Head East: Motorcycle Adventure in Central Asia

By Pavlin Zhelev

My name is...
I am just an ordinary guy but what makes me different is the fact that I am a full-blooded motorcycle enthusiast full of passion for adventure, open to new experiences, exciting challenges and in quest of conquering new horizons. Yes, I am your average guy who wants to change his routine existence by setting out and pursuing a dream, entering a new world, a world so different, so unknown and waiting to be explored. This is my memoir. It depicts my adventures spanning over two months and covering a distance of 17,000km, crossing 11 borders, entering 18 countries and seeing countless, unique, one-of-a-kind breathtaking sights and meeting a whole lot of interesting individuals along the adventure route. If you are searching for information, inspiration, an amusing read, a good laugh and a true depiction of two wondering souls bravely following and realizing their dream to ride across Central Asia, you’ve literally hit the jackpot and came to the right place. You will accompany us through our journey; witness our ups and downs; jump over all hurdles on the way to our final destination. This is a voyage, a true test of strength and perseverance, physical and mental endurance aims to drag you out of your comfort zone and throw you in the arms of the unknown and undefeated. Each day is a true test of survival, a challenge that goes beyond the human strength and can only be conquered by a strong spirit. Each day is a trial and each day is a defeat!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pavlin Zhelev
• Release date: Jan 24, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311659712

Pavlin Zhelev

Few years ago I decided that I had to see the world and I had no intention of delaying any longer. When do I start? Naturally, right away! How? By motorcycle. Why by motorcycle you ask? Because we all have our preferences. Some like to travel luxury – flying only first class, others think that buses are the most rational and practical choice. A few cycle like mad and find it of great enjoyment! I owned a motorcycle and I found riding it so relaxing that, I literally used it as an antidepressant drug. The feeling you get from it cannot be compared to anything else in the world. You feel every hole, every scent, every noise and every gust of wind...including every instance of bad weather but, these are just details that should not concern you at this time.

Book preview

Destination East – The Magic of Central Asia

When the road ends, the adventure begins.

Prelude

My name is…

I am just an ordinary guy but what makes me different is the fact that I am a full-blooded motorcycle enthusiast full of passion for adventure, open to new experiences, exciting challenges and in quest of conquering new horizons. Yes, I am your average guy who wants to change his routine existence by setting out and pursuing a dream, entering a new world, a world so different, so unknown and waiting to be explored.

This is my memoir. It depicts my adventures spanning over 2 months and covering a distance of 17,000 kilometers, crossing 11 borders, entering 18 countries and seeing countless, unique, one-of-a-kind breathtaking sights and meeting a whole lot of interesting individuals along the adventure route.

If you are searching for information, inspiration, an amusing read, a good laugh and a true depiction of two wondering souls bravely following and realizing their dream to ride across Central Asia, you’ve literally hit the jackpot and came to the right place. You will accompany us through our journey; witness our ups and downs; jump over all hurdles on the way to our final destination.

This is a voyage, a true test of strength and perseverance, physical and mental endurance aims to drag you out of your comfort zone and throw you in the arms of the unknown and undefeated.

Each day is a true test of survival, a challenge that goes beyond the human strength and can only be conquered by a strong spirit. Each day is a trial and each day is a defeat!

Here is a short excerpt that will validate if you’re ready to face this challenge:

He let us have a small in-between room with two beds that were made quite fast with sheets of plywood. They had a thin colorful mattress on top. An old and quite crooked wardrobe was placed at on one wall, while the other was a lacquered dressing table with a mirror. It turned out that we had a neighbor as well. A bank manager from Zurich, Switzerland. Our rooms were partitioned with a thick rug instead of a door, but who pays attention to these sorts of things in Tajikistan? He was in his late fifties with totally gray hair. His face and hands were severely sunburned; the sun being something that he had most obviously underestimated. He spoke English and was sincerely happy when he learned that we could communicate. He was travelling by bicycle. He had been planning this trip for a long time. He wanted to escape the stress in Zurich and to travel Pamir by bicycle. He had flown to Dushanbe, from where he departed 5 days ago realizing that the task at hand was beyond his strength. He had arrived a few hours before us. He had passed only 250 km and had another at least a 1000 more to go. He was feeling that he had reached the utmost of his abilities and had become quite distressed and down.

I can’t quite grasp where I am, it’s awful really, this broken down road, the dust, the trucks, the sand…and the heat is just killing me, I won’t be able to, and I give up. Tomorrow I am going home, he was lamenting.

Wait a second, I tried to console him. You can always give up and, when you go back, what? I am sure it’s not any better at the bank. I am sure that’s another hell altogether, did you forget?

