Crossing the Caspian, Uzbekistan to Kyrgystan.

The crossing across the Caspian left at 21:00PM the day after we arrived in Baku, so all worked out well as regards timings and getting ferry tickets etc. We departed in the evening at 21:00pm and arrived into Actau at 02:00am, 26 hours later. The crossing was made on a cargo ship but we were lucky enough to all have cabins, so what little sleep we had after a vodka fuelled night and 03:00am impromptu visit to the engine room, was at least in a proper bed! Clearing through customs was laborious and most of the night was spent sleeping on the floor whilst we waited for the truck to be processed. This was our introduction to Kazakstan and things never really got much better on the 4 days it took us to transit through to the Uzbekistan boarder. To sum up: it is flat, barren, muddy, home of the worst hotel I have ever had the misfortune to stay in and the least attractive towns, Borat can quite frankly keep it!

The boarder crossing into Uzbekistan was thankfully a lot more straight forward and we were soon through and into the Republic of Karakalpakistan, which is kind of like the Wales of Uzbekistan. The region, once prosperous in cotton production and fishing, is now rendered one of the countries most depressed areas due to the destruction of the Aral Sea in the 1980’s. Our first stop was to the old fishing port of Moynaq. Once one of the two major fishing ports, it now stands 150km from the sea with the poignant reminder of beached ships lying rusting on the former sea bed.

Our second stop in this area was in the capital NuKus and to the Savitsky Art Museum, which houses a huge collection of former Soviet Union art. Not conforming to the Soviet Realism of the time, much of the art was banned from Moscow but found protection here by renegade artist and ethnographer Igor Svatisky. It was excellent and I even bought the t-shirt!

It was then onto Uzbekistan proper and the ancient silk road cities of Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand which truly surpassed all expectations. Khiva is unlike that of any other central Asian city in that it is preserved almost in its entirety as a ‘living city museum’ with densely packed mosques, minarets, alley ways, all within ancient city walls. Our hotel was smack bag in the middle of everything and a wonderful couple of days were spent exploring the city and taking countless photos!

Bukhara was next and since we have a local guide travelling with us we were able to follow a guided tour of this ancient city. Different from Khiva in that it looks far more lived in and gritty, though the medressas were just as impressive. We once again had a fantastic hotel right in the middle of everything and enjoyed another truck birthday in style with pre-dinner fizz in our hotel courtyard before heading out for a roof top meal to celebrate Jen’s 60th.

If the other two cities had been impressive then Samarkand is ‘The Daddy’ of all Silk Road architecture. It is bigger, more colourful and even more majestic. The main sights of the Registan, Bibi-khanym mosque and the awesome Shah-I-Zinda were truly stunning, hopefully captured by some of these photos!

The last few days involved travelling via Tashkent through the Fergana Valley. Due to travel restrictions the truck had to detour into Tajikistan to then re-enter Uzbekistan to meet us later. We were then left to travel in a convoy of taxis and to endure the most scary 6 hours of my life at the mercy of a guy with a mouth full of gold teeth! Maximum speed I believe was 140 kmph on an unpaved hairpin bend, not cool!

So having survived I am now in Kyrgystan and it’s all about the scenery, it’s all about nature! Beautiful mountain ranges, high altitude lakes and pastures with nomadic communities living in yurts scattering the landscape. Sounds idyllic but it is bloody cold at 3000m!!!

Georgia to Azerbijan.

The last stretch of Turkey involved our first truck ‘stuck in the mud’ whilst bush camping. A couple of hours of hard digging ensued, my part in proceedings? To walk to the next valley and communicate our needs to the farmer with the JCB! Interesting. So with arms wildly miming our problem I believe I also suggest that we would give him a beer for his efforts (forgetting he was Muslim!). Eventually we were towed from the bog but this was the start of 3 days of continuous rain. Having a bit of a cold, and not up for the next campsite with only one cold shower between 24, I decided to upgrade to a hotel for the next few nights whilst in Sumela to see the monastery. Great decision, warm, dry, amazing locally produced cheese, butter, honey, jam for breakfast and wi-fi in the bedrooms. Fully revived it was onwards to Georgia.

Our last 14 days have been spent travelling West to East through the country where we have enjoyed the famous Georgian food, wine, hospitality, spectacular mountain scenery and cosmopolitan Tibilisi.

