It’s been four days since we arrived in Almaty (the former capital of Kazakhstan). It’s a place reminiscent of a large European (ie. German) city, with Audi’s, BMW’s and Mercedes dominating the tree lined avenues. Prices also reflect its European persona (1 litre of milk costing almost as much as a bottle of vodka!), so we’re fortunate in finding free accomodation with a local hospitalityclub.com member - Mateusz and his flat mate Azis. THANKS guys!!

Almaty marks the quarter way point of our trip (112 days & 22,000km’s), so we’re using the stopover as an opportunity to take a rest after Russia and Mongolia, arrange a few visa’s for upcoming countries and perform much needed maintenance on the bike.
We’ve already received our Pakistan visa (US$90 each) and are now waiting on the processing of the Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan visa’s.

We’ve changed our route somewhat and now plan to ride through Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, back to Kyrgyzstan and then through China to Pakistan via the Korakoram Highway.
The lure of seeing northern Pakistan’s mountains (ie. K2) was just too much and we expect it to be a highlight of our trip. Yesterday we received news that China has closed it’s borders with Kyrgyzstan as part of its security measures for the Olympics, so nothing is definite just yet. We’ll just have to wait and see…

All of Central Asia’s countries have seen dramatic changes over the last decade or so, following independence from the Soviet Union. Kazakhstan leads the way in economic reforms (mainly helped by its huge natural resource - oil) and has tried to establish a capitalist society. This has created some interesting and comical situations. For example all of Almaty’s bus stops are privately owned!! So anyone can buy a bus stop and then rent it back to the government

Unfortunately, most of the money being generated in Kazakhstan is only channeled back into the large cities. Provincial towns have changed little since the Russian’s left and the road network between them is horrible. The tarmac, which melts in the the searing summer heat, has been chewed up by large trucks and is full of potholes and grooves.

We’re also using the ‘time off’ in Almaty to finally update the photo gallery with images from Russia and Mongolia. Internet connection is a little slow but new pics are now available with more on the way…