Kazakhstan

We finally left Tashkent after a day of sitting around reception whilst Pete went back and forward to the embassy trying to track down our passports and visas. We then bombed it down to the border, to find it was closed to foreigners after we were told that it was open so we drove to a further away border making it there about 7pm. Customs forms filled and we were stamped out of Uzbekistan within an hour.

Then the problems really started as we found out that the Kazak border was closed. Either the Kazak consulate doesn't know his border opening times or the 2 borders don't work on the same time! Either way we had nowhere to go and were stuck in no- mans land for the night!. Luckily we always have food and water on board so we pitched our tents (out of the area of mines) and camped out as an Odyssey first.

Packed up and ready to go at the crack of dawn we entered Kazakhstan, the land of flat grassy plains and crazy driving as poor Kirsten experienced when a car decided to over take and then stop dead in front of the truck. The problems with the angry drivers quickly solved as the locals realised it wasn't a truck full of girls as the boys jumped out the back of the truck. Clocking up many km's we bush camped 150km from the Kyrgystan border and crossed over with few problems the next day.

We arrived in Bishkek in the afternoon and had a wander around. A few squares and some statues but not alot going on. Good evening though as we all ate out and had a few drinks at one of the pubs in town.

Today we are leaving for the mountains to spend some time at the alpine lakes so shall be out of contact for a while.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan

Visa chaos as Pete eventually submitted the visas as they were approved but yet to be issued. After being told to come back the next day we have now found out that the man that can issue the visa isn't around until Monday (its now Thursday). With the Uzbek visas expiring on Saturday Pete and Kirsten went back to the embassy and pushed their way to the front of the queue with a little help from the British embassy on the phone. They were told that we couldn't even get our passports back to get the Uzbek visa extended as the man with the key was away on business. Most recent update is that we should be able to collect them tomorrow but with one person saying that and another saying something else who knows when we will get out of Uzbekistan. As the hotels will not let us stay if our visas have expired and as we have to register with the government on check in, we had planned to camp in the Uzbek mountains till a new visa was issued. Turns out there is a lot of military patrolling due to proximity to border so we are just hoping to get the kazak visas tomorrow and get out of Uzbekistan.

We have had 2 nights in Tashkent and will definitely be leaving tomorrow with visas or not. I think everyone's pretty glad to be leaving as there's not alot here. I've not found the department store and the water park that some of us got to was really not worth the money so we didn't go in. On the upside I found tea and cake, the ice creams are cheap and the metro was pretty cool as there was a different style of light in every station! That's as far as the excitement goes.
Some of us did enjoy a night out in the FM bar. Ben who's my truck little brother getting many a lap dance is an image that's going to be burnt into my head for eternity! He did enjoy himself though!

Samarkand, Uzbekistan

A short drive to Samarkand and with Pete away in Tashkent it was Kirsten's time to drive the truck. With Kylie also in the cab the police were given the perfect opportunity to pull us over for “speeding” . Luckily Alex sorted it out and it shows what an easy target women make here as although it is legal for women to drive, none do and especially not big blue trucks!

Samarkand is instantly impressive. Registan square is huge and the madrassas and mosques with the blue domes stand out around the city centre. The walking tour was really interesting as we first headed to a 14th century necropolis and then later to Bibi-Khanym mosque which has been rebuilt in the last 10 years after many centuries of earthquake damage.

Registan square is home to 3 madrassas and 2 mosques and Alex gave us a tour around. The first Ulugbek Madrassa was built by leader and astronomer, Ulugbek in 15th century. The Madrassa features rooms for 100 students and some lecture rooms either side of the student mosque which was much simpler than other mosques visited. The second structure, the Tilla kari Madrassa was first built as a carvansaray and then after the Bibi- Khanym mosque was destroyed in an earthquake, it was converted into a Madrassa with a juma (Friday) mosque which is pretty impressive inside with its gold guilding. The third structure in the square is the Sher Dor Madras which is....just a madrassa.

Samarkand's been spectacular to look around but I'm quite looking forward to getting back to a normal city with street cafes, blocks of flats and non touristy shops which I'm hoping what Tashkent is. We shall see as we are staying there as long as the Kazakhstan visas come through.

photos: Registan square (l-r): Ulugbek Madrassa, tilla kari madrassa, sher dor madrassa.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan

From Khiva we were headed to the next Silk road city, Bukhara. Uzbekistan has a diesel shortage at the moment and the queues in the garages are huge. We stopped en route to buy diesel on the black market. Apparently the house was full of water bottles full of the stuff! So with our diesel we had enough to get us to Bukhara.

