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The way back

Hah! We bet you didn’t expect a blog post anymore!

Tom’s finally gotten around to writing the last one, so congrats for still checking on us! Or more likely, for receiving an update email…

While we took notes of what we encountered on our way back to Europe, most of the time was spent driving. So this post might get a bit boring. It’ll be more of a log really, a diary for us to remember the long road home.

Let’s see, where did we leave you last time? We were still in Mongolia (which seems like eons ago now…), getting ready to start the long ride home…

Friday, the 27th of July: UB

We spent the day in UB, mostly shopping for souvenirs. There was also a new dinosaur museum, which Tom thoroughly enjoyed. Along the way we also visited the national Mongolian museum, which shed some more light on the fascinating history of this country.


(Wafa’s best impression of a dinosaur.)

(Now we know where Star Wars found their inspiration.)

 

Saturday, the 28th of July: UB – Sukhbaatar (350km)

After saying goodbye to the nice people in the hostel (most importantly Rocky, our guide for our Mongolian trip, and Jamie, friendly Dutch fellow-traveler), we got on the road. Drove all the way to the Mongolian-Russian border, to a town called Sukhbaatar. On the way we visited a traditional bow ‘factory’, which consisted of a guy and his workshop. Very artisanal indeed.

Sukhbaatar itself is hardly worth mentioning. Bland little town, with a hotel that manages to be relatively new and rundown at the same time. Quite the feat.

 

Sunday, the 29th of July: Sukhbaatar – Lake Baikal (500km)

Our second Russian transit visa started on Sunday, so we headed to the border and got in line. While we crossed the Mongolian part relatively easy, the Russians were a lot more thorough. Had to unpack most of our stuff.

We passed the last ‘Asian’ town on our way to Lake Baikal, Ulan-Ude. In hindsight, it was really strange to notice the division between ‘Asian’ and ‘European’ people: Mongolia fully Asian, as soon as you cross the border there’s a mix, and by the time you get to Lake Baikal, it’s like you’re in Europe: only ethnic Russians to be found. If you look at the map, that’s way to the east of where we expected Caucasian people to be the standard! As we would learn on the way, Russian explorers colonized this stretch of Siberia already in the 17th and 18th century, so it’s thoroughly Russian. Unlike Kazakhstan for example, which was only added to the Russian imperial empire in the early 19th century.

While driving on the shores of Lake Baikal, we also tried the local delicacy of Omul. This is a smoked fish, a cousin of our salmon, which is deliciously tender and juicy… Tom’s salivating again just by writing this down 🙂

Our hotel was nice, but the price started feeling European again, which was less nice. Built like a giant log cabin, we had some nice borscht and beers. Omnomnom.

 

Monday, the 30th of July: Lake Baikal – Irkutsk (200km)

Driving on windy roads bordering the lake, it took us 3 hours to arrive in Irkutsk. We quickly found the local Suzuki dealer, which changed our shock absorbers for a measly 70€. At this point, Suzy had to have been in better shape than when we had left Belgium. Or so we thought…


(The new absorbers were made in Belgium! Kinda funny, exported to Russia, we imported them back to Belgium…)

By the time the Suzuki guys got finished, it was late afternoon, and we checked into our hostel in the centre of the city. Irkutsk is a pleasant place for an evening stroll, eating some good omul and buying Siberian honey.

 

Tuesday, the 31st of July: Irkutsk – Tayshet (650km)

Nothing to report. Lots of driving. We checked into a roadside motel and had an instant noodle dinner. The Siberian landscapes were somewhat hypnotizing though: endless shrubbery, pine forests and good roads (thankfully). More villages along the way than we had expected, too.


(Tom’s optimistic attempts at driveby photography mostly resulted in pictures of Siberian gates.)

 

Wednesday, the 1st of August: Tayshet – Mariinsk (770km)

Again, nothing to report. Even more driving. Checked into a nice little hotel in a small city. Had takeaway dinner.

 

Thursday, the 2nd of August: Mariinsk – Novosibirsk (430km)

While Novosibirsk is the 3rd city of Russia, we mostly found it very bland. We do remember having some very good food in the Beerman restaurant though (located in the local Hilton ^^). Tom enjoyed a half liter Affligem beer as well. Finally back to civilization, indeed!

 

Friday, the 3rd of August: Novosibirsk – Omsk (650km)

We enjoyed Omsk more than we had Novosibirsk. Pleasant city, dating back to the early 18th century, with some sort of festival going on. Good beer, good noodles and a brand new hostel.

 

Saturday, the 4th of August: Omsk – Lake Burabay (450km)

This was the last day of our second Russian transit visa, so we crossed into Kazakhstan again, through what had to have been one of the easiest crossings of the whole trip. Russia and Kazakhstan have some sort of customs union thing going on, so crossing over we were almost waved through. On the Kazakh side of the border, Maps.me gave us the option of a shortcut again, which we happily followed. After all, we were in the civilized world again, how bad could it be?

… Pretty bad, as it turned out. As we passed endless stretches of farmland, the road started degrading until it turned into little more than a cart track. Thankfully, not too many potholes (we’d had enough of those for a lifetime). We arrived at our destination, lake Burabay, around 6 in the evening. Big surprise though: this turned out to be one of the major tourist destinations in all of the glorious nation of Kazakhstan. On a Saturday evening in summer. So finding a place to sleep turned out to be very difficult indeed. After a very, very frustrating evening (during which we asked for room prices in a 5 star hotel casino (“400€ for one night? Such a shame, just above our budget…”) and considered camping next to the lake, surrounded by Siberian killer mosquitoes and drunk Russians) we finally found a place to sleep at 9.30PM. A crappy room and wedding party music blaring from upstairs. We’d had better nights… :p

 

Sunday, the 5th of August: Lake Burabay – Astana (250km)

After a week of almost nonstop driving, we wanted to stretch our legs a bit, so we decided to climb one of the hills next to the lake. The hill turned out to be rather steep and slippery though, so we turned back after half an hour. We were still a bunch of lazy tourists, after all!

After a refreshing swim in the lake, we headed to Astana. The road turned out to be some of the nicest highway since… Iran, probably? Without Iranian madmen driving on it, too!

Arriving in Astana in later afternoon, we hit up the local ATM and found ourselves a delicious Uzbek restaurant. Giant dishes of horsemeat plov and chicken lachman… Mmmm…


(Also: interesting interior design.)

 

Monday, the 6th of August: Astana

On our first day off since UB, we rented some bikes and did a little tour of the city. We went to the local mall (shaped like a giant yurt) and drove over the central Astana boulevard. While the architecture in this city was certainly… interesting, it all felt very artificial. Until 1997, Astana was a provincial backwater, with not even 100 000 residents. That year, however, the president of Kazakhstan decided to make Astana his new capital (mostly in a bid to keep the ethnic Russians in Kazakhstan from seceding, apparently). Combined with the oil dollars that started flowing in, Astana now resembles some sort of Dubai in the middle of the steppe. Or so we think, having never actually been to Dubai…
 

 

Tuesday, the 7th of August: Astana

We slept late and went for lunch in a nearby Asian fusion restaurant. Very nice indeed. Afterwards, we went to the Russian embassy to arrange our third (and final) Russian transit visa. The embassy lady was not very friendly, however. We had asked for 9 days to do our last transit, as we hoped to see a bit of Moscow and St-Petersburg along the way. She was adamant that we could only get 6 days, however, considering the distance we would travel. Citing car problems (which would turn out to be all too real), we tried to persuade her to give us a bit more. She got a bit annoyed with us though, saying ‘If I want visa in Europe, also problem!’. Whatever, we’d just asked nicely for it, no need to get all offensive.

We had dinner in the same Asian fusion restaurant, which also served some nice (and cheap) cocktails!

 

Wednesday, the 8th of August: Astana – Oktyabrskoe (500km)

We were told we could pick up our Russian visa at noon, at which point we were pleasantly surprised we could stay in Russian 9 days anyway. Thank you, strangely passive aggressive embassy lady!

We still had about 2000km to travel in Kazakhstan, so we got on the road quickly. Making good time (no more shortcuts from here on out…), we arrived at a roadside motel in the evening.

Driving through this part of the world was a challenge in itself: we’d driven through deserts before, but these were limited in scope, you might say. A few hundred kilometers and you’re through them. The next couple of days were something else though: landscapes that were completely empty, but for the steppe and the skies, thousands of kms on end.

 

Thursday, the 9th of August: Oktyabrskoe – Qarabutaq (760km)

Drive, drive, drive. From 9AM to 6PM. Roadside motel.

 

Friday, the 10th of August: Qarabutaq – Aktobe (225km)

Short drive. Spent the rest of the day resting. Nothing much to do in Aktobe.

 

Saturday, the 11th of August: Aktobe – Uralsk (475km)

Very boring drive. We stayed in a local DAF truck center, which had a hotel attached to it (?).

 

Sunday, the 12th of August: Uralsk

We had the day off in Uralsk, as our Russian visa only started on the 13th. We slept late and wanted to go to the lake, but when we got to the car, we noticed oil leaking from underneath it… Turned out to be a good choice to have a safety margin for our Russian visa. We found a local car shop (open on Sundays!) and they inspected the car. While they found out there was a problem between the engine block and the crank shaft, causing oil to spill, they probably also fucked up the water pump, somehow. As coolant started leaking on the floor while Suzy was hanging in the air. Lucky for us, they had all the necessary parts… We could hardly make a scene, as we still needed them to fix Suzy up, but it felt rather bitter having to pay for something they probably caused.

 

Monday, the 13th of August: Uralsk

We had hoped to cross the border, but as noon turned into dusk, we were still waiting for Suzy to be fixed. Replacing the rubber ring in the crankshaft necessitated taking off the whole thing, which made for some pretty cool pictures though:

Finally, at 6.30PM, we got Suzy back. As it was too late to cross over now, we found another place to stay. Cheap, but rather smelly apartment…

 

Tuesday, the 14th of August: Uralsk – Penza (700km)

We crossed the border early in the morning, so we could make up for lost time the day before. While waiting at the border, Tom noticed some oil was still leaking. It seemed to be less than before, so we drove on to Samara, where we had a local Suzuki dealer have a look. He told us the Uralsk guys appeared to have done a pretty bad job replacing the rubber band… Fuck it! They couldn’t replace it though, as they would have to order the parts we needed. Told us to check the oil level regularly while driving.

We made it all the way to Penza, which meant that we crossed two time zones in one day, by car!

 

Wednesday, the 15th of August: Penza – Moscow (650km)

While leaving Penza, we noticed there was now also an engine belt squeaking its head off. What the flying f*ck. Shit just kept piling up :’). At this point, we would have been happy if we’d just made it back to Europe. Our travel insurance covered car breakdowns all over Europe, which was now just over 1000 km away…

We later learned that squeaky belts are no problem onto themselves, though. Being the mechanical novices we are, we didn’t know this, so it did no one’s nerves any good.

When we arrived in Moscow, it had started raining. And by raining, I mean flooded-streets-and-hardly-see-anything raining. By the time we got to the city center (quite some traffic jams) and checked into our hostel, the evening dinner we had been looking forward to, almost turned into a midnight snack.  But we had made it! Moscow! Europe! Civilization! Transportation in case of car breakdowns!


(Crazy light at dusk.)

 

Thursday, the 16th of August: Moscow

We got feedback from the Uralsk car shop, and they told us it was quite normal there was still some oil leaking. It should eventually stop. A quick check underneath Suzy seemed to confirm this. The squeaky belt had turned into full-on cat strangling at this point though :’).

Taking another day of from driving, we visited the highlights of the city. The Red Square, St  Basil Cathedral, a walk around the Gum shopping mall, a tour of the nicest subway stations… After a couple of weeks cooped up in the car, our legs started seriously hurting by the end of the day.


(Russians have a thing for naked saints, apparently.)
  
(The GUM shopping mall used to be a Soviet department store, but is now occupied by all sorts of luxury brands.)
(Nice touch: the marble on the walls matches the meat in the store!)
 

 

Friday, the 17th of August: Moscow  – Ushaki (650km)

Before noon, we took our time to visit the Kremlin proper. The cathedrals, the Diamond Fund (some of the largest diamonds of the Imperial collection!)… All very impressive. All in all, we were rather pleasantly surprised by Moscow (and Russia in general, to be honest): especially Tom expected a more depressing, unfriendly city and country. But it turned out that, at least in summer, Russia and Moscow are really beautiful and, at times, interesting places to visit.

We left the city around 1PM and drove all the way to St-Petersburg, sleeping in a little town with a quaint blue church some 50kms outside of the city.

 

Saturday, the 18th of August: Ushaki – St Petersburg (50km)

We were immediately struck by the difference between Moscow and St-Petersburg: while Moscow has its historic core, the rest of the town center is mostly new to brand new buildings. St-Petersburg on the other hand, has retained more of its original character. We quickly planned out a walking tour. This took us from the Fabergé Museum (Fabergé eggs!), to the Kazan Cathedral (huge!), the Church on Spilled Blood (mosaics!), the Winter Palace (green!), the statue of Peter the Great (statuesque!) and St Isaac’s Cathedral (also huge!).

   
(At the end of the day, Tom’s shoes looked like this.)

After an exhausting day, we booked tickets for the Swan Lake ballet in the Mariinsky Theatre on Monday (because, when in St-Petersburg…) and went looking for dinner. We wound up in the Soviet Café, which aimed to recreate the Soviet era atmosphere. We sincerely doubt many people had such excellent food in those troubled times, though; delicious borscht, herring and beet salad, dumplings and many others found their way into our thankful bellies…

 

Sunday, the 19th of August: St Petersburg

We basically spent the whole day in the Hermitage. Probably second only to the British Museum and the Louvre in the breadth and depth of its collections, we saw many items we recognized from cultures encountered on our travels: Sassanid (Iranian) silverware, Soghdian wall paintings, Mongolian religious artefacts… Lovely!


(Creepy Siberian dead people…)
  
(This Qajar era painting of an Iranian woman is a bit less modest than what we saw in Iran…)

 

Monday, the 20th of August: St Petersburg

On our last day off without any driving, we slept late and afterwards headed out to see the Peter & Paul fortress, the traditional military bulwark of the city. While it certainly has its merits (the church contains the graves off all Russian tsars since Peter the Great, including the murdered family of Nicholas II), it lacked the kind of grandiose highlights or exhibits we’d come to expect of St-Petersburg.


