1 day before departure.
My flight leaves on Friday. My motorcycle is stuck in Istanbul customs. 17 million people in the city. With any luck, I’ll be drinking a Rakı at an Istanbul rooftop bar this Saturday night contemplating the upcoming trip through central Asia.
I’ll be traveling by motorcycle from Istanbul, through norther and eastern Turkey; a quick tour through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; there I’ll finally look for a cargo ship to get me across the Caspian Sea.
I’ll be met in Turkmenistan by a government required “guide” who will escort me, four days through the desert to Ashgabat. I’ll lose the guide at the border and then onto Uzbekistan where I’ll have a week in the Bukhara region, before heading to Dushanbe, Tajikistan where I’ll change out my enduro tires for full knobby off-roads for the final leg of my trip. I’ll then head south through the craggy Pamir mountains to the Afghanistan border and the Pamir Highway. I’ll work my way east along the river border road toward China and the Wakhan Valley, where I’ll finally head back north to Kyrgyzstan.
I hear good things of this area and can’t wait to do a little exploring on the KTM. With a health supply of fresh water rivers and mountain lakes, I’ve packed my fly rod with hopes of finding some really remote water. After some healthy exploring of Kyrgyzstan, I’ll finish up in souther Kazakhstan and from what I read, is another great area to spend some time on the bike. Almaty, Kazakhstan is the end of the road and where I’ll search to find a freight company who can ship my bike back home.
I’ve set up a Wordpress site to track the trip, realtime mapping updates, and upload a few photos to. If you’d like to track the progress, you can log into www.chadrothacher.com and sign up to receive updates.
1 day before I depart…
My flight leaves on Friday. My motorcycle is stuck in Istanbul customs. 17 million people in the city. With any luck, I’ll be drinking a Rakı at an Istanbul rooftop bar this Saturday night contemplating the upcoming trip through central Asia.
I’ll be traveling by motorcycle from Istanbul, through norther and eastern Turkey; a quick tour through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; there I’ll finally look for a cargo ship to get me across the Caspian Sea.
I’ll be met in Turkmenistan by a government required “guide” who will escort me, four days through the desert to Ashgabat. I’ll lose the guide at the border and then onto Uzbekistan where I’ll have a week in the Bukhara region, before heading to Dushanbe, Tajikistan where I’ll change out my enduro tires for full knobby off-roads for the final leg of my trip. I’ll then head south through the craggy Pamir mountains to the Afghanistan border and the Pamir Highway. I’ll work my way east along the river border road toward China and the Wakhan Valley, where I’ll finally head back north to Kyrgyzstan.
I hear good things of this area and can’t wait to do a little exploring on the KTM. With a health supply of fresh water rivers and mountain lakes, I’ve packed my fly rod with hopes of finding some really remote water. After some healthy exploring of Kyrgyzstan, I’ll finish up in souther Kazakhstan and from what I read, is another great area to spend some time on the bike. Almaty, Kazakhstan is the end of the road and where I’ll search to find a freight company who can ship my bike back home.
I’ve set up a Wordpress site to track the trip, realtime mapping updates, and upload a few photos to. If you’d like to track the progress, you can log into www.chadrothacher.com and sign up to receive updates.
1 day before I depart…
