at 01.30 at its first port of call. Realising there will be no pensiones or campsites open at this early hour we head up the coast and delight in our first beach camping. The tent gets erected and we snuggle down into our sleeping bags at around 03.30. Fifteen minutes later the cockerel warns us that dawn is approaching - how considerate.

A local luggage design

Xios is not a large island and attracts few tourists - those that do mainly use it to reach Turkey (only 30 minutes away) or to chew mastik! Mastik is a resin taken from a pine tree native to Xios and can be used to make a rather distinctive tasting icecream - eaten once and once only. We were advised that the north of the island was the prettiest so with local map at hand we headed for it. What a journey/adventure. Prefering to take the scenic routes meant that from time to time we battled across the 'white' roads which turned into dirt tracks - oh what I would have given for my Serow. Fully laden with almost 500kg it proves quite a challenge for Simon, however we safely arrive at our destination - a deserted beach - having successfully avoided the landslides and goat herds on the roads. However getting onto the beach was another matter and caused Simon's first drop. Sand is not a good idea with fully inflated tyres. With much blood, sweat and tears we haul the bike 50m along the coast and then deservedly partake in our first skinny dip in the Aegean, followed by the usual abortive fishing attempt. A fire is built on the shore to provide atmostphere and to cook calamari. The night sky is spectacular.

Beached whale

Wish you were there?

RULE NUMBER 3: You can't wash in sea water (but you can boil potatoes in it). Of course I didn't believe Simon when he warned me that soap doesn't wash off. I dare you to try it - it leaves you in a right mess.

RULE NUMBER 4: A deserted beach is never a deserted beach when you're swimming naked in the sea. The following morning we again took advantage of our apparent situation only to suddenly hear the sound of a car engine and the arrival of a pick-up. I'll leave the rest to your imagination, suffice it to say that Simon was extremely chivalrous.

From Xios we take the expensive 30 min sailing to Çemse (and Asia) and are fortunate that we are not asked to produce our green card - Simon left it rather late applying for the document having thought that Turkey was in the EU and that he could rely on our UK insurance. So we've been relying on a faxed photocopy ever since the original got delayed in the post between Leeds and Athens! (Mental note to G and S - don't mess with the feds).

From Çesme to Izmir we take the toll road. We're rather hoping that all the roads in Turkey are like this. The ticket machine isn't working so we reverse out of the lane and I walk across all the traffic lanes to find someone - now of course I couldn't dream of doing this anywhere else but there is literally NO traffic - on the other side of the toll booth a dog is asleep on the road, we wait for the tumble weed to appear! We are given a tatty old piece of paper apparently to indicate where we have joined the motorway. The road to Izmir quickly changes from 2 lanes to 3 - we're not sure when they're expecting to use them all, during the 80 km stretch I count that we have overtaken 1 tractor and 1 car, whilst 9 vehicles overtake us!

Some of you may think that we are mad doing what we are doing, however let me introduce you to Sally, a Cambridge lady who we met in Bergama. She is currently cycling her way back from Sudan where she was teaching English. Now that's madness.

The Gallipoli Peninsula is our next destination to view the World War I cemetries. I had been there before and been quite moved by the beauty of the landscape, finding it hard to believe how many casualties and deaths resulted from the disastrous Anzac attempt to gain control of the territory. I can't comment on the rights and wrongs of the campaign, but one of the ways that I saw it was the Turks were just trying to defend their country, as would any nation. Turkey's national hero, Atatürk, who played a significant role in the campaign, had a memorial built to honour the fallen Anzacs and wrote the following words (just wanted to share them with you):

'Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies (Anzacs) and the Mehmets (Turks) to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours ... you the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.'

ANZAC Cemetary

On a lighter note we also visited the museum which contained a very poetical letter written by a young Turk soldier to his mother. His last sentence though spoilt it all by requesting that she didn't send him any underwear! Boys, they're all the same.

Onwards to Istanbul via a coastal road described on internet as turning into a rally drive. They weren't wrong. For kilomtres we were driving along dirt tracks with a sheer drop to the sea below. It was worth it though, especially as we finally reach the village at the end and get the usual friendly waves and smiles from the locals.

The coast road

We stay on a campsite near the airport, 30m from a 24hr main road. Surprisingly we sleep relatively well for 5 nights since the relentless noise is so constant you eventually forget it's there. We wander around the city trying to avoid carpet sellers and kids shooting at balloons with ball barings - wouldn't you? We take in the major museums, including Topkapi which houses Moses' wooden staff (looked brand new to us).

There's Asia!

