Road to Tokyo

18 days and 4,119km (Total: 158 days and 32,144km)

Our third time entering Russia. This time into Eastern Siberia and only three thousand geodesic kilometers from our final destination. The ferry to Japan was booked and we had to reach Vladivostok a week early for customs clearance.

Ahead: eleven days, one long road, and no expectations.

The last two Russian border crossings had been intense. Phones confiscated and scanned. Interviews about our reasons for visiting. So we came prepared, arriving at the crack of dawn with a flask of hot water, a 3-in-1 Nescafé sachet, and some biscuits.

Instead, it was almost pleasant. Customs staff filmed us declaring no drugs, drones, or guns, before a kind woman helped us through the long motorcycle import forms which were entirely in Russian.

A short and sweet exchange — “Welcome to Russia” — “Spasiba” — and we were on our way.

Within hours my puny geography knowledge multiplied. We soon discovered that the big mass of water next to us was Lake Baikal — the oldest and deepest lake in the world. And the area we were riding through was the Republic of Buryatia — a federal subject of Russia and home to the indigenous Mongolic Buryats. If it weren’t for the Russian number plates and flags, we’d have thought we were still in Mongolia.

We rode past Buddhist temples and into the region’s capital, Ulan Ude. Not a city that could compete in a beauty contest against the European cities we were travelling through on the other side of summer, but perfectly functional for our simple desires of a clean bed and a working stove. We were probably one of the few foreign tourists there that night, and almost certainly the only ones that cooked a Portuguese ensopado with Chinese Tsingtao beers on the side.

We set off early the next day and headed east. Rain was abundant. Paved roads weren’t. It was a tough ride over one hundred kilometres through greasy mud, sludge, and pot holes filled with water of unknown depth. If Russia was tapping our helmet intercoms (not improbable) they would have heard my cursing within the fine lines between tears and laughter. Becs, as always, was keeping her cool and me distracted with pub/bike quiz questions like “How many red cars are there in China?”

We eventually found pavement again and finished the day on a high. I doubt the locals had ever seen a man so ecstatic, dripping wet and splattered in mud, standing before a backdrop of desolate Soviet apartment blocks.

We left early the next day. Or tried to. A railway barrier blocked our exit from town. A uniformed man gestured “It’s going to be a while!” and pointed to the pedestrian underpass. I was sceptical — until an old woman on a mobility scooter made it look easy. Pride prevailed. we stripped the bike of the panniers and Becs, and I made it through.

The rain continued to hammer it down. Finding accomodation was difficult, with camping off the cards and many hotels not accepting “foreigners”. Prices were between €30 and €40 per night — more expensive than we had gotten used to — and we already knew that attempts to negotiate abruptly end with “нет” (“no”).

Quality was... variable. Dirty rooms, mattresses that must have been used thousands of times, and sinks that fell over when you lent on them to brush your teeth. But, our bar for good continued to plummet and it only took a few days before I found myself saying “Becs Becs, look... the room has a window”.

We kept going east, riding alongside the Trans-Siberian Railway, which crosses Russia in seven days. With little else to stop for, we made good distances. After a week, we detoured to Blagoveshchensk and spent the evening walking the Amur River, captivated by the surreal view of China just across the water. Our hostel was full of men — likely truckers headed over that river in the morning.

The weather was improving but finding accommodation was getting tougher. I found a biker refuge that was close by and sent a message explaining “We’re a couple from the UK, riding to Japan on an Africa Twin, looking for a place to stay.” The reply: “Good evening, yes, of course, come!”

That was all we needed. We rolled through the gates late afternoon and were greeted by two guys fixing their van. They were from Yakutsk, the coldest city on Earth, visiting Vladivostok for their summer holiday. The host was out, so we waited in the garden — a Harley in one corner, a barking dog chained in the other.

Maxim soon arrived. He was proper biker. Cargo trousers, oversized hoodie, military boots, sunglasses. He was the first person in Russia that greeted Becs with a hug and we instantly felt that reassuring connection that runs through the biker community wherever you are in the world.

He showed us around his home and where we'd be staying. It was a perfect refuge for the night: double bed (pull out sofa), reasonably clean bathroom (just some cat poo on the floor), a fully equipped kitchen (an old pair of men's boxers as oven gloves), and some guns hanging in the garage (not that we needed them). Another more friendly dog showed his face, along with a fat cat and a pet hedgehog.

After a couple of beers, we walked into the tiny town for dinner. When we finished, Maxim picked us up and gave us a proud tour of his local town… the only highlights being a massive hydraulic damn and a tiny pool of dirty water with some fishes. We acted amazed. We all had tea and biscuits when we got home.

We woke to heavy metal music on full blast and Maxim fixing a quad bike. He never asked for money but we left some Rubles, wrote in his guestbook, and said goodbye. Vladivostok was only days away now.

The cultural jigsaw of Russia continued to amaze us and the next day took us into Birobidzhan, the capital of the Jewish Autonomous Oblast Region. It is one of two officially Jewish jurisdictions in the world, the other being Israel. Yiddish is still an official language. The following night we reached Khabarovsk, the largest city and previous capital of the Far Eastern Federal District. The sun was out and the streets buzzing. At a quick glance you'd think you're in San Francisco.

We then turned south and had a straight 800km to get to Vladivostok, a city that was closed to foreigners until 1992 and made the region’s capital in 2018.

After two weeks of rain, cultural fascinations, and more human generosity, we arrived at the port. Back by the sea for the first time since Turkey. We swam, explored supermarkets, and savoured our final Russian meals. Locals helped us book taxis and print the documents we’d need for our last border crossing.

Next stop: forty eight hours on a boat.

11 days and 2,466km (Total: 140 days and 28,025km)

Mongolia is an overlander’s dream. You can travel in any direction and you’ll find otherworldly landscapes in harmony with real nomadic culture. You just have to be okay with the weather flipping moods in seconds, riding through sand, and seeing more camels than humans for days on end.

