by Sheila on 30 Sep, 2014 - 0 comments

In preparation for our massive trip on the Mongol Rally, I stocked up on gear and supplies thanks to Altitude Sports. One of the most important pieces of gear for any international traveller is a light, portable pack for sightseeing. I decided to pick up the Patagonia Atom pack in Catalan Coral ($54.99 CAD). This […]

by Sheila on 28 Sep, 2014 - 3 comments

After a night spent in a rather bizarre office building-cum-hotel in Ulan Ude, we awoke the next morning with Ulaanbaatar on our minds. It’d be a lie if I said we weren’t wimps by this point; we knew we were taking the “easy” route into Mongolia & we were quite relieved about it! Because we […]

by Sheila on 18 Sep, 2014 - 1 comment

Siberia doesn’t have the greatest reputation in modern pop culture. The region is often equated with intense cold, secret missile silos, and gulags. We are happy to report that southern Siberia has none of these things, though if there are secret missile silos I’ll have to admit that they weren’t anywhere I could see (Russians […]

by Sheila on 17 Sep, 2014 - 1 comment

The road to Astana had been (relatively) smooth, so the next morning we crossed our fingers hoping that the road west and north to the Russian border would be the same. We really should have learned by now never to get our hopes up. Between Astana and Pavlodar, the road was so unworthy of being […]

by Sheila on 12 Sep, 2014 - 0 comments

We left Almaty around 2 in the afternoon and began our long, long drive to Astana. For the first time we were driving into the setting sun, which was disorienting! Sad but true, we’d been depending on “celestial navigation” to confirm our route the entire time, and travelling east meant that the sun and Big […]

by Sheila on 04 Sep, 2014 - 2 comments

After passing out in the middle of nowhere just beyond the Uzbek-Kazakh border, we made our big push towards Almaty. Why on earth is Kazakhstan so darn large?! The drive followed the southern Kazakh border with the Pamir Mountains all the way east. While the mountains were wonderfully scenic, we only had to glance left […]

by Sheila on 28 Aug, 2014 - 1 comment

Driving to the border of Kazakhstan from Samarkand didn’t look like a big deal on the map. It’s cute how, even at this point, we trusted the maps on our iPads. We drove north to Tashkent revelling in our smoother ride. The border crossing was just north of the Uzbek capital. When we arrived near […]

by Sheila on 24 Aug, 2014 - 1 comment

Early in the morning, we headed to Samarkand from Bukhara. While the roads in Uzbekistan weren’t as bad as in Turkmenistan, there was little overall improvement. Suffering with the low height of our car, the little amusement we had came in seeing old Ladas loaded with anything from melons to furniture. I mean LOADED: If […]

by Sheila on 21 Aug, 2014 - 4 comments

Much to our relief, entering Uzbekistan was not nearly as complicated or lengthy as leaving Turkmenistan. Of course, there were still forms to be handwritten, but everything was done and dusted inside an hour. A couple of young trainee customs officials were exercising their very decent English on us, and enjoyed talking about Canada and […]

by Sheila on 21 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments

With the expiry date of our visas looming over our heads, the second we cleared the border control we booked it out of Turkmenbashi. We were determined to reach Ashgabat, sleep for 5 hours, then power through to Turkmenabat. We wouldn’t be able to visit the Door to Hell, but leaving the country in time […]