Tuesday 29 July 2014
28th of July - Barnett wedding anniversary!
The petrol station room/ furnace was so hot that we both woke up sweating with headaches and had an urgent need to open the windows and doors. It soon became apparent that all of the doors in the petrol station motel (fire risk area) were locked shut. Andy resorted to dropping out of an open window on to the fire escape just to get down to the bike.
A once over of the bike revealed NO oil on the dipstick!!! Thankfully we were able to find a local motorfactors, and had to haggle in phrase book Russian for half a bottle of oil. We revived the bike and kept the bottle as our new petrol jerry can.
The next 130 miles to the Uzbekistan boarder were fantastic roads but ridiculously hot.
There was an event that Andy wishes not to enlarge upon now, but I can say that it involved a squat toilet and a pen knife!
The boarder was relatively easy. 1 hour in total. We were made to fill out the complex forms twice each (photocopier?) and had to spill the complete contents of our luggage on to the tarmac for inspection. They rifled through everything (personal ladies items included) but thankfully did not find our first aid kit drugs and hidden undeclared dollars (in the camera bag lining)!
Our first Uzbekistan experience involved being rammed by a local in a mini van (the side box bears the scars) but we escaped unharmed and Andy's riding skills proved useful.
We rode on to Namangen and stopped to buy money on the back market. Andy dissapead with a local man leaving me with the bike and all of our possessions. Within 2 minutes I was surrounded by approximately 40-50 people mainly men and boys who all wanted to speak Russian to me about the bike!! After what seemed like forever, with me standing grinning and saying 'English' a lot and pointing at the map, Andy returned with a plastic carrier bag full of local currency.
I got the impression that we were a very unusual sight in Uzbekistan and were quite a novelty to the locals.
We were supposed to stop there for the night but decided to push on to give ourselves a rest day in Tashkent the capital city.
We had 180 miles to go and were feeling good with 100 mile range left in the fuel tank.
It turned out that the 'end of Ramadan' means that all of the few petrol stations that there are, were closed (annoyingly the auto gas stations aka lpg were all open). So we soldiered on with the reality of camping in windy sandstorm desert on stony ground becoming an ever increasing reality. Luckily I spotted a garage next to a closed petrol station. The kind man there gave us a coke bottle of petrol out of sheer kindness and wanted no payment. Thankfully we were able to give him a massive jar of Kyrgyzstan honey by way of thanks. This was all good but not enough to get us to the next town, let alone Tashkent!
We have seen only two local bikers on the trip so far, and continuing on our journey I managed to spy another one through an open garage door whilst passing by on the motorway. After a striking up a brief conversation with lots of smiles, we were given at least a half of a tank of fuel out of a giant jerry can by the astonishingly generous locals, who would not accept any form of payment.
We decided to head for the next big industrial town Angren. After a stunning mountain pass and 60 miles of military patrolled road works compete with check points, sinister looking pill boxes and automatic weapons, we arrived in a very dark and closed looking town.
Thankfully we met yet more helpful locals who went out of their way to show us the only open hotel which was 5 kilometers away. We stumbled upon a grand soviet dinosaur of a hotel, built from immaculate shiny crisp white mable slabs.
After a few negotiations aided by our helpful Uzbek friends that we met 15 minutes earlier, the hotel manager insisted that we ride the motorbike up the front entrance marble steps of the reception area.
As I watched from inside I saw Andy roll up the first step fine. The second step resulted in a massive crunching noise and a broken marble step!
For the second attempt a plank of wood was used and the bike sailed in to the reception, safe for the night.
27th of July - The sound of hooves galloping around the tent
Can't say that we slept much as the camel grass tufts meant that there was actually no flat ground. From the cocoon of our tent the sound of dozens of thundering hooves sounded like an approaching army, and the occasional scream of a stallion meant that we were kept sufficiently awake though out the whole night. In hindsight this did not set us up well for the demanding day to come.
When we unzipped the tent, the view was astonishing. In front of us (less than 4 meters away ) stood a gigantic cow (with pointy horns) and all around us was the most jaw dropping scenery that either of us had ever seen. The mountains, the lake, yurts, horsemen, hundreds of horses, the plains, were simply beautiful. The ride there was worthwhile.
So our destination for the evening was Toktogul lake a mere 230 miles away, it didn't seem far.
It transpired that we had to endure about the another 120 miles of the same miserable off road gravel washboard dirt tracks. It was a tough ride, made substantially worse by the band new high performance (very expensive investment) shock absorber dumping it's intire contents out on the floor. The result was a child's playground giant spring toy effect, which mainly effects the passenger launching them in to the air repeatedly with every bump in the road.
With the sun rising approaching midday, the temperature also rising, and trying to keep a good pace, we were caught off guard by a collapsed buried pipe under the road surface. Our only option was accelerate hard and hang on tight. We were lucky and the Yamaha took the punch.
As it was Sunday the shop's were all closed so we had a nice pot noodle style emergency broccoli and cheese pasta cook up by a river using the petrol stove.
When we finally hit tarmac for the last 100 miles it seemed luxurious. We stopped for a break and met an off duty policeman who insisted on showing us his ID card and more importantly his large pistol. He asked us "where is your gun? Every one needs a gun for the wolves and criminals". Needless to say we got him to sign the bike with the sharpie.
