After almost a month in Bishkek I finally managed to drag myself away as the Kazakh visa I had applied for some time ago started to run out. Unfortunately while I had been staying in Bishkek the weather had grown colder, quite a lot colder. In the day the temperature seemed to be around -20C…
I rode out of Tashkent on wide Soviet built boulevards passing the city’s TV Tower as I went; bearing due north for the Kazakh Uzbek border at Jipek Joli about thirty kilometres away. Reaching the border I was expecting a repeat of the waiting and frustration I’d experienced when entering Uzbekistan from Kazakhstan in the…
Bukhara I was pretty happy to be in Bukhara, although I hadn’t been camping in the desert I still hadn’t slept anywhere with a shower for three days. Getting cleaned up felt great even more so as I made myself wait until I had cleaned off some serious mud from my bike. Bukhara was a…
Nukus Riding into Nukus I made straight for the hotel I’d picked from the Lonely Planet: the Jipek Joli. It was a bit more than my budget but there wasn’t much choice in Nukus and I wanted somewhere nice after another few days in the desert. I was also going to spend a rest day…
Leaving Beyneu I was both sad and happy to see the back of it; sad because it had at least had warmth, clean toilets and electricity and happy because it didn’t have much else to recommend it apart from the three things I just mentioned. I was also quite nervous about my knee failing again…
Arriving in Baku I was immediately struck by how different this city appeared to be from the rest of Azerbaijan. On the surface it seemed modern and bustling; there were impressive skyscapers and some really amazing modern architecture giving it a distinctive skyline. There was also a wide variety of restaurants serving many different cuisines…
The road into Tbilisi from Mtskheta was long and straight and mostly downhill, which made up for the crazy traffic whizzing past us. Tbilisi was going to be the first major city I had ridden into since Ankara, which had been a month before so I was a little nervous. Thankfully while it was a…
Riding across the border into Georgia I was immediately struck by the roads. They were a whole lot narrower than in Turkey and not in the best state of repair. That was OK though as it would transpire that Georgia has other things to make up for the roads. One of these is a thriving…
My next stop after Erzincan was Kelkit, a city laying between two ranges of mountains. I had planned on going further than here but the early onset of darkness had caught me out again. It was also pretty cold and I didn’t feel like pushing on for the sake of it and ending up freezing…
After Goreme I headed off for Kayseri, the nearest city. As I rode towards Kayseri the mountain Erciyes loomed closer. sadly the day wasn’t that clear so I didn’t get a great photo. The road to Kayseri was fairly uneventful, I left the wonders of Cappadocia behind quite quickly. After that there was only Erciyes…
Riding ROUND 