Fat in walm water.

No need to worry though- we are mechanical engineers after all- and with a little handy bending of a coat hanger we were on our way again.  We soon reached the main Pamir Highway (beautifully paved) overlooking a vast turquoise salt lake glistening in the sun, basically a lake with some white powder around the edge.  Henry and I, overcome with curiosity, jumped out the car, ran down to the white powder and gave it a lick! It tasted salty!

This was our last glimmer of sun for a while though as the weather quickly closed in.  The pamir highway, the reason for our several week detour driving at snail pace on a crumbly mess, and we couldnt see a thing!  A snow blizzard blew around us and we could only be thankful that we weren't on a bike.  That night, having driven halfway along the highway a small town emerged out of the snow.  We drove through a couple of times and eventually found a guesthouse to stay in, alreay occupied by a French and Swedish cycling duo. They were hilarious.  Most people skirt around the negatives of travelling, trying not to seem unappreciative or unimpressed, they did not!  We had all been thinking it, but they were the best at putting it into words, the food is APPAULING.  When the Mongol Ralley crew said we may loose a stone over the trip, we thought it might be due to the endurance factor, or D&V, but no, it is probably from the lack of will to eat ANY of the rubbish food.  Since Turkey the staple has been either lumps of fat in warm water, with the odd potato if youre lucky, or lumps of fat on a stick (shashlik).  Fat is the speciality everywhere, more expensive than meat and they love it.  We eat a lot of biscuits and look forward to our evening meal of pot noodles and oinion on the stove!

Enough complaining, the next morning we drove on and fortunately the skies cleared and sun shone -for a bit.  Untill the border infact.  We had timed it badly, 6pm on a Friday (border closes on the weekend) but we had made it.  We checked out of Tajaikistan at a grotty shed and got directed across the Border line.  It was comical, you could only laugh, ahead of us was the most enormous muddy mess streaching fo about 30m. You couldnt of walked through it with wellies, they would have been scked off in an instant. All out the car, the only thing for it was a run up, it was a near miracle the car got through, litrally floating across the surface with the momentum, no steering controll whatsoever, but the relief was short lived.  Normally the next border is within metres of the previous, but as we drove deeper into the blizzard and along the abismal road which both sides had clearly ignored no border imerged.  We could drive at no more than 5mph and were getting pretty worried about the tiem as it pushed 7pm.  We werent convinsed that letting us out one side, by any means meant they would let us in the other, and it would be a long, cold 2 days till it opened again on Monday!

Yet again luck was on our side and they let us though with just there usual question of "guns, drugs, knives?" at the prospect of having to search our tip of a car.  We were in Kyrgystan and it was beautiful, I think more so than the tajaikistan, still technically part of the Paminr Highway.  We passed dramatic mountains, wild horses, yurt tents with their pens of sheep and rolling fields, all the stuff lonley planet photographers would die for and stopped in a quaint little village (renound for drug smuggling) for the night!

Pamir Highway

We decided to go through the Wackhan valley even though the roads were again notoriously bad because many people told us it was unmissable and the most beautiful part of the Pamirs.  It was very impressive and the photos (well Gregs) will tell that story, we camped by an ancient fort looking across the river to Afganistan, with very recent signs of armed force inhabitance, it was very tempting to take a dip and have a quick visit to the other side, but one of our cyclist friends had previously warned us that he had been shot at fo just peeing in their general direction!

Half way along the valley was another set of hot springs and a secong ancient fort, but this time they were located up the side of the montaind rather than alond the river bed, we optamistically gave it a shot at getting up the path to them (on the deluded reccommendation of some other friendly travellers) but their was no chance.  Instead we opted for  giving a few dollars to a local with a 4x4 and getting him to drive us up.  After a nice wind up engine start we sped at break neck speed up the montain side and spent most of the journey thinking ""i though at least if we did perish on this trip it would be in our own car!"".  

The hot springs were as amusing as the last, this time all the clothes were off and I was thankful for the boy/girl segregation on half hour rotations.  As we carried on along the valley the scenery becam more and more sparce and the roads deteriorated, sand and pot holes we seem to be able to deal with, but it is the little amost vibrating bumps and the perfectly spaced ones that seem to hit resonant frequency with the car and result in us smacking the base of the car even if we are at 5mph that seem to do the most dammage.  But we did make it, with only two falt tires and the entire exhaust falling off.................

numb bum

We cruised the first 2 and a half hours along perfect motorway before our first police stop.  This was the first of many of the most pointless beurocracy I think I have ever seen.  It wasnt only us that was stopped most locals were too, but they had got the firm, smiley handshake, exchanging a cheeky bribe down to a tee.  We are stubborn though and werent going to hand over a penny, generally the police were pleased to see us and a combination of acting stupid, drowning them with paperwork or if all else failed flirting (genereally down to me, but im sure the boys would have happily tried) got us through! When the bribe didnt come in the handshake I think they were so surprised they werent really sure what to do, so they took our passports and various details (anything from our iran visa, to reading the whole passport upside down) were inputted into a tatty book, no doubt used as next weeks toilet roll!

