Back to blighty

And in to the present....  Right now Mr Barnett and I are both sat on the ferry heading from Dunkerque to Dover. Whirlwind is the only word that I can think of that adequately describes this trip!!

Some facts and figures for the reader,
In just one calendar month we have:
Travelled through 11 different countries.
Travelled through 5 time zones.
Travelled 5,234 miles on the Yamaha.
Moved at an average speed of 42mph.
Used 8 foreign currencies.
Attempted 10 foreign languages.
Been through 5 border crossings.
Endured freezing temperatures at 3,650 metres.
Sweated in desert heats of around 40 degrees in Uzbekistan.
Paid $80 of police bribes.
Used an estimated 594 litres of fuel.
Used fuel quality as low as 80 octane.
Used 6 antibiotic tablets.
Used 6 Immodium tablets.

The final leg of our journey: Europe

We can both confirm that European travel is very easy compared to the excitement and adventure of the Stans. Crunching motorway miles on smooth flat tarmac.

We decided to visit the church of bones in the Czech Republic, which was really bizarre. The interior of the church is decorated with thousands of human remains, skulls and bones. There was even a chandelier made out of various bones.

We spent one night in Germany, but there is something wrong with any country that tries to charge you €17 for two sandwiches and two small vending machine hot chocolates,  then 70 cents just to go to the loo, so we dropped trowser in the bushes instead, then decided to do a 400 mile day to blast on through Germany and Netherlands in to Belgium so that we could have a day off in Ghent.
Ghent turned out to be the perfect location for a leisurely day off. We were able to spend the whole day's drinking a wide variety of Belgium beers amongst some stunning medieval architecture. Result!

Polish plumbing in the hotel restaurant

How could anyone let this happen?!

Ukraine to Poland border crossing.

17 th of August -Poland, Oswiecim AKA Aushwitz

There is not a great deal to report other than our visit to the Aushwitz 1 and Aushwitz-Birkenau death camps. Although we had visited before we both felt that we needed to revisit the site to spend more time there and to pay our respects again.

Nothing can justify the unnecessary and horrific murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. The inhumane conditions that some were forced to survive in and the cruel way in which the vast majority were deceived and murdered. It makes no sense. People can do so much harm to one another. If you ever have the opportunity to visit Aushwitz you must go so that you are able to really appreciate the freedom that we have.

Police in countries beginning with 'U'

On the motorway between Kiev and L'viv we got fined for speeding again. It seems that the Ukrainian police are exactly the same as the Uzbek police. So it goes like this; we are heading along the motorway at 68 mph at the most, usually going at about 65 (the limit is 68 /110 kph), we then get waved on to the hard shoulder by a policeman with a big wavy stick and a whistle who tells us that the limit 38mph, and that we had just driven through a village! There really was no evidence of a village and certainly no speed limit signs. So we did the usual, smiled a lot looked shocked and sorry, spoke a lot in English (which the officer did not understand). Luckily it was very easily resolved by paying the fine. We were told that the fine was a minimum of 350 and a maximum of 550 local currency ($26-37). Andy opened his almost empty wallet and showed the officer the money that was left (not much, as our main stash was hidden in the tent bag). The officer then pointed to the $20 note, and in one slick transaction the officer opened his notebook and Andy slipped in the $20 note, and the notebook was flipped closed. All in a blink of an eye!

We did our routine ride straight to McDonalds to sit outside and use the free wifi so that we could decide where to stay in L'viv. We found a great spa hotel with spaces on trip advisor where we decided to stay for the night. Upon arrival we were told that the price was far higher than quoted on trip advisor and that they only had suites left! Needless to say that the receptionist backtracked very quickly when I showed her my phone with trip advisor on the screen and offered us a big discount and a double room.

Whilst in the hotel it was rather alarming to watch the news and see how the problems between Ukraine and Russian governments were worsening. There was a lot of footage of tanks at the boarder between Russia and Ukraine!

