The Nomads! By Kinley

Sir Charles Blois Ratu Kinley I had always wanted to do an overland journey on the silk route, the spark for traveling was ignited by a late uncle, who was a very good friend, a philosopher and a guide, who lived short but to the fullest. He loved bikes, travel, books and his guitar!. We often talked about far away places, good music and living like a bird. If he was here, he would have loved every bit of this journey. The journey was possible due to the generous philanthropy of Sir Charles Blois, the support of my family members and my dear wife. At 70 I admire Charles for his energy and down to earth attitude. The evenings in the camps were made all the more interesting of the talks of World wars, a subject he was versed in, and further enhanced my history. His experiences in Ethiopia, rides in the mine fields, kidnapped by bandits for a brief moment etc are all very fascinating. He plans to do the Dakar soon, and if Winston Churchill took office when he was in his seventies, I think nothing is impossible if the spirit desires. The worst thing about such trips is getting the papers organized, the visa formalities, more so for small countries like Bhutan, where we have to go to Delhi in India to get our visas. Prior to going on this trip, I went two times to Delhi to get the required visas and finally my mate Ratu stayed in Delhi over a month just following up and getting the necessary paper works in place. To get visas for CIS countries is even more tedious, because Bhutan has no diplomatic ties with these countries, forget about Diplomatic countries but foreign ministry officials of these countries do not even know that a country like Bhutan exists, It’s that bad!. More

about this later. As luck would have it, I have a good friend in Kazakhasthan, who arranged the visa paper and clearance for Kazakhasthan and Uzbekisthan. Without Yeldos’ my friend in Almaty, I can imagine whether this trip would have been even possible. Thank You Yeldos! For making this trip of a life time possible and for being a great host. I will never forget the moments in Almaty. However at the end after we got our visas, flights and everything was done, I felt happy! it felt like as if we scaled Everest!. We were ready to start our adventure of a lifetime. 14 May

Leaving for Delhi, had an early flight with Emirates to Dubai and connecting to London. We met a nice cab driver, and decided to halt some place near the airport to eat some ‘alu paratha’ India is always amazing with the ‘holy cows’ patrolling the streets. It’s dirty, hot, polluted, noisy with so much energy, You can do what ever you like and that’s the best part. I love India,‘Incredible India!’ That’s their Tourism slogan and truly it lives to that spirit. We spent a few hours at the Dubai airport and from the sky saw all the mega projects of Dubai and the chic airport. They are building so many stuffs out there and its huge, later my friend John told me about all the real estate crashes, how everything was just hyped by the media and all the projects are stalled or closed for the moment. What can I say, it’s sad. Hope the economic recession recovers soon so that all the people who work in Dubai get their jobs back because many people in India, Pakistan, Nepal and far east countries work in Dubai and these projects were always good for them. I also heard that Dubai is running out of their oil reserves and they are now shifting their focus on Tourism, but I see only sand in that country, I wonder how this works, riding the bike in the sand is sure fun though and shopping is fun too if you have the cash. We reached London Heathrow at night and later have to catch a train to go to a place called Ipswich and by the time we reached our destination, it was like 1 am in the morning, we were really tired by then.

15 May. We stayed a night near the station in some hotel paying about 40 pounds for a lousy room, with no room service. I was wondering we in the tourism industry in Bhutan charge a flat rate of USD 200/night/person, provide a good resort hotel, 3 meals, guide, and a good car for the whole day, so I really feel people who come to our country should not complain about the tour price being expensive as compared to the services in Europe, ours are far more personalized and also much cheaper. Anyways we were too exhausted to think any further as we wanted to sleep and head on to Darsham the next day where we meet Sir Charles and help him prepare the unimog and the bikes. The following day we got to Darsham, Sir Charles picked us at the station and headed for his farm and his workshop. No rest, straight on to work. When I first saw the unimog, I was really excited, it looked really cool, a real eye turner. I was all excited of our new home for the next two months. I was just dreaming about the drive and the places we will be seeing and it was a dream come true. I said a little prayer to my protecting deity and thanked the God for making this come true.

The unimog in preparation. The next few hours were spent in organizing the unimog. It had some electrical jobs to be done, loading the motorcycles, loading the tools and the spares. The unimog was a 1988 Mercedees, customized with experience as it had seen some good days in Africa. It had everything you could wish for and it was ready to sail the deserts, minus the air-conditioning!. It had one in the cabin but was defunct. I never thought in the grasslands the summer temperatures soared above 40degrees C and in winter am told it becomes -40 degrees C.