I don’t know, I didn’t expect it to be so hard, he was shaking his head. I won’t be able to.

Look now, I continued. Rest a day or two. Gather your strength, it would be a real pity to give up at this point, you are almost half-way there!

Half-way? I am nowhere, my climb hasn’t even started yet – no, I won’t be able to. He was stubbornly insisting.

Look what I am going to tell you now, I kept on convincing. Come with us now, we’ll have something to eat, to drink some of the magic potion of my colleague here, we’ll talk and tomorrow, if you still feel like it, you can return. In any case you can’t depart now. Each day that you survive here is a major achievement. It is a defeat that you will always remember when you sit down at your desk at the bank. Take it one day at a time. This way, you don’t have to think how you will make it to the end, just focus on how you’ll end the day. You see how easy it is?

Yes, you are somewhat right, but… he was being demure.

There are no buts my man, this is not you making estimations on the potential bankruptcy of the bank or some sort of a credit risk or whatever you call it. Here you decide, you either win or, you lose. Every day is a win, come, let’s go eat, then we’ll speak again. I concluded my lecture series.

You might be right, he said thoughtfully and we went out in the yard.

The host brought us our dinner which was included in the price. It contained a soup, a large salad, home-made bread and watermelon. We filled our glasses with the elixir, chatted while the sun slowly descended behind the hills. The river was crashing loudly at the shore under us and one more fantastic day was coming to an end. We quickly emptied our glasses and our new friend became increasingly more pleased and content. A short while before we headed off to bed, he said thinking:

Yes, you convinced me, I will stay. I will rest a few days and I will continue. Thank you very much.

Right, I even sometimes manage to convince Mitaka, so convincing you is not even a challenge, I said in all seriousness. Let’s go kill the mosquitoes, cause otherwise we won’t be able to get any shut eye. And don’t forget, each day is a conquest!"

The same applied for us, each day was a defeat. Another battle won – our own personal battle.

Contents:

Prelude

Foreword

The idea

The preparation

The trip, Germany – Bulgaria

Romania

Bulgaria

Turkey

Georgia

Azerbaijan

Caspian Sea ferry

Turkmenistan

Uzbekistan

Tajikistan

Kyrgyzstan

Kazakhstan

Russia

Latvia & Lithuania

Poland

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Information for traveling motorcyclists

Choice of motorcycle

Motorcycle tuning

Spare parts

Luggage

Camping equipment

Tires

Clothing

Money

Visas

Kilometers, Maps, Budget & Time

All photos and texts featured in this book belong to Pavlin Zhelev and are protected by the Copyright Law and other related rights. ISBN number: 978131166666

Foreword

The idea to write this book arose from the lack of available information concerning the destination in question. At the beginning, it was only intended to be an ordinary concise travelogue memoir that would contain everything necessary to guide anyone who wished to travel in this direction. Consequently, I reconsidered, thinking that it would be quite a pity not to be able to convey my thoughts, my feelings and emotions – everything that excited me during the whole duration of the trip. I would like you to be able to sense the magic of Central Asia at least a little. My descriptions are thorough in places, taking great care to deliver a painstakingly accurate account of my experience and, in addition, I have intentionally chosen to enter some topics in greater detail, even divulging descriptive historical accounts that will contribute to your more comprehensive understanding of the matters that I hold so dear. This really is the only way I can make you see things as I did and allow you to grasp the immense cultural diversity of our societies. Consequently, I make philosophical reflections every so often about matters that spark the center of my being, provoked by the majestic views and environments I was a part of along the way. They reflect my point of view and in no way am I intending to force it upon anyone – it just food for thought. For those who prefer to skip the long descriptions only to focus on the conservative numbers, I have dedicated a special chapter at the end of the book that will provide a thorough description of how you may do it all: visas, routes, contacts along the way, prices and everything that you may eventually need.

I would like to say a big thank you to my family for their rigid support of all of my undertakings, however absurd and hopeless they may have seemed. I would also like to thank Dimitar Anastasov (a.k.a. Mitaka) for stoically enduring my incessant grumbling during the whole trip and for all of those historical details and many other moments that, without him, I would not have remembered to include.

Pleasant reading!