The following morning we left L'viv and headed for Oswiecim Poland. When we reached the border we found a 1 1/2 mile queue of solid stationary cars which trailed all of the way to the boarder crossing! Thankfully being on a motorbike meant that we were allowed to queue jump directly to the front of the line. Once there we proceeded through customs in about 20 minutes. I would imagine that the poor souls trapped in their cars at the back of the que had a very long day /night of waiting in stationary traffic before they were allowed to enter the border zone.

Feeling safe in Ukraine.

Don't worry mothership. Feel like I am on a hen night! 

Sadness

Abandoned gym

Abandoned swimming pool

Children's gas masks, that were never used

The cold war gas masks

Chernobyl reactor number 4 at 280 meters

Andy in Independance square...

New lantern for the 'Alice challenge' no.4

Wild camping in the Ukraine

Kiev in kiev & Chernobyl

We arrived in the beautiful peaceful city of Kiev and immediately felt at home. I admit that cheap and plentiful local beer did help!
On our first afternoon in Kiev we accidentally stumbled upon a massive police parade/ rally/ display of force. This included what looked like every officer in Kiev, mounted police, military police , fire brigade, tank, even bicycle police! Felt really rather safe!

In 'independance' square there was plenty of evidence of riot damage from last weeks riots about the Russia situation. Including lots of fire damage and a giant tower of banners advertising the conflict.

On our second day in Kiev we decided to use the subway to cross the busy road. It was by pure accident that we stumbled upon a matix of complex under ground shopping centres. This was very inticeing but worryinglying  disorientating and confusing once within the warren of chambers.

For lunch we ate kiev In Kiev, in the afternoon we continued shopping and found fake driving licences for sale in the street! Andy also found two opportunities to play someone else's pianos in the street!

No trip to the Ukraine would be complete without a tour of Chernobyl and Pripyat, so it had to be done. the trip was outstanding in every way. We were astonished to learn about how close whole of Europe came to being inhabitable due to radiation. It really was due to thousands of unrecognised heroes, that that did their duty to work to cover the reactor and prevent further explosions, that the rest of the world is able to live the non radioactive lives that we do. We were both utterly amazed and moved by the experience.
During our visit we were very lucky to see reactor number 4 in its original concrete sarcophagus undergoing works to re-cover it in a new sarcophagus. This is being built next to the reactor, and will be slid over the existing failing structure. We were told that this is the largest movable structure ever made. We also visited Pripyat city (just 3km from the original blast at reactor number 4) and now an overgrown ghost town. We explored a kindergarten, hotel, school, fairground and leasure centre, which could only be described as creepy.

Russia....

Russia was really rather boring compared to the excitement of the Stans, so we decided to change our plan and go through Ukraine to spice things up and to trim down the days spent in Russia. That meant doing a number of exceptionally long days on the motorways, to push on through. We were also keen to get out of Russia as we found out (half way through the country) that we were breaking the law by not having any vehicle insurance. The problem was that there did not seem to be any way of getting insurance! We asked at the hotel's, looked online and even phoned the bike's insurance company, but no joy. So we decided to cross our fingers and proceed with caution and just hope for the best. We also found out that there is a law in Russia that states that you must not have a dirty vehicle!

The final sign that suggested we should leave Russia was our string of 3 bad luck events; I got stung in the chest by some sort of mega nasty insect (it really hurt and itched like mad), the bike fell apart (the pannier rack sheared off at one of the mounting points) and it thunder stormed and rained heavily all over our non water resistant luggage before we had the chance to cover it.

The boarder crossing out of Russia and in to the Ukraine turned out to be a potential nightmare. The Russian boarder official told us that we needed to have customs papers for the bike showing entry to Russia! We clearly did not get given any at the entry boarder. The official told us 'very very big problem' (that was the only English that he spoke).
At this point the prognosis seemed grim. So we did our usual; Andy stood back, I smiled a lot and showed the official our map of where we were going from and to, and also gave him all of the evidence/ paper work from the other countries. It was really rather obvious that we brought the bike with us, even the official could see that we had not levitated through the Stans. A long and worrying wait later, and a brief baggage search and we were allowed on our way.