Riots in Osh just over the border in Kyrgyzstan have led to the border we were going to use being closed which means a slight diversion for us. We will head north into Kazakhstan for 2 days and then cut into Kyrgyzstan through a northern border. This means we will miss the mountain passes of the Fergana valley but the detour shouldn't take any longer so we will be back on track. This is all based upon us getting visas into Kazakhstan which is up to Pete flying to Tashkent and joining a very long queue at the embassy. Fingers crossed all will be ok.

Anyway, on to Bukhara. We checked into our very nice hotel in the centre of this small touristy city. In Uzbekistan there are only a few meals on the western menu: plov (rice), shashlik (kebab), lahgman (soup with lots of noodles) and manti (steamed dumplings with meat and onion in the centre). All nice but not when there's little choice for lunch and tea so some of us walked to an Italian for a much needed pizza.

The following morning we went on a walking tour around some of the medrasses and mosques. They were really decorative on the outside and everything was so much bigger than Khiva. Despite the interesting facts about the buildings in was 42 degrees outside (about 10 hotter than the average) and everyone started to flag so the afternoon was spent catching up with internet in the hotel. In the evening the girls and boys decided to go out separately for dinner around a large duck pond in the centre of the city. I think a good night was had by all as the boys had beers in town whilst the girls made watermelon cocktails, even if the girls were all back in our rooms at 10pm!

Khiva, Uzbekistan

We are now following the ancient silk road as we rock on into the preserved city of Khiva. With a few heat related illnesses this week everyone is relieved to get into the hotel and spend the afternoon chilling. Unfortunately Roberta and I drew the short straw and got the room without air con on the afternoon it was 45 degrees!

We headed out to get money from the black market. 1$ is 2200 on the black market and 1600 at the bank. Exchanging in a busy market was definitely an experience.

Our local guide Alex took us on a walking tour around the city which is full of minarets and madrasses all decorated in blue tiles. The tour was really interesting and gave us lots of info (most now forgotten) but I did remember that men were executed by beheading or being thrown from the minarets and woman were put in a bag full of cats! Myself and Simon had a good laugh visiting the museum of nature which was filled with bad taxidermy, plastic fruit and a 8 legged sheep titled "ugly sleep".

Sadly, Darrell left for good this afternoon due to family reasons back home. He will be missed lots amongst the group and a few tears where shed. We will continue his journey through Ned though which we promise to look after!

The afternoon was spent truck cleaning which was a 23 man job for 2 hours (the deserts dusty) and drinking tea local style. Khiva was a nice break from the bush camps but I'm definitely looking forward to the cities to come!

Moynak, Uzbekistan

Border crossed and we were let loose in an another country. First we headed North to Moynak. This village 30 years ago was a busy fishing centre on the edge of the Aral Sea. Now its approximately 70km away from the Aral sea and home to so rusty fishing boats as the Aral has been drained. The place was really surreal as most life was gone from the village and it was incredibly quiet bar the 23 of us very excited and clambering on the boats.

Due to the roads being better than expected as we headed south again had time for a dip in a canal and stopped off in Nukus. The art gallery at Nukus wasn't everyone's thing but I really enjoyed it. All the paintings were put into storage to protect them from being destroyed as they were seen to be antisoviet impressionism. They have a great insight to Uzbek life.

Borders and bushcamps, Uzbekistan

We had our earliest start yet, 6am as we headed to the border. We stopped in Konye Urgench which is a pilgrimage town and the large madrases (universities) and what was once the tallest minaret in central Asia survived the passing through of Genghis Khan. It was a bit of an odd tourist attraction as unless you bought a tour ticket you couldn't even walk close to the buildings let alone take a photo of the outside. It was really expensive to I was pretty happy sitting by the truck with an ice cream!