The Idea

I was sitting in my one bedroom dwelling in Berlin, staring at the awful green wall in front of me. I say awful because it in no way matched the light gray color of the other three walls, the beige decorative strips, and the orange curtains. The woman who lived there before me had showcased her talent and patience to achieve such a disastrous mismatch. It was such a total disaster that it almost awakened my interest of what on earth she was aiming to achieve. Pondering over this, I reached the ultimate conclusion that my surroundings perfectly reflected my own life. Or at least, the mess that I was able to create in the last five to six years. I will not bore you with the details of who I am, how and why I found myself, or where I did, but I will tell you that I flew to Germany on a whim after, I too, was hit by the notorious economic crisis that made its mark in the latter years of the new millennium – around 2009. A crucial juncture in time that turned my life around completely and, for sure affected a great part of the population around the world the same way it had me.

The apartment was furnished simply. There was a large, comfortable bed, a kitchen table with three chairs, and a desk I had assembled myself. There was also something resembling either a wardrobe or a shelf. I wasn’t sure which it was, but I used it for both purposes, regularly throwing my clothes over it. On one wall, stacked up one over the other, were several mirrors that made the room appear larger and somewhat more modern. There was a terrace that gave me the ability to breathe fresh air and witness my neighbors scurrying about their lives, leaving for work in haste. Taking strides without even glancing sideways, they resembled obedient nuts and bolts, part of the giant machine called Germany. A machine that, without you even realizing, grabs you, reconditions you and transforms you into one of them. You, a compliant citizen, considerably indebted, with no plans, no outward appearance, no ideas and no hopes or desires. But the other wall was my favorite. It was this wall that occupied most of my attention. On this wall, one year earlier, I had hung a large, colored map of the world and marked all of the places I had visited with small red tacks. The tacks were quite dense in Europe, with a few in Asia and another sprinkling in America. I remembered I had the same map in my office in Varna before everything had taken a quick downward plunge. It all happened so fast that I had completely forgotten the map there. I looked at the map now, thinking to myself how little time we have on our big planet earth. I sat thinking; my mind boggled. What could I do to escape all I had gotten myself into? How could I manage to return my life back to normal?

I then thought about just how much I love to travel. It was one of the few things that made me feel truly liberated. To forget all about my bills, my work, my problems, to transport myself into another world. And now what? I had gotten myself stuck here, in this cold country, with people so foreign to me. I was feeling so grumpy that I wanted to cry out of frustration. To top it all off, it was raining once again. I was sitting staring emptily into my computer, aimlessly surfing the Internet just to pass the time. By accident, I stumbled upon a famous saying:

"We sometimes make wrong choices in order to arrive at the right place."

This powerful quote rose up in the air and practically smacked me right in the face. For an instant, I considered that my arrival here was not consequential at all. Most probably, I was meant to reach a dead end in order to realize I was running around in circles, like a dog chasing its tail. Surely I was making a mistake somewhere. Evidently, I was not looking in the right direction. I was in need of a complete transformation – a change of philosophy, beliefs, behavior, and even lifestyle.

Wise people have said that if you love what you do, everything else will fall into place. In any case, I had tried almost all options, so why on earth not this one? I decided to do the thing I loved most: to travel.

I was fully aware this was a mission that would complicate my lifestyle and take me out of my comfort zone. Even though it would temporarily cease my income, which by no means would be easy, I was convinced that I was following my calling. Life can pass us by while we are wrapped up in doing the things we think we must. Some of us cannot even imagine doing something we desire. When did you last pursue your dream? Was it when you were a teenager? Even younger?

I decided that I had to see the world and had no intention of delaying it any longer. I would get around by motorcycle. Why by motorcycle you ask? We all have our preferences. Some like to travel in luxury, flying only first class. Others think buses are the most practical choice. When I owned a motorcycle, I found riding it so relaxing that I used it almost as an antidepressant. The feeling I got from it cannot compare to anything else in the world. I felt every bump, smelled every scent, heard every noise and experienced every gust of wind.

Your wish is my command, the universe seemed to say as it proceeded to launch the preparation of everything I needed.

Thoughts of how my family would accept this decision loomed over me. I decided that if they wouldn’t support me, it must only mean I had really messed up somewhere down the line. I sincerely believed they loved me and would have my back, supporting whichever decision I made. I had no intention of making them, nor myself, endure a long test. The plan was to go through Russia to Mongolia, ride a week or two and then return. It would be a month in total.

So why out East? Why not Europe? Well, I know myself very well. I have always found myself attracted to strange places practically no one desires to visit. Places where all things appear frozen in time, unaffected by the contemporary way of life, or ruined by man. To tour first-class roads and luxury hotels was never my cup of tea. Frankly, I am a sucker for exciting adventures.