Our first impressions of the Ukraine were that it was beautiful. We decided to wild camp and rode in to a quiet village and then continued until we found a freshly ploughed farm field. We decided to camp on the edge of the field. Dinner consisted of chicken curry in a bag and warm plastic bottles of beer. Luxury :-)

Downtown Volgograd

Vodka isle in a Russian supermarket

30mm spanner anyone?

9th of August

Today we had a day off in Volgograd, no news. X

8th of August - In-bike entertainment system.

Things were going to be a lot easier now we were on more stable roads but the wind had changed direction and was now a permanent head wind, limiting our top speed to 60mph. We had a late start and needed to cover 260 miles. It seemed to take forever. I was so bored that I resorted to reading on my kindle. I got most the through a Lesley Pearce novel during the ride!
Andy was starting to get seriously tired, probably because the scenery was so dull. So when we came across the 'M150' energy drink sold by the jar,  Andy consumed it in moments. It tasted and smelled like calpol children's medicine.   Andy said that the next 100 miles flew by!
We passed some crazy industrial works and power stations,  one of which even had a massive live flame coming from a chimney.

We were completely exhausted by the time we reached Volgograd and Andy's pin point on the sat nav took us miles out of town. So after a few tired 'words' were exchanged we opted for the welcome comforts of a nice Hilton hotel. Sod camping on this occasion!

P.S happy world cat day 😸 and happy birthday Alice x

Vodka in Kazakhstan

The Aral sea bed desert ride.

7th of August -Anyone got a 30mm spanner?!

Our destination for the day was Astrakhan in Russia!!
It was a very long road heading in one direction. This combined with an extremely strong wind coming from the Caspian sea (dragging up plumes of hot dust with it) meant that we spent most of the day banked over to one's side fighti ng the wind. It was a tiring and constant battle of neck muscle V's wind.

On the journey we passed lots of old fashioned oil fields, pumping away and lots of camels. for lunch we fired up the petrol stove any had pot noodles next to a herd of camels. Andy's turned out to be a pot of chicken flavoured mashed potato and mine had a large hole in the bottom, so all of the liquid leaked out.

During the journey the bike had developed a death rattle coming from the chain area not helped by the lack of a functioning shock aborder. Andy discovered that the front sprocket nut had worked loose. Unfortunately the correct spanner no longer seemed to be in the toolkit (possibly never was). We ended up stopping at the roadside 4 times to try to tighten it with pliers before a friendly local stopped in his car to offer to help. He produced an ancient wooden box of rusty tools, but by pure luck had a spanner that fitted perfectly.

The boarder crossing in to Russia was surprisingly easy.

Crossing in to Russia was the biggest change in culture yet. Astrakhan was just like any other western city. We amused ourselves by going into a massive supermarket. In the supermarket we found horse in a jar 😵 and a whole isle dedicated to vodka😀. I resisted the urge to buy all sorts of special 'gifts' for our friends and family at home.

6th of August - Back on tarmac!

Due to the vodka consumption the night before, the planned early start did not happen. We left the motel and found evidence of the evenings drinking outside on the pavement; an empty bottle of vodka and a pile of vomit, our friends must have continued drinking once we had gone to bed.

On route we stopped to get some food in a nice looking cafe, the food smelled delicious. It was laid out like a school canteen, so we chose our meals very easily (as no Russian menu's). What we did not realise was that all of the food was cold, and once our meals had been dished up they were then put In to the microwave to be cooked! Interesting theory!