We followed a taxi to the border as the GPS didn't show the roads, Pete hadn't been to it and neither had our local guide. We made it though and were stamped with ease out of Turkmenistan. Getting though to Uzbekistan wasn't so easy though. We annoyed the border officials by making our lunch when we thought that they had stopped for theirs....turns out they hadn't and then the customs checks started. We had entry stamps in our passports so immigration would let us in but customs insisted on checking bags. An absolute nightmare when everything takes so long to pack. At first they were just interested in prescription medication so we were all ready to get out our malaria tablets and such like and the queue was moving quickly until Kaye was found with random medication that she had picked up from India including a single Valium tablet. This single tablet was to cause a lot of extra sitting around at the border as it is illegal in Uzbekistan if not prescribed. With Kaye facing prison I had dug out my tablets and handed them over but the official having seem what Kaye had, decided he wanted me to empty my whole bag. I wasn't too impressed having just repacked it in Ashgabat. I was quickly passed on and left the office with a bag full of all my stuff to repack on no mans land concrete. Kaye was made to destroy her tablet and we left after 4.5 hours of getting to the border and now needing to find a random side of the road bushcamp. A long day for all!

Darvaza, Turkmenistan

We left to cross the Karakum desert in the afternoon and it was super hot, hitting 38 degrees and a steel box was definitely not the most comfortable mode of transport and a couple were hit with heat stroke. We did see and pass through some large sand tornadoes though but other than that the scenery wasn't that exciting. The evening was assigned to a 6 wheeled drive monster jeep trip to the burning gas crater. I'd read and seen photos of the craters on previous year's blogs but It was absolutely spectacular and so surreal. This huge crater was created as a drilling rig collapsed into the ground in the 1970's. The natural gasses leaked out and someone decided to light them and the crater has been burning ever since. The locals see it as the gateway to hell and you can see why! The whole truck was buzzing an everyone felt privileged to have seen it.

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

We had a long driving day to make up for the delays with the ferry as we were going 600km (usually split by a bush camp) to Ashgabat. We made it to Ashgabat for tea time and everyone was very thankful to get to the very nice 5 star Grand Turkmen hotel. With a view over the city from the balcony I knew Ashgabat was something very different. The whole city was flattened by an earthquake in the 1940's so the old president very sensibly decided to rebuild the entire city centre in white marble government buildings. It was like a ghost town. The only people on the streets were soldiers telling you not to take photos and instructing you on which side of the road to walk on. It felt like there was someone watching you at all times.

We had a full day to explore and it started with a trip to the Sunday market which was huge and placed in the middle of the desert. There were camels everywhere and a large section selling clothes and assorted rubbish that you would never need. Myself and Alice had a hard time trying to find an affordable shawl and in the end gave up due to communication problems and all prices being too high. It was only later that we realised that they were giving us prices in old manat which was 5 times the price of new manat which was the currency they were trading in!

In the afternoon I wandered the city and got the lift up the arch of Neutrality. This is the only place in the city where you can take photos of the government buildings and not be stopped. There is a tacky statue on the top on the old president which rotates to always face the sun. At night the arch is lit up like some thing from Blackpool! There is an 11pm curfew in the city, after which there is a high chance of you getting arrested so we had dinner and a few drinks in a British pub. I was trying to be adventurous and order “sausages with fire” not really knowing if it was just a bad menu translation. It wasn't the sausages really were on fire. Very exciting!

Adventure on the Caspian.

After looking at the courtyard of the hotel and discovering that the camping site was the ground floor of a gutted office block full of mosquitoes some of us decided to try our luck an sleep anywhere in the hotel. Pete and Kirsten still had their room with all our luggage in it so with Pete and a few of the boys heading to the port to check on the ferry status some of us took advantage of the spare space (10 in a standard size hotel room isn't bad! Despite being a late-comer I also managed to get a space in the bed. Something about no-one wanting to share with Darrell but I was pretty happy to not be eaten alive outside!). We received a text from the boys at the port at 5am instructing us to get up and go. I don't think I've seen the group work so well together before but we were super quick getting to the port only to be sat around for another couple of hours at the dock. At least we could see the ferry though!

The boat left at 10am on 3rd June for a planned 16 hour crossing to Turkmenbasi so we were assigned cabins which were so stuffy and dirty that they ended up as luggage storage. There was a lounge which wasn't so comfy but it would do as it would only be for 16 hours...right? I'm not even going to describe the toilet but thankfully Pete upgraded one cabin to crew so we could have clean toilet to use and a power socket!

With everyone thankful to be on the ferry the lounging on deck started and I joined the pilate's club! A pot noodle dinner and some shut eye (some on the very windy deck and me in the lounge) as we cruised across the incredibly calm Caspian.