(There was also a space museum, with a used Soyuz module! Almost as awesome as Tom’s icecream!)

In the evening we went to the Mariinsky Theatre to see the Swan Lake. While Wafa thoroughly enjoyed her night out, Tom quickly gave up on ever finding the appeal in a bunch of tight-clad men and women jumping around on a stage. Yes, there were some nice or even beautiful scenes. But all in all, 3 hours is way too long to be watching what is basically a silent puppet show.

 

Tuesday, the 21st of August: St-Petersburg – Tartu (350km)

On our final day in Russia, we wanted to visit Catherine the Great’s palace outside St-Petersburg. When we got there though, it was closed for the day :-/ Should’ve looked it up first, I guess. But really, who closes their museum on a Tuesday?

Lucky for us, there was also the Peterhof nearby, which is basically the palace of Peter the Great. Apparently you can’t visit it on the inside though, which (again) we didn’t know. As it was a very rainy day, we didn’t feel much like strolling around the gardens.

We left early for Estonia. Which was  a good call, as the lines to cross the border stretched way back. The crossing itself went fast (Estonians seemed quite surprised to see a Belgian passport though). And that was it! We were back in the EU! Last real border crossing of the whole trip!

 

Wednesday, the 22nd of August: Tartu – Riga (250km)

Most unnoticeable border crossing of the whole trip (in the middle of a village). Visit Riga. Nice old town. Just strolling around, drinking, eating…

 

Thursday, the 23rd of August: Riga – Bialystok (500km)

Drive from Riga to Kaunas (Lithuania). Spend a couple of hours. Drive on to Bialystok (Poland). Last time changing money (bloody Poles and their Zlotys…).

 

Friday, the 24th of August: Bialystok – Warsaw (300km)

Go to Bialowieza forest. National park closed without guide :(. Stroll through not national park. See bison in reserve.

Drive on towards Warsaw. Find nice motel just past the city. Last dinner is pizza and grilled pork neck… mmm…

 

Saturday, the 25th of August: Warsaw – Home (1250km)

Idea is to drive 700 km to Magdenburg, Germany. Once we pass Berlin (around 2 PM), we decide fuck it, drive on to Belgium. After a whole day of driving (9AM-10.30PM) and 1250 km, we arrive in Belgium!

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Russia and Mongolia – Nomadic travelling

Warning: monster post

Thursday, the 5th of July

Our previous post left off while we were waiting for Suzy to be fixed in Oskemen, Kazakhstan. As we had hoped, work on Suzy was finished around 5.30PM. Because they had replaced the ball joints, we still needed to get the front wheels aligned again in another shop across town. So we finally left Oskemen around 6.30PM. We immediately felt the difference: steering felt more rigid again. Before, Suzy had felt a bit shaky on her wheels in the corners. So we were quite happy, driving through the Kazakhstan countryside during the golden hour 🙂 . In the end, we decided not to cross over to Russia straight away, but instead get a hotel right before the border, in Shemonaika. We mostly saw ethnic Russians here (being close to the Russian border), but people were really nice and friendly (not the typical rude behavior we expected, based on experiences with Russian tourists abroad).

 

Friday, the 6th of July

As we explained earlier, our transit visa for Russia started on the 5th, running to the 8th. Having already lost a day, of course we got under way quickly on Friday, at 11AM 🙂 . A few kilometers down the road we came across the border post. Or more correctly, the traffic jam leading to it… Long story short, we only crossed into Russia at 3PM!

We wanted to drive all the way to Barnaul, the only big city in the region, so 6 hours and 500 km later, we pulled over near guest house Izba. Russian roads were surprisingly good, not at all what we expected from Siberia! We found a ‘French’ restaurant near to the guest house, which served decent seafood pasta and fish soup (even while 1000s of km from any ocean).


(Good roads and lots and lots of agriculture. Just endless fields.)

When we got back to our guest house, our fellow guests had some bad news: apparently the Russian-Mongolian border was supposed to be closed in the weekend. Saturday and Sunday. FUUUCK! Some frantic googling later, we gathered that it was only closed on Sundays. Still, that left us in a conundrum: do we speed to the border the next day, or just risk overstaying our visa and crossing only on Monday (apparently the repercussions include a fine and a lot of hassle)? In the end, we decided to go with the first option. So we quickly went to bed at 12 (and missed the epic Belgium-Brazil game… 🙁 ), and…

 

Saturday, the 7th of July

… Got up again at 5AM. Google Maps told us it would be a 10 hour drive to the border (750 km), so we could get there at 3PM. The border was only open until 6PM, so that didn’t leave a lot of margin. We started driving through misty Siberian fields, with the sun rising slowly. Luckily the Russian roads kept being awesome, so we made good time. Around the town of Byisk though, our windshield got hit twice by pebbles from the car in front of us. One of the ‘stars’ turned into a big nasty crack down the windshield, so that needs replacement… We drove on through the Altai mountain region, which has lush green mountains, and nice windy roads to speed down. No stopping for breakfast or lunch, we just ate cookies along the way. Only stop twice for fuel breaks. In the end we make it to the border at 3PM, exactly as predicted by Google Maps. We made it! And also spent just 24 hours in Russia (doing 1250km in the meantime)! But then the waiting starts…


(Russian Altai.)

In the end, it took us 5 hours to cross into Mongolia, which was apparently quite fast. We heard from others it took them 8-9 hours. While waiting, Tom noticed the rubber on one of the new ball joints had been almost completely ripped off already. Not looking good! So when we finally were going through Mongolian customs (at around 8PM), both of us are quite on edge. When we get pulled into an immigration office, because of ‘small problem with visa’ we are just about to cry. Long day, lots of misfortune, lots of waiting, no food… It’s getting to us!


(Rubberless versus normal ball joint.)

The problem with the visa turns out to be a wrong date somewhere. It says we can enter Mongolia until the 20th of September (3 months after we applied for the visa), while it should be the 19th. We try to explain that we’re crossing now, on the 7th of July, so it doesn’t matter. ‘No no, this is incorrect, needs to be changed’. What the fuck? In the end, the correction consists of just scrapping the wrong date with a pen in our passports, then writing ‘19’ instead. Yeah… That looks official?

Whatever, by 8.30PM we’re finally across the border, only 100km to go to Olgii, where we want to spend the night. We drive carefully over part paved/unpaved roads, finally winding down for the night in a ger/yurt camp in the middle of the city. We meet Jamie again, the Dutch guy we met before in Bishkek, and have a beer to decompress. Whatever the problems with the car, we’ll try to get things fixed the day after…


(Typical Mongolian road. If you look closely, you can see the ‘washboard’: the road surface has small waves in it, which cause the car to vibrate violently. It’s best to drive fast over it, so that you kind of ‘fly’ over the waves.)

 

Sunday, the 8th of July

Early next day, we get feedback from the car shop in Oskemen that the ball joint should be ok to drive on all the way to UB (Ulaanbaatar). Good news indeed. We’d like a second opinion though, so we try to arrange a mechanic through our ger camp. As he never shows up, Tom takes the car to a nearby car shop to let them have a look.

With minimal Russian and lots of gesturing, we ask the mechanics if they think it should be ok to drive Suzy all the way to UB. And here we get to know a Mongolian custom we would run into lots of times: a lot of Mongolians will, if they can’t help you, simply say ‘no’ and then start ignoring you. Very frustrating if you’re trying to get some clarification!

We try to do some more planning for Mongolia, but it’s very difficult as we don’t know what we can or can’t do with Suzy. Very frustrating day indeed.

 

Monday, the 9th of July

Early in the morning, the mechanic we asked for in the ger camp finally shows up. He confirms it should be ok to drive to UB with the rubberless ball joint, so that’s one worry less. Afterwards we get to the practical stuff: get a Mongolian SIM card, get some cash and a map of Mongolia. Wafa is quite fed up with us doing no sightseeing, so in the afternoon we go to the local museum and bazaar. Both quite dilapidated, but at least it’s something?


(The museum contained some ‘nicely’ stuffed animals, while the bazaar had an outdoor poor hall.)

When we get back to our place, there’s quite another sight: an older (and very crazy) French lady arrives, and immediately starts going off about her bad experiences in Mongolia. She has spent two months here, and calls it the worst experience of her life. Supposedly she has visited 184 countries in her lifetime (including a solo hitchhiking trip from France to Pakistan in the 80s, with a small baby boy in tow), so we can only hope she’s exaggerating when she describes everything that’s bad about Mongolia and Mongolians… We also meet a Croat guy, travelling by motorbike, that lost his license plate on the bad roads. He’s worried he can’t cross back into Russia again without it, joking that Putin will come to rape him in prison… Seems like a lot of people with bad stories here!

 

Tuesday, the 10th of July

Whatever may come, we decide to make the most of it while we’re here. We’d read earlier about the festival of Naadam, which is held all over Mongolia around this time of year. In Olgii (where we’re staying) it’s kicking off with the archery event. A group of fellow guests decide to go check it out with us. So after a classic 2 eggs breakfast, we all head towards the festival grounds. It turns out we’re just about the only spectators. Quite nice: chill atmosphere, lots of guys in gaudy costumes and no hassle!

Sidenote: we’re in Western Mongolia. This area is mostly populated by ethnic Kazakhs. They have a culture that is quite unique: different from the rest of Mongolia, but also from Kazakhstan (where the original ethnic culture was largely destroyed by communism). One of the Kazakh specialties is eagle hunting. Of course we want to check this out!

So in the afternoon we drive to the nearby village of Sagsai (over some atrocious roads, but Suzy seems to hold out). We were told by our ger camp hosts to ask for a guy named Arman the eagle hunter. We find his ger quite easily, but it appears Arman is out for a wedding feast somewhere. His brother is around though, and we get a demonstration from him. Very impressive! He also keeps a wolf cub. A bit sad: he plans on rearing it, then killing it for its fur once it’s fully grown…

 

After the demo, we’re invited by the family to go to the local Naadam (every village has its own). Different event here: wrestling! It’s very impressive yet also amusing to see these big guys go at each other in their skimpy little outfits. The design of the wrestling top dates back several hundreds of years, when an incognito female wrestler once beat all the male wrestlers. As the men were unable to bear the shame, wrestling with an open vest was mandatory from that point onwards, so that women would be detected straight away.

 
(Afterwards, we were invited back to the eaglehunter’s ger for tea.)

The rest of the evening: back in Olgii, we meet Harry again (biker we first met in Almaty). After dinner together, we watch the Belgium-France game (at 1AM) and go to bed really pissed off with the result.

 

Wednesday, the 11th of July

The next Naadam event in Olgii was also wrestling. While Tom opted to stay at the ger to plan the trip and ducktape the car, Wafa went to see it with a group of fellow travelers. The wrestling itself was not as impressive as in Sagsai, but there was a nice opening ceremony for the Naadam festival. Traditional dance with a techno beat in the background was certainly… refreshing.

In the evening, we played card games with Harry, 2 Dutchies and one French biker. The favourite game of the night was Chinese fucking or pooping. Whatever you call it. Dutchies called it ‘boerenbridge’.

 

Thursday, the 12th of July

The third (and last) event of Naadam was the horse racing. This has a bunch of 6 year olds on horses race across the great steppe plains for 25 miles! So of course we wanted to go see it!

We got to the finish line (10 km south of the city) early in the morning. There was a nice festival atmosphere, with lots of booths and gers for food, Chinese crap (here also) and some local singers. The views on the horse races were quite spectacular, as you see the jockeys coming in from miles away. Things would get quite heated around the finish line though (for reasons unknown). Whenever there was any commotion, the police brought out their tasers and started zapping in the air. So it made for some strange scenes: horses coming in, people cheering, sometimes a bit of a ruckus and then the sound of tasers in the background…

     

In the afternoon, we were treated to a few traditional Kazakh games: kiss-the-girl and kokpar. Whereas kiss-the-girl was quite lame (a boy tries to hold on to a girl while she whips him, both racing on horseback – here it seemed really tame), kokpar more than made up for it though. This game consists of two guys on horseback playing tug of war with a dead goat. If it sounds gruesome, it is. But also quite exhilarating!

Riders were thrown of horses, or they both held on so well that they just raced off over the next hill, legs were torn of the goat… It was a confusing but hilarious afternoon. All the excitement caused some rows, of course. Luckily the police was happily zapping away with their tasers.

 

By 4PM, the champion of kokpar had been determined (after the legless carcass of the goat had been torn in two – pelvis from ribcage). Earlier, we had decided we’d drive straight to UB to get the procedure for our Russian transit visa started again. The only official Suzuki dealer of Mongolia (with spare parts) is also located there. So we left our buddies at the Naadam grounds and got going again.

The first 60km were good new asphalt, with some nice views over mountains and lakes. After that, the new road was still under construction. What followed was a 100km over uneven terrain: sand pits, gravel, potholes, washboards… You name it, we had it. We arrived in Khovd late in the evening. While the hotel was great, the traditional Mongolian cuisine was a bit less: a noodle soup with bits of sheep floating in it. No vegetables whatsoever. Yummy.

 

Friday, the 13th of July

Still 1600km to go to UB, so we left Khovd early. The first 450 km were over a newly paved road, so we made good time. No real views though:


(View behind us.)
(View in front of us.)

After the town of Altai, we got onto an unpaved road. 200km to go to our stay for the night, Uliastai. 50kms in, we hit a large rock while going pretty fast. We immediately felt there was something wrong with the tire: flat with a big gash in it! Not even sure whether this could still be fixed 🙁 .

So, 150km to the next village, on an increasingly worse road. We drove on for hours with clenched butt cheeks, I can tell you… After some really tough terrain for the last 50km (took us 2-3 hours), we finally made it to Uliastai at around 8.30PM. First we found a place to sleep, then we went to a Korean restaurant which looked pretty nice. We got our menus and sat down. But then Wafa heard Flemish! You have to imagine, this town really looked like the middle of nowhere, so it was quite funny to run into Gerrit and Nathalie, 2 Belgians who had just started their year-long trip.

After the long day (with added stress), we just wanted to eat something before going to bed. But suddenly it was no longer possible to order (too late). What the hell? Why did you give us the menu then? The waitress reverted to the age-old Mongolian tactic of just saying ‘no’ and ignoring us. Luckily Gerrit and Nathalie were kind enough to share their food with us (they had ordered 5 minutes earlier…). You can say what you want about the service, but the n° 4 was to die for!