Later Sir Charles took us to his place Benacre Hall for the night. It sure was fancy, nice big place and looked very historical as well. As the name suggests Sir Charles Blois came from a noble lineage but I really do not know the details, but I know that any name that has long and many words has a lot of history behind it. His real name is Sir Charles Nicholas Gervase Blois. We were very comfortable in Benacre hall, nice soft beds, warm shower, luxurious carpets with a historical ambience.

Benacre Hall 17 May

Waiting in que at Dover to board the ferry to France.

We are all packed and ready. We thought of starting early but last minutes here and there like filling the tanks, petrol, oil, and diesel took some hours. Finally when we filled one reserve tank there was a small hole and we had to fix that. Charles’ son Andrew came over and welded the tank, but by the time we could depart for Dover it was 4.30pm. We had to start now, we were getting impatient. We reached Dover at night and took a ferry to France at 1.am. The adventure had already started. After we crossed the English channel, we wanted to find some place to halt and we spent the night in a parking lot. We hoisted our tent, and just fell asleep after a long and tiring day and night.

18 May Our goal was now to head east, avoiding the major motorways and this was rewarding. We traveled through many beautiful landscapes in Belgium passing through the cities of Mons, Namur and Marche.

We drove parallel to the Mosel river, which was just like Bhutan with many winding small roads with beautiful scenery throughout. This is perfect country for motorcycling and it was very enjoyable. Overnight we stayed in a place called Dasburg in the woods. We set up our camp, cooked a good meal and retired to our cozy beds with everything in perfect harmony, the weather was very pleasant.

19May. Our drive today took us through some beautiful country side of Germany, it was the wine growing region of Germany. After covering some 600km of winding roads we drove through a private road and landed to the dead end of a German farm and requested the owner there if we could camp out there and he was happy to allow us to camp in his parking place. On talking with him he was a Hobby farmer but he seemed to manufacture the turbo chargers for cars and trucks. Apparently he also had clients in Asia and one of his clients was he was saying some ‘tesco’ ok it was TELCO, and he probably didn’t know that these guys are really huge around this area manufacturing the Tata brand of vehicles. Germany country side is very pretty, the farms look all very organized and we had many people give us the Thumbs up! As the unimog is quite an eye catcher. We camped near a place called Koblenz in Germany.

20. May. Our drive took us through Altenkirchen, Siegen, Erndtebruck, Winterberg, Korbach, Hofgeismar, we were now in East Germany. As one travels east, you can see things less organized, the farms are better in the west and in most towns there are basically very less people on the streets. The garden and homes also look a little uncared for. I hear that after east and west Germany were united, most people from the east left their villages and headed on to west for employment, it looks quite true with the sparse population in the settlements we crossed. We are now quite close to Poland and set our camp about 3 hrs short of the Polish border.

Discussing the next days route Our camp site 21.May. We crossed into Poland, since it’s the EU there are no border crossing formalities, however a police man stopped us and checked our passports and documents, although Poland is in the EU we still needed to change money as they used their own currency. We got an opportunity to check our emails and send updates to our friends and family at

Gelena Gora. However it now gets a bit tricky as people speak very less English around this region and communication is a problem. The drives in many places were through small mountain roads and many places it reminded me of Darjeeling and Kalimpong regions as the views and landscape was similar.

22 May. One of the places for a must see was the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau and we kept a whole day to visit the sights. The turbulent history of Europe is evident in these places where many people were killed by the Nazis. The concentration camps were really huge and we got a good insight into what really happened there and one also gets a chilly feeling looking at the various museums there.

This was one of the gas chambers. One of the incinerators

Concentration Camp at Auschwitz And finally!

23.May. After our sightseeing of the concentration camps, we went to the city of Krakow. This was a beautiful city with a lot of character, a nice big castle and many beautiful buildings.