We crossed the border from Russia straight onto the main asphalt road that cuts through the country — a country with an average of two people per square kilometre. The first sign of civilisation was a town called Ölgii and, at nearly two thousand meters altitude, the winter gloves were back out for the first time since Europe.

That night we stayed with a family spanning three generations, all living in a big ger (yurt) with a few cabins for guests in their garden. The dad of the middle generation worked as a tour guide and spoke good English, so I asked him what route we should take. He looked at our fully loaded bike, then at me and Becs, and quickly said “stick to the road” — as if it was a dumb question I had asked. He warned of August rains and the risk of getting stuck in the middle of nowhere.

We listened (for now). For the next two days we rode hundreds of kilometres between scattered towns. The air was crisp, the landscapes green. It reminded me of Jersey but stretched a thousandfold, with mountains as a backdrop, camels instead of cows, and eagles instead of seagulls.

When the sun started to descend, we’d look for a place to stay. The tactic has been refined: I’d wait on the bike while Becs went in to play the innocent traveller. Even when they say they're full, they have a room available somewhere. And even when they have prices formally listed on the reception desk, there's always room to negotiate (until a more fancy place listed a double room for €75 and we said we'd do it €25 — that one didn't work and we ended up in the tent).

Evenings were slow and peaceful. We’d walk past kids playing basketball, families watching the TV inside their ger, and stray dogs which didn't pay us any attention — just like the locals. We’d have a couple of beers, reflect on the day’s events, and plan for the next.

Mornings would always start with coffee. I've been keeping ground beans in a packet from my favourite coffee shop in Jersey, appropriately called “Bean Around The World.” But the grocery stores only sold instant coffee, which won't satisfy my addiction. I ended up in an actual coffee shop ordering ten espressos, then trying to explain to the young woman I didn’t want them made, just the beans ground into a plastic bag. After some confused translations and bewildered looks, we got there. The whole saga only set me back €10 (cheaper than Bean Around The World).

First addiction satisfied, the next one came knocking soon after. The asphalt road was smooth, enjoyable and safe, but I was craving the adventurous path. So, on the fourth day, we left the asphalt and rode two hundred kilometres across tracks, grass, and sand. In Mongolia, you can basically go in any direction you want and you will find a way.

We aimed for Uliastai, one of Mongolia’s most remote cities. We rode up to the gates of a local ger camp on the outskirts, where the young owners told us we could pitch our tent in their garden. It turned out to be karaoke night (we hadn’t clocked it was Friday night) and they pointed to a central ger with a massive TV and sound system. We tried to pay for the stay — cash practically forced into their hands — but they refused. We pitched the tent as far from karaoke central as possible, but still laughed ourselves to sleep that night as local songs grew louder and the singing quality steadily declined.

After Uliastai, we cut back onto a smaller, mostly paved road and slowed down the pace. For four days we cruised through stunning scenery, stopped for lunch in fields so large you can’t see the edges, and pulled up at ger camps in the evenings. For €5 they often let us pitch the tent behind a fence or cabin to hide from the evening winds. A hot shower and somewhere to charge our helmets was just a bonus.

One week after entering Mongolia, and on a diet of tuna, beans, and biscuits, we made it to Ulaanbaatar. Riding into the city wasn’t pretty, as we passed through suburban ger districts that looked extremely impoverished and exuded potent smells my brain struggled to comprehend.

But the city itself was like many in Europe… high rise buildings shimmering in the background while younger folks sipped ice tea in the afternoons and alcohol in the evenings. Being the final days of August, there was a “back to school” vibe in the air.

We took a few days rest and prepared for the last leg of the journey: bike maintenance, money exchange, and washing clothes. We would have loved to stay longer, but summer was slipping away and we didn’t want to be left behind.

Next stop: the road to Vladivostok.

4 days and 1,320km (Total: 129 days and 25,560km)

On the world map it looks like you should be able to hop straight from Kazakhstan into Mongolia, but there’s no official border between the two. Heading south through China was a no-go because foreign vehicles aren’t allowed, so we gladly rode back into Russia on the pricey multi-entry visas we’d secured in London before the trip began.

This time we entered four thousand kilometres further east along the country. The border crossing was a breeze compared to last time and only took us an hour on the Russian side. We just had to fill out a form about our jobs, which always causes minor hiccups when the answer is “unemployed.” But the staff were, as at most borders, friendly and welcoming — going about their day-to-day lives and happy to see others visiting their country.

Our first night back in Russia was at “Guest House Man Wearing a Dress”. Not its real name (which is something in Cyrillic we can't read or pronounce), but what we named it based on photos from their Instagram. The owner (not wearing a dress this time) showed us to our room, pointed out the well where we could find “holy water,” then proudly told us we were his first ever foreign guests. To welcome us, he gave us a complimentary bottle of champagne, which we really didn't need considering the beers already stashed in our panniers.

The second day took us northwest to a city Google calls “Barnaul” but road signs referred to its actual name of ‘”Барнаул” — making road signs not particularly useful to us, or vice versa. Thankfully the road there was straight, rolling over lustrous meadows which were a welcome change after Central’s Asia’s endless flat plains. No more camels either, which I didn’t miss as their favourite hobby seems to be standing in the middle of the road chewing grass with a face of confusion but interest.

That night we stayed in another apartment block, the kind we’ve oddly grown to love. Cheap, private parking, a grocery store downstairs, and usually at least one pull-up bar lurking near the kids play area. Everything you need an elevator ride away and the perfect antidote to the constant and consequential unknowns of life on the bike.