 

Saturday, the 14th of July

With no spare tire anymore, and still a 1000km to UB (of which 200 unpaved), we really wanted to replace the ruptured tire. So we started looking for a new set of tires, or a decent used one. It turned out Uliastai is not the place to do this, though. We soon found out that our tire size is quite an unusual one (235/60R16), which made the hunt for a new one very frustrating. In the end, one shop sold us a patch (‘Germany, very good quality’) and brought us to a tire repair shop.

The shop looked dodgy as fuck (literally a shack), with an even dodgier occupant. Sadly, no pictures as both our phones were dead at this point. Still, he patched up the tire from the inside and it seemed to hold. Yay!

Until we saw there was still some air bubbling out of the wet tire. Not properly fixed then? The tire repair guy got all grumpy and insisted it was ok. Nevertheless, he took it back inside, to try and seal it from the outside this time. He made mixture of superglue and cigarette ash and applied this to the gash in the tire. It seemed to hold, with no more air leaking out, so we called it a day.

We had dinner in the same Korean restaurant as the night before with our Belgian buddies again (n° 4, mmm…). Afterwards, we watched the game between Belgium and England for the 3rd place in the world cup. We saw most of it, in between blackouts caused by a massive thunderstorm. Very happy with the result 🙂 .

 

Sunday, the 15th of July

We were still quite anxious to drive with the patched up tire (having read online you shouldn’t try to fix tires with gashes like this one). But we had no choice, so continued our way to UB. The first 100kms of the day were over an unpaved potholed road again, in the pouring rain. Not the best conditions to drive in. But the tire held out, and after those first 100kms we got some good asphalt again to drive all the way to Tsetserleg, only 500km from UB.

We stayed in a crappy smelly overpriced hotel, where we met up with the two Dutch guys from Olgii again. Luckily the hotel had a decent restaurant, so we had a good night with beer, Korean food, laughter and games of Chinese fucking.

 

Monday, the 16th of July

The last leg of our trip to UB was over good roads, so we were quite relaxed while driving. After about 100km we stopped in the town of Kharkhorin. It was a bland little town, but nearby once stood the capital of the largest empire in the history of mankind: Karakorum. Founded by Genghis Khan, it was once a center in world politics. Nothing much remains though. The stones of the old town were used to erect the Buddhist monastery of Erdene Zuun in the 16th century. We visited this monastery complex, but large parts of it were also destroyed, in the communist purges of 1937. Still, it was our first contact with an eastern religion on this trip, and it made us realize just how far we had come 🙂 !

In the evening we arrived in UB. After 27500km in just 4 months, we made it to the original destination of our trip! No time to celebrate though: weaving through the dense traffic, we still had to find a place to sleep for the night, and preferably also something to eat.

We’d read on iOverlander about a nice place for overlanders on the other side of town, so we tried our luck there. What we found was a bit funny: it looked like a convention of Monster Trucks fanatics, with mostly German giant camper trucks. Little Suzy looked completely out of place between these monsters. Still, they had a free room (even if way overpriced), so we parked her inside the gate and called it a night. Dinner was again Korean (our new favourite kitchen!).

 

Tuesday and Wednesday, the 17th – 18th of July

The next two days were mostly spent patching Suzy up. To refresh your memory: in Kazakhstan we had some work done on her. The rear wheel bearings and engine mounts were replaced, and new ball joints installed. By the time we got to UB, one of those ball joints needed fixing, we needed a new windshield and also a new set of tires.

So we got to work straight away: on Tuesday we went to the Suzuki shop, which had some good news. The ball joint was still ok, they could just replace the rubber! They also put in a new stabilizer (the other one broke down in Tajikistan, remember?) and some other worn down rubbers. Over an hour’s work and we just paid 20€. They even gave us a free lunch in their canteen! They told us we should take care not to drive to rivers with the ball joint, as it might get wet inside. Lucky for us, it had started raining old wives in UB, turning the streets into wild muddy streams…

Afterwards we drove all over UB to find new tires, which cost us hours. Traffic here is absolutely ridiculous: crossing from one end of the city to the other will take you 1-2 hours. We did it three times that day… In the end we found a set of 2 used tires, in excellent condition (with the help of a friendly Mongolian Christian Samaritan). By the time these were installed, it was 9.30PM and we were quite knackered. So we said ‘fuck it’, got dinner in the KFC and booked ourselves the most fancy hotel of the whole trip, the Ramada. The bed was amazing, the shower refreshing and the beer in the 17th floor rooftop bar delicious. Quite a productive day!


(By now, the glue-cigarette ash mix had mostly worn off from our ruptured tire.)

(Tire salesgirl.)

Next morning, we went to the Russian embassy first, to apply for our transit visa. And lo and behold, we ran into our favourite Dutch guy again, Jamie! He was also staying in UB to get his truck fixed up, and pointed us towards a nice hostel to spend the next night.

After this, we decided we would try to get the windshield replaced. The Suzuki guys had recommended a place, which looked a bit dodgy when we got there. But again looks deceived: these guys were superfast, very professional and obviously knew what they were doing. In half an hour we were in and out. Last thing to do on our list: get the new tires balanced. We spent a couple of hours driving around UB again to find a good place, but got Suzy some nicely balanced tires in the end! We also met a Mongolian-American girl there, who had some awesome stories, including sinking through the ice of a frozen river with her 4×4, having to be rescued by a fire truck. We haven’t done anything that crazy yet 🙂 .

We still had some time left, so we went to a large bazaar, called the ‘black market’. You could literally find anything there (including some new crappy Chinese hiking shoes for Tom!). No antique cabinet for Wafa though 🙁 . She wanted one ever since she saw some pretty ones in the lobby of the Ramada:

Dinner was fish and chips, burgers and loads of pizza with Jamie and 2 Canadians. Best pizza of the whole trip (also the only pizza of the whole trip). When we got back at 11PM, we found the manager of the hostel/tour operator and discussed booking a tour of the Gobi Desert with them. By 12PM, we had booked a tour for a week, starting the next morning. Talk about fast service!

 

Thursday to Wednesday, the 19th – 25th of July

After a bit of chaos in the morning, we got underway at 10AM. First we went to the outskirts of UB, to a WWII memorial. Some really nice views on the town. Rocky, our guide, gave some info on living in UB. Not our kind of place: lots of smog and very cold in winter (down to -30°C!).

Afterwards we drove to Terelj National Park, where we got to visit the Turtle Rock (named for obvious reasons) and a nearby Buddhist complex. While there, we found a nice game of spin-the-wheel, which gave us some directions to find transcendence!

Lunch we had by a river. The tour included everything: car with driver and guide, sleeping places, entry fees. But most importantly: breakfast, lunch and dinner! Rocky turned out to be an excellent cook, so for the next week we ate really well (and hardly any Mongolian, to be honest. Lucky us!).

Our final visit of the day was to the giant Genghis Khan statue East of UB. This actually marked the eastern most point of our trip, and it was quite an impressive one: at 40 meters tall, this statue of Genghis is the largest horse riding statue in the world. Nice views from on top of the horse head too:

In the evening, we went to a nearby Kazakh family to spend the night. Dinner was Mongolian BBQ (you basically put heated rocks in with the food), and horse noodles. Really good! Afterwards Tom tried to milk some of the family’s cows, but they didn’t like that so much. We did see a cute little 1 day old calf, though!


(Wafa managed to stay on a horse for 5 minutes!)

The next day we started off early, driving through intense rain again for 100s of kms on unpaved road. Our little Russian UAZ van, Uno, was crazy good at it though. We only got stuck in the mud once, which our driver, Incheh, got us out of quickly. By late afternoon we got to a mountainous park, Ikh Gazriin Chuluu. This had some really nice but alien panoramas. While going for an evening hike, we spotted a couple of ibexes just 20 meters away from us. Bouncy fuckers! At night we cooked food, had some beers and played some Mongolian card games. We were lucky with our companions: the driver was a bit crazy (but funny), and our guide really sweet (and friendly).


(If you look closely, you can actually see an ibex in the middle of the last picture.)

On Saturday Tom woke up way too early (3.30AM), but got to watch the Milky Way again. Also hiked up a nearby hill to watch the sunrise:

While descending the other side of the hill, he stumbled upon the nicest bit of wildlife of the whole trip: a vulture’s nest! (Since then, we’ve determined it should be a Cinereous  or Black Vulture, of which there are only 4000-5000 left in the world!) The mother was huge, with a wingspan of over 3 meters! And the baby chick in the nest was just lying there motionless, hoping the stupid tourist would leave it alone.

After breakfast we started driving again. The pattern for the next week started to emerge: each day we drove for 6-7 hours, over some really shitty unpaved ‘roads’. We’d arrive somewhere late in the afternoon, do some sightseeing, have dinner and go to bed. While it was a beautiful trip, it also got boring at times, driving for so long. Today we arrived at the ‘White Stupa’, a rocky formation resembling… a white stupa. After setting up camp in a nearby ger camp (with baby camels!), we went to watch the beautiful sunset:

   

We talked with Rocky at length about Mongolian dating customs (pretty similar to Belgian ones, but apparently dating non-Mongolians is frowned upon, got to keep the bloodlines pure!).

Sunday saw us driving towards the largest town in the Gobi area, Dalanzadgad. After taking our only shower of the whole trip in a public bath house, we visited the nearby Yoliin Am Canyon. Very nice hike, with lots of pikas to spot! (Inspiration for Pikachu, by the way.)

The canyon is famous for its ice, which can stay around until August (really weird so close to the Gobi desert). We only found one little muddy patch though:

We talked to Rocky some more about Mongolian customs. Burials are still done the Buddhist way: they leave corpses out in the open for the wild animals to chew on (see also the Zoroastrians of Iran). If you were a good person in life, your bones should be picked clean after 3 days. If not, a monk is called in for some vulture-calling mantra’s, to help speed up things. For babies, things are slightly different: they are put in a white box, then put on the back of a horse. The horse rider will drive over the steppe and leave the box where it falls.

The day after we drove from Yoliin Am to the Khongoryn Els sand dunes. This was the real Gobi! We arrived at 2PM but had to rest up first: the road had been the worst so far (literally got thrown around in the back of Uno) and it was probably around 35°C. In the late afternoon, we went for a camel ride:

 

At around 7PM, we set off towards the sand dunes proper. Coming from the stony steppe, these dunes look like a sheer wall, a tsunami of sand. We would climb the highest ones, at around 120 meters high! It took us 1 hour to climb the bastards (real procession of Echternach, each step followed by sliding half a step back), but it was worth it in the end: the sunset views on top of the dunes were amazing:

When we got back to the ger camp, we tried getting the sand out of our clothes as much as we could (including the half kilo per shoe), but we would still find sand in the shower three days later, back in UB. Sleeping proved to be really difficult: the wind was howling and flapping the ger about. So it turned out to be a very short night.

After four hours of sleep, we took off towards UB again. To give you an idea about how the day went:

6.30AM: Get up to have breakfast. We’re a bit groggy from the lack of sleep, hoping to sleep in the car.

8AM: We set off.

8.30AM: After about half an hour, we smelled some smoke in the car. Due to the build of the car, Incheh had to throw out his car seat to find that the car battery underneath the seat was smoldering. He had been working on the car the previous night (because the crazy road had managed to displace the engine), but had forgotten a tool. This had caused a short circuit on the battery. Whoops!

9AM: The car is now on fire. Literally. It had kept smoldering, turning into real flames as we drove on. With some frantic blowing and patting Incheh can put the fire out, we’re under way again after 10 minutes.

12AM: We arrive at our last major attraction: the Flaming Cliffs of Bayanzag. Known as the dragon cemetery, this is a huge site for dinosaur fossil hunting! Tom’s childhood dream finally came true! Walking around in the torrid heat, we spotted some real nice dinosaur bones:

2PM: Lunch near some saxaul trees. These trees are able to withstand the harsh conditions of the desert and are revered by the Mongolians because of it. Rocky and Wafa are amazing: even with temperatures going near 40°C, they manage to cook up a full meal. Meanwhile, our driver is sleeping under his van, while Tom suffers in the shade of a nearby saxaul tree.

3PM-7PM: we drive on as far as possible on the Dalanzadgad-UB road, before we set up camp for one last time. We spent our last night drinking beers and playing card games again. Turned out the camp spot was not ideal though: again a very short night because of the wind howling around our tent. Tom was quite frankly amazed at how well our little bunnyfucking tent held out: at times it was under a 45° angle, but it made it just fine!

So, while Tom woke up at 3AM again, he also got to watch the Milky Way and the sunrise one more time. Last day of driving to UB. On our way there, Incheh stopped over by a nomadic family keeping horses. He bought some airag, fermented mare’s milk, which also gave us the opportunity to try it. Like in Kyrgyzstan, it tasted pretty sour again, but this time there was no smoky flavor.

By the time we finally got to UB, we were completely beat because of the driving conditions and lack of sleep. So after having a burger in a nearby restaurant, we went to bed early. Sleeping like babies!

 

Thursday, the 26th of July

Another practical day in UB: After cleaning Suzy out for a bit, we went to pick up our passports from the Russian embassy. Transit visa approved! So we can at least make it back to Kazakhstan 🙂 .

During the check up at the Suzuki shop a week earlier, they had also noticed one of our rear suspension coils was broken (yet more damage to Suzy 🙁 ). So today we also found some new coils and had them installed. Installation had to happen in a different shop, as they were renovating the Suzuki one by now. The new shop told us we should probably have our rear shock absorbers replaced. Shit just keeps being added :’)

In the end, we’re really happy we did the tour to the Gobi. We got to see some more of Mongolia, while also taking care to not further damage Suzy. The roads in the Gobi would have destroyed her. We will probably have to find a shop to replace the shock absorbers in Russia or Kazakhstan, as they didn’t have the parts in UB.

And in case you’re wondering: the costs of all the repairs so far is really ok. While all the work done so far would probably have cost us several thousand €’s in Belgium, so far we only spent around 750€ here in Asia. That includes a new windshield, new tires, ball joints, wheel bearings, engine mounts, balancing tires, suspension coils… If you go to a Carglass shop in Belgium you pay 500€ for a new windshield alone :’) . And we have to have the work done anyway, if we want to pass the car inspection when selling Suzy back in Belgium.