24.May. Our destination now is towards Warsaw. We drove through Iglomia, Lubnice, Daleszyce Annopol to Pulaway and camped 54 km short of Warsaw. All along we drove through interesting country side; our camp was near a river after driving about 420km. 25. May. We reached Warsaw, the capital of Poland. Warsaw is a city with a lot of history. The city was basically destroyed during the world wars, but old Warsaw was very beautiful with a lot of tourists. We had some complications with our Visa, as our Schengen visa was not valid for Lithunia but was valid for Latvia. We were in some trap, as to continue further we had to go through Lithunia to reach Latvia and then into Russia. But as per our research Lithunia was a part of the European union so we assumed that everything is OK. But the police in Poland told us that our visa is not valid for Lithunia, so we decided to solve this problem when we reach Warsaw so we had to get this sorted out first. We then headed for the Lithunia embassy. After meeting with the embassy official, he told us that Bhutan did not have diplomatic ties with Lithunia so it cannot issue a visa for Lithunia, he was helpless. We then decided to continue the tour without a visa. The best thing we could do was to call our Embassy in Geneva to find out if they can help us. On the line in Geneva was a friend Phuntsho, this was cool. He tried his best to find some solutions but it seems that Bhutan had no diplomatic relations with the CIS countries. We then decided that we will sneak through Lithunia illegally and we did it without any problems, by planning the border crossing late at night when all the police were sleeping!

Warsaw is a beautiful city with many old buildings, churches and friendly people.

26. May. Our plans were now to head east towards Lithunia, also with some fear now just praying that everything goes as planned. We tried our best not to let this bother us, but as always there were butterflies in the tummy and we needed to confront this and don’t let it bother us. We headed towards the north of Poland where there are lots of beautiful lakes. The route took us from Warsaw-Lomza-Pisz and to Huricane Nida. We passed some beautiful resort towns. When we reached Huricane Nida, I got a call from my wife and found out that so many things were happening back home, there was a big cyclone in West Bengal in India and many people dead, and also caused a lot of damage back home. I felt very sad and also started to feel a bit home sick, we were cut off from the rest of the world!. However the sights of so many lakes and beautiful scenery was a joy. Charles was also carrying a boat in the unimog, so he took the opportunity to do some sailing, while Ratu and me really needed to do some laundry and have a shower! We needed it desperately.

27.May. Since there were so many lakes around the area Charles wanted to explore more on his boat, while Ratu and me wanted to look around the area and have some fun in Huricane Nida. We did just that. The place was really beautiful.

28.May. We crossed into Lithunia without any problems, there was no police control and we were in the land of Lakes. We now wanted to just drive across Lithunia as soon as possible, incase we are met by police and get thrown into prison for illegally being in their country. We stayed a night in the forest well camouflaged. The scene in that country is just like in a fairy tale with monasteries, lakes and beautiful rural setting.

29.May. We drove through Latvia which is quite a small country, we avoided the highways and drove through some very remote village and decided to camp in some remote place near a river. However, since it is summer, there were many mosquitoes and was not very comfortable. We decided to stay very close to the Russian border so that we could cross into Russia the next morning and get close to Moscow.

The back roads and rural areas of Poland, Lithunia and Latvia which we visited were not very developed and they are all EU countries. So I guess the EU have quite a task at hand to bring them to the standards of Western European countries. However I feel the resources are already there, as the land is vast and fertile, to develop countries in the Himalayas like ours, building a road itself is such a herculean task in our mountains. 30.May. Our research showed that the border crossing from Zilupe into Russia would be relatively easier than other borders but this was not true, it took about 6 hrs to cross into Russia.

Our crossing into Lithunia illegally finally came into light here by the Russian authorities. They enquired how we came through Latvia when we did not have a visa for Lithunia, we said that no one stopped us and anyways we are already in Russia now and maybe it’s not their problem. All these conversations took place without the Russian authorities knowing English. Man it was difficult. Apparently it seems that the Russian guys were trying to contact the Lithunian police. We had some arguments and I didn’t want to argue further when the official pointed at his gun and asked me if I wanted a bullet in my head. It was in sign language and I understood it very well. We then settled the whole thing with some ‘gifts’. By the way they didn’t want money. I hope to understand Russian police, officials and their system some day. After 6hrs of ordeal, passport control, custom formalities we were in the vast country of Russia. It felt great, again a sense of achievement. I felt very happy to be in Russia, I always wanted to see this great country which covers half our globe. We head for Moscow and camp in the outskirts of Moscow. The road from Zilupe to Moscow is straight without a bend for a few hundred km. The GPS would go ‘drive 300km and turn right’ and when it was time to turn, it was a slight bend. It’s hilarious for us mountain folks. The country is so vast without a settlement for hundreds of km. It also looks like there is no speed limit. I heard that if you take the Trans Siberian railways, sometimes for a week you just drive through forests and no settlements.