Such an unknown hit us the very next day, as we came the closest yet to falling off the bike at speed. Not camels this time. Not crazy deep potholes. Nor crazy crazy drivers. Instead: a helicopter. Out of nowhere, one suddenly lifted above the trees, maybe twenty metres overhead. The downward gush of wind jolted us sideways at 90kmph, and I only just managed to keep the bike from veering off the side of the road and into the trees. Probably the one time I’ve been thankful K weighs as much as a small car. Fittingly, it turned out to be an ambulance helicopter, so at least we’d have been in safe hands if we’d crashed.

Day three we set off south towards the Mongolia border. The ride looked arduous on paper but turned out to be splendid in practise. Six hours through the Altai Mountains with smooth, empty roads winding alongside a river. Each town we passed getting smaller and smaller as we covered the four hundred Ks on K, before we arrived at the smallest and most peaceful of towns and settled there for the night.

We thought about staying another night, but we’ve learnt it’s often better to leave on a high, so waved goodbye to our host and her crazy chained-up dogs. Two more days to Mongolia. Our last stop was a campsite tucked off the road, where €10 got us a pitch near a flowing stream and €15 more bought dinner for both of us: two chicken legs, a good pile of bulgar, a small pastry, and unlimited tea. Simple, but perfect.

We woke early and put our down jackets on for the first time in months, brewing an Aeropress from the shared kitchen as the sun rose with just enough warmth to overcome the morning chill. Summer felt well and truly behind us. The last leg of the journey just beginning.

Next stop: our 22nd country.

13 days and 1,617km (Total: 125 days and 24,240km)

“But he found that a traveller’s life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are forever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes other novelties.” – Frankenstein

It was serendipitous to read this on the morning we left Almaty, after ten days of beautiful repose. We had arrived into the city after the trials and tribulations — and pure adventure — of riding the Silk Roads of Central Asia, and were ready for a break. Our home was a family-oriented apartment complex called Comfort City, and the polar opposite of a Tajik hostel at four thousand meters above sea level. For the first time in months, packing up our gear in the morning was replaced with making the bed. Navigating a muddy track was now navigating aisles of a supermarket. And plotting the next day’s route was traded for a book and an early night.

The extended shift gave me a newfound appreciation for the mundane-yet-blissful routines of everyday life. We’d spent our days doing very little, savouring the simple pleasures of it all.

Our original plan was to stay in the city for four days while the bike was serviced. But that was extended, twice, as we fought with Kazakh customs over the delivery of new bike parts. By the time they finally arrived from Italy, I had acquired a Kazakh identity number, a registration with the tax authorities, and mastered the ability to maintain my place in a chaotic immigration queue using only Google Translate and universal hand gestures for “what the fuck are you doing.”

Despite these new strengths, we had also grown a soft spot for Almaty. Set in the foothills of the Trans-Ili mountains, the air was cooler — a mild thirty degrees compared to the forty-plus elsewhere in Central Asia — and the sound of running water from the mountains was a lush replacement for the constant onslaught of sand and dust.

The best part, although a bit awkward to admit, was that people paid us absolutely no attention. Everywhere else in Central Asia, kids and adults approached us whenever we stopped, which is lovely, but it gets tiring. You always feel like a tourist unable to blend in and flow with the everyday lives of the locals. But in Almaty — and Kazakhstan as a whole, for reasons I can’t explain — we were almost entirely ignored everywhere we went. The most attention we got was from some people that kindly welcomed us to Kazakhstan and asked if we needed any help.

As we watched the leaves begin to fall from the trees, it dawned on us that Autumn was approaching and we still had a long way to Japan. On our tenth day, we finally picked up K, fitted with new tires, brake pads, air filters, and a new chain (which came in gold, really helping us blend in…).

We enjoyed our final day in Comfort City, eating our last Plov of the Stans (for breakfast and dinner), and set off. The “pleasure for something new” was calling and, as we rode north through the peaceful vastness, we reminisced over the intercoms about the incredible memories from our journey through Central Asia.

Next stop: Russia Part 2 of 3.

8 days and 1,461km (Total: 112 days and 22,623km)

The Pamir Highway had delivered ridiculous, otherworldly scenery — but at a cost. The high altitude, broken roads, and stale-bread-of-a-diet had been slowly beating the shit out of us, one punch at a time. By the time we arrived in Osh, we realised we were close to KO.

We took a day's rest in the city and treated ourselves to an apartment that had the luxury of a toilet you didn't need to walk fifty meters outside in the freezing cold to get to. We had an easy day planning our route through Kyrgyzstan and lubing our aging bike chain with a bunch of kids watching and saying “hello” on repeat.

We left Osh and rode four hours to a guest house called October, in a town called Oktyabr. We were back in forty degree heat and back in the world of unfathomable generosity as two local men brought over bread, cheese and fruit as we took a break under the shade of a tree. We continued on and arrived at October, agreeing €30 for a private room including dinner and breakfast with a woman that looked like she was going to give birth any moment. A few other overlanders turned up later that evening but we all silently acknowledged the fact that no one had the energy for small talk — so we did our own thing and went our separate ways the next morning. Perfect.

Maps.me is popular here, but the routes it sends you down is a roll of the dice. Anything ranging from new asphalt to dirt tracks that look like they're only used by horses or donkeys. We tried our luck and on our first day the dice landed on gravel. We rode a hundred kilometres over two hours with the bike vibrating and traction control in overdrive. It wasn't the most enjoyable ride, but oftentimes that's the trade-off in exchange for stunning views with no other humans in sight.

We needed to find a place to camp, which is more tricky in practise than theory when the sides of the roads are either steep drop-offs or covered in sharp shrubbery and/or rocks. The road continued to wind down over the mountain pass and we weren’t having much luck. We realised Becs had dropped her phone and then I dropped the bike turning round to go try and find it. Picking up the fully-loaded bike on an incline, at the end of a long day, took every ounce of energy we had left from the kilos of bread we had consumed in Tajikistan. Luckily the helmet was hiding my facial expressions which probably resembled a world strongest man competitor mid boulder lift.