The roads turned out to be the first day of 100% tarmac, all the way to Atyrau. Thank goodness for that.😀

the Aral sea

5th of August - Camels milk and vodka

We started the day with a beautiful sunrise over the graveyard of rusting ships in the sand. We both knew that it was going to be a very hard day's riding as our destination was Kazakhstan, 255 miles away through desert terrain and desert temperatures.

The first 100 miles were just sand and off road tracks, taking us across the dry and dead Aral sea bed. We had a few near misses, one of which I was totally dislodged from the bike and we had a frantic struggle to get it upright in deep sand.
Half way along the track we found an abandoned runway and airfield, which was clearly another relic from before the Aral sea disaster. We also rode alongside a stampeed of horses (I think that we caused the stampeed).
We loosely following a set of gps coordinates across the sandy plains, there was no specific track to follow. The sun was at its hottest and we were roasting alive in the bike gear and helmets. There was no point in us taking of the bike gear as we would have been burned alive by the rays of the sun instead. It was unreasonably hot and all we had to drink was hot water. Whenthe water is hotter than your body heat it is really tough to stomach!

The boarder crossing from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan was fairly ordinary. We deployed our standard routine; ride straight to the front of the long que of cars and lorries, Andy gets in line with the bike and the locals, I take off helmet jacket etc and go directly to the official at the front and smile/ use female charm to fast track us in through the gates. Unfortunately once inside we we directed toa long que of lorry drivers. One of them said to us in broken English that it was a 2 hour process. I soon became bored, and wandered back to the bike lingering outside and open office window whilst Andy queued with the lorry drivers. Bingo!  An official popped his head out of the window and asked where I was travelling to. After showing him the map and smiling a lot. He gestured for me to follow him. He then processed our exit documents, taking just minutes! The entry to Kazakhstan was easy and we were back on the road again.
The road between the boarder and Beyneu was truly horrible. It was hours of hot, dusty, pot holed, wash board, sandy gravel dirt road. It shoock me so hard that my teeth hurt and felt like they were going to fall out.

To reduce my boredom on the bone shaker road I started to count camels. I counted 81.

when we arrived in Beyneu the only accommodation with washing facilities was a rancid hostel that serviced the nearby gas plant. The 'bathroom' turned out to be two shared broken showers and two disgusting squat toilets. The smell was horrific.

We tried to order some food from the canteen but after trial and error found that there were only 3 items left on the menu. The food was as nasty as the rest of the place.
On the plus side what was to come was one of the best evenings yet. We were invited to share vodka with some really nice Kazakh gas engineers. Conscious of a 5am start the next day, we carried on anyway and had a fabulous time. We were given and tried the local delicacy; sour camels milk and lashings of luke warm vodka. Our Kazakh friends told us in fairly graphic English quite how much they "f*****g hate Borat".
Once again we were surprised by the warmth and generosity of the local people, as we were presented with gifts! Andy was given a cowboy hat and I was given a camping penknife! All that we were able to offer in return was stickers of London :-).

4th August - Who pulled the plug out of the Aral sea?

Thank goodness, when I woke up I felt much better! The medicine worked, so back on the road with a 5 am start heading to Monyak.

So our next issue was getting enough petrol to see us through 500 miles and 2 days of hard uneconomical desert driving. As expected the petrol stations were all derelict, or had closed down to make way for gaz stations. Luckily Andy spotted a coke bottle of petrol outside of someone's house and they were able to sell us 40 litres of petrol. We precariously bungeed and strapped this to the bike in water bottles and and an old oil can. We didn't expect to see a petrol station until we reached Kazakhstan.

Unfortunately it didn't take long for one of the ratchet straps to work loose and wind itself around the rear sprocket. This pinched the water bottle which contained our spare engine oil, so tightly that it burst and sprayed a litre of oil all over our legs!

On the way to Monyak we crossed an interesting pontoon bridge made out of various bits and pieces of sheet metal welded together like a patch work quilt. Slippery with random spikey bits that threatened to punch the tyres, it made an interesting addition to the ride.