After another productive day, we went to the National Theater of Mongolia, right near our hostel. Every night, they have a show which highlights all the traditional singing, dancing and music forms of Mongolia. While going over, we ran into Gerrit and Nathalie again (see Uliastai earlier). They joined us for the show and we had dinner together after. Really nice catching up with them! They’d leave for China the day after, so we were really lucky to run into them like that (in a city with 1.5 million people, no less). We wished them a pleasant trip, as they are only getting started.

The show was also really entertaining: not only did we finally get to witness throat singing (look it up, it’s an amazing technique), there was also long singing, folk music, nice dance acts and even a contortionist. Not allowed to take pictures or record video though, so nothing to show 🙁 .

 

Friday, the 27th of July

As we’re writing this blog post, we still have 2 days left in Mongolia. It might be  while before we can update, so in short here’s our planning for the next days and weeks:

– Today go for shopping and museums (dinosaurs!)

– Tomorrow drive 500km to Northern Mongolia towards Russian border. Visit a traditional bow and arrow factory on the way there.

– Cross over into Russia on the 29th. We have 7 days to cover 3200 km to the Kazakh border, so we’ll have to see what we can see or do along the way. We pass Lake Baikal, which should be nice.

– 4th of August: Cross into Kazakhstan again. Get our last Russian transit visa in Astana. Hopefully cover some 2000km quickly to get to Russia again.

– Around 11th/12th of August: cross into Russia again, for the last 2000km to Europe. Pass Moscow and Saint Petersburg on the way, so hopefully we have some time to stop there.

– Around 20th of August: back in Europe! Normally through one of the Baltic countries. We might try to stay for a few days, depending on how we feel at this point.

– Back in Belgium at the end of August! If this planning works out, we’ll have done over 10000km in one month. We also started our trip this fast, so it should be ok. Link if you’re interested to see the planned route on Google Maps.

So see you again soon!

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Kazakhstan – Round 2

New friends, heroic actions and a big scare from Suzy

Saturday, the 23rd of June

After the uneventful crossing into Kazakhstan, we stepped on the gas to get to Almaty in time… for the world cup game of Belgium vs Tunisia! After a 200 km drive through the empty steppe, we got to Almaty proper. While filling up Suzy up with diesel, Tom noticed the left front tire was looking deflated. We just thought to fill it up again, but the tire repair guy next door advised us to let him have a look. Result: second flat tire of the trip!

Almaty traffic didn’t seem to be any better than in Bishkek, so it took us the better part of an hour to cross the city to our hostel. They pointed us towards a very nice Uzbek restaurant, which served delicious horsemeat plov! Every booth had its own TV, so Tom was very happy to watch the game 🙂 .

Sunday to Saturday, the 24th – 30th of June

We spent the rest of the week in Almaty. Sunday was again a day for practical stuff; writing, planning and preparing for our Russian transit visa. We talked to two Afghan students at breakfast, who are studying at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek (and thus know Chris, small world indeed!) on a scholarship. These girls really changed the way we look at Afghanistan a bit: they were modern, liberal, and set to return to Afghanistan once they finished their studies. Not at all what we expected from young Afghans! And as with so many people in this region, they had family studying and working all over the world (North America, Europe, Asia…).

On Monday we changed hostels, partly because our old one was fully booked, partly because Wafa found a real ‘backpacker’s’ hostel on iOverlander. The new one was also fully booked, but we could set up our tent in the garden, almost for free. We would end up spending the rest of the week here.

Our plan so far had been to get a double entry transit visa for Russia: this would mean going from Kazakhstan through Russia to Mongolia, and then after three weeks in Western Mongolia, doing the same route in reverse. However, we found out it is impossible to get a double entry visa in Kazakhstan as a tourist (need to be a resident). Poop!
So we changed our plan: with a single entry visa we can get to Mongolia. Then we need to go all the way to Ulaanbaatar for a new visa (possibly a tourist visa? If not, a new transit visa.) Then we can go through Russia again to Kazakhstan. This will add another 3000 km to our trip, over crappy Mongolian roads. So we’re also considering taking a flight from Western Mongolia to Ulaanbaatar and back, just for the visa… We’ll see what we’ll do when we get there, I guess?

So Monday was again spent planning and getting our paperwork done to apply for the Russian visa the next morning. We also saw Jonas and Michael, our little German brothers, again. They didn’t get a spot at the hostel, but we could say goodbye one last time. For real this time, as they were flying to Iran later that week. I guess we’ve met them about 15 times (if not more) on the road, travelling together part of the way. They almost feel like family now 🙂 .


(We also had some pictures taken for the visa application. Left: old pictures from Belgium. Right: new photoshopped pictures from Iran and/or Kazakhstan. Which are the best ones?)

Tuesday morning we went to the Russian embassy early, together with 2 French bikers we’d met earlier at the Mongolian embassy in Bishkek, and who were also staying in our Almaty hostel. Martin and Thibault turned out to be some of the nicest and funniest guys we met on the whole trip, we’d have loads more fun with them during the rest of the week. After a surprisingly quick embassy visit, we went to the Tamgaly petroglyphs, some 150 kms outside of Almaty. We were astonished by the sheer amount of drawings we found. Some rather abstract ones as well, such as the sunhead-dudes:


(On the road we were again stopped by police, but they quickly let us pass once we made clear we didn’t speak any Russian…)

In the evening we went to the local Shakespeare Pub to watch the France-Denmark game. Boring as fuck, but nice talking to all the people from our hostel.

Wednesday we got a late start (after sleeping late), but in the afternoon we went hiking in the hills/mountains around Almaty. It was a very nice walk to a local waterfall. Very refreshing shower as well. The group from the hostel made it great fun. In the evening we went to the pub again to watch the Germany-Korea game. Great atmosphere, not least because we could have a laugh with the Germans! (Which our German hostel comrades didn’t like very much…)

After sleeping late again on Thursday, we went to an Almaty park in the afternoon, hoping to find a pool to go swimming. It’s been steadily getting warmer since we left the high mountains, with temperatures now going to 30°C and above, so we needed to cool down. After learning the pool would cost us 25€ (!), we decided to just hang out in the park instead, playing card games and Frisbee. Relaxing. Later we watched Belgium win their game against England (bloody Januzaj…).

On Friday we got our Russian transit visa from the embassy. We thought we’d leave later during the day, but ended up staying to plan Mongolia, do some shopping and just hanging about in the hostel. At night we went out to a local club, which made for some great fun!

We didn’t leave on Saturday either, having slept only a few hours and half hung over (Tom). The day was mostly spent doing nothing. In the evening the hostel had organized a BBQ to celebrate the birthday of on the other guests, which was great fun: good food, great people, making music… The France – Argentina game was also really entertaining to watch!

Sunday, the 1st of July

We really had to get started today, or we’d never leave this place 🙂 . However, first some Israeli guys made everyone breakfast, a delicious shakshuka. This consists of a spicy tomato sauce with eggs poached in it. So nice! After that, Thibault gave Tom a haircut (which turned out OK, even though he had never cut someone’s hair before…). And then it was noon already, so lunch time!

After finally leaving for real (with many heartfelt goodbyes), we got on the road to northeast Kazakhstan. We drove another 400 kms, before turning off the main road to find a good camping spot. Wafa also got pulled over by police for the first time (speeding!), but again Tom managed to play the idiot convincingly enough that they let us go. He’s got a real talent for it…
While checking the camp spot, we ran into Aldo, another of our hostel buddies, who had left the day before. So another camping night with company!

 

Monday, the 2nd of July

Tom woke up early to another herd of goats surrounding our tent. When they started moving along though, a pitiful bleating sound could be heard from a nearby canal. Disaster! One of the little goats had fallen in and was being swept away!


(Not pictured: goat.)

Tom, being the hero he is, didn’t hesitate and tried to get the little fellow back on shore. The first 500 meters of the canal were too high, so rescue attempts were unsuccessful. After that, the canal bank started getting lower, so he could grab the goat from the water. Only just in time, because little Rudi (as the goat was called by that time), had just given up swimming and was drowning.

Once Rudi was on shore, things didn’t look good: he was barely breathing and had a dazed look in his eyes. So Tom tried CPR on the little guy’s chest (because that’s what they do in the movies to make them cough up the water, right?). No success. Next he dangled Rudi upside down by his hind legs, vigorously shaking the little bastard to get the water out. Again no success, but by now Rudi started bleating a little bit again, so maybe there was still hope?

After a few more minutes, Rudi stood up again! Brought back from the dead, hurrah! In obvious shock, Rudi was unable to move more than a few paces at a time though. Looking confused and shivering violently, he tried to hide in some nearby bushes. But just as Tom decided to let the little guy be, the herd of goats returned to the scene. With some ushering, Rudi was finally returned to the fold. A very emotional moment, both for Rudi and Tom:


(Meanwhile, Wafa had slept through all the commotion.)

After breakfast, we bade Aldo goodbye and got on our way again. We wanted to drive a large part of the way to Russia, so apart from a small lunch break, we drove on until 8 PM. Still mostly empty Kazakh steppe along the way. We also passed some lakes which had seagulls, literally 1000’s of kms away from any ocean. We had thought to camp again, but got in a really big storm along the way. So we didn’t take any risk (because Tom’s 9-year old 50€ festival tent is probably not waterproof anymore) and checked into a roadside hotel, just 200 km from the Russian border. In the evening, we saw the Brazil – Mexico game, but turned in early, and missed the epic Belgium – Japan match 🙁 .

Tuesday to Wednesday, the 3rd – 4th of July

After a 2 hour drive over a rotten road, we arrived in Öskemen, the last big stop before Russia. We were actually ahead of schedule, and had a day and a half of time to kill before we could enter Russia (visa starting date: 5/7). So Wafa had the luminous idea of going to a car repair shop for a quick check up before heading to Mongolia proper. The iOverlander recommended a place for 4×4’s, so after visiting the city (highlight: an ‘authentic’ Siberian village in the middle of the city park), we had these guys have a look.

It turned out Suzy hadn’t been coping with the shitty Central Asian roads that well, after all. According to the mechanics, there was a problem with our rear wheel bearings, the front ball joints should be replaced AND the engine mounts were ‘destroyed’ (imagine thick Russian accent for extra effect). As these guys came with a recommendation, and seemed honest enough, we trusted their judgment (they also saw that our oil filter hadn’t been fitted correctly during the oil change in Bishkek, for example). But fuck! Bad news indeed!

Kiril told us he would start looking for parts the next day, but wasn’t very hopeful that he could find anything in time for us to get on our way to Mongolia. Our Russian transit has a very narrow window (5-8 of July), so even 2 days of delay would mean we couldn’t make it to Mongolia.

We went to bed slightly apprehensive about the next day, as you can imagine…

So after sleeping late and some anxious waiting, we called Kiril again on Wednesday at noon, only to find out he hadn’t found any of the parts. After looking at our alternative travel options (plane: too expensive, train: takes too long, bus + taxi: too cumbersome), we headed into town ourselves to look for car parts. To be honest, Tom had all but given up at this point. Already apprehensive about the Mongolian roads and conditions, this was the final straw; it felt like we weren’t supposed to go to Mongolia after all.

But we got lucky! The first garage we stopped by (thank you Wafa!), pointed us towards a parts shop. While we didn’t find that shop, we stepped into another one that had our wheel bearings and ball joints. The guy working there even drove us to another shop to find some new engine mounts as well! Talk about good service!
We drove to the car shop with our shiny new parts for Suzy. The guys started working on her straight away. Apparently they go the extra mile for tourists, as they know these have serious time constraints. We were told they would probably work until 10 or 11 PM… Nice!
After all the excitement of the day, we decided to celebrate with some nice aperitifs and sushi!

Thursday, the 5th of July

As we’re writing this post, it is now the first day of our Russian transit visa, but we’re quite hopeful we can get under way sometime in the early evening. We found out our border crossing is apparently the only one between Kazakhstan and Russia that is open 24h a day. The idea is that we get the car back by 6 PM, and start driving towards Russia right away. Fingers crossed!

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Kyrgyzstan – Chased away

Not the warmest welcome

Monday to Wednesday, the 11th – 13th of June

Our last ride through Tajikistan was quite beautiful: leaving Karakul village, we drove by the lake on our way to the Tajik-Kyrgyz border. These last 50 km or so were deserted, the mountains were snow-covered and the road was good. The border crossing itself was quite uneventful; the Tajik side was at the border itself, on a mountain pass of about 4200m. Certainly one of the more remote borders we’ve ever seen. They tried to pull the usual insurance/disinfection scam, but we’d been warned by others on the IOverlander-app, so didn’t fall for it. Some army guys even offered us tea and cookies while they stamped our passports!

After this came 20 km of no-man’s-land, until we got to the Kyrgyz border control. We actually saw some people living here, and wondered how they got by (living between two countries). Again crossing was smooth, to the point where they didn’t even bother inspecting our car. Quite strange, when you know Tajikistan is one of the most important trafficking countries for Afghan heroin… We also met 2 different groups of Belgians, crossing from Kyrgyzstan to Tajikistan. Small world indeed!

We drove on towards the first Kyrgyz village, where we had lunch by the side of the road. We had to decide whether we’d go to Peak Lenin or not (or at least to the base camp). Peak Lenin was the second highest mountain of the entire Soviet Union (over 7400m high!). But the weather wasn’t looking good (so no views), so we decided to drive on to Osh, the second city of Kyrgyzstan. Very scenic drive: while we were still in the mountains, these differed greatly from the Tajik Pamirs: lush vegetation, horses everywhere, lots of habitation (yurts by the side of the road)…

We meant to stay in Osh mostly to rest up after our stay in the Pamirs, and to start preparing the rest of our trip. So on Tuesday we cleaned out Suzy (carwash, dusting out…), exchanged our leftover Tajik somoni into Kyrgyz som, and got our car insurance. The insurance guy turned out to be a really nice and funny guy. We exchanged Kyrgyz and Belgian movies to watch, and he warned us about swimming in Kyrgyzstan’s glacier lakes (and their shrinking effect on male private parts).

Wednesday was spent writing and planning. Also: Wafa got her clothes back! In our previous post, we mentioned that we’d forgotten some clothes, all the way back in Dushanbe (before the Pamirs). Turns out the hostel there had sent them with another driver to Osh, to the exact same hostel we were staying in. So after more than two weeks, they found their way back to us again!

In the evening we met up with Mattias, our German friends Jonas and Michael and others for a beer. Mattias would leave the next day to stay on a Kyrgyz farm, so after 2 weeks travelling together, we had to say goodbye. Jonas and Michael had dropped off their Toyota Landcruiser in Osh, and were once again dependent on other transportations. They were planning to go the same way as us, so we invited them to drive with us.