Eventually, we found a spot. The sun was setting so we ate some bread and cheese before setting up camp. At about 11pm, the wind introduced itself, hissing over the hills. By midnight, it had matured into a deep bellow, rattling our tent as it swooped through. It soon had pulled every peg from the ground and warped the tent to the point the only thing holding it down was our body weight.

I knew I had to do something before the whole thing flew off. So I ventured out into the darkness in my boxers, sandals and head torch and continued my world strongest man training, carrying the biggest rocks I could find and strapping the tent to them. Whilst Becs held the structure together from the inside, I completed the fortress with a chain of cable ties hooked to K — the 250kg beast stood there unfazed.

Eventually the gusts calmed. Despite a restless night — Becs very much over camping at this point — we woke early and boiled some tea on the stove before loading the contents of our bedroom, kitchen, and wardrobes onto the motorcycle — alongside ourselves — and shuddered our way down the rest of the mountain pass.

We soon came to a T-shaped fork in the road. Previously, choosing a direction meant a close examination of Google Maps. Now, after a month in Central Asia, it boils down to one thing: which road looks less fucked? We made the right call and followed a smooth and empty road for hundreds of kilometers around Song-Köl (a lake) — our eyes, ears, skin, and noses receiving data we hadn’t felt since Europe: endless greenery and crisp, cold air. It was beautifully nostalgic. Over our intercoms we agreed that Kyrgyzstan is a true hidden gem — our favourite Stan.

The next day I even had the chance to run, led by a dog that I’d befriended and trotted on like a guide. She even waited for me as I took off my shoes to cross a river after she had nonchalantly waded through it. It was nice to chat to someone/thing other than Becs despite being seriously out of breath — which I originally thought was lack of fitness but later came to a more flattering hypothesis that it was because I was over 3,000 metres above sea level (as 40% of Kyrgyzstan is).

The nostalgia continued the next day, but in a different guise: cold and heavy rain. As we skirted the edge or Issyk-Köl (another, much vaster lake) the dice landed on mud. It was a challenging ride over slippery roads and near-zero visibility, as the rain peppered our helmets like we were driving a car in a storm with no windscreen wipers.

We knocked on the door of a guest house in the next town, which wasn't our first choice but turned out to be bloody perfect. The room clean and the bike sheltered, but more than that — “perfect” was the feeling that we’d be happy making this our home for the night. So much so, that after we had stripped off our riding gear — this time wet from rain and not sweat — we asked our Russian host if we could stay two nights instead of one. “Da,” she said.

Despite the frequent power cuts which meant it took at least thirty minutes to boil the kettle, Guest House Amirhan and the town of Bokonbayevo made its way towards the top of our favourite stays so far.

On our eighth and penultimate day in the country of the Kyrgyz, we continued East, stopping for a swim in the lake on the way of our short ride to a village called Jeti Oguz. We've loved the guesthouse experiences so much in Kyrgyzstan that we enjoyed our last one in the foot of the mountains, where our host made us a simple but incredibly tasty dish of potatoes, cabbage, and beef (or horse), served alongside dozens of extras: bread, watermelon, apples, apricots, pears, nuts, raisins, salads, sweets, and a bunch of other things I couldn’t identify (but they were all delicious).

On our final day, the nostalgia eventually overstayed its welcome. We rode towards the border in a non-stop downpour for two hours — the kind that soaks through to the skin and sucks all the warmth from your body. Still, it wasn’t able to dampen what had been an incredibly positive experience of a country that we fell more in love with on every turn.

Next stop: our last (and first) Stan.

10 days and 1,370km (Total: 104 days and 21,162km)

Three hours after exiting Afghanistan, we were sitting in a border hut sharing fruit and energy drinks with the Tajik immigration staff. We needed to pay $10 to import the bike, but they had no change for our $100 note, so we started asking random passers-through if they could help. Eventually a friendly Tajik man pulled out a wad of cash and swapped our dollars for somoni — but only once he’d made sure the note was as crisp as a new one. That matters here.

Meanwhile, the system wasn’t accepting Becs’s Portuguese passport, but that got solved when one of the officers said “Hang on a moment,” took it round the back, and returned with it magically stamped.

A few hiccups, but they felt so minor after Afghanistan that we just took them on the chin with a smile.

In need of rest, we nailed it straight to Dushanbe, the capital. We’d booked two nights — but that turned into six after I was floored by Tajik Tummy and confined to bed. I couldn’t tell you much about the city, but I could certainly give you a detailed review of our bathroom and the sweets aisle in the supermarket across the road. Becs knows I’m not doing great when I’m watching YouTube videos like “How to drive a golf ball straight” at ten in the morning.

The Pamir Highway was waiting. Part of the ancient Silk Road, it’s been used for millennia as the only viable route through the mountains connecting Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. The Soviets turned it into an actual road in the 1930s and named it the M41. It’s famous for its Mars-like scenery, and infamous for sporadic landslides, deep river crossings, and dreadful road conditions.

A week later than planned — and finally ready to trade the toilet seat for the bike seat — we set off.

We left Dushanbe and rode east along the Panj River, which literally forms the border with Afghanistan. It was a scenic and gentle ride, exactly what I needed to get back into the rhythm. Kids played on both riverbanks, seemingly metres apart but a world away in every other sense. Tajik military patrolled their side to stop people crossing illegally.

Five hours later, we reached the first town. We knocked on a hostel door and asked how much. The guy wrote “200” on a calculator (about €20), so we took off our boots and unpacked. Thirty minutes later he reappeared and typed “300”. He had changed the price (apparently not unusual in Tajikistan) so, out of principle, we did the last thing we wanted to: got dressed again and repacked the bike. We rode to the next place down the road and quadruple-confirmed the price before unpacking. That night we had soup and a small plov for dinner and swapped stories with a French couple who’d cycled all the way from Lyon.