Our arrival after a rather push and shove boarder crossing was to Batumi where the group took over the ‘Hotel Old Ship’. This is an old, permanently moored galleon and it was excellent fun. We then had a group night out on another ‘Old ship’ turned restaurant (not joking), which was a short walk away. We were treated to the first of our Georgian feasts… I believe I lost count at course number 8! The food was wonderful, the wine flowed and we danced the night away to a strange Yamaha keyboard trio who repeatedly played ‘Venus’ by Bananarama, hilarious!

Next we headed up treacherous mountain roads leading high into the mountain passes of the Svaneti region. Never will I complain about the roads of Greece again! Our base was a homestay in the village of Mestia with the very generous Nino as our host.

Svaneti is famous for it’s defensive stone towers and snow covered peaks rising to above 4000m and is truly isolated from the developed world. We found we were accompanied by the police, or some form of military, through a lot of this area since up until 2004 it was still considered unsafe to travel through. This was no problem, always friendly, one of the police men even bought us food and wine from a local wedding he was forced to miss due to guarding us for the night and spent the night with us by the campfire before retiring to sleep in his freezing car overnight.

Now I feel that I must make reference to the protocol of the ‘Georgian toast’ since this is a business to be taken very seriously when eating and drinking with a Georgian. Firstly Georgians only ever toast enemies with beer so wine and spirits are the only drinks to toast friends with. Once initiated a toast can be surprisingly lengthy, poetic and heart felt. If you are toasted you should let others add their wishes before thanking them and draining your drink. A suitable amount of time should then pass before you are then able to propose your own in response. Unsurprisingly the group seemed to take to this new protocol very quickly!

Leaving the mountains behind for a little while we travelled down to Gori-home of the Stalin museum and a night for us in the Ex-Soviet style hotel ‘Intourist’ with a very allusive hot water supply. The museum charts Stalin’s journey from Gori church school to the end of WII and his death in 1953. We had an amazing guide who had the phenomenal ability to speak without drawing breath, I believe that she had something reptilian about her. Her commentary was great but what was missing was any attempt at a balanced portrayal of his career, taking the angle of local boy made good! No mention of the Gulag, Ukrainian famine or Stalin’s involvement with Hitler! From Gori it was then back up into the mountains to bush camp at the base of Mount Kazbecki. From here I took a rather strenuous trek up to monastery (can’t recall the name but it’s the one on the cover of the Lonely Planet). Overall it took around 3 hours in total with the last bit scrambling on all fours up through the snow. The views were amazing!

Next was onto Tibilisi for an extended 3 day stay. This is due to having to re-route the trip through Kazakstan since Turkmenistan have closed their boarders due to swine flu. This worked out well as Tibilisi is a wonderful place to spend a few days wondering the old town and soaking up the café culture. There are still protesters in town trying to oust the president, however all was peaceful at the time of our visit.

Our last stop was in the Kakheti region near Telavi known as Georgia’s wine country. We stopped at a small producer where over 100 litres of wine and cha-cha were purchased for the truck bar! It’s hardly St Emilion but it is infinitely drinkable whilst around the campfire at bush camps! So now we are in Azerbijan and our 12th country of the trip. Here we transit through on our way to Baku where we will catch our ferry across the Caspian to Kazakstan. So far we have stayed at an ancient Karavansaray and bush camped at mud volcanoes. The Azeri people are very friendly and the response to the truck is always an inquisitive look and a raised hand to wish us well on our journey.

So today we are due to catch the cargo ferry to Kazakstan. We have been told we could go today or we could go in 7 days! I'll keep you posted!

Into Asia.

Bush camp-Bulgaria.

Spent a cold night bush camping in Bulgaria (even had ice on the tent in the morning) before heading into Turkey. The boarder crossing only took 3 hours and after a long drive day we arrived into Istanbul-what a city! Amazing and definately the highlight of the trip so far. We were based in the heart of the old town right next to the Blue Mosque and Ayia Sophia for 3 nights. Myself and Lyndsey decided to upgrade from the hostel and ended up in a wonderful apartment just across the road-bliss! It is great to get these breaks from camping from time to time, a chance to do laundry and not to have to pull on jeans and boots in the middle of the night to trip across wet grass to go pee!

View from my tent!

