Dienstag, 7. Oktober 2014

Planning the next bit

We have finally begun to plan our itinerary for the oncoming trip in 2015 that will lead us from Thessaloniki, where we stored the bikes after this year's Balkan tour, to central Asia. We're getting more and more excited when dealing with all the foreign names - these places seem so incredibly far away! Yet we'll be heading there in a few months time...

For next year's destination Kyrgyzstan, we will have to deal with the Caspian Sea. We can cirumnavigate it to the north via Russia, to the south via Iran or cross it by ferry to either Turkmenistan or Kasachstan. The most interesting option is for sure to travel through Iran but not surprisingly at the same time the most difficult one with regard to custom formalities. But thanks to my greek friend Giannis we have found a very helpful guy in Iran who'll handle the iranian border procedures for us. For a smooth approach he recommended to enter Iran from Armenia, so we've adjusted our itinerary accordingly. Once we're in the country we'll head as far to the south as we can get, because some of the major attractions like Persepolis and Shiraz are situated 1000 km to the south of Teheran. But since we're not quite sure about how our time schedule is going to work we have a good option to shorten the travel distance at this point - to skip the southernmost point of our planned route could save us up to 4 or 5 days of travelling time, if needed. But the infrastructure in Iran is supposed to be in very good condition so we're optmistic that we'll be able to see a big part of the country. Then, after having travelled through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, we're planning to finish this year's tour in Kyrgyzstan (see also map below). We haven't found a storage solution yet, but hopefully this issue is going to be resolved within the next weeks.

To see a map click here.

UPDATE 12. October 2014
Great news! Thanks to the help of Patrik from muztoo.ch we have finally found a place to store our motorbikes after the next ride in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. He even offered us assistance in dealing with kyrgyz customs. That is really a big relief, thank you very much!