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 […]

by Sheila on 21 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments

On August 8th, we set out to arrange our passage across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan. In what retrospectively may have been a poor idea, we walked in blazing heat to the cargo port of Baku (not the same as the ferry port: much further from our hotel and certainly more seedy) where we encountered […]

by Sheila on 15 Aug, 2014 - 2 comments

So far, we’ve been pretty lucky with border crossings. They’ve been fairly efficient and drama-free. Azerbaijan decided to break that trend. Reaching the Georgia-Azerbaijan border wasn’t difficult. Getting through was a challenge of patience – one I ultimately failed. Mom passed with flying colours. Here’s to hoping patience can be acquired over time?? The Georgia […]

by Sheila on 08 Aug, 2014 - 3 comments

I never had a good image in my mind of what Georgia is like. In recent history, Georgia’s only impact came with the Russian conflict precisely 6 years ago. My first impression of Tbilisi itself came when then President Saakashvili kept airing live statements beseeching President Bush to send Georgia more military aid. In the […]

by Sheila on 06 Aug, 2014 - 4 comments

Apologies for the lack of updates lately! We’ve been putting in some serious driving hours, and by the time we get to our destination with WiFi our brains are boiled. Time to catch up on Turkey: While in Istanbul, we saw that at least five other teams were in the city intending to visit the […]

by Sheila on 02 Aug, 2014 - 1 comment

Knock on wood, all the border crossings we’ve had to go through so far have been relatively painless. Crossing into Turkey from Bulgaria, the border was fairly empty and we got everything sorted in about an hour. We told one border official that we were travelling through to Mongolia, and he just shook his head. […]

by Sheila on 01 Aug, 2014 - 1 comment

Upon entering Bulgaria from Romania, we were not greeted with what could be considered the warmest welcome ever. Immediately, we were struck with crumbling reminders of Soviet life and how little the Bulgarian countryside had managed to move forward since. Given the fact that we were driving hours away from the much nicer capital of […]