TigertoThailand & elsewhere: Biting dust near the Uzbekistan border

Day 27 417 km ( 8743 Km total)

Sorry for the delay readers, catching up now. A slight misadventure coupled with no internet is my excuse & I'm sticking to it .... Read on to find out more!

A testing day, early start, lunar roads, biting the dust, 3 hour border crossing, no fuel & sleeping on the floor. The stuff adventures are made of?

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Prior research had indicated that this would be one of the most trying days and so I started early - up at dawn, and a glorious Beyneu dawn it was too.

Not long after a local herdsman bought his camels past, and then we were off.

Apart from the border, three challenges lay ahead today; rumours of a severe lack of petrol in Uzbekistan, a troublesome border crossing & 70km of extremely bad roads to the border.

There was petrol in Kazakhstan, but the stations were becoming scarce so we filled up to the brim at the last one before the border.

The road, very soon after leaving Beyneu, was not really a road at all, cars & trucks were pickng there way between sand dunes, what looked like bomb craters, broken concrete and gravel in a general south easterly direction.

Sorry no pictures of that particular bit due to the concentration needed, but it was bizarre.

A kilometer or so later, it at least resembled a road from a distance and a camera lens but to ride in it was awful. Imagine broken rock pounded into the ground and mixed with sand and your somewhere near. The following pictures are of the good bits, when I could dare to take one hand off and operate the camera.

The sand that was blowing about tended to collect in the pot holes and these were danger spots as once filled with sand and levelled by the wind you had no idea how big or deep they were. Normally I could spot these early enough to weave a path around heading instead for the rock I could see on the surface, which made for a very bumpy but safer ride.

I had a couple of near misses when i felt the front wheel slide, but managed to keep control as it bit on rock again. But then I missed one.

I saw at the last minute that the patch of road ahead, though it had rocks in was too smooth and probably sand. It was too late to turn, so I tried to power through, hoping it wasnt deep. Unfortunately it was.

There was suddenly no feeling of grip and a millisecond later the front wheel hit the soft deep sand and dug in - the back of the bike refused to comply and kept going, resulting in a brief pirouette before I found myself hitting the ground, biting the dust and with the bike on top of me.

In the adrenaline fuelled after crash moment, I quickly pulled myself from under the bike stood up and shouted severel unsavoury words at anyone or anything who was listeneing. Unfortunately, that was greeted with complete silence no-one was around, there was no other traffic and Russ, was probably a kilometer ahead and out of sight.

Then the pain hit me and I looked down at my left hand to see a thumb & three normal fingers & a little finger that looked all crooked and was sticking out at a weird angle - oh bugger!

I tried to ignore my throbbing hand & started to take off the bags & panniers from my bike - there was no way I could lift it with them still on. Luckily after a while, a small local truck came by and three men jumped out and helped me get the Tiger upright & then went on their way.

Time to survey the damage.

Apart from some 'characterful' scraping down the crash bars & hand guards, the bike was fine. I plucked up the courage to pull off my glove and have a look at my finger. The good thing about being alone in the desert at moments like this is no one can hear you shout - I didnt know I knew so many swear words!

Anyway it although very painful it didnt seem broken, just a bit bruised & twisted so best to just carry on.

I caught up with Russ, just shy of the border and we joined the queue.

The crossing was better than expected, we have queue jumping off to a fine art now & the Dumb & Dumber approach generally works well with customs officers, police speed checks & the like.

The Kazakhstan exit was pretty slick - apart from the slips of paper they give you to pass onto the next guy, (its like a cross between pass the parcel & chinese whispersh

The Uzbek entry was a little more problematic, in that they wanted to search the panniers - meaning I had take off the spare tyres, unstrap the dry bags & then unlock the panniers to allow them access - a bit awkward with only one fully working hand!

For the uninitiated, apart from the usual stuff, several things are not allowed in Uzbekistan, amongst them, antibiotics, anything with codeine in it & any religous or political literature (including on ebook readers, Ipads & the like)

At one point I was called away by a (very attractive - what is it about women in uniforms?!) lady customs officer, who wanted me to explain what some tablets were that she had found on another hapless traveller. She handed me the leaflet that came with them. She only spoke a little English and couldnt understand what "anti-nausea tablets" were for.

At last! An opportunity to put my acting talent into practice! .....so I did my very best dramatic mime of vomiting all over the floor followed by a 'Cut!' sign. She said she understood and sent me back over to my bike with a slighly supressed smile (maybe I shouldnt have been quite so enthusiastic with the sound effects!

By this time, inspector Poirot had finsihed inspecting my pannier contents, which were now strewn all over the floor, and said I could go. Guess I have to repack myslef then!

So there we were in Uzbekistan - country number 14 for me.

First priority was water - I was gasping. Soon I spied a lady holding a bottle at the side of the road & stopped to buy one.

Next priority was petrol ... No such luck there.

We travelled some 300km, no petrol and things were looking serious. There were stations, but they only sold LPG .... It seems Uzbekistan is an LPG orientated country, and particularly in the west, petrol is very hard to come by. We asked at quite a few places and were told "no petrol" or in one case, " ask at the cafe"!

So we found a roadside cafe and asked......

... after an initial rebuttal, and many volatile mobile phone calls, we were told that we could have 10 litres in or at 2. Welcome to the black market!

We werent sure if that meant 2 minutes, 2 hours or 2am, but in any case it was getting dark and so I asked if there was a hotel. Answer no!, but we could sleep in one of their rooms.

The owner then showed us the rooms and the outside toilet, Which was basically a concrete shed over a pit.

The room was fine though, basic & sleeping on the floor, but I like hard beds (honest!)

We then sat On the floor in the 'dining room' and had a local dish, which was actually really nice - sort of lamb stew/soup & bread to descale your teeth on!