On our second day, we followed the Panj River again but the road got rough. Broken asphalt, deep sand, gravel, and narrow passes barely wide enough for two vehicles. The bike was enjoying it even less than I was. From the intermittent revving and dirt flying everywhere, the clutch got stuck at full tension and wouldn’t stop slipping. I couldn’t loosen it with my hands because sand and dirt had locked it in place. So we were stuck in first gear for 20km, with another 100km to go.

We passed a sign for a car mechanic and rolled down the path to his house. He called his brother (who spoke English), poked around, and said he needed to open the engine. I knew that was total overkill so eventually — and proudly — I fixed it myself (with a phone call to my dad).

For the rest of the day I was too focused on dodging rocks and potholes to enjoy the landscape, but Becs was taking it all in.

On the third day, we ascended away from civilisation and into the heart of the Pamirs. Trucks had battered the road to pieces over the last hundred years, so it took us nearly six hours to cover just 200km, probably shaving a few years off K’s lifespan in the process.

As we climbed higher — above 4,000m — the scenery became breathtaking, literally. We passed a few cyclists and the odd truck, but mostly it was just us and the bike immersed in surreality for hours on end.

By early evening, we rolled into a tiny village and decided to stop for the night. The owner, wearing a traditional Kyrgyz hat (locals here identify as Kyrgyz, even though they’re Tajik citizens), sat with us and told us this was his favourite time of year. In winter, it drops to minus forty — the coldest inhabited place in Central Asia.

Dinner was stale bread, fried potatoes, and lentil soup. As the rain started and the light faded, it was exactly what we needed.

The next day brought another 200km of unbelievable views. We passed a town called Murghab, filled up on whatever fuel was available, and wandered through a shipping-container market. The altitude made us breathless within minutes, which was fine as the market didn’t have much to offer anyway.

We sat on the roadside and ate our last bit of bread before pushing on to Lake Karakul — two hours of jaw-dropping scenery. We found a homestay near the lake with a large room full of beds. The mum said we could have it to ourselves (I guess the tourist traffic isn’t heavy here). Her daughter cooked us noodles and potatoes and served more stale bread and tea, which we enjoyed like it was a Michelin-starred meal.

We woke early the next morning and rode north, leaving Tajikistan and crossing into Kyrgyzstan via one of the highest border crossings in the world at over 14,000 feet, and a challenging ride too.

Our destination was Osh — officially the end of the Pamir Highway.

Next stop: one Stan closer to Japan.

4 days and 912km (Total: 94 days and 19,792km)

“Foreigners face a high risk of terrorist attacks and kidnapping.”

I get it, western governments don’t want Brits-abroad happening in Afghanistan. But when you cut through the conservative advice, you find stories from recent foreign travellers, of different nationalities and genders, that are surprisingly positive. It’s like a rollercoaster ride: there are warning signs plastered all over it but, most of the time, the experience is good. So we packed our bags — like we do every day — and set off to find out.

The Afghan embassy in Termez, Uzbekistan, was a little residential building on the side of the street, with a flag flying above a small security shack. The address on Google Maps takes you to entirely the wrong place. Our phones were taken off us and we were walked through to a small, dark room, where the consular officer asked why we wanted to visit the country, as if confused. When we told him we wanted to see his country and its people, he told us we could get a visa that same day, if we submitted the application before 12pm and paid fifty dollars extra.

There was a lot of paperwork to fill out, all in Persian, but a man and his two sons across the road offered to do it all for twenty dollars. After countless spelling mistakes and a couple of power cuts, the forms were ready by 11:42am. We ran back to the embassy and handed everything over. Then we had to go to a bank to pay for the visa before returning at 4:30pm to find it stuck inside our passports, stamped with “Land Only.” We had our final beer in Uzbekistan that night before heading into Afghanistan the next day.

Exiting Uzbekistan was smooth. Entering Afghanistan was… significantly more unstructured… and a lot more intimidating. Halfway across the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two countries, we had our first encounter with the Taliban: two men in black t-shirts with the Taliban emblem, AK-47s slung over their shoulders. Guns are common at most borders, but their presence here felt very different.

They checked the visa stickers in our passports and waved us through. At the next stage, we had to unload our panniers and run them through an x-ray machine (looking for guns, drones, or alcohol). Then our passports were stamped, our photos taken, and we were officially in. It ended up being the quickest — and possibly friendliest — border entry we’ve had. The fact we were British didn’t change their attitude to us one bit. One officer wearing only civilian-style Afghan clothes — which we learnt means he’s the most senior — even pulled out a map of the country and passionately showed us the best places we should visit.

We had a short ride to our first stop, Mazar-e-Sharif. We counted seven Taliban checkpoints along the way and were stopped at all of them, bar one. They’d ask where we are from and take pictures of our visas. Some were friendly, some cold, but never hostile. Between checkpoints were long, straight roads through empty desert. We rode with our visors down not to block insects — which aren’t a problem in these temperatures — but to keep the sand off our faces.

When we arrived in the city, we parked K in a secure car park and walked into the hotel through a door that looked like the entrance to a Swiss bank vault (at least the kind you see in movies). A bit of haggling on the price — hotels for foreigners are expensive here — and €30 a night felt like a win. We were shown to a basic but decent room with a nice view over the city.

We took a walk around the centre, attracting stares from just about everyone. Some didn’t stop watching until we were out of sight. Others turned their stare into a smile when we caught their eye. A few shouted whatever English they knew — the most common being “Hello how are you I’m fine!” It was very genuine curiosity, mostly (I suspect) directed at Becs who, even in a hijab, stood out. Her eyes and face were visible, and instead of a burka, she wore trousers and a long-sleeve top that outlined her body. She handled the attention calmly but I could tell it became uncomfortable after a while, so we ate some Qabeli Plov and headed back to the hotel.