Istanbul was just fantastic, managed to see the main sights:- Blue Mosque, Ayia Sophia, Topkapi Palace and totally overspent in the Grand Bazaar. I can now haggle with the best of them and managed to negogiate 'best price' on a number of items. For more detailed Bazaar banter please refer to 'Back in Six' (totally jealous of Steve's blog!). Also managed to have some great food, lots of apple tea, play some back gammon and a bit of the hubble bubble pipe!

Topkapi Palace

Inside the Gande Bazaar

Ayia Sophia

From Istanbul we travelled along the Black Sea coast, stopping for two nights on the way at a lovely campsite with sea views from the door of my tent! So now we have 4 nights in Goreme in the region of Cappadocia, famous for it's caves, lunar landscapes, fairy chimneys (?) and hot air ballooning. It's a brilliant spot, we did a tour of the area which included climbing through some severely claustaphobia inducing tunnels of the 'Hidden city' (I now know I don't like enclosed spaces!), spent the evening at a 'Turkish night' complete with the Whirling Dervishes (strange) and hot air ballooning (spectacular).

Goreme
Fairy Chimneys
Hot air balloning at sunrise.

From here we will continue to travel through Turkey on our way to Georgia. So until next time please enjoy the pictures, there are more on facebook too.

Changing landscapes.

Budapest.

Our next destination from Prague was Budapest in our 8th? country. We move so quickly at the moment it is hard to remember what the actual day is, never mind the date! Budapest was lovely if not a very large city. It seemed unrealistic to try to be able to see it all in a day so a few of us opted for some rest, relaxation and a good scrub in the historic thermal baths. So for around 13 quid the next few hours were spent in thermal pools of 38 degrees and in the steam room, watching the dirt and muck sweat away! After this we all met up for a beer as we had our first truck birthday. Me and a couple of the others were on card making duty and we were very pleased with our efforts and we hope so was Debbie (happy birthday). We seem to have a lot of truck birthdays, about two a month in fact and quite a few of those are 30th birthdays. So in all in all Budapest was great, and preferred to Prague.

Camping Budapest.

After another boarder crossing we entered into Romania. Straight away a definite change is evident. As we drove through small farming hamlets machinery has been replaced by shovel and spade, piped water is now a well in the garden and the houses of far more basic construction. Reminiscent of the Mediterranean, the grandmas and granddads sit outside the front door in the setting sun to chat and observe the comings and goings of village life.

Our plan was to find our first bush camp. I pondered what the essentials must be when trying to locate a bush camp and I came up with the following: must have tree coverage for toilet business, must be flat, must not be too close to a village to not attract unnecessary attention and so a fire can be built. Well perhaps our camp didn’t quite fill all these criteria! For a start we were on a hill and I consequently spent a lot of the night wriggling back to the top of my sleeping mat after waking to find myself pressed against the bottom. No real tree coverage, luckily I didn’t need any! As regards village attention, this was from 3 local boys, around 12-13 years old, who at first appeared a bit cocky, smoking and shouting random stuff at us. However after a football appeared and game of football (the universal leveller) ensued with some of the lads from the truck all was well. I must say it was taken very seriously by all involved!

First Bushcamp.

The next day we drove towards the town of Sighsoara. We had a lunch break of a couple of hours and a few of us took a walk through the length of a beautiful gorge taking about a 1 ½ or so. It was lovely if not a bit close to the edge and to the stream below at times! The rest of the day was the drive to town and to a hotel as the campsite isn’t open until June. Well the hotel was a welcome break from the tent and a very comfortable night was had in a real bed with a bathroom just a few steps away, bliss!!! Today off the explore Sighsoara before back to the bush tonight as we head towards Bucharest. Happy days!

Beautiful gorge walk.

Prague

Today was spent discovering the delights of Prague…..in the pouring rain! We have been very lucky with the weather so far so can’t really complain too much. I was expecting Prague to be similar to Riga with lots of spires and red roof top views. It was pretty but maybe due to the weather casting a dullness over the town I have to say that I prefer Riga, though of course there may be some bias there! We fit in most of the sites about town, had a few Czech beers before heading back to a very wet and cold camp. This is the first time my tent has had a rain test and I am very pleased to say that is remained fully watertight! The plan for the next day was for an early start and long drive day to get us to Budapest for the next couple of nights. See you there...