Two trips to Central Asia and no problems with theft anywhere. We tried to find secured parking for the bikes at night but often ended up just parking in front of the lodging.

There was one place, Beyneu, Kazakhstan, a frontier border town where 'the vultures' did descend. My partner went inside the railway hotel to arrange for a room and I was out watching the bikes. Pretty soon there were at least a dozen grown men, a couple of them drunk, pawing at things. My partner, who was taking every opportunity to practice his Russian, was taking his time inside, chatting up the clerk.

Meanwhile, one the men started to mount my bike. I put a stop to that and when I turned around, I saw another had picked up my partner's helmet and gloves and was wearing them around, showing them to the rest of the group. GPS's, luggage straps, water bottles, and windshields were all poked and stroked, and the group would occasionally break into laughter.

Finally, my partner returned, and we took everything off the bikes and hauled it inside. The odd thing is: the whole time, there was never any bad feeling from the men. They were just curious, and didn't seem to have the same boundaries for interacting with other's property that I am used to. Plus they were bored and unoccupied (no work?) and just looking to be entertained. No harm was done.

We had to leave the bikes, forks locked and covered, but unattended out front there over night, but nothing was disturbed when we got out in the morning.

Of all the places, we stopped that was the only one where anything at all out of the ordinary happened. Just take ordinary precautions, I think.

.............shu