As we progressed in the midday heat we started to feel really bad (not helped by yesterday's lack of food due to illness) so when I saw a river, we took the opportunity to cool down by getting in to the water fully clothed in all the motorbike gear. This had a lovely cooling effect once back on the road. I later read in the lonely planet guide, that the rivers that feed the cotton fields are notorious for being heavily contaminated with pesticides!

When we arrived at Monyak we passed a huge sign that welcomed you to a seaside fishing port and holiday resort. The sad reality of the Aral sea disaster becomes immediately apparent once you enter the town. The atmosphere was one of desolation. The town was dusty and dry. the sea had clearly gone, taking with it the prosperity that the town had once enjoyed, leaving in it's place a tragic reminder to the destruction that humans can cause to their environment.

We set up our tent amongst the graveyard of marooned ships on the dry sandy sea bed. Looking out to what was once a massive sea and seeing nothing but dry desert with no life left was very moving and rather depressing.

Once we had settled down for the evening we made candle lanterns out of our old water bottles, and had an excellent camping dinner.

Sleeping was not so easy. The sand that our tent was pitched on had retained the 40 degree desert heat and slowly emitted it out in to our tent creating a mini tent furnace, baking us alive.

The final insult to injury was that we were woken at 3 am by a repeated very loud howling screeching sound, which sounded like it was coming from a large cat type creature just outside the tent. It went on for ages as we lay roasting alive in the tent. Needless to say, we were too scared to unzip the tent and find out what it was!

3rd of August - Not well :-(

It finally happened I got the squits, real bad. Thankfully we have both had the 'travellers curse' now enough times in the past to know what to do.
Number one 24 hours of not travelling is essential. Next step drink as much water & dioralite as possible (dioralite usually tastes vile. If you are ill /need it, it it actually tastes ok). Be prepared!  Get a travellers dioreeah kit from the travel Clinic. Take two antibiotic tablets and two lopermide tablets then lie down and let them do their magic. This is easier said than done if you have the sicks as well but thankfully I didn't this time.
Next wait and see...

2nd of August - 'P' is for plov

We decided to leave the hotel at 6am in order to avoid the police and the heat.
Our destination wad Khiva approximately 285 miles away heading north westerly.
The tarmac was in very poor condition as we headed out in to the desert making the journey hard work, especially considering the lack of a functioning shock absorber!
After the first 150 or so miles we began to get nervous about the lack of open petrol stations. Even the big shiny new ones were either closed or had no benzol (petrol). We eventually pulled in to a gaz station (butane replacement for petrol) and asked where we would be able to get benzol. The friendly Uzbek's signalled that fuel was a long way away and made gestures for us to wait. What happened next was brilliant. A local man pulled out of the gaz station and parked up. He and his friends then proceed to syphon out fuel from their petrol tank and give it to us in our empty oil can.  He did not even want any money but we insisted on giving him $5. A genuine random act of kindness.

After another 20 miles Andy decided to turn off the main road which by now had turned in to a very smooth new very boring hot highway, on to a more interesting route.... This turned out to be a poor move as the road instantly became incredibly rough and sandy (5mph ish)
By now we were stuck in the worst afternoon heat (2pm) and there was nowhere that was sheltered enough for us to stop for a break.
The last thing that we need was a police check point, but that was exactly what we got!