Woke up at midnight with the anchors coming down. We'd docked with the port on the horizon so we knew that we were on board for a bit longer. Another day went by and due to us being anchored there was no wind and a lot of flying insects on deck so everyone was getting pretty fed up in the heat. Dinner consisted on snacks on deck as everyone was accepting another night on board as we used binoculars and praying that the ship in our berth would get a move on! Luckily the anchors came up and we docked at 11pm and the “doctor” came on board and we signed a document and we were finally on dry land at midnight only to have to wait at customs for another 2 hours. We drove out of the port and bush camped at the roadside, everyone exhausted and in bed at 3.45am for a 7am wake up but glad to be in Turkmenistan!


photos: sunset over turkmenistan. Darrell enjoying life on deck.

Baku, Azer

Another humid night and then we headed to Baku. Immediately you can see the wealth here and the dominance of the oil in the region. People had nodding donkeys in their gardens and looking out to sea the horizon is covered in rigs. We checked into a very nice hotel ($140 prpn) as we have to have a local sponsor in order to get the visa so as part of the deal they choose the hotel. In the afternoon we spent the afternoon trying to find the shops so I can buy some more flipflops, T shirts etc. Everything is very expensive though and in Debenhams they stick the local price at at least twice the British. Some thermal/pilates legging later and a lot of money spent, I've still no flip flops!

Its a bit of a waiting game for the ferry as there is no set sailing time and we are waiting for a diesel carrying cargo ship sailing to Turkmenbashi. We were told to be back at the hotel for a 11pm sailing. When we returned Pete told us that the ferry was actually petrol cargo to Kazhakstan. No good for us so we needed to find somewhere to stay. There is an oil and gas conference going on in the city at the moment to there are few hotel rooms around. In the end we got 23 of us in 5 rooms spread over 2 hotels. Some were lucky to get a bed with the chance of a decent night's sleep and others were on the floor 6 to a room. All in all, Pete and the hotel did their best and everyone was pretty pleased not to be out on the streets!

So that's the update. It's now 1.30pm on Wednesday and a ferry got in this morning. Hopefully we will be on it this evening as everyone has few dollars left and is getting a bit fed up. We shall see!

Update: 2pm and we are hopefully on the ferry tomorrow morning. No hotels are free so we are camping in the "courtyard" of the hotel. Should be interesting!

Bush camping with the mud volcanoes, Azer

We had a short drive down good roads. It's amazing how much money is floating about- constant construction, big 4x4's and petrol stations everywhere. For once filling up the truck is pretty cheap.

The bush camp was surrounded by mud volcanoes which was pretty cool. Some were about 5 meters high and all were constantly erupting. It was a pretty surreal place to camp and everyone enjoyed the surroundings but some maybe less than others after sinking through the thin mud crust!

Bush camp and Sheki, Azerbaijan

Leaving Tbilisi in the afternoon meant that everyone was pretty relaxed as we headed towards the border to bush camp. We first stopped at a mountain village called Signagi. This is a pretty little town that looks new but it has actually been restored so that when the new paint fades it will look like a traditional Georgian town. Too me it looked a little artificial and perfect, geared towards tourists with the "Traditional Georgian Restaurant" on every corner.

We then rolled back down the mountain to bush camp. The original camp was unusable but we stocked up on wine and Pete did an amazing million point turn of the truck in an impossibly small space! We headed into a storm and decided to bush camp just off the road. The first camp set up in torrential rain was a little chaotic but we all pulled together and set up camp quickly. Only the next morning after a noisy nights sleep did Roberta and I discover that we had pitched the tent next to a pond full of very noisy frogs!

The next day we headed towards the border with Azerbaijan. We reached the border in good time but were faced with the sad news that crew member Rich wouldn't be continuing with us for the rest of the trip. Fab guy who will be sorely missed within the group but we had to move on, Azerbaijan called!

All passengers were through the border in an hour but the truck took a further 2 hours. We all sat in the Azeri "carpark" waiting. The reason. The customs office ran out of paper for the photocopier!

Our first night in Azer was a karvansaray in Sheki. Sheki was a main stop on the Silk road so a night here was pretty special. I visited the Khan's palace in the afternoon. The palace built for admin in 1761 was small but spectacular. The rooms were stained glass and walls and ceilings covered in murals.

The next couple of days we would continue the journey to the Caspian Sea.