Geo: 42.87, 74.5879The trip to Bishkek was quite leisurely as we knew the embassies would not be open until Monday so we camped out a couple of nights.The first night we headed down a track to a reservoir and headed for a clump of trees big enough to hide our vehicle and found that there waseven an older chap who seemed to be the caretaker in a very old van.. he had 4donkeys, 2 baby donkey,) one dog and 1 cat & 1 kitten… excellent. Darren greeted him, indicated using sign language that we wanted to sleep next to his "caravan" to which he seemed to be okay with that idea, indicated for us to park in a given spot out of the wind and the deal was done. Crazy given we could not even read ... read more

Geo: 38.1702, 73.9667Spent the day driving through the Pamirs high altitudevalleys looking at Marmots, Yaks and Yurts… and finally managed to find a placeto camp south of Murgab at 3500mtrs…. Hum we like the smell of thicker air.... read more

Geo: 36.7081, 71.5729The southern route nicely takes you down the warmer souththen nicely drops you into the valley that separates Tajik from Afghanistan.Right from the onset the road is bad, the recent rains having caused some chaosand further damaged an already damaged road.So the first night we try to get close to the river and camponly to be sprung by some Tajik military doods so were not so keen for us to doso… eventually found a camp site under some trees and reasonably well off theroad. Cooked dinner and was about to make a coffee when Lisa exclaimed Darrenthere is something running at your foot… well even before I looked I jumped andalmost brained my self on the canopy…. Looked around and in the torch light sawthe biggest ugliest nastiest spider I have ever seen…. Good ... read more

Geo: 41.3775, 64.5853We drive through green fields sheltered by green leafy structures, commonly referred to as trees from the border. Very exciting. Uzbekistan has a regulation that foreign aliens, that would be us must be registered each night. Hmmm means we need to do the hotel thing which can be a bit painful. Often it is less effort to camp outside cities and catch a taxi when we need to the tourist attractions rather then struggle to find a decent hotel with car parking. Anyway we snag a good one so have halled up for a couple of days, R&R. Bukara has so much to see that UNESCO declared the whole of the city a world heritage site. After Iran however this was pretty routine stuff so we had a quick wander around and seem to ... read more

Geo: 37.6621, 61.7596The roads deteriorated fairly rapidly,, the buildings looked decidedly different and nothing was obvious. We had some direction from a cyclist indicating we could get local currency in a Paint shop in the next village. Sure enough we followed his directions, got some money and were on our way. Iran was hot, Turkmenistan is hotter, wow indescribable.We drive slowly to Mary as there are next to no street signs and our mapping software has no details for Turkmenistan. The Russians have built irrigation channels all thought the border sections of the country which look pretty inviting. We pull up near one and there are some locals swimming. Still reeling from the Islamic thing it is weird to see people relaxing in not full clothing, we strategically sit in the shade and wait for them ... read more