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Our path
Click picture to download Google Earth kmz file !
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Video #4 - Struggling through the sand
This was back in Uzbekistan... unlikely to be able to post more of these videos until the end of the trip but we will have plenty in stock for those who are interested to watch a few on our return.
Btw - among the biker/traveller community reading this blog: if you have a good tip on how to ship our bikes from Mongolia back to Europe or HongKong, please shout ! ideally post a comment on the blog with your email details - Thx !
Practical details
A quick one to let you know some practical details and to answer some comments:
- Amy, we do shower now and then and with real shampoo that I bought before leaving (and there still is some in the bottle)...shows you how often this is... We do brush our teeths everyday though.
- A big thank you to Cyril for posting our tracks so that all can follow our route.
Today we will be leaving Almaty to drive North in the steppe/desert. Before we do that though, I will send home a pack of things that we won't need (air filter, oil filter, some other stuff, books etc...)
See you soon and don't stress out in these markets.
- Amy, we do shower now and then and with real shampoo that I bought before leaving (and there still is some in the bottle)...shows you how often this is... We do brush our teeths everyday though.
- A big thank you to Cyril for posting our tracks so that all can follow our route.
Today we will be leaving Almaty to drive North in the steppe/desert. Before we do that though, I will send home a pack of things that we won't need (air filter, oil filter, some other stuff, books etc...)
See you soon and don't stress out in these markets.
Almaty
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.
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.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Kazakhstan - Borat here we are !
We entered Kazakhstan late yesterady evening after what was our most challenging riding day so far.
It all started very nicely when we left Karakol in the morning to explore the nice landscapes around - the best weather conditions we had so far in Kyrgyzstan, amazing scenery and very decent roads. But all started to go bad when we decided to take the San Tash mountain pass to reach the Kazakh border. It was only about 2,200m high but the road was in very poor conditions and... still unopened since the winter. Patch of ice, mud and finally a lot of snow on the road. We reluctently had to go back only 500m away from reaching a bigger track (see pictures below).
This forced us to a 150km ride around the Karkara valley on pretty poor roads and we reached the border only by night fall (and temperatures of -4C). Once the border crossed, it was already dark and we had to stop and camp by the side of the road and suffered a bit from the cold during the night...
But in Kazakhstan so far - all is good. Warm temperature, very nice scenery of the Charyn valley and... high speed internet in Almaty. We passed below 1,500m for the first time in about 10 days and enjoyed more than 15 degrees today.
It all started very nicely when we left Karakol in the morning to explore the nice landscapes around - the best weather conditions we had so far in Kyrgyzstan, amazing scenery and very decent roads. But all started to go bad when we decided to take the San Tash mountain pass to reach the Kazakh border. It was only about 2,200m high but the road was in very poor conditions and... still unopened since the winter. Patch of ice, mud and finally a lot of snow on the road. We reluctently had to go back only 500m away from reaching a bigger track (see pictures below).
This forced us to a 150km ride around the Karkara valley on pretty poor roads and we reached the border only by night fall (and temperatures of -4C). Once the border crossed, it was already dark and we had to stop and camp by the side of the road and suffered a bit from the cold during the night...
But in Kazakhstan so far - all is good. Warm temperature, very nice scenery of the Charyn valley and... high speed internet in Almaty. We passed below 1,500m for the first time in about 10 days and enjoyed more than 15 degrees today.
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