A hunter selling souvenirs on the highway.

As we entered the suburbs of Moscow the roads were really good and vehicles driving at break neck speeds. We finally found some place near a small forest to camp for the night. After our supper, we bumped into Sasha a homeless lad who drank a lot of vodka to keep warm, he slept in the woods. Although we could not converse we enjoyed the company but somehow figured out that he lost his job recently due to his factory closing, so he became ‘Sasha the Tramp’. If we had extra space in our unimog we would gladly offer

him a place to sleep, but we are also guests and he also had a brother who was asleep all the while. Sasha kept offering me shots of his Vodka and after some time I needed to get some sleep.

My friend Sasha the Tramp.

31.May. We drive through the outskirts of Moscow and our next goal is to reach the Kremlin. After some initial confusion with the GPS, we reach the center, we break a traffic rule, get pulled over by the police and after some time the police got fed up because we could not communicate and just let us off. Sometimes not knowing the language is an advantage. Moscow is a city with lots of construction works going on, real estate developments can be seen and we can see why Moscow is one of the most expensive cities in the world. Lots of beautiful houses being built, some are like palaces. Probably most of the Russian millionaires whom we have heard of live here. The architecture is just awesome with all the beautiful buildings, the Russian Orthodox Churches, the Red square, the Kremlin. We spent the whole day walking around these sights. Later in the evening, we continue on our journey and find a nice camp site about 100km south east of Moscow in a communal farm. It seems that there is no dearth of campsites as the country is so large and sparsely populated.

01. June. After Moscow our plans are to head on further east towards the Ural mountains, and then travel towards the south towards Kazakhasthan. We decided to find more small roads and avoid the highways. With the GPS it just works so well and it’s a pleasure to just explore all the back roads without getting lost. We travelled through many farms, villages and small towns. We are in the Steppes.

However the country does not look very prosperous and still has a long way before they can catch up to Western Europe. There sure is a lot of oil in that country as we can see the crude oil being pumped in many places.

2. June. We headed towards Ufa, the grasslands are vast and beautiful. Today we got pulled over 3 times by the police. At one point, we were signaled to stop but we just ignored and drove on. It was becoming a harassment. We thought we got away but we had a police after us, he jumped in our unimog and directed us to turn and get back to the control office. After checking all our papers, he literally yelled at us, I felt like in school being reprimanded by my school master. We apologized and the police checked the unimog, looking for drugs or arms I presume. The police inspector who was checking the unimog was a nice man we could see from his curious eyes. He had some kindness in his eyes and we offered him something to drink, but he denied and then he asked us where we were from, we showed him the pictures of our King and country and he was curious. He then wanted money and he wanted to see our country’s money, when we gave him Nu50, about 1 USD, he infact gave us money as well. We traded money and he wished us well. Later he stopped the entire traffic for us to turn our vehicle and head on. That was a nice experience and I loved it.

Riding the grasslands – a dream come true! 3 June. We are now heading towards the Kazakhasthan border. We passed many huge farms, we stopped and looked how huge farms were basically managed and worked upon. We had very good views in Belortsk. 4 June.

This day was probably one of the best days of travel through Russia as we had to cross the Ural Mountains, which I believe is the dividing line between Asia and Europe. The highway was not asphalt, it was a small mountain road with one of the most beautiful scenery we could come across. Beautiful villages kept popping out across the hills. It was quite remote as well and we kept getting friendly smiles and waves from kids and village folks.

5-June After crossing the Ural mountain range, it was rather a boring drive on the flat and hot plains. We crossed many large cities like Magnitogorsk, many Industrial cities and some Russian economic strength and power plants. However it was not a very pleasant site, with smog over some of the cities, huge ugly black smoke emitted into our atmosphere. The Industries badly needed some upgrades in their machinery and some modern technology. Most of the industries were powered by fossil fuels. The nights were spent in the swamp lands, very uncomfortable; we got sucked by 100’s of mosquitoes.