As we pulled in we said hello and greeted them in our best Russian. The officer took ages reading our documents, then proceed to use my passport as a ruler to draw a table in his note book! We continued to smile and wait and I handed out yet more London stickers. There is something very amusing about a grown man getting excited about a little stickerof a union jack flag and watching him sticking it to his ID badge.
We eventually got the all clear to leave, then one of the officers offered us chai (tea). We gratefully accepted his offer and were led in to the police porta cabin office. We spoke no Uzbekand and they spoke no English but we all sat smiling and drinking tea. The police man then insisted that we eat bread with him and within a few minutes a steaming plate of lovely smelling plov (rice and vegetable dish) had been put down in front of us to share.  I am convinced that this was supposed to be the other officers lunch,  but the main officer would not take no for an answer and insisted that we eat with him. So we took him up on his offer and we happily sat and ate their plov, beneath a giant poster of the most wanted criminals in Uzbekistan with some kind of badly dubbed ancient video of a Robinson Cruso on a CRT TV in the background! Full to the brim, after lunch and 3 cups of tea, we were waved of for the next leg of our journey. This was the polar opposite of our police experience the day before! Very random indeed.

The only other thing to report was that we eventually managed to get fuel via one of the infamous pastic water bottles of fuel by the roadside.  We pulled up the vendors driveway and took our pick from his outbuilding filled with water bottles of fuel. We were very pleased as we managed to fill the tank to the brim :-)

I hope that these are not loose in our next camping spot!

Interesting menu

1st of August -day off in Bukhara!

Yey rest day! First 1200 miles done.
A day of resting, sightseeing and touristy things.
The only thing to report here is that whilst we were wandering around the 'Arc' a historic fortress museum Andy let out a really unpleasant fart. He was then pretty much chased out of the 'natural history' section, by a lady with a can of pungent air freshener!
;-)

Loosing the battle :-(

31st of July - 'B' is for bribe

We stated at 5am, intending to avoid the worst of the desert heat on our journey to Bukhara. We decided to avoid the hotel's breakfast offerings (based on our gut feeling) and opted for a picnic of foods from the local bazaar.
The 'tarmac' road to Bukhara was appalling. It had endless potholes (more potholed surface area than flat tarmac) crators, giant nobbles like someone had laid the tarmac on with a spoon, deep ridges and relentless roadworks, despite this we were making reasonable progress.

So far we had managed to avoid/evade police attention... This was not to last.
Within 2 hours we were stopped 3 times. The first time we were pulled in and fined for breaking a mythical speed limit. The officers kindly showed us the photo to prove to us that they had seen us! In fairness we were doing around 60 mph (briefly at best) and they said that the motorway limit was 45 mph. There was clearly no avoiding the payment. It then transpired that the 'fine' was $150 and would have to go to the local town (in the wrong direction) or we could pay them $30 'cash in hand' and they would not make the official report! We chose the latter!
We then got stopped by the police at a checkpoint less than a mile later. This time they were only interested in our documents. They were obviously bored. I struggled not to laugh watching them try to read Andy's driving licence. They clearly had no idea what they were reading! They then proceed to give me a lecture about not having any children. They told us that we should have at least 4 by now! They let us go soon after I sweetened them up by giving them souvenir stickers of London, that I had brought with us to give to children during the trip.
Time was ticking along. It was getting really hot, we were getting weary in the heat. The last thing that we needed was to be stopped by the police again.
Surprise surprise the next lot of corrupted officers wanted yet more money from us!
They started with the whole document reading regime, then once they had established that we were English tourists proceeded to tell us that we had been speeding again and that we had to pay a ridiculous fine!!! In the first instance we both thought fair enough, but this time we knew that we had kept to the limit. They showed us the same photo again. We were well and truly stitched up. After 45 minutes of negotiations, we failed to make any head way, we had no choice but to pay again!  The injustice of this made me very angry and I was able to express this by politely smiling and swearing a lot at them in a language that luckily they did not understand. Another $30 cash in their pockets and we were on our way again.
The frustrating thing is that everyone else seems to speed past much faster than us.
So our grand plan of an early start to avoid the midday heat totally failed.
The corrupt police situation does not bode well for the next 700 miles of Uzbekistan.  :-(