 

Thursday to Saturday, the 14th – 16th of June

On Thursday we left Osh and travelled to Arslanbob, to the north. Jonas hadn’t been feeling too good since coming down from the Pamirs, and this wasn’t helped by the lack of space in our car. He and Michael had to fit in one seat in the back:

Once we got to Arslanbob, Jonas only wanted to sleep the sickness away, so the rest of us hiked towards a ‘small’ local waterfall:


(The view from our homestay in the evening.)

Jonas was feeling a lot better on Friday, and we hiked  more than 20 km through the main sight of Arslanbob: the world’s largest walnut forest. What started out as a fresh walk under grey skies, soon turned into a misty and muddy ordeal:

We also intended to go the large waterfall, but never found it. We don’t know if this was because of the mist, or our navigation app just playing tricks on us again… We had been told this was also a day of festivities: the end of Ramadan. When we got back to the village, however, we didn’t see anything happening. Maybe they were already sleeping of the wodka?

Saturday was spent driving: from Arslanbob all the way to the north of Kyrgyzstan, to its capital Bishkek (600 km). Even though the roads of Kyrgyzstan are some of the best of all of Central Asia, this still took us from 10 in the morning to 10 in the evening. Some things that happened along the way:

  • Tom got pulled over for speeding. Kyrgyzstan is infested with manned speed cameras. We’re not exaggerating if we say we saw something like 25 speed controls on this 600 km stretch of road. Tom proved to be pretty adept at playing the ‘stupid tourist’, so after half an hour they just let us go without paying. It turned out we would need this stratagem a lot more in the future…
  • We had lunch near one of the bigger lakes (Toktogul), where Jonas and Michael also went for swim. Turns out there are some interesting plants growing in the wild in Kyrgyzstan:
  • We bought some mare’s milk along the road. Had a really acidic and smoked flavor, so we’re wondering if this is normal or just the effect of fermentation?

All the driving (and having to be a passenger sometimes) had worn Tom out though, so by the end of the day his nerves were frayed and he turned into a grumpy asshole (once again). So in order to recuperate, we decided to stay a few days in Bishkek…

 

Sunday to Tuesday, the 17th – 19th of June

So on Sunday, for the first time during the whole trip, we did absolutely nothing! Wonderful! Tom finally managed to finish the first book he started reading (‘The Silk Roads’ by Peter Frankopan, highly recommended!), while Wafa, being Wafa, socialized with all the other travelers in the hostel . In the evening, we met up with Chris for dinner. Chris is an old friend from our time as students in Leuven; he also stayed in the COPAL dorm, but has been working and living in Bishkek for the last four years. We had a really nice night catching up, talking about the region in general (Chris is an instructor at the American University of Central Asia’s Department of Journalism and Mass Communications (and yes, I had to look that up)), and getting to know his lovely wife.

Monday was another day full of practicalities: after submitting a visa request at the embassy of Mongolia (we need to apply for two visa on the road: Mongolia and Russia – see also the preparation blogpost on administration), Tom took Suzy to a garage for servicing (more than 20 000km on the road!). He was planning to change oil and filters himself, but after being told this would only cost 2,5 euro to be done by an actual mechanic, he chose the latter option. Still took all afternoon. Apparently Kyrgyz mechanics are not that experienced in changing Suzuki fuel filters…

Wafa spent her afternoon going to the Osh bazaar of Bishkek, together with Guillaume (French) and Anthony (French-Canadian). Bazaars in Kyrgyzstan are a bit different from what we’ve seen so far: mostly it’s just containers with little shops inside, stacked next to and on top of each other. During the evening everybody met up for beers and to watch the Belgians beat Panama in the World Cup. Nice!

After sleeping late on Tuesday (still resting up), we decided to go to the national park just south of Bishkek, Ala-Archa. Supposed to be real nice for hiking and views. The afternoon turned out to be not so nice though: first we were pulled over by the cops again. This time we would have to pay a fine for crossing a solid white line. Very understandable, but this was a 2 meter (!) white line at a crossroads. Tom had simply changed lanes to go in the right direction, but was immediately pulled over on the other side of the crossroads. This time it took him an hour (!), but he managed to talk himself out of the fine again. But not before being yelled at while the cops drove away: ‘Плохо! Плохо!’. Which means as much as ‘Bad! Bad man!’. Tom now carries this as a badge of honor.

By the time we got to the park, the sky had become grey and overcast. So after walking up the mountains for an hour, and seeing the rain head towards us, we decided to make a run for it, back to the car. The rain made everything slippery though, so Tom had a nasty fall (like seniors of his age often do), and cut/bruised his arm. Let’s just say we weren’t in a festive mood while driving back to Bishkek…

 
(That last picture has the rain bearing down on us in the background.)

 

Wednesday to Thursday, the 20th – 21st of June

After sleeping late again, we weren’t decided on what we’d do on Wednesday. We were forced to get of our ass when the other travelers in the hostel barged through our door at noon, though. It had been decided we would go to Song-Kul, a mountain lake in the middle of Kyrgyzstan. So off we went!

We would find each other at an arranged point at the lakeside, the Belgian car and a Dutch car filled with Jamie, Jonas, Michael and Anthony. We wanted to pay for our Mongolian visa first though (has to happen through a bank, not at the embassy), so we tried to do this first. Not as easy as it would seem. First of all, it had to be a branch of a specific bank (only this bank can handle a money transfer?). Then all branches of this bank in Bishkek had either moved or were under renovation. So after driving around Bishkek’s hellhole traffic (apparently in the top20 worldwide for congestion problems) for about two hours, we gave up and drove off to Song-Kul. In the end we managed to pay in a bank in a small village along the way.

The drive to Song-Kul was otherwise quite nice (stunning views!), but we were of course pulled over again by police. This time for speeding again (Tom had been following the car in front of him, which was not a smart idea, it turns out). This time he talked himself out of a fine in 15 minutes, a new record! By the time we got to the lake, it was already 8PM. We couldn’t find the others at the meeting point, so we spent the night in one of the CBT yurts along the lakeside (CBT = Community Based Tourism, a grassroots travel and homestay organization in Kyrgyzstan). Slept very well, even though it got ice cold at night!


(After the Tajik toilet, the Kyrgyz version!)

The next morning, Tom took the opportunity to go horse riding for the second time in his life. Wafa had had enough for a lifetime in Cuba, so decided not to join. The wide open plain and gorgeous background made for great riding. Tom even managed to go at full gallop a few times! (Getting off the horse, everything below the waist didn’t feel so nice, though…)

We drove back towards Bishkek via Issyk-Kul, which is the second largest alpine lake in the world. It certainly looked the part: while pictures hardly do it justice, it looked like an actual sea ringed by distant mountains!

 

Friday to Saturday, the 22nd – 23rd of June

On our last full day in Bishkek, we went to pick up our Mongolian visa at the embassy. In 5 minutes we were in and out, visa in hand. Really smooth procedure! After a couple of hours of resting, we met up again with Chris to say goodbye. We had dinner in a nice Georgian place (Georgian cuisine (and culture in general) is famous in all of the ex-Soviet Union. Again greatly recommended!). We discussed all sorts of things and people we found baffling during our travels in the region. It was really nice to have a ‘local’ like Chris, with inside knowledge, being able to explain so much to us. After a warm goodbye, we headed back to our hostel. We loved seeing a familiar face during our lengthy traveling!

The next day we meant to get going quickly, having a border crossing (Kyrgyzstan – Kazakhstan) and a couple of 100 kms on our agenda. Just 300 meters outside of the hotel, though… we got pulled over again by the police (4th time!). This time it was an alcohol control. After Tom (stupidly) admitted to having a beer the night before (long out of his system), he had to blow into a breathalyzer. Which came back ‘positive’! What the actual f**k?!

It should be noted that all the ‘Stans’ have a strict zero-tolerance when it comes to alcohol in traffic (still lots of drunk drivers though), so you’re positive as soon as you have any alcohol in your system. But this was just plain bullshit: more than 14 hours after a couple of beers, these are long out of your system. The breathalyzer itself was also a joke: without even touching the apparatus, Tom had to ‘whistle-blow’ into  it.

This time, we both lost our cool a bit (because of the obvious shadiness of the whole thing), and protested rather heavily to the cops. This did not have the desired effect though, as they got more aggressive and started shouting. We backed off and took the time to try calling our consulate: not reachable. We got Chris on the phone, but he couldn’t really help us either (his knowledge of Kyrgyz does not include the vocabulary to talk yourself out of an alcohol control, strangely enough 🙂 ). But apparently the threat of getting the consulate involved had impressed the cops enough to let us go; we got our papers back and they told us we were free to go ‘as long as Wafa drove’. So without further ado, we packed up and got the hell out of Kyrgyzstan!

The Kyrgyz – Kazakh border crossing was otherwise very uneventful (long wait), so before long, we were on the road to Almaty, the old capital of Kazakhstan!

 

Kyrgyzstan epilogue

So what is our impression of Kyrgyzstan, you might wonder?

While we had a great time in Tajikistan, as you might’ve gathered from our previous post, things weren’t so clear-cut in Kyrgyzstan. While we could certainly see the potential here (nature, traditional nomadic culture…), we also encountered a number of things which weren’t so agreeable:

– The cops: We were warned about Central Asia’s law enforcement in general before we left. Up until now, we were pleasantly surprised by the lack of problems we had encountered, though. So it was a rude awakening in Kyrgyzstan, were we got a real taste of post-Soviet law enforcement. It would seem like other countries (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan) have tried to get their shit together and have turned around their police forces, at least in their behavior towards tourists. Or we just got lucky before. Either way, it really feels like we got chased out of Kyrgyzstan. We’re certainly not planning on going back anytime soon…

– The people: While we did meet a number of kind and welcoming locals, we met just as many indifferent or just plain rude people. We have been told this is due to the fact that the Kyrgyz people are already more used to tourists, and thus have lost some of the warm hospitality which is otherwise so typical of the region. You could say Kyrgyzstan is more like Europe, in this respect. Another explanation is the effects of long years of Soviet rule on the morals and institutions of society. We certainly had to adapt after Tajikistan, where you literally couldn’t go 5 steps without being invited for tea.

– The weather: Weather in Kyrgyzstan has been extremely unpredictable, often going from sunny and warm to cold, rainy or even snowy in the course of a single day. It certainly makes things… more interesting (see also photos of Arslanbob and Ala-Archa).

Overall Kyrgyzstan was an interesting experience. As somebody explained it rather nicely to us: whereas  you can still find morality and a sense of traditional culture in the countryside, Bishkek has everything you can expect from a post-Soviet capital: no morals, corruption and a sense of dystopian society unlike anywhere else.

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Tajikistan – Beautiful scenery and people

Highlight of our trip

Friday to Tuesday, the 25th – 29th of May

On Friday we crossed the border from Uzbekistan to Tajikistan. No problems here, Tajik border guards were very friendly, and no scams were being pulled (we read online this might be a real problem when crossing Tajik borders).

Driving into Tajikistan, the change in landscapes compared to Uzbekistan was dramatic: gone were the flat arid plains of Uzbekistan. Instead we were greeted by steep mountains, often rocky, with lush vegetation in small oases.

After stopping in Panjikent to stock up on fresh supplies, we headed into the Fann Mountains proper. Although not as high as the Pamirs, these mountains are still awe-inspiring: you often feel like you drive next to a kilometer high wall when driving through the valleys. While driving, we spotted two Tajiks pushing a broken down car over the mountains. These guys were nuts! So we suggested we tow them, which they happily accepted. After 20km we dropped them off in the nearest village.

Towards the evening, we headed towards Iskanderkul, a glacier lake at 2200m altitude. The views were amazing. The Overlander app helped us find a perfect camping spot.

After sleeping late on Saturday, we drove to a nearby valley for a hike in the mountains. On our way back, we stopped in the local village of Sarytag for tea. There we met a group of expats, some of which had been staying in Tajikistan for years. Steven, an American, was especially helpful in giving us insights into Tajikistan cuisine, customs and highlights.

Before setting up camp on the other side of the lake, we headed towards another viewpoint:

Sunday started with a hike towards the nearby ‘Niagara waterfall’ of Tajikistan. Not quite as impressive as the real thing, but the rickety platform made sure we were properly terrified by the brute force of the water below us:

The drive to Dushanbe was very nice, passing through the same lush green mountains. We also passed the appropriately named ‘Tunnel of Death’: a 5km long, unlighted, unventilated hellhole. We read online it wasn’t supposed to be asphalted either, but luckily this had recently been corrected. The ride through the tunnel was quite scary for us in a car. Can’t imagine what it must be like for the bikers that do it though. (There are plenty of biking tourists in Tajikistan, all drawn to the mountains, the Pamirs in particular.)

Once we arrived in our hostel in Dushanbe, we of course ran into our German buddies again. No escaping these guys :). Must be like the 10th time. Afterwards we did some grocery shopping in the local Auchan supermarket, where the varied, European-like range of products was a welcome change from the usual minimarkets always offering the same 10 items.

Monday was spent resting, writing the blog and planning for the Pamirs. Nothing much to report. In the evening we went to a nice Indian restaurant with a lot of friends we met on the Caspian ferry. We keep running into these people!

Tuesday was prepday for the Pamirs: we did some grocery shopping, got some money and fuel . In the evening we made pizzas together with our friends. The flat bread here serves as a perfect pizza bottom! We also decided to tackle the Pamirs as a group: us, Mattias (Belgian) on a motorbike, and our 2 Germans, Penelope (French) and 2 Italians in a Landcruiser. We’d see how far we got together, helping each other out along the way.


(The crew and the convoy.)

 

Wednesday to Friday, the 30th of May – 1st of June

We started out from Dushanbe in a good mood. We were finally going to see the Pamir Mountains! Our German buddies had heard about an alternative route which was supposed to be very scenic. We arranged a meeting point and time, and each headed off at our own pace. After about 150km we discovered we’d forgotten some clothes back in Dushanbe though. Bummer. We called the hostel in Dushanbe, and they would send them on with another group also travelling the Pamirs. We didn’t have much hope for our stuff, though.