Just like Athens, Istanbul has a fantastic array of shops. We ventured into one that ONLY sold shoe laces. We picked up a bundle of thick lace and asked for 8 metres so that we could make 2 pairs. 'Sorry you can only buy the bundle, it is 93 metres long. Yours for 2 million lire - 2 GBP'. So if anyone has any ideas what we can do with the remaining 85 metres we would be very interested.

And finally we arrived in Bursa, the final port of call for this newsletter. This is a fantastic laid back town with a cracking vegetable market and street full of ironmongers and welders. Simon delights in getting our rear rack welded up - the weight of all our luggage is putting an immense strain on it. We weren't surprised to discover that this bodge was done free of charge and included a free glass of tea.

This is a classic example of the friendliness of the Turks. They really are a hospitable nation but also one that appears to have a massive divide between the rich/developed and poor. The fields are majorly cultivated by hand and donkey. Daily we drive past hundreds of men and women working the fields using ploughs and scythes, shepherds tending to their goats, sheep or cows following them wherever they go.

And really finally, I promise, onto our health. Many of you have been asking how sore our bums are. Surprisingly they are bearing up rather well, it's our backs, heads and Simon's sciatica that cause us most bother. Each morning I help him into his trousers and watch him crawl around the tent apparently trying to get his socks on (now that's one place I won't go near - his feet).

In our next episode you can hear about our first visit to a Turkish police station, the chief inspector really did have a lovely gun and how we in the middle of Turkey we meet up by chance with 2 groups of people that Simon knows.

And by then we might have made it through Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan ...

So here it is - the first of (hopefully) many mails from the adventuring duo. Not all of the mails will be as long as this one, especially when we're paying by the minute in cyber-cafes. We-ve chosen an appropriate namne for our joint email (sorebums (at) yahoo.co.uk) - Do you like it? Seemed to be fitting, as we'll be sitting on the bike for about 35,000 miles over the next 18 months. There will be some days when we just keep going and going for 10 or 12 hours, sitting on one buttock and then the other, to try and get some circulation going?

As our messages will be read by a range of people, there'll be bits that will be dull or impenetrable to some or all of you. Simon will waffle about bike bits and Georgie will describe the finer points of Turkish grammar - just skip the bits that are tedious.

So what is the trip, why are we doing it and what are the highlights we're looking forward to?

The Itinerary

We're planning to ride a motorbike to Japan and back, taking in about 25 countries on the way. We intend to be gone for about 18 months, from April 2002 to September 2003.

The Route

Here's a summary of where we plan to be and what we plan to see.

United Kingdom - we leave from Harwich to the Hook of Holland on 13th April 2002. My brother (Pad) is going to escort us down to the port to make sure we go!!

Belgium - we will shoot through Belgium as quickly as possible, shielding Georgie's eyes from the sight of Brussels, so as to avoid any psychotic flashbacks to her workdays. We may pop into the "Tesch" rally in Malmedy, where a bunch of overlanding bikers will be meeting to discuss "travelling round the world".

Germany - a planned stop in Heidelberg, for some beer and "spratzler" (cheesy noodles in the shape that the locals refer to as "little boys willies"). Then down to see my old boss at his house near Lake Konstanz - hopefully the apple orchards will be in bloom.

Switzerland - a little bit of twiddling will take us to meet Georgie's friend Rachel and her family in Basle. Are you getting the impression that we're in no hurry to get to the arduous parts of the trip? Then we'll see if we can find a relatively warm route through the Alps to Italy. From past experience it can be bloody cold in the Alps in spring, so Georgie will need the heated gloves and socks that she got at Christmas.

Italy - again, we'll see if we can stay warm through the northern parts as we head for a couple of nights in Siena - It's a wonderful place; too good to pass without a stop, and there is a book that Georgie needs to buy there (about the Palio horse race) that she's not been able to get anywhere else in Europe - one of many small targets to aim for. Then it's off to Bari or Brindisi on the Adriatic "heel" of Italy to catch a ferry to Greece.

Greece - we plan to arrive in Patras, which is only about 200kms from Athens. A quick scoot through to Athens should see us meeting one of Georgie's friends - Spyros. We'll probably spend 3 or 4 days in Athens, seeing the sights and adapting to the Mediterranean pace of life. Then a ferry from Athens to Izmir in Turkey, will help us to avoid 800 mile journey through the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; island hopping to Turkey or customs hassles and a long ride through Macedonia - easy choice!