The Preparation

The motorcycle was far from new, but with a few minor amendments and replacement of some parts, I believed it would take me there and back. The only question I couldn’t answer was with whom? I figured that two would be the most optimal number. True that, on one side, I would then have to bear in mind this person and adjust myself accordingly but, on the other hand, I would always have company and assistance should the need arise.

Generally, I can get along with all types of people irrespective of ethnicity, sex or age. For this destination, in particular, I did not encounter any enthusiasts who wished to join me. The conversation would commence with interest but, when we’d get to the part concerning the travel to Mongolia, I constantly had to face the following comments: Are you crazy? What on earth will we do there? If we’re talking about Europe, no problem but Mongolia, it’s definitely not for me!

I had almost come to accept the fact I was going to be alone, and I had started my planning when my telephone rang. It was Mitaka, an amusing and upbeat character. He had just entered his forties with a trendy shaved head and large abdominal muscles, consisting of just one huge pack. He was a relentless optimist and easily distracted. A typical bohemian, he loved Facebook, the news, and homemade alcohol. We had met a few years earlier in Berlin and since then, he frequently impelled me with activities such as driving, beer drinking, and far more serious things. Last year, he coerced me to go to Norway, an initiative I found very much to my liking. I had already traveled with him before, and even though it was quite a short trip, we had gotten to know each other quite well. Since he’s very direct, he started: Listen now, forget about Mongolia, there is nothing there, let’s travel around Central Asia. All former Russian republics and we’ll even go to Pamir, high mountain lakes, passages with elevations of over 4000 meters, peaks, rivers…

It was quite difficult to acquire a multiple entry visa to Russia and without such, one would never be able to leave Mongolia. The only option was to fly one way, but it would be way too expensive, and the main plan to leave and return on motorbike would be totally abandoned.

Ok, so, when do we do Mongolia? I asked, already aware of the answer.

We will include it in the trip around the world replied Mitaka without hesitation. That’s what I wanted to hear! I left Mongolia on standby.

I don’t know whether it was by fluke, most probably not, but a few years earlier I had read the travelogue On the Way to the Silk by Dimo Kalaydzhiev. It was a truly unique adventure through Central Asia. With his amazing photographs and casual writing style, he helped me sense this almost unknown to me part of the world. I remember he left such an impression on me that I did not go to bed before I finished the book. Afterward, quite a few times, I went back to reread it over and over and over. I said to myself that one day, I had to see all of this with my own two eyes. To turn this into a reality, I needed free time and stable financing. I didn’t have either at the moment but, I knew, sooner or later, I would. I was absolutely convinced, to the same extent as you are of the fact that day is followed by night.

The first and most important step was the attainment of all necessary visas. This question was one of great difficulty or, more precisely, it was just slow. Living and traveling in Europe, you almost get used to the absence of borders and consider it quite normal. But, it is not quite so when you have to travel in Asia. We had to traverse the territories of 17 countries, most of which required a visa. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Russia. Did I count them all? Seven in total. A pile of documents for each visa and one to two weeks…came out to quite a pain in the neck. Naturally, there was an easy way. We could choose to go to a large travel agency and they would prepare everything for us. Unfortunately, we did not possess the necessary spare change to afford this service, so we had to face the bureaucracy reigning in each embassy head on. Mediocre civil servants, bored out of their minds, hiding behind bulletproof glass and utilizing the power they had temporarily acquired to make it additionally difficult, so you opt to give up in the end. They wish to break you with the intention to leave you with only one option to surrender and beg for help. If you have seen the movie Mission to London, you may recall what I am getting at. In our case, the stress level was high because of what little time we had.

In the beginning of February, I realized my passport had expired. I immediately applied for a new one at the embassy in Berlin. After all fees were made and I took the necessary pictures, they informed me that the waiting period is two months. This meant there was no chance it would happen before the beginning of April. I remained positive and told myself that we had April, May and two weeks of June. We had set the date of departure on June 15. The two months then became three, marking the beginning of a series of running around, pleading… and in the end, thanks to the fact that I am quite a lucky chap, everything did happen on time. I have to say I ended up dealing with a few quite helpful and smiling individuals to whom I am extremely grateful.

The second question was how to prepare the bike so that it would not give me any problems. We were expecting to travel the next 15,000–20,000 kilometers mainly on bad roads or something barely resembling a road. It was sparsely populated. In terms of spare part and service stations, any kind of luxury was out of the question.

Naturally, I believe a person can receive help just about anywhere but, in any case, I preferred to be prepared. How was I to prepare adequately for everything that could happen and everything we could possibly need? The answer is quite simple, really: I couldn’t. I decided to change everything that needed to be changed since it would have to be done quite soon anyways. I started calling up various ads looking