1World2Go - Munich to Vladivostok

[hellcoder]

It's been a while now since i arrived at my final destination Vladivostok in Russia,
but i never took the chance to write an english trip report (i'm german).

So here it is, i try to add as much detail as possible for anyone interested in doing a similar route.

The route was this:

Click here for a larger Picture
Click here for an interactive google map

it's been a cold rainy 5. April 2012 when i left my parents home in a small town near Munich to embark on the trip I've been dreaming about for many years.
Job was quit, Flat returned, Friends seen off, all that was left was my Honda Transalp 650, some luggage, some money and the utter desire to explore the world.



Well, i didn't get very far, after 230km, somewhere on the highway in Austria my rear tube exploded!


I had quite some speed (~120km/h) when this happened, luckily i could manage to get the bike on the narrow emergency lane and call the ADAC. To explain what happened, i first have to tell you that my technical motorbike knowledge was 0 when i started preparing for this trip. I had quite a few motorbikes before, but never maintained them on my own. But for this trip i wanted to do everything by myself, so some things i have to learn the hard way...
to make it short, when i put on my offroad tyres (i used TKC-80's btw), i used a 19mm Nut to keep some space between rim and tyre (please don't ask why), that 19mm Nut was gone when i put my toolboxes away for the day. I just thought "hm, will show up somewhere", it did, but inside my tyre was not the location i was thinking of.



Well, after that bumpy start it went a bit smoother, i just weren't lucky with the weather, most of the time it was raining and when i got to Romania it got freezing cold (snow!)

Austria (1 day)
Hungary (2 days)
Romania (5 days)

Bulgaria (1 day)
Turkey (23 days)


The first week i was mostly freezing my ass off, that's why i really hurried a bit to get into Turkey. And yes, in Istanbul weather was getting nice and warm.
In Istanbul i also met Mehmet from the Istanbul Motorcycle Club (istanbul bisiklet motosiklet ihtisas klübü), many of you proably know him. I really loved it there, got some spareparts for my bike that i would most likely not get after Istanbul (rear breakpads) and Mehmet helped me to plan my route. Or i better say he planned my route :P. As Turkey is the most expensive country in the world for fuel (2Euro/liter) i told him to draw me the nicest fuel-saving route through turkey, that's what he came up with:


As you can see on my actual map i followed quite exactly, just in the end i decided to take a more direct route.
The whole turkey trip was great, there was no day were i didn't get offered a free tee.


The highlight was cappadocia, a moonlike landscape in the middle of turkey








Iran (19 days)

After a stressful border crossing (northern border, 4 real officials, 40 others that want to rip you off) Pedro (a fellow rider that i met in turkey) and i made it into Iran. For everyone who want to cross from Turkey into Iran i would suggest to go for the southern border, as that one seems to be much nicer (no ripoffs). The good thing though, we could easily take a very scenic route along the border with Azerbaijan and Armenia (i believe it's called Aras Area)

A short note about money, there are no International ATM machines in Iran, money have to be brought in. Never change with the official exchange rate, on the black market you get about double with your dollars or euros.
Just ask someone that has no relation to tourism about where to find a money exchange.


"Don't enter the grass" was written on a sign at this park. when we asked the guard if we could camp here, he just replied "sure!". After that we got Iranian (0% alc), very good Shisha's, Food, everything, and we were not allowed to pay any cent for it. I could tell a nice story about the outstanding hospitality of the Iranians for every of the 19 days i stayed there, but probably more interesting is that day were i not got treated very friendly.
It was that day when i left Semnan to drive through the Dasht-e Kavir desert. Pedro had a different route (not pakistan), so i was back on my own.

There is basically only one road that goes through the desert, but 3 roads lead to the beginning of that road.

Looking at this picture i think it makes sense that i decided to take the shortest one.
After riding about 40km with nothing but desert around me i reached a checkpoint. I didn't think of anything bad, so i just asked the guy if i could pass. He looked a bit surprised and asked me to write down my name and sit in his little hut. I should wait he said. After about an hour someone who looked important but couldn't speak english came by, a few phone calls and about 30min later someone with fair english came to ask me some basic questions, who am i, where do i go, where do i come from... ...a bit later i got an escort back to Semnan (i was not happy about that but did not really understand what was going on yet). After getting carried to many different police/military buildings around Semnan, meeting different people that got more and more unfriendly, telling my story all over again, it appeared to me that i'm in some kind of trouble. Yes i was, in the last place they brought me to (i call it the interrogation station), people got really unfriendly, all my electronics got confiscated and i had a 3 hour interrogation with 2 guys from the secret service (at least i believe they were). This was NOT nice, i got asked about every photo on my camera, "where is this", "who is this, name!", "WHY DID YOU TAKE THIS ROAD". I told them what they wanted to know (except for other persons names), 10 times, 1 time was apparently not enough, and my answer "THIS IS THE ****ING OBVIOUS ROAD TO TAKE IF I WANT TO GO THROUGH THE DESERT" seemed not to be understood. At some point, when i was explaining my planned route, they asked me for my Pakistan Visa. Right, that is a valid question as i should have one. And i had one, but it was in my second German Passport (under certain circumstances it's possible to get a second valid passport in Germany). The situation was tense already i really didn't want to show them that i have a second passport. But what should i do, so i showed them. One guy freaked out completely, took my second passport and threw it into the corner of the room. He was angry, he said he has never seen such a thing before. After a bit more "talking" he said he is gonna call my embassy and left. After some time someone came to bring me my electronics, but not that i could take them back, i should put them into a locker. I really thought i'm going to jail now, but luckily another hour later someone told me i'm free to go, and hell yeah i left as fast as i could.
The whole thing took about 8 hours! I forgot to turn on my GPS when i left, that's why there is no GPS track of the road to Damghan.

After checking a bit on the internet it seems like this road leads to one of the most sensitive military zones in Iran, where they have aerospace programs and long range missile tests. Also I've not been the first who blundered into this. The German embassy issued a warning about exactly that road and i found another motorbike traveler blogging about this. If they would put a simple sign on the beginning of this road nobody would take it, but there is none.
"Being a spy suspect": CHECK

Good, the ride through the desert the day after was nice








2 Days later in Yazd i was just writing about the incident in Semnan, a staff of the hotel pointed at me, two well dressed guys standing next to her. Hello again. All my electronics got confiscated. This time they were quite friendly and explained me "you wen't through the desert, it's illegal to take pictures of the desert, we have to check everything". They said this has nothing to do with what happened 2 days earlier. So after all, this was not so bad, i just had to stay longer as planned and all my storages (MMC's,USB's,HDD's...) got infected with viruses. But i'm a programmer, so not a big deal for me

From here on i didn't get into problem with the police anymore, so i could fully enjoy beautiful magical persia












okay enough for now, i will post a followup in the next days, still a few countries to go:

Pakistan (53 days)
China (3 days)
Kyrgyzstan (7 days)
Kazhachstan (8 days)
Russia (6 days)
Mongolia (15 days)
Russia (11 days)