6 June. We are heading to Kazakhasthan border - Petropovlosk and hoping we will be able to cross into Kazakhasthan today. The drive today was like driving in the plains of India, minus the marsh lands. It was hot and really nothing worth seeing. We finally made it to the border and was surprised that there was a huge line of trucks waiting to cross into Kazakhasthan. We jumped the que and made it in the front, thinking that tourists might be given a priority over the usual cargo trucks. We were stopped by the Russian police and he told us that if we want to go ahead we have to pay him to jump the que, which we gladly did, or else it would have taken about 2 days before all the trucks crossed into Kazakhasthan. So we settled the deal with 2000 Roubles to get in the front. After that we were assisted well to complete all the paper works and custom papers to be in Kazakhasthan. We got sun burnt as it was hot and so many mosquitoes sucking our blood. The border crossing took us like 7 hours. It was not fun. However the thought of driving through the deserts of Kazakhasthan and going to Alamaty to visit a friend was very comforting and in a way felt like home coming.

Russia and Kazakhasthan border. Kazakhasthan border inspectors.

7 June

Our next destination is to head for Astana the capital city of Kazakhasthan. We drove through the Kazak steppes and deserts. Crossed the places of Petropovic, Kokshetau and Aqkol. The grasslands here are vast, the roads are well maintained as the country is under massive construction. We reached a small town and wanted to buy some bread, we met a friendly Kazak who offered us beer and just wanted to chat with us. The grasslands we were driving are basically a huge farming country with huge farms and very modern machinery. Later in the evening, when we reached our camp site, we came across two lads who were riding a small moped and was impressed with our bikes. So I went with them for a ride and they took me to a lake where we had a nice swim, it was a much deserved bath as well. This was very refreshing.

8 June. We went to Astana and spent a few hours driving around the city and exploring by foot. Astana is a modern city with so many construction works going on. Lots of fancy buildings and on reading the guide book it seems that the President has lots of ambitious plans for Astana, like building some dome that can maintain the summer temperatures in the winter months when it drops to Minus 30 degrees C and there will be shopping malls

inside and all that stuff. Making a university that will be the Harvard of the East. It’s a nice city and Ratu and me took the opportunity to update our emails which we badly needed to do. Later in the evening we went to the suburbs and camped and took our machines for a spin and did some offroad riding, this was one of the most exciting moments, to be able to ride the vast grasslands for miles without a soul to disturb you.

9 June After a good rest on our camp in the grasslands, where we were spared of the mosquitoes unlike Russia, we headed towards the city of Karanganda, a nice city with a relaxed atmosphere. The day was still hot. We took the opportunity to see the Muesuem in Karaganda and learnt a lot about the Kazak history, freedom, Independence, science and technology and the progress made after their independence from Russia. We had an informative guide and was well worth the tour to the museum. It was here I first learnt about the Labour camps in Russia. This place had ethnically more of German population and when Hitler invaded Poland, the Germans here were sent to the Labour camps as the place is rich in coal deposits. They worked here in labour camps and Stalin’s repression is evident here. About 150,000 people were massacred. The monuments are about 25 km south of the city. I was quite surprised even Koreans killed here, apart from many nationalities including Japanese, it seems that they had come with the Japanese as slaves and workers during the war, during the repression the Russians thought basically the Koreans and Japanese looked same and they were all victims of the Repression. Poor Koreans they got it two times here, from the Japanese and the Russians. I believe Stalin used to say, people cause the problems and if there

were no people there would not be problems!

After visiting Karaganda, we took the bifurcation from the highway to explore more back roads and we passed through some of the remote nomadic villages and also took the opportunity to do some exploration on our bikes, we did some great riding here on the vast open Kazakh grasslands and semi arid desert.

10 June , 11 June. Our plan now is to reach Alamaty, where we still need to get our Ukraine and Uzbekisthan visa and also to meet our friend Yeldos who is eagerly waiting for us. We still had about a 1000km by the time we could reach Alamaty, our drive was through the deserts and semi desert plains. We crossed Lake Balkash which was really big, we drove about 300km on one side of Lake Balkash, the total circumference about 700km. We came across a nomadic family and took the opportunity to visit the welcoming family and saw the nomadic lifestyle and the ger or yurt where they lived. They had a lot of sheep and cattle. Their old lifestyle was quite intact but I guess this will not last long before they finally settle down with a proper house. We were quite lucky to experience this.