We did have to stop for a quick evening meal. presented with a menu in Crylic alphabet we had absolutely no idea what to order so we selected the first two items from the menu. We got lucky as it turned out to be the same dumpling meal as the day before.
From there to our destination was the perfect motorbike road. 10 meters wide, mostly downhill sweeping mountain roads.
When we arrived at Toktogul lake at 9:30 pm (on a Sunday) our opinions were slim. We ended up opting for a motel/petrol station on the edge of town. It was clean and served beer, they were the positives. On the down side the plumbing and electrics were very questionable, the TV appeared to have the bare wires wrapped around the pins of a very black multi gang adapter, the bed was less comfortable than the camping air bed (sack of apples), no air con, and no shower meant using a sock as a flannel to wash our entire bodies!
26th of July - Our first taste of gravel road!
The combination of jet lag and local beer resulted in our early start becoming an 11:25 am start on our first day. So we stopped by a supermarket for the evenings camping dinner. The highlights of the supermarket included canned horse and 1litre cans of beer (which exploded on the back of the bike a few hours later).
Less than an hour on the road, we discovered our jerry can had worked loose and had grinded on the rear wheel, resulting in a fountain of petrol directed straight at the hot engine block. After a swift removal, and stop to admire a soviet mig fighter jet we were on our way again.
Next stop was issyk-kul lake where we stopped for lunch and tired local dumplings and got the restaurant owners to sign the bike with a sharpie pen.
Then we Begun our journey to Song kul lake our final destination for the day.
With 60 miles to go, the potholed tarmac turned to gravel track. With the sun decending fast we knew we were against the clock. The gravel track then turned to a 'wash board' surface (bike killer and nut loosener). And in the rush we had a few brown trouser moments in the sheer drop corners. Not helped by seeing a dead cow that had clearly fallen over the edge. Still in our summer bike gear we reached 3500 meters at the Kalmar ashu, passing large ice formations. Our fingers went numb which did nothing to help Andy's clutch control over the rutted dirt/ gravel track.
Approaching the lake, the theory of a 'track' disappeared, and we encountered a huge sense of freedom to roam the open plains (in the dark).
Unfortunately we got carried away and lost the direction we were supposed to travel in. After 4-5 miles passing through some surprised locals in their yurt camps, we decided to pitch up.
Dinner would have been easy if Andy had not taken the rusty untested crappy lighter from the shed at home. 20 minutes of attempting to get the lighter to work, we did get to cook and eat our supermarket selection of pasta stuff.
The stars at night were amazing but our stove was obviously the only ambient light for miles, so we became a moth magnet!
Once we were tucked in the sleeping bags and turkish airline blankets, by accident we created magical and very surreal static crackles and light flashes in the tent when we moved around in the blankets. A bit alarming surreal but a good end to the day.
25th of July - straight to the incredible pepper biker bar!
So after our tiring customs experience we were led to our hotel in the city by our new friend Sergei. We were really lucky to be invited out to dinner and drinks at the incredible pepper biker bar. It was a brilliant start to our trip and we were privileged to spend an evening with such a nice crowd of people and find out more about life in bishkek. We drunk beer pulled from a recycled biker engine block and ate lamb kebabs! Thank you Sergei for a brilliant evening :-)
Friday 25 July 2014
vogon style burocracy at customs
the first thing to say is that if you have never seen the film 'the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy' you need to watch the 'definition of vogon' on you tube now.The following comments about the customs officials then make sense.
will
So we arrived at the customs building to collect the bike at 9am......it took us a grand total of 5 1/2 hours in the end to liberate the bike and get free! Which we are told is very quick.
During the process we learned that the Kyrgyzstan customs officials (vogons) love; demanding multiple pieces of officious paperwork, endless requests to go to the next room/ hatch and back and forth , numerous upvc mini window hatches (which they also enjoy slamming a lot), the power trip of the rubber stamp, the sound of rubber stamps, decorating our paperwork with rubber stamps, requesting 'extra' payments for speed of processing the release of the bike (with the threat of another $100 a day storage cost). But on the plus side they were very friendly.
We also learned that photocopying one passport before lunch is acceptable but a passport and a log book is just 'too much before lunch'!
All in all, an interesting process that could not have been done without the help of 'james cargo' and 'iron horse nomads'. There is no way that we could have done that without experienced local help! Aparrenrly it took an Australian couple 4 days of relentless upvc hatch shuffling and 4 days of extra storage before they were finally allowed to take their bikes! We were very lucky!
Thursday 24 July 2014
Stage 1 complete:
Made it to Bishkek airport via Istanbul. Even got complimentary turkish delight on the flight. All of the other passengers clapped when we landed in Istanbul, not sure what that was all about?!
Had a brief moment of panic at 30,000 feet when I looked out of the window and saw just sand and desert!!
Now just got to locate the motorbike!
Wednesday 23 July 2014
Tuesday 22 July 2014
One sleep to go!!
Only one more sleep to go now!!! just need to pack, go to bed once more. Then the adventure starts!
Can't believe that it's finally happening!
Shit
Left it a bit last minute, but here's the bike hastily strapped into the horse trailer ready for Heathrow terminal 4.
Bad news was, all that rushing around towing the trailer managed to kill the head gasket in my 'modern' car, as I discovered on the way to work the following day!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)