 

So it was at this first stop that we noticed the "normal" cars thinning out. Not only were all the cars whopping great 4x4 but the odd straggling Lada (most common car type here) had a good foot more clearence than us and we soon realised why...  In the next 5 hours of drivind we just about managed to dross 3 rivers in the road, by getting out and pushing, and the local people getting out and pushing and then charlie loosing a flipflop down the river while pushing and then locals giving him a flipflop ect...and we made a grand total of 25miles what a day....

More smiley soviets.

We stayed in a very amusing homestay owned by an old man who capt massis of pegions, a little crazy but a welcome change from the generally stern emotionless population.  We met an Ausie, Ken, who was planning to somehow work his way to some underground grotto of sulphur springs he had heard about, sounded interesting, so we decided to all go.  After we had got over the initial annoyance at being charged 20 times the local price (no exageration) the caves were pretty crazy.  Ther were very dark and stunk of egg and looke like a grotto an evil troll would live in.  I dont know exactly what was in the water, but when I got out all my silver had gone balack!

After leaving the capital the country seem to fall to shreads. We drove on through the desert towards the second city of Mary.  It was quite a contrast to Ashkabat, infact I think it had been completely ignored and left to carry on in the tradition soviet regime!  We decided to stay the night and for some reason felt driven to pick out a hotel that was described as an "unclean dive", it was.  It was a traditional soviet concrete block with sparse and vile decor and again vastly escalated prices for tourists. They dont try and hide it either, there it is written clear as day on the wall!

Anyway after that lush experience we moved on to Merve, the ancient city demolished by good old Gengis, apparently it was one of the biggest cities in the world before its destruction (but that was a long time ago).  Apart for the mud mounds that took a little imagination to picture the city, there was a spectacular appearance from the cammel species.  Hundreds of them were hearded all around the car making for a slightly more entertaining traffic jam.

With not long left on or transit visa and still the residing fear from our boarded entry, we wanted to push on and geT there in good time.  We drove with the veilw to get near the border igood light and set upcamp, but of course that didnt go to plan.  We were shafted at a surprise check point, bywhich time we didnt really mind about paying the $10 fee we just wanted to be able to see where we were camping,  No such luck we had an hour or so of beurocratic bulls##t and were released just in time to see the last light fade. Finding a spot was near impossible and in the end we resorted to our familiar protocol of camping next to a busy road, railway or in this case both!  We turned off the road onto a mud clearing  and drove as far from the road into the darkness as we could to avoid attention.  Just as we began to set up camp a figure strated approaching, I went over to try and justify our stay and ended up having a very amusing conversation which envolved discovering  we had pitched up where all the drunks reside and if we camped in the light he would whatch over us!  We were very lucky that at last we had found a friendly chap inTurkmenistan, but unfortunately we were now camped 20cm from the main road!

We got up early the next morning and made it to the border with uzbeckistan at 7.30 before it even opened, we were ready to go!  Thank god this border was pretty smooth even if they did x-ray every last one of our belongings.  We made it through by 10.30 and stopped by a river on the other side for a celebratery watermelon and pat on the back.

the weird and the wonderfull

Thank God (or Turkmanbashi should I say) we made it to petrol! Congratulations to some shrude driving from Charlie.  We drove over the last few mountains from the border and saw the desert open up infront of us and there in the middle, a concoction of glissening white marble, perfectly groomed greenery and gushing fountains, was Turmanbashi's playground!  He was the previous dictator of Turmenistan, his self given title means "leader of the turmen" and to all acounts he is a total nut case!  There are too many oddities to mention about Ashkabat (this capital), Turmentbashi and infact the whole of Turkmenistan, but I will give a few examples.

 

As we drove into the impressive centre,lined with highrise upon highrise, ompletely clad in white marble, we were blown away by two things, the first was there was no rubbish or mess anywhere, not a drop, but it slowly dawned on us the reason for this, there weren't any people either!  An empty capital city!  The only lonley soles we saw were the brigade of street cleaners, they had their fac rapped in white bandage, so there disturbingly resembled burns victims, and had resorted to sleeping dust off the road for lack o an other rubbish (remember we are in the desert!) and their only company was the police men scattered at 100m intervals and on every corner without fail.  We inveted a new game which involve how close you could move to a building, statue, foutain or even bench without being shooed away!  No onder there werent any people they werent allowed to be anywhere!!

beginning of Iran...