The next day was a ten hour ride to the capital, Kabul. We rode for four and a half hours straight before stopping under a tree that offered some shade and, we thought, peace. But within five minutes we had dozens of young men around us. They love touching everything on the bike. One guy was revving the engine, another fiddling with the GPS, and one was biting our wing mirror like a toddler trying to make sense of a new toy. Some spoke enough English to ask where we were from (always guessing Russian, German, and then American), and they’d repeat the same questions on loop.

The afternoon was longer in time but shorter in distance as the roads had turned to shit. Luckily, Turkmenistan had trained me well for this kind of riding and we were used to potholes, sand, and forty degree heat. The final hour was a slow approach into Kabul, where the energy kept building like water starting to boil. Kids playing football at the side of the road, women walking children back from school, markets starting to emerge, and a crescendo of car horns.

There are no rules on the roads. Literally none. No speed limits, no traffic lights, no designated lanes or directions. Most cars don’t even have license plates. It’s an organic chaos seemingly held together by the shared instinct that nobody actually wants to crash. I must’ve looked like a mug trying to navigate roundabouts properly, while everyone else just funnelled in and out from whatever direction they fancied.

We got to the hotel just before sunset. Our faces were grey from the dust our bums red from the saddle. The staff — also armed with assault rifles — unlocked the massive gate and we rode K inside. My negotiation skills were running low and my boots already off, so we paid what they asked and were shown to our room.

After a quick shower, we went out to find food. Normally, we’d pick based on menu and price but here it was about whether they’d accept a woman inside. We found one that did and walked in, past rows of men eating, into the family room at the back — behind a curtain and hidden from street view. The waiter spoke great English and interacted with Becs a little, but most of the conversation went through me. When he brought one too many Cokes and Becs tried to hand one back, he ignored her and picked up a different one from the table instead. It was hard to wrap my head around and even harder, I imagine, for Becs to experience.

On the third day, we explored Kabul. The markets felt like those in any big city — people selling things to other people — but stripped to their most raw and gritty form. A man sharpening knives with no goggles, his child sitting quietly beside him. Three brothers baking bread beside their home-made clay furnace, the eldest looking like he hadn’t slept in days. A bird seller asleep in his bed, surrounded by towers of cages. It was a sprawl of isolated worlds, all bleeding into each other with loud noises and unforgettable smells. And pushing the senses into overdrive, the blue skies transformed into a thunderstorm.

We ran back to the hotel, taking brief shelter at a Taliban checkpoint, and crashed. Another biker we’d met back in Russia turned up at the same hotel, and we went for dinner together, sharing stories of the Stans and our longing for a cold beer.

On the fourth day, we rode north toward a town called Kunduz. “What the fuck” was on repeat during that ride — first at the chaos leaving the city, then again at the mesmerising scenery once we got out of it.

We stayed at the “5 Stars Hotel,” which had a squat toilet and dirty bedsheets. But the air con worked and it had wifi, so by Afghan standards… it really was 5 stars.

I later downgraded it to 1 star when the hotel manager knocked on our door and came in with two men carrying guns. They said they were police and wanted to make sure we had no drones. They unpacked all our bags, found our stash of cash, and stole a hundred dollars. Right in front of me. Fortunately, Becs was locked in the bathroom, they weren’t aggressive, and they left our passports and other valuables alone (including another four hundred dollars in the same wallet, surprisingly). I guess the western government advice has a point, after all.

We didn’t sleep that night. We wanted to get the hell out of there and we were on the road by 6am and heading for the Tajikistan border — the end of the rollercoaster in sight.

We pulled into a petrol station, woke up the guy working there, and asked for “super.” He yawned. I yawned. Halfway through filling up, I checked the price and realised he was using the diesel pump. “What the fuck.” Again. I pulled the nozzle out of the bike and he told me to smell it. Thankfully, it was petrol. The quality, who knows.

The final “what the fuck” came moments later, just as we pulled out of the station and watched a car completely level a tuk tuk at a ninety degree angle. As we rode past, local men were dragging out a limp body. I felt completely helpless — there was nothing we could do but keep riding.

The rollercoaster had come off the rails entirely and we slid our way over the border and towards our next country.

Next stop: sleep.

7 days and 1,013km (Total: 90 days and 18,873km)

Navigating a two hundred and fifty kilogram motorcycle in these temperatures is a kind of physical labour I’m not used to (relative to the other types like making cups of tea and carrying the groceries home). Gore-tex keeps the sweat in just as well as it keeps the rain out, whilst your mind's playing a game of whac-a-mole to dodge pot holes, crazy drivers and wild animals. It certainly doesn't help when your body is trying to digest food and water it's not used to.

The journey is a challenge but I absolutely love it.

After Turkmenistan we needed a rest so pre-booked accommodation, more premium than our average, to guarantee clean bed sheets and air conditioning — two things Uzbekistan isn't famous for.

Getting into the country was easy. The customs officer prodded around our bags but didn't steal anything, and even offered to fix our wing mirror which had fallen off from the bumpy roads. I suspect he saw in us two people whose day had been difficult enough. We were shattered but only had an hour's drive to Khiva, a quintessential tourist hotspot, where we did the things TripAdvisor will never write about: ate a kebab on the outskirts of the town and had an early night.

The next morning we woke as the sun was rising, pushed K out of the courtyard to not disturb the children sleeping outside, and rode for six hours south to Bukhara. The heat was intense — not just in temperature, per se, but the shimmer on the tarmac, the hot wind blowing into your face, and the mind's consistent draw to water.

We arrived at our accommodation and it was everything we had hoped for, and more. The host opened the door and led us through to a secluded courtyard that cast an instant relaxation spell over us. There was even a tiny tortoise wandering round slowly and aimlessly — the perfect antidote to riding six hours in one direction at a hundred kilometres per hour. The addition of a needy cat topped it off.

