1 day before departure.

My flight leaves on Friday. My motorcycle is stuck in Istanbul customs. 17 million people in the city. With any luck, I’ll be drinking a Rakı at an Istanbul rooftop bar this Saturday night contemplating the upcoming trip through central Asia.

I’ll be traveling by motorcycle from Istanbul, through norther and eastern Turkey; a quick tour through Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan; there I’ll finally look for a cargo ship to get me across the Caspian Sea.

I’ll be met in Turkmenistan by a government required “guide” who will escort me, four days through the desert to Ashgabat. I’ll lose the guide at the border and then onto Uzbekistan where I’ll have a week in the Bukhara region, before heading to Dushanbe, Tajikistan where I’ll change out my enduro tires for full knobby off-roads for the final leg of my trip. I’ll then head south through the craggy Pamir mountains to the Afghanistan border and the Pamir Highway. I’ll work my way east along the river border road toward China and the Wakhan Valley, where I’ll finally head back north to Kyrgyzstan.

I hear good things of this area and can’t wait to do a little exploring on the KTM. With a health supply of fresh water rivers and mountain lakes, I’ve packed my fly rod with hopes of finding some really remote water. After some healthy exploring of Kyrgyzstan, I’ll finish up in souther Kazakhstan and from what I read, is another great area to spend some time on the bike. Almaty, Kazakhstan is the end of the road and where I’ll search to find a freight company who can ship my bike back home.

I’ve set up a Wordpress site to track the trip, realtime mapping updates, and upload a few photos to. If you’d like to track the progress, you can log into Central Asia – The edge…there is no honest way to explain it, because the only people who really know where it is, are the ones who have gone over. Hunter S Thompson and sign up to receive updates.

1 day before I depart…

I can not really point you in the right direction, but try to find a local to help you out with the customs people. Get on line and find a local club to see if there is somebody who can give you a hand. From my own experience dealing with Turkish customs people for tires i shipped they can be very hard to deal with, especially if/ because you don't speak the language.