We’ve had a brilliant time in China, seeing some sites and experience culture far beyond what we expected. Unfortunately we did have a few delays when entering the country, but our guides – Benny and Sophie, helped out a lot by improvising around our delays to make sure we had the best time we possibly could in China.

In particular I very much enjoyed the food while Simon & Shaun seem to have rather suffered the consequences from eating it…the smelly (fermented) tofu was perhaps a step too far even for me though.

More than anything, this has been an incredible cultural experience which gives a nice contrast to the Middle Eastern and European cultures we had earlier experienced.

So, it has again been a while since an update. However, having now set up a VPN should help with that, and the internet here is at last a bit more accessible.

We spent yesterday crossing the border from Kazakhstan to Xingjang, and today crossing a huge portion of land. A huge portion of land which is only a tiny fraction when compared with the vast size of China. However, with the help of our current guide, Benny, we’ve now sorted out all the paperwork for travelling through China. We even have our own Chinese license plate now, something to take home as a momentous! While there is a lot of travelling to be done, it is across an incredible landscapes, and just today we have seen some beautiful sights in the highlands of this province.

It’s also worth having a mention of how good an impression we had of Kazakhstan too, it really was a nice surprise. The people were generous and the landscapes wild. A really pleasant combination. And when I say the people were generous, I’d personally go as far as to say it was perhaps the friendliest country we’ve been through so far, with no end of free gifts – free peaches, free ice cream, and even a free flag! Everyone seemed to want to welcome us and leave us with a good impression of their homeland.

(Unfortunately having problems at the moment uploading photos to the website – working on a solution to that, but I didn’t want to neglect to give an update on our situation just because of that.)

We haven’t spoken much about the difficult side to all of this, but it has been catching up with us. Exhaustion and an array of problems caused us to hold up in Samarkand for a while, but we’re now on our way. Now, we’re determined to do this. As impressive as it is, we’ve seen enough of the Silk Road. Time to push on to Kazakhstan.

Despite a few issues with money withdrawal back at the Iran-Turkmenistan border, we were able to cross without any serious problems and have since gone across the desert all the way to Turkmenistan. While there we encountered many other teams along the way, and want to give a shoutout thank you to the Kiwis who helped us find a hostel to stay at while our car was almost on it’s last legs. After a couple of nights in a border town hostel we crossed into Uzbekistan. While on the Uzbek side of the border we had some help raising our car up to a new height as we had not anticipated that it would be so difficult to traverse these desert roads which are littered with potholes.

Of course it didn’t end there and we had further problems with the car, but were helped out by some very kind people, who offered to accomodate us in their own home during one of most difficult times. Honestly their kindness was beyond belief, and we want to send our thanks to:
ДЖумамурадова Олтиной , Мирзахмедов Жамшид, Розимова Асал, Розимов Хамдам, Мирзахмедов Зафар and Сийтимов Бахтияр
Hope I got all those right, Cyrillic isn’t the easiest thing for me to follow!

We’d also like to thank the neighbour of the house who saved us on the first day of our breakdown and took us to his house.

Trying so many homemade foods, going fishing together (without catching anything of course) and playing board games. Even being generously greeted with some vodka. It was probably the most interesting cultural experience of the whole trip for us so far and we really are so thankful to our hosts, and hope they see this!

Since then we’ve made on our way and travelled through the ancient cities of Bukhara and Samarkand, following the Silk Road along our way towards China.

Continuing on our way through Iran we’ve had the time to meet many more locals by visiting traditional workshops and handicraft stands. We’re doing a good job of blending in apparently. Having bought some Zoroastrian goods, Simon was invited to tea by some Iranian cloth workers simply because he wore “the symbol of their old civilisation”. It seems I have been continuing with my theme of being mistaken for being Middle Eastern too, not quite how I’d hoped though as people have been thinking that I’m an Arab…I don’t think the scarf helps.

Shaun and Simon have also both earned a new nickname from our guide – topul, a descriptive term in Farsi regarding a person’s belly size. Our guide Hamid does not deny that he’s not in much of a position to judge though, as he continues to sample every food he possibly can.

It has been a while since we’ve done a blog post, and that is because for the last few days it has been a whirlwind while constantly on the move. For complicated reasons we were stuck at the Turkish-Iranian border for 2 days, but have since been traveling down south to the deserts of Iran. Currently, we are in fact closer to the Persian Gulf than to Turkmenistan, which is our next destination.

Although delayed for quite some time, we have managed to find the time to enjoy the parts of Iran we truly wanted to see. Meeting up with our guide Hamid at the border, we rushed south as fast as possible once the delay was sorted so that we could reach the heart of Persia itself. Having gone through Esfahan and Shiraz, two great and ancient cities, today we explored the ruins of Persepolis, once the centre of the mighty Persian Empire. For me personally this has been a height of the whole journey, to see the great tomb memorials and palaces of power built by one of the mightiest empires in human history. Simon thought it was a nice pile of rocks.

During our travels we have also encountered an array of interesting people, as we always do. Our guide, Hamid, has done a good job making up for lost time here and ensuring we can see as much of the country as possible, as well as as much Iranian cuisine as he can stomach, which apparently is an endless amount. We have also had help from two other Iranians who have helped us make this journey, Taraj and Pegah, and we’d like to send our thanks to them.

We have met people from many different parts of the Islamic world, including nomads, Afghans and Azerbaijanis. Having now met fellow nomads along their own journey, we now must travel north to reach our destination.

We’re continuing as fast as possible eastward through a very mountainous region of Turkey. The mechanics back in Istanbul must have done a good job because the car seems to be handling this all very smoothly. The further east we get the more language barriers seem to become a problem, but we are managing okay, we were even kindly treated to a cup of tea while stopping at a petrol station, by someone who was very interested in the journey we were making while he was on the opposite route, to sell goods in Ankara. For the most part though we’ve has little time to stop today as we intend to reach Iran tomorrow, and have had to just appreciate the nature of this place while keeping on the move.

We’ve stopped for the evening, but are expecting to reach Iran tomorrow morning.

Now well on our way towards Iran on schedule we have been traveling across the dry plateaus and mountain ranges of Turkey’s mainland. On the way we have encountered some incredible sights, including a huge and dramatic salt lake spread across miles, and even a tornado in the sand. We now have truly left Europe, and a very different landscape has begun to emerge.

With our car taken to a good mechanic in Istanbul, they were able to fix all the problems in only a few hours. With this done we’re finally on our way out of Istanbul. We were delayed from leaving last night because of a severe storm flooding the streets, but now we’re getting out of during the early hours of the morning to avoid the traffic. It has been a great stay and we are thankful to everyone who helped us out, especially Burak and all the staff at the Buhara restaurant and Mustafa Yurtseven’s garage.
Şerefe!

Another thank you to our mate Burak who is helping to translate with the garage for us, it’s going to be difficult but it looks like we might have the car up and running again within 2 or 3 days. In the mean time some interesting developments are taking place. I have successfully managed to blend in with the local population with a hat that was haggled for for 15 lira. Now everyone thinks I’m a Muslim. When explaining our mission to one person at the place we’re staying, they asked if i was doing it for my religion. Shaun has been finding and exploring some incredible Byzantine sites, and Simon continues to stuff his face with Turkish cuisine. He also managed to be successfully kidnapped by someone trying to force him to buy a jacket at the Grand Bazaar. While we’re having communication difficulties and trying our hardest to get on the road again, some quite amusing stories and friendly gestures from the locals are coming out of this.