I’m writing this while waiting for the plane to Bangkok from Almaty, in a modern and fresh airport and a well stocked lounge.
Well, in fact this is my second attempt to write this post, after somehow my earlier lengthy writing of this post somehow disappeared when I posted it. Yup, saving and posting it every few minutes will hopefully help to end this second version.
I’m slowly at the end of my Central Asia loop after I exited China over one month ago and looped through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and back to Kazakhstan, following the Pamir Highway and visiting the Silkroad towns of Samarkand and Bukhara. In general, you can split these four central Asian countries in mountainous Kyrgystan and Tajikistan and the flat steppe nations of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
For those who want to get an impression of what flat steppe means, here is a quick summary of the last six driving days from Bukhara to Samarkand, Tashkent, Shymkent, Taraz, Merki and Almaty. It is flat, very flat
https://youtu.be/NOACxeFBOK0?si=aqZ6EDk4JRwfovIS
Six days, flat nothingness.
As my start to the second leg through China starts only on 1. September, I have some time to fly home to be around when our son starts his Year 9 at school and I can pamper myself a bit with being home with family.
On 20. August I will fly back to Almaty to drive to Bishkek, Kirgisistan the next day and further south to Osh again to change tires and oil again at Zoro Moto, before getting back to the small settlement of Sari Tash latest on 31 August, to get from there to the Border with China early morning on 1. September to join a group of 18 other motorcycles and crossing into China again. The main reason why I’m joining this group is, that it routes to Laos via Tibet, which means, you need a mandatory Tibetan Tourguide and special permits, etc, and makes only sense if you join a group. It will be interesting to see how this will work out, especially as this is a wildly mixed group in terms of bikes, age and language spoken. I also know, that we do not need to drive all together, but everybody on his own, as long as we come all together against the hotel in the evening. A service car is the sweeper and will make sure nobody stays behind. Will report how this works out on the long desert runs along the Taklamakan and Gobi deserts and on the high altitude sections in Tibet. So far, my Africa Twin had no problem with the high altitudes (4,600 m) on the Pamir Highway, however, Tibet is 1,000 m higher, but I expect no dramas, except some power loss.
Reflecting on the last few weeks, I can only summarise, there is not one destination I would skip next time. I also understand how lucky I was to have found a loose group of great new friends from Indonesia and we simply had the best weather one can wish for, to cross the Pamir Highway together, so none of us had to do it alone. From talks to some bikers who made it a few days earlier, we understand, only four days earlier it was snowing very badly (mid of July) on the Pamir Highway, when it was all clear blue sky and dry when we passed four days later. While we had some drops and crashes, all of us made it without bigger injuries, however, some bikes suffered badly and needed some repairs.
I can only praise the engineers at Honda who designed and built such a great bike, which took all what the road was throwing at it with a certain easiness which is hard to explain, even when it was the heaviest of all the bikes in the group and what we came across over the 10 days (except one loud swearing, not very happy Russian on a BMW 1250 GS) along the complete loop. The majority of bikes have been the Tenere 700 (majority), CRF 300 , DL 650s and so on plus another Africa Twin, two up. They have my full respect.
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