We crossed Balkash Lake, which is about 800km in circumference and took us nearly 4 hrs to drive through the coast of the Lake which was about 300km. This lake is half salt water and half fresh water, the water do not mix.

12 June

Views as you approach Alamaty. The mountains suddenly appear like magic from the semi desert landscape. There are mountain ranges that have 6500m peaks. We finally reached Alamaty, which is a large city with about 2 million inhabitants. It felt like home coming to be able to meet my friend Yeldos and his friends. The unimog

needed a service and we needed some good rest and recreation as well and all this was arranged by Yeldos. Since it was a Friday, Yeldos had arranged some get away to another remote place which was Sergey’s place and there we met Ben, Sergey and the rest of the lads. This I must say was an action filled weekend and one of the most memorable experience. 13,14 June. At Aral Toby.

We had a ball of a time at Aral Toby, speed boats, fishing, ATV and jeep in the dunes, good food, sauna, swimming. At the end of weekend I had no more desires left, I had

done everything that I possible wanted to do, and thanks to Yeldos, Sergey and Ben. We still had not experienced the city, so on Sunday we left for Almaty again, as we also had work to get some visa sorted out and also to make our plans further to start heading for Uzbekisthan. 15,16,17 At Almaty. We spent 3 days, applying visa for Uzbekisthan and Ukraine visa. At the same time looking around this cosmopolitan city. However at the end the Ukraine visa was not possible for us Bhutanese passport as some bureaucracy was involved and the official at the Consul didn’t know where Bhutan was and it was also not on the list. My friend Yeldos tried to explain that there was a country called Bhutan and he was there last year, it was hilarious. We would get the visa, but it was going to take some time since they had to send the papers to Kiev for approval, so we just left it and decided to move forward to Uzbekisthan.

18-19 June. We leave Almaty. Finally after a few days relaxation at Almaty, it is time to bid farewell to our friend Yeldos’ and his grand hospitality. It feels sad to leave a place after becoming a bit familiar. I console myself by thinking of the Buddhist teaching of attachment. We should not be attached as this starts creating sorrow, so its time to get the wheels rolling. Nevertheless, leave with the thought that Almaty is just about 4 hrs flight from Bhutan, I can always get back in the future. We start heading West now and set our destination for Chimkent, where Yeldos has kindly arranged for us to stay at a very nice hotel there and also to meet another friend Maurie from Finland who also happens to be the General Manager of that Resort. The drive is through spectular scenery driving parallel to the mountain ranges at the back ground and grass land at one side. Also took the opportunity to get on our bikes today.

At Chimkent. Maurie At Chimkent, Maurie was instrumental for having a guide arranged for us and great hospitality at the resort. We had a room attached with sauna and a private swimming pool and great ‘shaslek’ That night he had some friends celebrating a birthday and we drank some vodka there. It was really fun. Thanks Maurie! For everything. 20-21 June. Uzbekistan at Tashkent. We left early from Chimkent to head for the border of Uzbekisthan. It was a really hot day with the temperature reaching 40C. That border crossing was not very easy as it was quite busy and it took us nearly 7 hrs, that too with the help of Babur. Yeldos’ friend, if he had not requested Babur to assist us with the border crossing, it would have taken us maybe a day or two waiting at the border which is hot and dry. From the border towards Tashkent it was about 4 hrs drive. Once we reached Tashkent it was again at the kind and generous hospitality of Babur and his lovely son Bakhtiyor. They made our stay at Tashkent a great one, they showed us around from the local perspective, took us to the spice market, fed us again great food and lots of meat. People in Central Asia eat a lot of meat. They say that give a Kazak man a small nice and a horse, and he will finish it slowly. Uzbekisthan is a great place with great history, land of Timur and the Khans. The great Maughal empire in the Indian subcontinent was formed by one of his sons. The architecture and the Muslim culture is lavishly displayed here. There is just so much to see and experience, words are not enough one has to be present there.

Waiting at the border the Registhan

One of the spice markets

22. June. Samarkand. Samarkand is a fairly developed city with a great atmosphere. Lots of places to look around and great monuments of Timur. There are also many Madrassas’ not functional though. During the Soviet rule worship was banned. Before coming to Uzbekisthan, we were told that Uzbekisthan was going to be quite difficult and it’s a police state and all that, but surprisingly we never had a single police control throughout our tour in Uzbekisthan and people were very friendly. We met our guide Lola here and she was very informative but also a head strong lady. We stayed in nice comfortable hotels in Uzbekisthan, with the luxury of showers!. The drive to Samarkand was on the ancient silk route with great sights and landscape. My mind drifted to the Silk trading days, what it must have been like with bandits, camels etc.