Luckily, the scenery more than made up for this loss. So many baby donkeys as well! After a long noon picnic, we drove on and found an awesome camping spot along the road:

We spent the evening cooking and playing games. The Italians seemed horrified by what the Belgians made as pasta sauce. They didn’t bring a stove though, so we were calling the shots 🙂

The next day we drove towards Muminabad, which was home to a large water reservoir, circled by mountains. However, when we got there, the water didn’t seem that appealing to swim in (dead fish, people washing their carpets…). Only Jonas was brave enough to dive in:

From Muminabad we drove on to Qalai Khum, the real start of the Pamirs. On our way there, we drove for hours on end next to the Afghan border, on very good Chinese roads (they’re everywhere). The views were amazing.

We had to hurry though, because we arranged to meet at 3 o’clock in Qalai Khum. We and Mattias got there around 4, after which we started waiting for our Landcruiser friends. After a couple of hours, we decided to set up camp, unsure of where they were. In the end they arrived at 8h30. They had decided to stop along the way for sightseeing, showers under waterfalls, Afghan-watching… All very understandable, but then don’t agree to meet up at a certain time and then let us wait. Us Belgians were a bit annoyed by that.

Sleeping proved to be difficult as well, with the Afghan mosque on the other side of the river offering a call to prayer well into the night. Still, there are worse ways to stay awake 🙂

On Friday we started out towards Korogh or the Bartang Valley, we weren’t sure yet. We would wait to see the road conditions (supposed to be really bad) and then decide.

And we weren’t disappointed: the next 240 kms took us about 10 hours, stops included. Some of the worst roads so far. Even the Afghan gravel road on the other side of the river seemed better! Suzy was amazing though: we constantly thought we would kill the car with all the bumps, gravel and rocks in the road, but she took it all in her stride. The old gal still has a lot of juice! Also, the amazing scenery helped soothe the pain:

While we were having tea on the side of the road in late afternoon, Mattias’ motorbike limped into sight: mechanical issues. He was helped out by a friendly Polish mechanic (travelers looking out for each other), but needed further help.

So it was decided: we would head towards Korogh, the capital of the region. (30 000 inhabitants in a capital for a region twice the size of Belgium. Says a lot about population density here!) We finally arrived in town around 21h30, having an Indian takeaway dinner at 22h30. (Delhi Darbar is a big chain of Indian restaurants in this part of the world. Comes highly recommended!)


(Korogh is also home to a very nice MAC Doland’s and a Korogh Fried Chicken!)

 

Saturday to Monday, the 2nd – 4th of June

We had heard that an Afghan market took place in Korogh every Saturday. So of course we checked it out:

Even though the Afghans were photogenic, and we found a couple of interesting souvenirs, we were also a bit disillusioned by the experience. As we have remarked so many times before, local markets and bazaars are also overrun by cheap Chinese crap. Whether it be Iran, Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, it has been really hard to find some original, authentic souvenirs. And apparently even a country as ravaged as Afghanistan has entered the era of mass consumption. Such a shame.

In the afternoon, we headed back for a 100 kms, towards the Bartang Valley. We had heard so many good things about it, we didn’t want to miss it. While waiting for our Landcruiser buddies, we were again invited for tea. Farhud was a carpenter, who had lived for 12 years in Russia, before coming back to Tajikistan to start a family. A story we would hear over and over again in the next couple of weeks in Tajikistan. The economy is so poor here, it is estimated that about a million Tajik live and work abroad (mostly Russia). Out of a population of 4 million, this is a huge chunk, and equals one of the single most important means of income for Tajik households.

Farhud was so genuinely welcoming, speaking very good English, we felt right at home. He told us many Pamiri are learning English because they were told to do so by the Aga Khan. This guy is the Imam of Ismaili Islam, a little known sect within Shiite Islam. Also has some good ideas, it would seem: we would meet many Pamiri speaking fluent English, hoping to help out tourists.

We found an amazing camp spot through the Overlander app again (recommended!). After cooking dinner, we said goodbye to our Landcruiser buddies: they had a tighter deadline than us, and would leave very early in the morning. (Although we would still run in to them every once in while, of course 🙂 ) So that left just us and Mattias. We also met a couple of English guys that told us about a great hike for the next day!


(Tom building himself a fortress wall to keep out the river noise at night.)

So on Sunday (after being woken up by goats) we headed further into Bartang Valley, towards a little side valley. The road there was quite rough, lots of rocks and gravel, very uneven. Still, when we got to the village and started hiking (up to 3300m), it was worth it:


(The highest peak in the background is over 6 000m high!)


(Drying animal dung to use as fuel in winter.)

When we started driving back towards the main valley, Suzy made some strange noises though. Very loud ‘clangs’ coming from beneath our seats.

After a very stressful hour of driving downhill, we arrived back in the main valley. We had been invited to tea there earlier by Shamsya, while in the village shop. So we found her again and settled down for tea. Again a very genuine and heartfelt welcome. These people are some of the kindest and warm we’ve met so far during our trip. We made bread together with her mother, and talked about all kinds of Tajik stuff: marriage, her work as a nurse, food…

 

Her father also arranged a mechanic for us. You have to imagine: this is an isolated village of maybe forty houses, so we didn’t expect much. But not only does this guy find out what the problem is (the stabilizer, it would turn out), he also happens to have multiple second-hand spare parts on hand to help us out. And of course he wouldn’t accept any payment. Too nice!

On Monday we headed back to Korogh, but not before Tom had an ice cold shower next to the side of the road, in frigid glacier water. Invigorating!

Back in Korogh we met our German Volkswagen buddies again (last seen in Samarkand), and went for an Indian lunch. After doing some shopping and getting Suzy properly fixed up, we started on our trek through the Wakhan Valley.

First, we agreed to go to the Garm Chashma hotsprings, south of Korogh. When we got there, things didn’t seem very appealing, though. A bit run down, we were also chased away several times while trying to set up our tent. This would turn out to be the only bad experience we had in Tajikistan. Eventually we found a camping spot and settled down for the night.

 

Tuesday to Thursday, the 5th – 7th of June

During breakfast we used some of the local mineral water. We’d already seen this was high in iron content, as evidenced by the red rust color near the spring. When we boiled the water for tea though, it turned completely black! Never seen such a thing. It tasted like blood as well 🙂

Afterwards, we hiked up the mountain to Dasht village, for some nice valley views. Of course we were invited for tea again… After trying to find a ruby mine in Kuhi Lal (we couldn’t visit it 🙁 ), we headed towards Ishkashim, where we had a well deserved afternoon of resting and reading. We paid two dollars to set up our tent on the property of a guesthouse, but the owner didn’t seem so pleased once we realized we had our own stuff for cooking, and wouldn’t be eating in his restaurant…

On Friday, we headed to Khaakha fortress. While the fortress itself wasn’t really impressive (dates back to the 3rd century BC), we were welcomed by hordes of school children. We can’t say enough how welcoming and genuinely happy everyone seemed to see us.

After another hike in the mountains, we headed towards Yamchun to set up camp. After some tea and delicious bread provided by the locals, we headed up the mountain flank to visit the Yamchun fortress:

Camping at 3000m came with spectacular views as well:

Early next morning, we headed further up the mountain towards the Bibi Fatimah hotsprings. Named after the daughter of Muhammad, these hotsprings didn’t fail to deliver: soaking in the 40°C water felt so relaxing after camping for more than a week. According to the locals, the hotsprings also have a beneficial effect on female fertility. All the people we talked to, had at least 8 children, so there might be some truth to it…

We also hiked to the Abrashim Qala fortress. The hike itself was nice enough, but as we didn’t have real maps of the area (only an offline GPS app), we ended up on the wrong side of the river when we got up to the fortress… Whoopsie!

We got near the end of the Wakhan Valley now, before we would head up towards the higher Pamir Plateau. In the last village of the valley, Langar, we stocked up on food that was way too expensive, before we set up camp for the night. To avoid altitude sickness, we tried to camp a little higher every night (<400m), which worked out great in the end; nobody ever felt sick.

 

Friday to Monday, the 8th – 11th of June

The road through the Wakhan Valley had been nice so far, asphalted for the most part, with some gravelly or sandy bits every once in a while. When we drove towards the plateau, this road turned into pure dirt. So while we drove up from 3200m to 4300m, we were tossed and shaken about. Suzy still handled it all like a trooper. Landscapes changed from rocky-with-green-oases to lunar desolation. Apart from the lonely shepherd with some goats or cows, nobody lives in this area:

When we finally got to the Pamir Highway proper, Tom was relieved: some proper asphalt!

We headed to Bulunkul lake first, which is supposed to be the coldest part of Tajikistan (-63°C recorded). Lucky for us, it was quite a bit warmer when we got there:

The nearby town of Bulunkul is one of the most desolate places we’ve visited so far. Looks more like an Alaskan town above the polar circle than anything else:

Straight away, we also noticed a change in people’s appearance: in the Wakhan Valley, they looked more Persian-Caucasian, while here they had a distinct Mongol-Asian look. (People in the Wakhan Valley told us they are pure-blooded Persians. The original Persian people were an Aryan race from the steppes. We still saw some very striking blue, grey and green eyes in the Wakhan Valley, so there might be some truth to it!) First time we’ve ever come across such a stark contrast  while driving overland. The high mountain pass apparently has kept these peoples separate for all this time?

We had dinner in a fish restaurant along the road towards Murghab. The owner caught his fish in the swamp behind his house (at 4000m!). The fried fish tasted like heaven 🙂 Afterwards, we also spent the night in his homestay:

This area is so remote, the stars really come out at night, so we could stare in awe at the Milky Way.

The following day we tried to find a caravanserai in the nearby village of Bash Gumbez. No luck, but we did have some fun crossing rivers and annoying yaks along the way:

Further along the road, we made a detour to spot some Neolithic cave paintings. These were rather disappointing (three animals in a row). But the views in the valley made up for it:

After visiting a rather dull meteor crater (but again really nice valley views), we drove on towards Murghab, capital of the district, with a population of 6000. It actually felt a bit like civilization again. We stayed in a hotel for the first time in two weeks and got a hot shower. Dinner was a lovely plov/pilav with yak meat. Delicious!


(Fuel station in Murghab.)

Sunday started with a hike in Pshart Valley, near Murghab. We drove to a height of 4000m, then ascended on foot to a nearby hilltop of 4400m. Because of the altitude, we really noticed a shortness of breath while trying to get to the top. First time we experienced this, really weird. Your body lacks oxygen, so you’re constantly panting.


(We also found a yak horn along the way.)

In the afternoon, we drove on towards Karakul Lake/village. But not before passing over the Ak-Baital mountain pass. This pass is the roof of our trip, at 4655m altitude. Suzy got over it like it was nothing. While Mattias and Wafa hiked up even higher, Tom had himself a nice lukewarm beer and enjoyed the view from below. Wafa made it all the way to the top of the Mont Blanc, over 4800m high!

When we got to Karakul, we found yet another end-of-the-world town, sitting next to an ancient meteor crater filled up with glacial waters, with the most beautiful blue color.

We’d met some really nice Germans in a campervan in Murghab, and found them again on the beach of the lake. They had an awesome set up: bikes, kayak, paragliding parachute… they had it all. It felt a bit weird standing there though; some Tajik kids were standing nearby watching us with big eyes, with all this obvious wealth on display. (People in these kind of villages are dirt poor. Children often look scruffy and dirty.)

Afterwards, we cooked ourselves a lovely noodle dinner before we slept in a scrappy homestay with a yak poop fueled fire to warm us. We were absolutely content with what Tajikistan had offered us.

This country has really been one of the highlights of our trip. We didn’t know what to expect when we first arrived here, but the beauty we found here, both in the scenery and the people, has left us dumbfounded. If you ever have the opportunity, be sure to come here. You will not be disappointed!

Actually, no, wait! Don’t come here! Don’t spoil it with your dirty touristy feet! Leave these people alone! It’s ours!

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General – Service announcement

Addition of GPS tracker (= map) to the website

Just a short post this time, to inform you that we added a GPS tracker to the website.

Tom finally found the time to look into this, and put all our GPS logs to good use. Sometimes we forgot to log our daily travel, so you’ll notice some straight lines on the map here and there.

You can find our logged route through Eurasia on the tab ‘Current location + progress so far’.

Stay tuned for our report on Tajikistan!

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Uzbekistan – Silk Road cities

Big update this time, so not as much text. Photos will have to speak for themselves!

Friday, the 11th of May

Instead of driving on to Nukus, we decided to have ourselves a day trip, towards the town of Muynac. Muynac was once on the edge of the Aral Lake, at the time the 4th largest lake in the world. However, some serious water mismanagement ensured the gradual disappearance of Lake Aral:


(Not that gradual either: 1960s to 2000s.)

To save diesel, we took a shared taxi from Kongrad to Muynac, about a 100 km. We paid just 3 euros, which made it cheaper to take the taxi than driving there ourselves!

Muynac’s only claim to fame is that it was once the main fishing town on the border of Aral Lake. It’s now about 200 km from the nearest water, so we read that a lot of people have been moving away, and it’s supposed to be an economic disaster. Still, when we got there, it seemed quite busy, if a bit boring. First we visited the local museum, which had a mishmash collection of crazy stuffed animals, information on  the disappearance of the lake and even a whole floor of art:

Afterwards, we set out towards the old port. The only thing to be seen now is sand, some shrubbery, and some very eerie rusted boats:

While we were there, we ran into two German guys which we met on the ferry across the Caspian Sea. They’re using public transport and hitchhiking to try and get all the way to India. We didn’t know it at the time, but we’d be seeing them a lot more in the future…

After taking the bus back towards Kongrad, we drove towards Nukus, capital of the Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan (try saying that 5 times in a row!).

 

Saturday, the 12th of May

After running into the Germans again at the hotel (second time), we visited the local art museum in Nukus. It’s supposed to be the most elaborate art collection in the whole of Central Asia, but we mostly found it a bit boring. More interesting were the snogging couples we saw on the way there. After the prudishness of Iran, we had to get used to people being themselves again out in the open!

We still had to pay the hotel. Needed to exchange some money first though. For 500 dollars we got 4 million Uzbek Som. This shouldn’t have been an issue, except that the largest note the bank had, was for 5000 Som. So we received 800 bank notes, or 8 neat stacks of a 100 notes… Even worse than Iran! And we were lucky, because the larger notes were introduced only a few years ago. The biggest one used to be for 1000 Som, at which point we would have been able to fill half our backpack with money…

The way to Khiva was quite uneventful, except that the road started degrading into a potholy mess again. We also crossed some sort of pontoon bridge which didn’t look that thrustworthy:

The old town of Khiva was just beautiful, if a bit touristy. We had to get used to the large groups of (French and German) pensioners again. The sunset from the city walls:

We had a very good dinner on a rooftop terrace (manty, which is some sort of pumpkin dumpling!). While waiting for our food, we found the time to harass people in Belgium through Whatsapp ;).