Turkey - we'll be in Turkey for most of May 2002. Our original route assumed that we'd arrive near Istanbul, but that was before I got round to looking at a map. So at the moment we're still planning the exact route. However, we want to do some touristy stuff in Istanbul. Including having a Turkish bath - as Georgie wants to see be worked over by some hairy bruiser pretending to be a masseur, and she'd also like me to be clean for a change. We'll do some ancient sites and temples along the southern coast (and maybe a little sunbathing), a visit to Gallipoli, some old villages in the hills (including Cappadocia), and then head off towards the North West border of Turkey?

Georgia - we aim to be in Georgia at the end of May and stay for a couple of weeks. That way the mountain passes in the Georgian Caucuses will be opened after the winter snows. Georgia is supposed to be one of the most hospitable places on earth (that is, after Manchester), and they have fine red wine. There's a load of old villages to the north, in the mountains that border Russia. And of course there's Stalin's birthplace to look forward to.

Azerbaijan - there be oil in that there country. I'm not really sure what to expect in Azerbaijan; the only thing it seems to be famous for is the oil industry round the Caspian sea. So it could be a warm version of Aberdeen, or we might find it's a cultural delight in itself. I suspect that it will be the first "grim, former soviet state" that we get to, so we may be making a quick exit.

Turkmenistan - now the adventure is really hotting up. To get to Turkmenistan we'll have to get a ferry across the Caspian, as the southern road route takes you through Iran and the northern route is through Chechnya - "hmm, 2 tickets for the boat please". Turkmenistan will be a complete change. If you look at the place on the map, there is one main road that hugs the mountains along Turkmenistan's southern border, and north of that road is nothing but desert. It looks like a guide on a tour bus might say, "to your right you will see lush oases and thriving towns, and on your left is 1000kms of dust and rock". I wonder how far we'll dare to ride into the desert? Too far as usual I guess. The culture in this region will be seriously Islamic, and major things to see include the markets in Ashgarbat (wanna buy a camel, or a hat made from a camel?), and a place called Merv (near a place called Mary) which is complex of ghost cities, swallowed up by the desert - got to be a cool place to camp overnight!

Uzbekistan - I wonder if it going to be swarming with American squaddies (as a lot of supplies for Afghanistan were being shipped there last year)? This is where we'll really hit "the Silk Road" with places that leap off the page at you - Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara. There'll be lots of mosques and "caravanserais" (coach houses for camels). We'll also start to become experts on "tribal hats" by this point - each ethnic group has its own distinctive type of hat, made from different parts of various animals. I want to acquire a Kyrgyz hat, which are traditionally made from black sheepskin, with the fleece on the outside; the overall look of the hat is "Harry Enfield's scouser", with a dash of "afro". By this time we'll be getting fed up with eating mutton and chicken.

Kyrgyzstan - Have you ever heard of this place before? No? What better reason to visit? I first heard of it when I was working for Bestfoods in Moscow - we were shipping Hellmann's mayo by train to this far-off republic. They had to show me where it is on the map - sort of on the northwest corner of China. Kyrgyzstan is supposed to be really pretty, like the British Lake District, but with mountains the size of the Alps - a walker's paradise by all accounts - oh hell, we're going to have to get off our fat bums and do some walking. The capital of Kyrgyzstan (Bishkek) is also the place where the first of our "tenuous links" has to be met. Up to this point we'll have all of the visas we need in our pocket, but we need to get the visa for Kazakhstan in Bishkek. This should just be a matter of finding the agent that we've already arranged, and leaving them with the passports for a few days - here's hoping. If we can't get the visa, than we're buggered and a long way from home with no visas to get us across the various borders - anyone out there got a helicopter we can borrow?

Kazakhstan - where the Russians used to test nukes, launch Cosmonauts and plunder oil reserves. This is a big place with a lot of "bugger all" to see, so we're going to sneak into the east end, ride north for 3 days and get the hell out. We may be surprised at how beautiful the fields of wheat are on the steppe, or by what a buzzing place Almaty is - here's hoping. We've got the second of our tenuous links here - we'll get the double entry visa for Russia in Almaty, again through a prearranged agent. We live in hope - perhaps I'll have to be flattering about how nice Almaty is?