The architecture and woodwork are similar to the woodworks in Bhutan.

23 June. Bukhara Arrived Bukhara and enough time to look around, Bukhara is a very special place, this was one of the best places I personally liked. The whole place is a caravan sarai. The architecture is just awesome. I particularly enjoyed the ‘Hammam’ bath, the location in a 400 + building, first you are steamed up, then scrubbed with shampoo, meanwhile the masseur keeps pouring cold water over you, later you get a massage something like a thai traditional massage, later the icing is done by pouring rose water all over you and complete that with a nice herbal tea.

24 June - 25 June. Khiva. Uzbekisthan is not all about Muslim culture and tradition, but also the Zorostrhans or the fire worshippers. The walled fortress city of Khiva is a rich city and used to be the home of the ‘Khans’. The places were an architectural delight in the middle of the desert. We could see that it had seen some action during the silk trading era. After a long day or driving from Bukhara, our stay at Khiva was quite refreshing, we met some people who were on a similar road trip with their landcruisers which was geared to take on the deserts.

26. 27 June. We now head towards the Aral sea region. Our drive today is from Khiva to Maynak. We had a very hot day and the desert crossing was not a very enjoyable one as the mercury was touching 45degrees C. We wanted to get close to the Aral sea but the shore line had decreased by nearly 250km, and we could not see the Aral sea. The rivers that drained into the Aral sea were all used for irrigation for cotton cultivation. The guide books say that its an environmental disaster but I was thinking that in a way, if the rivers were not used for irrigation the farmers would have no farming in that area. It’s a tricky situation here. So with no luck we had to stay in the middle of a desert. We however crossed the Kyzylkum desert and our destination next is again to cross into Kazakhstan and then into Russia to head back west. We are now traveling towards Benew and to see the Caspian sea. The border crossing back into Kazakhasthan from Uzbekisthan was the most painless one, all the formalities were completed in about 2 hrs.

28- 29 June.

The Caspian Sea After crossing the deserts in Uzbekistan, once we reached Kazakhstan the roads were a treat, as we were back on good roads. We were once again back on the grasslands and the greenery was a welcome treat after the deserts in Uzbekistan. We lost our way for about 60km. We also had a repair to be done on the unimog as the tank started leaking and we had to weld it in Atyrau. At the banks of the Caspian sea it was one of the most enjoyable moments with the liberty to have a nice swim in the vast ocean of fresh water. 30 June. We cross into Russia and our destination is Astrakhan. The border crossing is not too bad again, however it took us about another 6hrs. With the weather quite mild everything was fine. On the sight of the River Volga and the greenery around nothing was impossible today. Volga is officially regarded as the dividing line between Asia and Europe, so we were back in Europe again. We set our camp near the river Volga and just enjoyed the sight of people moving around in their boats and enjoyed the lush breeze from the Volga, prepared a good meal of chicken curry.

Volga river and our camp site near the Volga.

1 July. After our night at Astrakhan, we left for Stalingrad/Volgograd. We met two friends who were bikers and were running their custom bike shop. Anton and Victor. There were very kind to entertain us and showed us around. Volgograd is a city that is covered with history of the battle of Stalingrad. Everything around there revolved around the world war. The memorial and the muesuem were the main attraction.

Volgograd

After we reached Volgograd, I had to end my trip because I did not have a visa to enter Ukraine. Charles at the end headed back to UK on his own visiting Ukraine, Moldovo and some countries that are not even on the map. After I reached back home I got an email from Charles saying that he visited a country called Transnistru. Heard of that. Google it! In the event of my tour, I made a great connection with Oleg who arranged our paper works for Russia. He was very helpful in arranging our visa and paper works. www.welcome-ural.ru I like to Thank all my friends who have made this trip a life time experience. Thank you for making this world a smaller place and hope to see you all in Bhutan one day.

Yeldos Sergi Ben Anton Babur

Bakhtiyor Mauri Victor Lola Alex

John Sasha