Our first night in Iran spun off our first real meal,  Starving from the border and looking for anything to eat (other than the crusty-though appreciated-bread handed throught the window) we stopped at a jazzy looking roadside restaurant. purely for the fact that it had pictures outside and with our total lack of Farsie we though this was probably the simplestway to order.  However once again our luck was up, the waiter was overjoyed to have us their andhad a fair grasp of English!  He doted apon us giving us all the specialities he could think of to try and on us asking for directions toa good camping area, showed us to a really cheap roop upstars!

The next day brought the massive trial of trying tofind somewhere to change money,  it took a good few house in a little town skippind from one place we were directed to, to the next, but it was eventually found and did culminate in an exciting neam of....something...at least it wasnt bread and kabab, it sort of resembled lamb,chick pea and aubergine stew,served with your own masher!

Rain, rain go away...actually, no, come back!

We drove on to a cool waterfall in the mountainy regions and then tried to get some driving unter our belt towards, Baki the capital.   We managed to get about half the way before nigth fall and were well into the sparce scrubland of central Azer.  We followed some truck tracks off the main road, past some derelict oil pipes and into a quiet spot to stop.  The rain picked up and we had some pretty good lightning displays, we huddled in the tent and eat partially cooked omlet and played cards, our saving grace being this time we had tied the tent to the car and hammered two tent worth of pegs in, it want going anywhere this time! 

 In the morning we drove on to Baki Early on an mate it by about two.  We dumped the car (outside the parliment houses) and went hostel searching.  Our first and rather optamistic stop was a nice looking hotel in the centre, $177 each, I think not, next stop was the Raddison, very opptamistic, $440 each, and they didnt seem to want to give us a discount, but we did use their rather nice toilets, several times!  A few hours passed nad we started to loose hope, all the cheapies seemed to be miles out of town, but the we passed  "Adams bar"  and Indian (obviously) and decided to poke our heads in to see if they spoke english.  We were in luck, again, not only did we bump into some expats but also a lovely peace corps american, Rachel, who let us stay at hers, for two nights!!  Not only that but she lived in a plush apartment none other than next to the Raddison.  We could swear right at them out the window! (not that we would!)

 The rain persisted and we tried without luck to drive to the mud volcanoes.  We ended up going to some cave paintings instead, which actually turned out to be really cool.  We turned up without tickets after the site was closed, but somehow blagged a private tour with a very amusing and keen Azer who quizzed us the whole way round.  Apparently back in the day 3000BC some people reached 2.3m, we are not sure we believe it but hay!

 The next day saw a full day driving, perhaps fuller due to the 300km detour to central Az rather than south to the border, ah well thats the problem with having no map and a compass that like to point to the engine!  We stopped at a cute little hostel by the border and prepare for a long crossing.

 

We Were right, a cool 7hrs, but not bad by any means.  our car had for some reason only been certified for 2 days in Az so we ended up with a $50 leaving, but the Iranian side was relativly fun.  We were given tean in our hour or two wait in the police office, then had finger prints taked, which they giggled were just revenge for us taking Iranins'!  They also appologised for thei crap roads throught the border and said that was because "if az are going to keep theirs badly so are we (they were really bad)".  Finally we had to wait a few hours for the carte de passage office to open so slept in the mosque and we were on our way.....ish.  We have a photo of a map we took off a nice canadian we met, but all the signs here are in arabic soooo, well its prtty funny, we have worked out the numbers and a u turn so far!

 

The people here are extremely nice.  We have had bread given to us thorugh are car window, endless welcomes, free tastes of almost everything at our first restaurant and even friendy cops, who gave us a "bye bye" on their loud speaker on the motorway!

Only downs id say are it is really very hot, and I have to completely cover up and ware a head scalf, but no other probs yet....

 

Max temp 30 degrees

bribes and fines $60

Mossy  :  just a few 

No-mans land and roof riding!

We were right, there were ruins.  Down on the south east boarder with Azerbaijan, Georgia had areally impressive monestry carved into the rock, this wasn't supposed to be a ruin, though it probably could have passed as one, but on the hills about an hour or two hike away were some old school catholic fresco paintings in the rocks.  The climb was in the harsh sun, but as we reached the cliffs and cave it decided to belt it dowm, this made for a rather dodgy new sport of "slippery cliff running" But im sure the azerbaijan malitia angrily staking out their territory, would have caught us with open arms at the bottom, had we falled!  The drive out to the monestry was outstanding, seriously impressive, however the bumpy road was already proving itself to be somewhere near peak roughness capacity for our car, mmmm Mongolia will be fun!  We sat up on the roof of the car and snapped and fillmed the surroundings.  Charlie jumped off to get a driving shot of the car in its epic surroundings, only to get hounded by three terrifying farm dogs which apperaed out of nowhere!  Us on the car about 400m away where fairly helpless to rescue him and could only whatch on (mildly amused) as he legged it down the road, only regretting that he hadnt just turned the video camera off!!