Russia - a place that's about as big as they come. It stretches across 11 time zones, although it cheats a bit 'cos it's stretching round the top of the earth!! We're going to cheat a bit too, as we're entering about half way across, near a place called Barnaul. Then it's north a bit and east a lot as we spend days riding through Siberia!! We'll be there in July, so it will be warm, it may be wet, and it will be bug-ridden. This is where our 2 fishing rods (one spinning and one fly) will come in handy. Siberia is full of streams which are full of trout - I reckon that by this time we'll be so sick of mutton that the prospect of a plump trout cooked over a campfire might be enough to make Georgie dive in and catch the beasts with her bare hands. A week or so of riding in Russia will take us to Irkutsk and Lake Baikal - a lake that holds 10% of the earth's fresh water, being 50 miles wide and 400 miles long. Tenuous link number 3 will see us obtaining visas for Mongolia.

Mongolia - should be one of the highlights of the trip, and we'll be there for most of August. The idea of going to "Outer Mongolia" has been floating round in my head since boyhood - it's just about the remotest place I'd like to end up in. We'll be there during the traditional "Naarden" season, when every village holds games of strength and skill; wrestling, archery, horsemanship, all bound up with ritual dances and drinking of fermented mares milk (maybe like a vodka yoghurt??). While we're in the country, we'll spend a little time in the capital Ulaan Baataar, and then ride a big loop to take in the rolling plains, hills and the Gobi desert. Apparently there are no fences in the whole country, and you can camp anywhere. And the road system and signage is so poor that the guidebooks give you GPS co-ordinates on the basis of ?find your way there and use the roads if there are any?.

Russia again - our final stretch in Russia will be a slow sprint to the eastern seaboard, as winter starts to close in during September. This bit will be fun as the road system does not run all the way across the country - there's a section known as the "Zilov Gap" where we don't want to end up. So we'll head to a place called Chita and load the bike onto the Trans-Siberian Railway for 1000km and trundle across the tundra that way. And thence to Vladivostok - supposedly the San Francisco of Russia maybe I'll take my rollerblades. Here we hope to find a ferry that can take us to Japan.

China - I hear you say "what happened to the plans to visit China". Well, China's still playing silly dictatorial games. The main pain for us would have been that we?d have had to hire a guide, and a car and a driver to shepherd us around everywhere. It would have cost us about £100 a day for this irritant, so we thought ?sod you, we'll take our money elsewhere?. Maybe one day we'll go, but not just yet.

Japan - decent food, new tyres, clean beds, civilisation. I think this is going to be a big, pleasant but expensive shock. Georgie's looking forward to unlimited supplies of sushi and rice and Simon's looking to temples, broad leaved woods (after all those Russian fir and birch forests) and a BMW dealership. We hope to pick up a package of guidebooks for the rest of the journey from contacts in Japan. Then it's a small matter of finding a shipping agent for the bike as the next stage of the journey will be by air (for us) and air or sea for the bike, to Thailand.

Thailand - will be our base for the winter of 2002/3, as we get the bike imported, and then plan trips to the surrounding countries. There'll be some lazing on beaches, riding (and maybe walking) through rainforests, visiting temples and hill tribes, cruising seedy bars and some more lazing on beaches. Sometime during the winter we hope to meet up with Georgie's mum and dad. I imagine that their luggage will be full of goodies that we've emailed them to bring. Maybe even a spare gearbox by that time!

Cambodia - we haven't read the guidebooks yet.

Laos - we havent read the guidebooks yet.

Vietnam - we haven't read the guidebooks yet, but we understand that the older locals speak French so maybe for once we'll be able to chat to someone other than the local youths.

India - as you'll have realised, the itinerary for the winter is vague - we'll sort that out once we've got across the 'stans and Russia. But we have a definite date to hit in India. One of our friends - Tony Colgan - is coming out to meet us in Calcutta. As you can infer from his name, Tony is Irish, very Irish, and can sniff out a good "craic". So we're going to lead the St Patrick's Day Parade in Calcutta. I can see my shaved head having a green shamrock painted on it - Tony, don't forget to bring out the white and green face paints. So we'll be in India by March, and my 40th birthday is in April, so we'll have to find somewhere special to spend that. So far the best idea seems to be to spend it sampling tea in Darjeeling - if anyone knows how much tea I drink, the meaning of this is obvious. From Calcutta (on the east coast of India) we'll probably head north towards the Himalayas, and hit Nepal in April.

Nepal - Buddhism and views. We-ll probably spend a month here, doing more low-land things than most tourists. The guide-books all talk of "a month's visit will allow you time for a 2 or 3 week trek in the mountains, and squeeze in the other bits around that". Sod off, we're not mountaineering for 3 weeks!!

India again - back to spicy food for a few months as we drift around seeing various parts of the country.