Sight seeing in Samarkand

Empty soviet monster hotel

30th July - Tourist price $$$

we seemed to win the food roulette game as both of us started the day with 'everything in order'.
So on our journey to Samarkand, we decided to play the game again by eating lunch out of a cobbled roadside shack/tent.  Whilst we were eating we watched the local police who were seated near by,  set up an impromptu road check point for just 15 minutes.  Perhaps they were short of cash for their lunch?! It seems to be how they operate here!
Once we had eaten Andy asked to pay for the meal. The shack owner attempted to charge us a ridiculous 75,000 som ($25) for a gristly 'meat' kebab. We couldn't help but laugh. After much chuckling we told them they were 'very funny' (via the Russian phrase book)  and left them a generous 20,000 som. Andy also said 'good try' and we all knowingly shook hands. This also seems to be the norm.
Back on the road we amused ourselves by watching a great array of creative methods of transporting goods in vehicles including, a large double bed on the roof of a lada, a sheep loose in the back of a mini van, a full height fridge freezer wedged in to the open boot of a lada, a giant coil of waste pipe (3m wide) over the roof of a lada, a fine example of 'how many melons can you fit in a lada' (like sweeties in a jar game), a horse in the back of a pickup, and cows in a standard car trailer attached to the back of a saloon car.

We arrived in Samarkand and pulled up outside the best hotel that we had selected from the lonely planet guide book. At first glance it looked closed down, it's vast expanse of soviet concrete and marble looked lacklustre, the fountains were dried up,  the plants and grass were over grown, weeds were sprouting out of the paths, and there was a general absence of any human activity.
At this point we should have driven on, but curiosity got the better of us and we decided to take a closer look.
To our surprise the hotel was actually open!
It was like stepping in to a vast marble cave, floor to ceiling marble, there were grand glass chandeliers hanging like stalactites from the ceiling and brass decorated every surface that wasn't marble. The reception was a least an acre big. It even had a post office and two full size pianos, one of which Andy couldn't resist playing. The interior did not match the exterior, it was very odd and gave me very sinister feeIing. I can imagine that in its heyday this 500 room monster would have been the most glamorous place in town. 
Upon check in Andy asked where we could park the motorbike. He was given the entire moth balled 'museum bar' as a bike garage for the night.

Once we had checked in we decided to tick a few tourist boxes and go out and see the sights. Entry to the 'Registon' was another classic example of tourist extortion. In black and white on the price list was Uzbek price 1000 som, tourist price 15,000 som!
the Registon was stunning, an absolute feast to the eyes of patterns and mosaics. Whilst we were wandering around totally absorbed we had the oddest experience yet. Women started to point and stare at me, talking excitedly.  At first I though that I may have had a wardrobe malfunction, but Andy reassured me that this was not the case. Then situation became even stranger, as we were asked for photos and what seemed like half of the museum jumped on the band wagon. We were obviously mistaken for some sort of celebrities!

Later when we arrived back at the hotel after dinner tired and thirsty, we thought that it would be no problem at all to obtain a bottle of drinking water, bearing in mind that the hotel boasted 5 bars and 500 rooms. WRONG! The receptionist told us that the nearest shop was more than one kilometre away, and offered to get us a taxi there. With the reception refusing to help, we decided to go back to the room. On our way we spied a massive private party,  so managed to bribe one of the staff to open a bar and sell us water and beer.
It wouldn't have been right for us to go straight to bed, so we scared ourselves silly by exploring the maze of unused unlit corridors. It was like something out of the 'shining ' Andy said that he felt that he should have been riding a tricycle.

29th of July - Yamaha thirsty for fuel

So finally managed to get some fuel (91 octaine), after that it was a relatively easy and short ride to Tashkent.  Checked in to a lovely hotel, who noticed on my passport that it was my birthday and gave us free wine (like sherry) and a bowl of fruit. Andy got stung by a large wasp down the back of his bike jacket whilst riding along. played food roulette by eating in plov in a street cafe (it's a 24 hour game!). Tashkent is a lovely city,  nothing much else to report.