 

Sunday, the 13th of May

Khiva’s old town is quite small, as we noticed when we set out to explore. It’s basically a walled area of maybe 2 square kilometers. Combine this with it being a Sunday (= foreign + local tourists), and you’ll understand when we say it seemed the hordes of old had invaded Khiva again…

Still, the sights more than made up for this:


(Climbing the minaret turned out to be quite the challenge…)


(This guy is the last Khan of Khiva. He only ruled nominally (Russians were the real boss) in the beginnning of the 20th century. He was deposed by the Bolsheviks.)


(Traditional Khivan headdress.)

Tom felt like quite the movie star: all the young Uzbeks wanted to have their picture taken with him! He was even more popular than Katya the camel. We later learned this happened to all the foreigners though…

Of course, we also ran into our favourite Germans again (third time). In the evening, we had another great dinner with the nicest setting:

 

Monday, the 14th of May

Today a sand castle tour! The Elliq Qala, or Fifty Fortresses, comprise a range of fortifications dating from the 4th century BC to the Middle Ages. A lot of them were constructed by the old Khorezm Kingdom, which ruled these parts before the advent of Islam. Now only great mountains of sand remain, with the occasional wall sticking out:

Also: camels! Baby camels!

Tom managed to make small talk with the driver in Russian, mostly talking about cars, children and Uzbekistan… He also really wanted us to stop at a nearby lake. Which was just a… lake? Nothing beautiful about it? We presume lakes are kind of special in these parts, because he kept asking if we have them as well in Belgium.

 

Tuesday, the 15th of May

Mostly driving from Khiva to Bukhara. We tested a new application, which we got to know from other travelers, to find a spot for lunch. It’s called ‘IOverlander’, and it seemed to work out pretty well, because we ended up here:

We also tried to find diesel with the app along the way, but the places that had some were a bit too expensive, so we’ll look further when we leave Bukhara. While trying to find our hostel in Bukhara, Maps.Me (navigation) sent us through the back streets again. Tom almost managed to get the car completely stuck. With the help of a few locals, we got it out again. But not without the first scratch on the hood of the car 🙁 We still want to sell the car again in Belgium, so have to avoid doing that!

First impression of Bukhara was not so good. In the evening, we went to the center for a bite, but were greeted by flashy LED lighting, loud music and loads of tourists again…

 

Wednesday, the 16th of May

Lots of noise and light in the hostel we stayed at, so not a good night’s sleep. While visiting the sights in Bukhara, we ran into our Germans again (fourth time).

   

To celebrate our 8th anniversary, we went to a nice rooftop restaurant, had a good bottle of wine… We’ve been on the road for 2 months now, but it doesn’t feel that way. Still have that holiday feeling. Hopefully it stays that way! 3 more months to go 🙂 🙂

We also talked quite a bit to our hostel host. Sanjar has lived for 10 years as a jeweler in London, but had to go back to Uzbekistan (work permit expired?), where he started a family. Still dreams of going back to London though. He was very warm and welcoming, like most people we met in Uzbekistan!

 

Thursday, the 17th of May

Part two of our visit to Bukhara. We took things a bit more at ease (= more stops to drink), as it started to get quite hot outside.

First stop was a meeting with Kevin and his brothers and sisters, silk caterpillars:

 

Friday, the 18th of May

Drive towards Samarkand today. First we found a gas station that had some diesel. (We later learned from other travelers that this year is ‘a good year’ for diesel, and good quality could be found relatively easy everywhere. So we wasted some money on a diesel filter and additives 🙁 .) Turned out we didn’t have enough Uzbek Som left to pay, though. Solution: go to the bank to exchange dollars together with the gas pump guy!

After having a last lunch at the hostel (homemade Plov! Delicious!), and paying with lots of cash, we started driving.

 

We’d decided to camp half way to Samarkand. IOverlander mentioned a nice spot, in a nature park with some Bronze Age petroglyphs. The drive there was scenic:

We set up camp, prepared dinner and watched a movie. Sleeping proved to be difficult for Wafa though, with all the noises around the tent…

 

Saturday, the 19th of May

After being woken up by some Uzbeks that decided our camping spot was going to be their lounge area for the day, we went further into the valley to explore the petroglyphs:

By this time, Suzy was getting nasty again (tree sap from Khiva + dust from off-road = sticky mess), so another car wash! Third one in 2 months, Suzy’s getting spoiled! And then on to Samarkand!

 

Sunday to Wednesday, the 20th – 23rd of May

The monuments in the city of Samarkand were mostly built by Timur, or Tamerlane, and his descendants. Timur is one of history’s great conquerors. At the end of the 14th century, this guy forged himself an empire that rivaled the one conquered by the Mongols almost 200 years earlier. In western culture, he still has the  reputation of a bloodthirsty maniac, but in Uzbekistan he is revered as the patron of a Golden Age for the arts. Samarkand, being his capital, was the focus point of his efforts, and where he brought in countless artisans to work on his grand monuments. Some of the more important ones:


(Gur-e-Amir – Timur’s mausoleum.)


(Bibi Khanum – a mosque supposedly built by one of Timur’s wives.)


(Shah I Zindah – an avenue of mausoleums for the extended family.)


(Registan Square – three medressah’s, the left one built by Timur’s grandson Ulugbek, the others some 200 years later.)

While visiting the city, we ran into our Germans again, of course (fifth time). We decided to team up and go do a local wine tasting. The most prestigious (and only) ‘wine factory’ of Samarkand is housed in a 19th century industrialist’s palace, which proved to be the perfect setting for tasting 3 normal wines, 4 dessert wines and 3 brandies. Yummie! After grabbing ourselves a sashlik dinner (= kebab), we spent the rest of the evening drinking wine and playing card games in the hostel of our German friends. We finally got to know their names as well! (We forgot to ask before, and found it awkward to ask after 3 or 4 times of seeing each other. The wine helped to find the courage!)

A few bottles of wine later, we tried to find a taxi back to our hotel. In the end we got a lift from the owner of the restaurant next door. The guy was friendly enough to drop us off on the other side of town, for nothing! So of course we promised to go eat at his restaurant the day after…

On Monday, after a late start (maybe a tiny wee hangover), we spent some more time in the city. Tuesday, however, was a day to forget: after drinking a (boxed!) fruit juice, Tom got really sick and so we spent the rest of the day in the hotel. Tom mostly sleeping and vomiting, Wafa browsing her internet.

Wednesday Tom started to feel better, so we set out again towards the city. We had hoped to explore some old city neighbourhoods, but this didn’t turn out to be worthwhile. So we snuck into Shah i Zindah again (Mausoleum Avenue). This time it was sunny, and everything looked completely different.


(Meanwhile, Tom felt like that plant next to him.)

We had heard that the son of Turkey’s president, Erdogan, was visiting the city (the Registan was closed off for this reason), so imagine our surprise when we ran into him near the monuments! We’re pretty sure we ended up in a couple of official photos, hopefully nobody took offence to our shaggy appearance…

After strolling around the city for quite a bit, we had ourselves some ice cream. And we ran into Mattias again, the other Belgian on the boat across the Caspian. The longer we’re on our Silk Road trail, the more we notice that you keep running into the same people. And then you meet their friends, and their friends’ friends. It’s like everybody has more or less the same idea, whether it’s bikers, motor bikers or car travelers. And so you end up running into the same faces again. Which is quite nice; sharing news, experiences and ideas.

In the evening, we went to the light show of the Registan, which was supposed to be quite spectacular. We were quite bummed when it turned out it was closed off for the night, being rented out to a group of tourists. Using Wafa’s charm, we managed to bribe an official to get in though! Turned out the light show consisted of a short movie being projected onto the buildings, which we thought was neither very original or well done…

 

Thursday, the 24th of May

On our last day in Uzbekistan, we went to Sharisabz, Timur’s summer palace town, some 90 kms from Samarkand. The monuments in Samarkand itself have been extensively renovated. We read that the palace and mausoleums in Sharisabz were still a bit more ruined, or authentic, you might say. So we were a bit disappointed when the Uzbeks had already cleaned everything up in Sharisabz as well… Still, the old gate to Timur’s palace, Ak Saray, was still very impressive:


(The whole complex at Sharisabz is supposed to have been as impressive, or even more so, as Samarkand itself. Nothing much remains though.)

The only other thing we found interesting, was the original tomb of Timur, which was only discovered in 1963:


(Timur was intended to be buried here, but ended up in Samarkand instead, as the mountain pass was snowed shut and they couldn’t get him across.)

In the evening we met up with Mattias, Susi and Thomas (some other boat Germans) to have dinner and a bottle of wine on the cemetery of Samarkand, with a view over Mausoleum Avenue. Had a really good time!

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Kazakhstan & Uzbekistan – First taste of the Stans

On new friends and border controls

Tuesday, the 8th of May (cont.)

After making it through Kazakh customs, we found ourselves a hotel in Aktau, freshened up and headed into town to eat something. On our way there we saw a carwash. The dirt of our trek through the Alamut Valley (Iran) was still on the car. Combined with the sea salt of the Caspian, we thought it wise to get Suzy all lathered up again:

While we were waiting, we started talking to some guys standing nearby. We asked them if they knew a nice Kazakh restaurant nearby, so we could try the local cuisine. One of them, who turned out to be the carwash owner, suggested he’d show us. We could follow him in our car.
What a nice chap, we thought. On arriving at the restaurant, however, he went in with us.
What an even nicer chap, we thought, keeping us company. Then he started ordering plate after plate of local fare. As we didn’t even know the price of what he was ordering, we gestured for him to stop, we weren’t that hungry anyway. He then told us it was all on him, a gesture of Kazakh hospitality. Like… what? We talked to you for five minutes and you’re buying us dinner?


(And quite the dinner it was.)

Either this was the nicest chap we’d run into so far, or something dodgy was going on. We talked some more over dinner and were put at ease by his easygoing manner. No stranger danger alarm going off. After learning his name was Askhatt, we chatted about a lot of stuff. We learned that the day after, the 9th of May, is Victory Day in all of the former Soviet Union. The celebration of the victory over Nazi Germany. Askhatt kindly invited us to join him and his family for the parade the following morning. Also, would we be interested in having a few drinks later on in the evening?

We understood he would invite some of his friends, so Wafa, feeling tired already, left Tom to a boys’ night out. After dropping Wafa and the car off at the hotel, we set off in Askhatt’s Land Cruiser limo. After meeting up with some of his friends, we had a couple of beers on a nice terrace in the center of town. Really friendly guys. Something we’ve noticed in this part of the world, they’re not scared to ask you direct questions either: how much is your salary, why no babies…? It turned into a very pleasant evening. Tom also tried the Russian brewed Hoegaarden. Tasted like crap, of course 🙂

In short: Kazakh hospitality is some of the best we’ve encountered so far! We were almost ashamed of our earlier distrust. Travelling through this part of the world really makes us wonder what went wrong in Belgium, where this kind of evening between strangers would be exceptional (at least in our experience).

 

Wednesday, the 9th of May

After a rather short night, one of Askhatt’s buddies came to pick us up to go to the Victory parade. When we arrived, we were pleasantly surprised. We expected something militaristic, but it was really interesting to see how people here remembered their relatives that fought in the Second World War. Especially considering we were in a far-flung corner of the former Soviet Union. We didn’t get a sense of overly patriotic feelings either. You can judge for yourself:


(The guys that were Heroes of the Soviet Union (their highest decoration) got separate memorials. These had their family all over, of course.)

Askhatt also turned up with his family:

After treating our party to lunch, we said goodbye to everyone, with promises made to meet up again in Almaty, and headed off towards Beyneu, near the Uzbek border.

The next 500 km were mostly empty again, except for a few lost villages and lots of camels and horses on the steppe:

Once in Beyneu, we stocked up on diesel. During earlier research, we understood there’s hardly any diesel to be had in the western part of Uzbekistan, so we filled up the car’s gas tank, a 20L jerrycan, and 6 x 5L water bottles. About 110L of diesel in total, enough to get us about 1500 km far:


(Obviously Tom’s most photogenic side.)

Beyneu itself wasn’t much to look at (being a town in the middle of nowhere), so we went to bed early to rest up.

 

Thursday, the 10th of May

On our way to Beyneu, the road had been pretty great to drive on: all paved, no potholes… This changed as soon as we started driving towards the Uzbek border though. Although this was supposed to be the E40 highway (Yes, the same one as in Belgium! We’re going to the source of the E40!), it quickly degraded into a dusty track filled with holes the size of a decent camel. Camels being the only things around to compare things with:

After 80 km of this (or around 2 hours of driving), we arrived at the Kazakh-Uzbek border crossing.  This was a strange place. No photos of course (border crossings are sensitive), but you have to imagine a small facility in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a few shacks that serve food and drink. And otherwise: nothing.

The border crossing itself started of smoothly, after waiting in line for about half an hour to get our passports checked, we waited another hour to get the car searched on the Kazakh side. When we made it to the front of the line, they just let us pass through though. White tourist advantage, fuck yeah!

Then we got stuck waiting in no man’s land between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan for about 2 hours. No idea why, but they would only let in a couple of cars at a time to go through the customs procedure. When they finally let us through, the Uzbek cars around us started unloading all of their stuff from the cars. We really didn’t feel like doing this, so after getting our passports and car papers checked, we played the stupid tourists and asked one of the border guards what we had to do next. He simply waved us to the front of the line, did a quick check of our stuff in the car and waved us through. White tourist advantage, fuck yeah!

All in all, the crossing had taken us 4 hours though. So it was now 4 PM, and we still had 400 km to go to Nukus, where we wanted to stay the night.

The first 50 km after the border were absolute crap as well:


(This is the dirt track next to the E40. And it is a whole lot better than the highway itself.)

Afterwards, road conditions got considerably better; we managed to average 90km/h. Still, every 10-20km there would be a potholed stretch of road. So one moment you’re doing 90-100km/h, and then the car gets thrown around like it’s going to break an axle. Because you can’t break in time for the holes in the road. VERY uncomfortable.