The host and his family spoke good English and we really felt at home with them. They made us a huge delicious breakfast in the morning and we only left their house to visit the local bazaar and buy groceries — perfectly content to skip the thousands of TripAdvisor suggestions in favour of air conditioning, hanging out with a cat and a tortoise, and doing absolutely nothing.

Whilst enjoying a cold Sarbast Special that evening, we realised we wouldn't be ready to leave the next day, so asked the host if we could stay an extra two nights with a lower budget. He said we can move into one of the smaller rooms and forfeit the breakfast. We both instantly agreed and paid up front. The next morning, breakfast was still served and he told us we can keep the same room.

It's the first time on the trip that we've stayed more than three nights in the same place. It's also the first time we ate at the same restaurant twice! A place nearby specialised in Uzbek Plov for which you can order “0.7 portions” or “1 portion” and pay a little more if you want beef instead of horse. The food was so good that I had to keep myself from finishing the whole plate before Becs had finished her first mouthful. And the no frills dining experience made it even better: pictures on the menu, food served in two minutes, and the waiters don't bother you again until you get up and pay seven euros for the whole experience. Perfect.

After four nights, it was time to leave Bukhara. As we rode further south the scenery turned from uninteresting desert to undulating hills with enough rain to support farming and some flora. The roads were great and the heat had calmed a bit. It was some of my favourite riding yet.

We’re now preparing for our next Stan. Fortunately, an Aussie biker had topped us off that Tajikistan visas were currently in a state of unknown — some people getting them instantly, others taking weeks, and some outright rejected for no reason. British passports, we were warned, weren't having much luck. We were given a WhatsApp number of a “fixer” who could apparently get visas approved faster. It sounded pretty dodgy but compelling enough, so we sent him $150 and he replied “Leave it with me.”

Next stop: Let’s see.

4 days and 1,433km (Total: 83 days and 17,860km)

The last fifty kilometres to the Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan border were bad, really bad. If you wanted to recreate the road, here are five simple steps to get started:

1. Get a spade and create piles of ground close together but of random sizes and shapes.
2. In between said piles, dig holes anywhere from one to three feet deep.
3. Smother the whole thing in concrete (the cheapest you can find) but before it dries make sure to drive some tractors over the whole thing and lob some rocks in there too for good measure.
   
4. When all of that is dry, sprinkle a few hundreds of tons of sand over it all.
5. Finally, station a sizeable population of camels on either side with an incentive to cross the road frequently.

It took us two hours to cover those fifty kilometres, in forty degree heat, with no one else in sight. For a fifty kilometre radius, the only sounds you could hear were Becs counting down in hundred meter intervals, me saying “oh fuck” every ten seconds, and K's suspension bottoming out and making a thud just before or after my cursing.

The arrival to the Kazakhstan exit border couldn’t have been anymore anticlimactic. We entered a small shed to get our passports stamped followed by a customs officer opening our panniers that were so caked in dust that he didn’t touch anything. Everyone looked confused to see us, saying that only about ten foreigners a year travel through this border.

Exiting a country overland is easy. But entering one is another story, and Turkmenistan would be the protagonist if ever such a story existed. Three hours with more paper shuffling but this time we also had to pay per shuffle. Covid test, tourist tax (British being the most expensive), bike import, bike insurance, fuel tax, and others which I gave up asking questions about. They even spent time literally drawing out the route we were taking through the country on a physical map. Overall we spent about five hundred dollars and several litres of sweat before we officially entered Turkmenistan.

Since separating from the Soviet Union in 1991, the country has remained insular and tourism is strictly controlled. You need a full-time guide with you at all times and ours was called Bahtiyar who was accompanied by a driver called Annamuhamet. They told us we had two hundred kilometres to reach our first hotel. The road was significantly better than on the Kazakh side of the border, despite the fact that a single pothole would still make headline news in Britain — and there were thousands of them. I realised that locals adopt one of two strategies: drive at fifty kilometres per hour and dodge around them, or drive at one hundred and fifty kilometres per hour in an attempt to glide over them. There's no middle option. We chose the former and arrived at our hotel four hours after crossing the border. From start to finish it was a gruelling twelve hour day — our most difficult yet.

At the hotel, they gave us a wifi password but few websites loaded properly and all communication apps were offline — a fact we realised was true for all of Turkmenistan. Bahtiyar accompanied us to dinner and we were surprised at how expensive food was relative to neighbouring countries, with a staple Pilaf dish costing thirty manat, which Google (behind a VPN) converted to nine dollars. But, we learnt, that was the official exchange rate set by the Central Bank of Turkmenistan, and the “black market rate” used on the street was nineteen manat for one dollar; so our meal was really just one dollar and fifty cents. Great value for money for high quality food that was all home-grown due to strict import laws.

Even better value for money was fuel. A full tank of petrol cost us just… one dollar. A welcome relief for our budget after the expensive border crossing, and especially since we were covering serious distances each day through sparsely populated desert. The mental stimulation of the riding was low: the roads were straight and flat, the scenery hidden behind a thick haze, and even insects had stopped flying into my helmet — either too hot for them or they need an expensive visa too. Speed wasn’t even something I had to think about, as local police aren’t allowed to stop foreign vehicles.

With the extra headspace I discovered a new art: using airflow through the gaps in my jacket to air-condition different parts of my body. Sweat accruing near the belly button? No worries, sit up tall, tilt the head back slightly and air will funnel down your neck and over the torso. Right nipple starting to overheat? Just stretch your left hand out over the windshield, bend your wrist at a right angle, and splay your fingers like a starfish. Instant relief. Honestly, I could probably make a poster of all the different positions I’ve been learning. Bike yoga.

