Today was a good day as we had a day with little to no riding in Almaty.
A little since we had to go to get Cyril's motorbike to Leonid (who owns a bike shop) in order to get it serviced and this involved coping with Almaty's horrible traffic. We will get it back tomorrow noon. In the meantime, I got my bike cleaned (it really needed it), checked the air filter (still in very good condition) and straightened my boxes (since I fell so many times in the snow in the Karakara valley). Almaty is a very pleasant BIG city and it feels good to be such a modern place. Quite unusual as well after so much time in the wilderness.
We met David Berghof, in charge of Stantours. A really good guy with quite a lot of knowledge on the region and who helped us with some visas and info. We had a chat on our likelyhood on entering China with our bikes and David's answer was: No way they let you in, in particular not in current times! Hmmmm, that obviously isn't good news, so we will still try it in Mongolia and if they indeed don't let us in, we will use Plan B or Plan C. This involves either going to Russia or shipping the bikes from Mongolia and then doing our china trip with buses or trains. Anyhow, let's cross the bridge when we get there.
For the bikers who watch this blog, we've posted the contact details of Leonid in the Kazakh photo album. I will take my GPS with me tomorrow and post the coordinates as well.
We should be off and roling again tomorrow afternoon towards the north of Kazakhstan.
This is the travelblog of Cyril Ducau and Niccolo Manno on their adventure from London (Cyril), Munich (Niccolo) to Hong Kong on motorbikes.
It took us short of 3 months to do 20,000km on bikes, trains and planes. We crossed the following countries together:
Austria - Italy - Slovenia - Croatia - Serbia - Bulgaria - Turkey - Georgia - Azerbaijan - Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan - Kyrgyzstan - Kazakhstan - Russia - Mongolia - China - Hong Kong
On this site you will find some info on both of us, our bikes, some of our friendly helpers in Hong Kong and London and loads of pictures on our trip.
Austria - Italy - Slovenia - Croatia - Serbia - Bulgaria - Turkey - Georgia - Azerbaijan - Turkmenistan - Uzbekistan - Kyrgyzstan - Kazakhstan - Russia - Mongolia - China - Hong Kong
On this site you will find some info on both of us, our bikes, some of our friendly helpers in Hong Kong and London and loads of pictures on our trip.
Latest top picture
Thanks for watching our blog - Enjoy as we did it!
Our path
Click picture to download Google Earth kmz file !
Monday, April 21, 2008
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A BIG THANK YOU TO:
Cyril:
- Maddy, the head of our "London HQ", special technical and weather advisor, and because she is simply the best and has been so supportive over the last few months
- My family and friends for their understanding and moral support
- Robert Roe (alias Bob) from Motoselect Franham for preparing the bike with such good care
- Anastasia from thevisacompany for helping me deal with so much red tape
- Claudio von Planta for sharing his valuable experience on Long-way Round and Long-way Down and answering so many of our questions
- Ronnie, Emmanuel and Benjamin for their enthusiast support and precious advise
- The Techtransalp team for their excellent website and advertising our adventure
Niccolo:
- clearly Manon as she has always been supportive of this trip even though this means 3 months without me
- My mother for not giving up on me, for receiving all the parcels at home in Austria and for not freaking out!
- Amy and Steve for pushing over several months to keep focus on the organisation
- Xavier, for trusting me to be in France in June and be his best man at his wedding
- Cyril, for posting our tracks on the blog
- Louis, for looking into getting Continental to sponsor us
- Romain, for getting us the Turkmen visas
- My friends for all telling me "DO IT"!
- Claudio von Planta, Sambor and Maciej for sharing their great experiences on their numerous motorbike trips
- Henry, Yau and Tan from BMW HK for their support with the bike, the preparation and the bike sale
- Yasser, Mark, Michael and Christoph from BMW Munich for their help with all the accessories and the last minute bike purchase
- Bertrand and Alice for your help with the tyres in Almaty
- Maddy, the head of our "London HQ", special technical and weather advisor, and because she is simply the best and has been so supportive over the last few months
- My family and friends for their understanding and moral support
- Robert Roe (alias Bob) from Motoselect Franham for preparing the bike with such good care
- Anastasia from thevisacompany for helping me deal with so much red tape
- Claudio von Planta for sharing his valuable experience on Long-way Round and Long-way Down and answering so many of our questions
- Ronnie, Emmanuel and Benjamin for their enthusiast support and precious advise
- The Techtransalp team for their excellent website and advertising our adventure
Niccolo:
- clearly Manon as she has always been supportive of this trip even though this means 3 months without me
- My mother for not giving up on me, for receiving all the parcels at home in Austria and for not freaking out!
- Amy and Steve for pushing over several months to keep focus on the organisation
- Xavier, for trusting me to be in France in June and be his best man at his wedding
- Cyril, for posting our tracks on the blog
- Louis, for looking into getting Continental to sponsor us
- Romain, for getting us the Turkmen visas
- My friends for all telling me "DO IT"!
- Claudio von Planta, Sambor and Maciej for sharing their great experiences on their numerous motorbike trips
- Henry, Yau and Tan from BMW HK for their support with the bike, the preparation and the bike sale
- Yasser, Mark, Michael and Christoph from BMW Munich for their help with all the accessories and the last minute bike purchase
- Bertrand and Alice for your help with the tyres in Almaty
4 comments:
you know, i am curious to know how often you guys actually take real showers. how often to you shampoo your hair?? do you brush your teeth every day? dont lie.
Salut Nicco,
Je voulais te passer un petit bonjour alors que j'ai été il y a peu dans un de tes pays : je suis allée faire un tour à Trévise et Parma ou du moins dans des petits bleds autour, pour aller me gaver de parmesan, mozza et huile d'olive...passage éclair mais très sympa!
Je te remercie d'avance de permettre à Manon de pouvoir se faire une petit A/R en France et profiter d'elle pour notre mariage avec Tommi!
Je vois qu'effectivement ça doit pas être les douches qui vont vous user la peau...
à noter que la barbe vous vieillis un peu ;-P
Bonne continuation et bravo pour les photos!
biz
audette
We have to be careful about ask for camping in the top, because I've seen a lot of persons that forget this, and for Indians that is so disrespectful.
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