By 8 PM we still had a 100 km to go to Nukus, so we decided to make a stop in Kongrad, one of the first villages after the border crossing (actually 300 km further down the road; this part of the world is really empty). After finding ourselves a basic local hotel, we prepared ourselves a tasty little tabouleh with canned Russian herring in tomato sauce, and called it a night.

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Azerbaijan & Caspian Sea – The Caspian Ferry

Maybe tomorrow...

Tuesday, the 1st of May

Another border crossing today: Iran – Azerbaijan. We’re guessing this one isn’t used much by passenger cars, because we had to look quite a bit before we found the entrance. On the Iran side everything went reasonably smooth. First we had a guy assist us with getting our Carnet in order (need that exit stamp to get our bail money back in Belgium!), then another guy that ran from office to office to get us across the border. He was rather ‘assertive’ about the whole thing, but as long as he got things done, that didn’t bother us too much. If we can avoid administrative hassle for a couple of euros, why not? 🙂

The Azeri side was a different story, though. Supposedly we had driven across the border so fast the camera didn’t register our car. So up and down the compound we drove. After that, we had to wait for a couple of hours before someone turned up to check our passports. The border guards were really working hard though; reading news websites, taking a nap, having tea… Must be exhausting!

From Astara to Baku was a pleasant enough drive, a bit boring maybe. No highway either, so driving 60-70 km/h for 200 km made us sleepy. Baku itself was a pleasant surprise! Due to an oil boom in the late 19th century, the center of town has a very stately, almost Parisian feel about it. So of course we had dinner in Paris Bistro. That first beer after Iran was very tasty, even if it was German…

 

Wednesday, the 2nd of May

Some real sightseeing of Baku on this day. Our first impression was confirmed by daylight: Baku is really worth a visit! (city trip?) It has a combination of an interesting old town (medieval), the stately avenues and shopping streets of a European town, lots of modern architecture (the Flame Towers!), and a nice seafront! And we had just missed the annual F1 GP as well (including a concert of Christina Aguilera)! Everything was still set up for the race through the center of town, much like in Monaco. We spent the entire day just strolling around town, taking in the sights, without really visiting anything. Very refreshing!

While visiting the Lamborghini shop beneath the Flame Towers, we ran into Beknur, a Kazakh guy. He would also take the ferry across the Caspian Sea, so we exchanged info on the practicalities. Really nice guy! We owe him a lot, as will become clear later on.

 

Thursday – Saturday, the 3rd – 5th of May

We wanted to visit some sights near Baku, before heading towards the ferry terminal. So we went to see petroglyphs. Supposed to be one of the 5 highlights of Azerbaijan, according to our Lonely Planet. While it certainly was ok, we wouldn’t exactly call it a highlight though… We heard from other people the other highlights weren’t much to look at, either, so we think Azerbaijan doesn’t have much to offer outside of Baku.

After this experience, we decided to just go and wait for the ferry. This boat has no regular timetable: you just call every day, or turn up at the terminal, and wait for it to arrive. In our case, this meant we camped for about 3 nights on the parking of the terminal.

This camping was quite an event in itself. We’ll try to summarize:

– The best part were the other tourists. By the end, a group of around 10-15 people had gathered, most of them camping as well. A couple of Germans (with an old Volkswagen van), a Brit and a German (cycling to Mongolia!), another Belgian (motorbike) and several Dutchies (with a Range Rover Deluxe, including collapsible minibar and rooftop tent) made for fun company. We also ran into Beknur again. These guys made the waiting bearable, because…

– You have no idea when the boat is coming. We would ask the port authorities every morning, and every morning the answer would be: ‘Today, probably, maybe. 50% chance. Ask again in the afternoon.’

– There were basic facilities. A separate toilet for the tourists. Which was nice, because the truckers’ toilet smelled like a… truckers’ toilet. A shower. Which we really needed after camping for a few days. Even a little shop, a teahouse. By the end, every Azeri there knew Wafa’s name, even though we didn’t mention it…

– Our car has a mattress in it for Wafa, but sleeping in it proved to be difficult. So on night 2 Wafa just slept in the tent, like a normal person. Well, sleeping… You’re on a truckers’ parking, so…

– We had a cookout: ‘pancake extravaganza’ (courtesy of the hyper-equipped Range Rover folks), with liters of Georgian wine (courtesy of a new Kyrgyzian friend). All we could offer in return was a Belgian post card of Brussels… 🙂 It was probably the wine, but a lot of ideas were generated: to start a proper ferry line, with camping and facilities, a boat that can actually withstand the waves, and has an actual TIMETABLE!

– Also a possible effect of the wine: Tom got very sick that night. As in; bowels emptying in mere seconds sick. Remember that separate toilet for tourists? It was locked with a key. The person with the key disappeared. Only the truckers’ toilet remained. Poor truckers.

– On Saturday, good news: a boat is coming! Probably maybe! It even has a name: the Mercury-1. We soon learn about the tragic fate of its sister ship, the Mercury-2. It capsized during a storm. And there’s supposed to be a storm under way towards us. Yay!

 

Sunday – Tuesday, the 6th – 8th of May

After a very short night, we were woken up at 2 AM Sunday morning, to start boarding. To give you an idea of how efficiently this was done:

– 2 AM: begin passport control (it’s not like you could do this the evening before, right guys?)

– 3 AM: park the car on the quay and start waiting for actual boarding.

– 4 AM: start actual boarding of boat.


(Really festive atmosphere, as you can see.)

– 4.30 AM: car is parked on boat, we go up to find where our cabin is.

– 5 AM: tired lady is surrounded by confused tourists, trying to assign cabins to a bunch of unhappy troglodytes in perfectly understandable Russian!

– 5.30 AM: after a lot of bartering (thanks for the help here, Beknur!), we finally get assigned the cabin we paid for: a 2 person cabin with a window. Which is actually quite nice, and not as decrepit as we feared.  Most of us fall asleep immediately.

– 1 PM: boat actually leaves harbor. A collective sigh goes through the crowd of tourists. We made it! We’re going to Kazakhstan!

– 5 PM: boat stops and goes at anchor just outside of Baku. Reason: there’s a storm coming, we’re going to stay here for another 2 days… (‘-_-)

Life on the boat itself was quite nice though: we had ‘food’ (chicken for lunch and dinner, accompanied with either rice, pasta or cooked wheat and ketchup). We had a good bed. Movies/series to watch. Books to read. And the truckers had lots of wodka!


(“Hi guys, wanna have some wodka?”, he cried from his cabin window, waving his wodka partybox around.
These two guys were hilariously drunk, including falling into each others’ arms whenever possible.)


(Gambling machines in the hallway, still needed Deutsche Mark to play though.)


(No Titanic for us! Lifeboat looking prim and proper.)

Luckily, the boat left the following morning, and at noon on the 8th, we arrived in the port of Aktau, Kazakhstan. Ready to get on the road again!

Or not. First, disembarking took us around 3 hours (first all the trucks had to get out). Then customs took us another 3-4 hours (lots and lots of paperwork). After saying goodbye to our compagnons de route, we found a good hotel in Aktau and called it a day. Or so we thought…

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Iran – Final week

Wrapping up

Sunday, the 23rd of April

After spending the night in an Esfahak ecolodge, Moshin showed us around. His background is in IT, but he decided to quit his job and return to his home village, and help develop it. Doing a pretty good job as well, if you ask us.

Next we set out to the Mortazeh Ali spring, near Tabas. We thought we were really going off the beaten track, given the remoteness of the region. Hiking through the riverbed, we soon ran into a couple of Belgians though… Still, the surroundings were beautiful:

Afterwards, a 600 km trek towards Mashhad, in the north east of Iran. Lots of desert. The weather was quite strange: lots of sand in the air, but no real sandstorm. Combined with a few raindrops, this ensured very low visibility unless we constantly kept spraying the windows.

 

Monday, the 24th of April

After a very short night of sleep for Tom (which caused a bit of grumpiness during the day…), we visited Mashhad. Famous for two things: the holiest site for Shia Islam, and saffron. First, we visited the shrine for Imam Reza in the center of town. This turned out to be somewhat of a disappointment: everything about the shrine is quite new (20th century), and it failed to impress us with its grandeur. What we did like:

– The chador Wafa received as a gift:

– The obligated talk with an imam. Wafa almost cried laughing when he got confused by the fact we were ‘married’ even though Wafa’s ‘muslim’ and Tom ‘christian’. He promptly tried to convert Tom, of course!

– The carpet museum, part of the shrine complex. Even included one of the German Kaiser, made around the time of WWI, a 100 years ago:

Afterwards, we bought lots of saffron, as Mashhad is supposed to be the capital of saffron. They put it in everything: tea, sugar, rice…

 

Tuesday, the 25th of April

Nothing much to report, drove 700 km from Mashhad to Semnan. We did see a few warning signs on the road to mind the leopards though. Apparently there’s still a small leopard population remaining in the remote parts of the desert here. Sadly, most of the other big animals have been hunted to extinction a long time ago (lions, bears, all sorts of deer…).

 

Wednesday, the 26th of April

Drove from Semnan to Tehran Airport. After leaving the car the airport, we took the metro to Tehran itself. Due to the fantastic efficiency of the metro system, this only took us about 3-4 hours. Even though Tehran is a real metropolis (15 million inhabitants!) we still got a lot of curious looks. After another passenger shyly asked us where we were from, we heard the answer whispered around the entire carriage (‘Belgik. Belgik? Belgik!’).

In the rest of Iran, we had been told by youths that Tehran is supposed to be the most liberal city in the country. We could immediately tell by the dress of women: almost no chadors, and even headscarves were worn very loosely.

First thing we did was visit the Azadi tower. This was built in 1975 by the last Shah of Iran, the celebrate a continuous 2500 years of Persian Empire. The feast was so opulent (over a 100 heads of state) that it was actually one of the catalysts that triggered the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which signaled the end of that same Persian Empire:

 

Thursday, the 27th of April

We only had one day in Tehran, so we wanted to make it count. First a visit to the American embassy, which was stormed at the time of the revolution back in 1979. It’s now home to some sort of militant organization that defends the revolution. And the graffiti on the compound walls tell their own story:

Afterwards we set out to the National Museum. It was really nice to see every period in Iranian history covered here; it enabled us to link up every place we’ve visited so far. And it contained some beautiful artifacts, of course:


(Lots of stuff from Persepolis. The last dude was found in an ancient salt mine, ‘perfectly’ preserved. Wouldn’t want to meet him in the dark…)

Last item on our list for Tehran: the Golestan palace complex. Built in the 19th century by the Shahs of the Qajar dynasty, these palaces are fabled for their opulence. The Qajar era is generally viewed as one of the worst in Persian history: reduced to a laughing stock, the empire lost a large part of its territory. During our trip, we met a number of people that still speak of a ‘Greater’ Iran, which would contain the Caucasus nations, large parts of Central Asia, Afghanistan… if not for the losses of that time.


(Also included: a photo exhibition with photos of the private archives of the Shah. The upper one depicts dead bodies in a tower of silence (cf. Zoroasterians – they leave their dead to be eaten by animals). The lower one is the harem of one of the Qajar Shahs. Still going for those unibrows…)

In the evening, we enjoyed our last dinner together with the three of us. We could tell the travelling had worn Abdel out, so it was the right call in the end. Still, it will be different travelling with just the two of us again…

 

Friday, the 28th of April

Early morning, getting up at 5 AM! After a hearty goodbye to Abdel at Tehran airport (and sticking around for a few hours, to make sure the plane actually took off), we went to pick up the car in the parking lot. The clerk got real confused about our ticket –not supposed to stay for two days?- and we ended up paying just under 1 euro. Eat that, Zaventem!

Afterwards we drove to Qazvin and spent the rest of the day hanging around in the same hotel we stayed in 4 weeks earlier. The hotel staff even recognized us! (As the annoying customers that complained the food was too expensive). We didn’t see the friendly night manager anymore though, that gave us a free upgrade and discount. Hopefully we didn’t get him fired…?

 

Saturday, the 29th of April

Today we set out to visit Alamut Valley. Like we explained in an earlier post, this valley is most known for being the home base of the Assassins, a cult that specialized in high profile assassinations on command. After we made it all the way up to the main castle, we understood why it took a couple of centuries and the fierceness of the Mongols to root these guys out:


(Wafa touching a dog! Imagine that!)

There was supposed to be a road that took us straight from Alamut Valley to the Caspian Sea. So we left in the early afternoon, heading towards the town of Ramsar. Little did we know that the road would degrade into this:

After climbing to around 3000 meters, it even started looking like this:

And then it got worse:

At this point, we thought about turning back: it was snowing, visibility was down to 50 meters, the road was snowed under and the car started slipping every once in a while (and we were driving next to a rather deep ravine). We were shitting bricks by now.

We could see on the GPS there was a provincial border nearby though. Gambling on the fact that borders are usually placed on the highest point of mountain ranges, we decided to drive a little bit further and hope the road would start descending.

Which it finally did after this point, at over 3300 meters!

Once we got back down in the valley, another worry: the most annoying shrieking sounded from the right tire in front. It did not sound (& smell) good.

Some friendly Iranians came to the rescue. After taking off the wheel, we saw that a small stone had become lodged between the wheel and braking disc.

Around 7 PM, we finally arrived in Ramsar. In the end, it took us 5 hours for just 135 kilometers. So we checked into the local luxury hotel and went looking for dinner. We ended up in a coffee shop under the old part of the hotel, where we ran into the manager slash doppelganger of a good friend of ours:


(Meet Iranian Antonio, with beard!)

He told us the hotel used to be the hottest place in town, drawing rich people from Iran and far beyond. Before the revolution, there was a casino and everything. They even had pictures of Frank Sinatra, Al Pacino and Sammy Davis Jr in the hotel on the wall. Pretty weird when you keep in mind the state of things since 1979…

(They also had shisha! Yay for smoke rings!)

 

Sunday, the 30th of April

After being woken up at 5 AM by a random dude knocking on our door, we first set about writing the post cards we wanted to send out of Iran.


(Wafa got a bit confused.)

Driving towards the Azeri border in Astara, we had a stop at a local heritage museum. This region of Iran, Gilan, has its own culture and customs. Some lovely houses as well:

After arriving in Astara, we found a hotel that would give us a room for our last rials and gave us access to the kitchen to cook our own meal. We spent our last evening in Iran talking to the hotel manager, commenting on the state of affairs in the country. His conclusion: Iran good people, bad politics. We couldn’t agree more!