Turkish TV apperances, a thorough scrub down and an unpopular dog..

After a long day of driving it seems to have become par for the course to just stop at the nearest flat looking spot, pitch the tent and get our heads down, leaving it to fate and daylight to discover whether we have camped in a picturesque paradise, or a a quarry on a sewage works (both have occurred).  The latter, was in the dramatic hills of Eastern Turkey, the moon was out and we could make out the big hill like structures, the winding roads (thankfully), but a worrying number of falling boulder signs.  We got the a village and saw a group of people snuggled together on a grassy patch under some umbrellas with some sort of warmth brewing and decided it looked like a decent enough location.  After setting up camp nearby, the dormant group of 20 odd young guys seemed to burst into action, in some form of epic Turkish line dancing, this was too good to miss, we went over and we were immediately dragged into the action.  The night progressed with dancing tea and biscuits, card tricks, a dabble at poker and serious car graffitiing, all with not one word in common between us!! The morning started again in a similar fashion, but this time with olives, fetta and more of the unrelenting bread (more effective than immodium).  Then we all decided to make a move for the Turkish baths, I was separated from the boys at the changing room but for some reason I thought I would be reunited out the other side.  This was not the case, and for good reason.  Some of the largest naked women I have ever seen were lolling like seals around a steaming pool. Some younger ones seemed to scrub them occasionally, it seemed strangely like a sight David Attonbourough should have run a commentary over!  After  serious of staring (checking out my potential threat) one particularly large shape decided to take me under her wing, literally.  She gave me a scrubber, then immediately took it back, deciding it would be better if she scrubbed me down, well I definitely ended off clean, even if I did have a few too many layers of skin missing.  The boys had an equally bizzar experience, but theres was on the other end of the scale, they received sensual massages from the young Turk boys and every time they tried to escape the baths were dragged back in for "one more, one more". We eventually managed to leave and get back to the car, where yet more dancing insued,  This time quite an audience had gathered and suddenly a film crew seemed to have appeared as well!  Yes, yes, we are now famous.  We were very politely asked if we would feature in their travel documentary, yelling some phrase that could have been anything for all we knew!  They also filmed an alarming amount of our rubbish attempts at Turkish dancing, but I did get a free scarf out of it! Next across the Georgian Boarder a friendly 2hr en devour, easily doubled by our complete ignorance as to what was going on.  Charlie even managed to buy a visa back into Turkey again!  Once through we we pretty sweaty and worn out and decided to crash on the beach.  Greg asked some "friendly" army chaps with massive guns  (who seemed to be posted at every 10m) if we could sleep, he received an un-useful grimace.  however, Henry had made friends with an old lady who let us pitch up outside her bar-(a couple of tables) next door. We even got the free security of our new army friends patrolling past our tent all night!! Now we have reached Tabilisi, the capital, where not much seems to be going on, we keep being told it is off season.  How on earth can a capital be off season?  Anyway we are going to check out the countryside, it is seriously attractive stuff, ans I think there are churches or at least ruins to be had! Mossies [charlie] 1 Bribes and fines [none] Max temp [38 degs]

good old gypsys and their beaches

We arrived in Constanta on the Romanian coast with the black sea, and stayed at what I can only describe as a gypsy campsite, perhaps Romanias take on balckpool, without the rides!  I was very funny though and an eventfull stay,  that night we pitched tent on the beach and went to the bars on the water front, where was situated one of romanias most exclusive clubs.  Outraged at the entrance price we decided to try the back entrance, and what do you know we sneaked right in!!  Miss Romania was about along with a selection of the best dressed people I had ever seen!  We were definately the only ones in flipflops and shorts!  We had only been asleep for about an hour when the most ridiculous thunderstorm moved in, it pulled the pegs straight out the sand out the top of the tent blew away!  We were all running about in out underware trying to retrieve the tent and then had to hold it down for what felt like hours!

 

The next day we drove down the coast and stopped at a smaller more picturesque beach, or so we thought.....  It turned out to be a nudist beach, call us prude but that was something else!  We tried out had at fishing of the end of the pier using an miniscule hook and mouldy bread, the fish were not impressed and our bear grills attempt was looking weak.  Now we have made it to varna in Bulgaria, had an interesting time finding somewhere to stay and eventually ended up effectivley "camping" on the floor of a hostel kitchen, but its an nice place and we are going to stay a second night and wah some clothes, the car is not too funky yet but we dont want to help it too much!

 

max mossy bites (0)

money to bribes and fines (0)

max temp 32 degs with a nice sea breeze...