Pakistan - oh we do hope the place is open to tourists again. The main focus at the moment (because again we've not read the guidebooks) is the Karakouram region, up in the west end of the Himalayas (where the mountain K2 resides). The Karakouram Highway links Pakistan to China, and is supposed to be a top biking road - full-on gravel and views. Out with the heated gloves and up to 14,000 feet on the bike, through landslides and icy river crossings. And I'm sure there are a load of cultural and culinary highlights that we'll sample there too. However, if Pakistan is still kicking off in June/July 2003, then we have a cunning plan to avoid it. There are regular boat routes from Bombay to Iran, so we?ll just load the bike onto a pallet and ship it, and then fly ourselves over.

Iran - from memory seems like a scary place, but recent reports from other overlanders say that the Iranians are really hospitable and friendly people (but without the red wine the Georgians have). We think we can get visas for a couple of weeks in Iran, so we can have some desert adventures in the time it takes to cross the country (another big place). One delight will be the clothing for Georgie. We've seen photos of other western women crossing Iran on bikes wearing long, black flowing gowns and black hoods. So we plan to buy a similar outfit for Georgie in Pakistan and have her wear it in Iran. She might also have to ride side-saddle (or maybe not!!)

Turkey and home again - that piece of elastic that attaches us to home will be getting pretty tight by now and the pull will be almost unbearable. However, there will be a few more sights in Turkey to see, including Mount Ararat and the Hittite villages around Ankara. We're not clear on the route we'll take on the way home. Through the Ukraine and Poland would be cool - who knows.

Heavens, this entry is almost as long as the journey - by the time you've read it all we'll be half-way home.

The Gear

Half the readers can skip this bit!!

We're going on a 1990 BMW R100GS. It's got 40,000miles on the clock at the moment. The shaft has been changed about 5,000 miles ago, as a preventative measure. Ohlins shock. 43 litre Acerbis tank. Keihan Y-piece. CBR600 silencer attached low. Recently replaced diode board. Givi screen. High output regulator. Garmin 12XL GPS. Heated grips. 20 watt pilot bulb. LED additional light array for tail and stop lights. Avon Distanzia tyres (to start with) - not taking any spare tyres - we'll see what providence supplies en route. K-bike coil.

Home-made fibreglass panniers, holding about 105 litres - the aluminium lids are about 5 inches deep, so they double up as washing up bowls and seats. Home-made pannier racks that angle in at the bottom to reduce the width across the bottom of the panniers. Aerostich tank panniers. Small Lowe-Pro rucksack converted to a tank-bag. Ortleib map-case attached to the tank-bag. Lowe-pro 90 litre sack on the back for light bulky stuff that can get a bit wet.

Wild Country Hyperspace 3 man tent (very much luxury!!). Ajungalak sleeping bags. Thermarest mattresses. 17 year old Peak 1 petrol stove, with spare generators.

Lonely Planet guide-books all the way.

Visas through Travcour (Amanda - travcour@cableinet.co.uk) and Alpha-Omega (EverlinaF@alphaomega-travel.com)

How to contact us

The wonder of modern telecoms is upon us. From my past experience in Former Soviet countries, the landline systems are impossible to use and unreliable. I guess this will be the same in most of the places we're going to. However, the mobile, satellite and internet telecoms companies have set-up shop EVERYWHERE. I have been amazed at how easy it has been to communicate by email with agents in remote countries. So here is the plan for keeping in touch with us?..

We'll be taking my mobile phone, which I'll keep charged up from the bike's battery. We'll turn it on everyday (when we're in range of civilisation) so that we can pick up and send text messages. This is a nice, cheap and reliable way to contact us. If you call us on the mobile, 99% of the time you?ll get the message service, and it will cost us a fortune to pick up the message you leave. If you manage to get us when the phone is on, it won't cost you any more than if you were calling us on our mobile in the UK, but it will cost us a huge amount in roaming fees. So

TEXT MESSAGES = GOOD
MOBILE PHONE CALLS = EMERGENCY ONLY

We'll be picking up and replying to emails when we can - generally when we're in large cities for a couple of days. Again there are some limits to what we can do. Please DO NOT send any large files to our email address as the Yahoo system limits our total mailbox size to 6MB.

NO PHOTOS
NO ANIMATED JOKES

If someone fills up the mailbox and we can't receive an important message (such as a visa invitation or instructions on how to fix the bike!!!!) I'll, I'll.. well you get the idea.

So if you want to contact us (with all our regulations!) the contact details are:

Mobile phone 07770 638 611 (+44 7770 638 611 outside the UK)
Email address sorebums (at) yahoo.co.uk

Ok that's it for now. I'll get a nervous Georgie to write next time.

Simon (and Georgie)