On our third day, with my new air conditioning system operational, we rode into the capital, Ashgabat. It's like The Capitol of Panem from the Hunger Games. As you travel in, you go from shitty roads and basic concrete buildings to immaculate four-lane highways (one lane reserved for government officials) and white marble palaces — a policy decreed by the former president who envisioned the city as “The White City.” Only Ashgabat-registered cars can enter the city; if you’re born elsewhere in the country you need to park outside the city and get the train in. The cars can only be white, silver or gold, and they have to be sparkling clean otherwise the police will fine you. Fortunately we were exempt from that rule too.

We left K at the hotel and got a tour of the city in Annamuhamet’s car. We saw the huge Turkmenbashi mosque (which was empty), the state museum (assigned with a new compulsory guide), and the city shopping mall (our favourite part). Along the way we drove past The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Ministry of Agriculture, The Ministry of Education, The Ministry of Energy, the Ministry of Construction, The Ministry of Security, and all the other ministries that were equidistance apart and grand in design. We even stopped to see a bus stop that was air-conditioned with the national news playing on a TV inside.

After a night in Ashgabat, we rode to the Darvaza gas crater (“Door to Hell”), bang in the middle of the country. Our guide said the road to get there was “dead road” which, by this point, we knew meant dodging potholes like you’re playing a video game, just in sweltering heat and real repercussions if you make a mistake. So we decided that Becs and the luggage would go in the car to reduce the weight — and responsibility — I was carrying on the bike for the next two days and six hundred kilometres.

I got stuck a few times along the way.

But we eventually arrived at our yurt and parked (/got stuck) in the sand for the night.

Bahtiyar cooked us a bbq whilst we walked over to check out Turkmenistan’s most popular tourist attraction.

The heat kept us awake in the yurt till one o'clock in the morning, and we woke three hours later to start the final ride to the border before the sun rose. It was a seven hour ride, with one stop to refuel myself on the local version of Red Bull and another to refuel the bike on siphoned petrol from a stranger passing by in an old Soviet truck.

We arrived at the border just before it shut for lunch time, paid a few more border fees, and waved goodbye to Bahtiyar. It was an intense five days riding through Turkmenistan. The riding wasn't enjoyable, but we made plenty of life memories and it was fascinating to see inside a country that wants to keep to itself.

Despite the physical strain, the motorcycle journey is making me feel a lot younger.

Next stop: more “roads” to Tokyo.

7 days and 2,118km (Total: 79 days and 16,427km)

“Turn right and drive 500km until you reach your destination” said Google Maps every morning.

So that's what we did for our first few days in Kazakhstan — riding through the West of the country and wrapping around the Caspian Sea, albeit only scratching the tiniest surface of this huge landmass the size of Western Europe.

Riding a motorcycle here is tough. The wind is so brutal that your neck becomes sore holding your head in place. The landscape is the exact same in every direction for so long that it becomes disorienting. And the bare road with nowhere to stop is simply intimidating. Time passes slowly and each day is a fresh challenge.

But, it's one heck of a spectacle for the eyes. If Italy is the Teletubbies and Armenia is Dune, then Kazakhstan is Star Wars. It's like a different world — driving through vast landscapes contained only by the horizon and with opposing weather systems battling it out in the sky above. All the while, camels, horses, cows, tortoises, foxes, hedgehogs, and dogs meander across the road in front of you. The place, literally and figuratively, takes the breath away.

Unfortunately I was taught nothing about the Stans at school so my only subconscious preconception was embarrassingly and incorrectly built from Borat. The people seem reserved, keeping in their own swim lane, so to speak, but are super friendly, welcoming, and always have a smile on their face when you interact with them. During our time in the country we had strangers buy us a full tank of fuel, a meal, ice creams, energy drinks, ice tea, and countless bottles of water. We learned earlier in our trip that refusing such “gifts” is disrespectful more than polite.

The restaurants are the size of palaces and always look closed, with tinted windows and their doors shut, until you walk in. The food is tasty, you just have to be comfortable that “meat” is typically from horse and “milk” might be from a camel. Google isn't too helpful with menu translations, so we were often deciding between dishes like “potatoes of the fool” and “meat with confusion”. But, whatever we ordered, we left satisfied every night for less than €5.

The highlight of our week was on our fourth night. We had heard of a mystical landscape called Bozhira — a canyon that was the bottom of the Tethys Ocean millions of years ago. It was roughly 200km from where we staying but we couldn't find directions anywhere on the internet. We were recommended to find a local guide that is equipped with both the knowledge and a 4x4, but we had an adventure motorcycle and this sounded like a adventure. So we mounted K and set off.

After four hours of road, sand, and dead ends, we knew we were close and saw some promising tracks veering off the beaten track and into the open landscape. After 10km (which is a long way when you're off road) we had to make a decision whether to keep going. It was late in the day, we were running low on fuel, and the track was getting worse. If it rained, which we had already learned could happen at any moment, we'd be in a bit of a pickle. We were close to calling it before we ventured over a small peak and Bozhira opened up like a pop-up book.

We found a flat spot overlooking the canyon, pulled up the bikes and setup camp. No internet, no people, no worries. We soaked up the view until the sun disappeared over the edge of the canyon and went to sleep happy and content. If the pop-up book actually existed, I like to think it would be called “Magical Places on Planet Earth.”

The next morning we made coffee and waited for the heat of the day to tell us to get going. We rode back to Aktau and spent two nights in a hostel awaiting visas. More “chicken from a fried grandma”, “eggplant sadness”, and 90p beers.

When we got news that our visas were approved, we left for the Kazakh border. It was only 160km away on a straight road but Google said we needed 4 hours to get there — something didn't add up. We'd soon find out why...

Next stop: Turkmenistan

P.S. Before Kazakhstan we covered 702km over 4 days in Russia. We'll be back in Russia after the Stans so a post will wait till after then.