Hey all,

James from Australia.
I'm a travel/adventure photographer
So ages ago I thought I'd do this trip across the silk road and record it.
Well I completed the trip back at the end of 2016 ... and I'm only just now finishing the posts on my site and finished the final version of the vlogs that document the trip.
I reworked both the vlog and blog 3x each, till I was happy.

I'll give you the brief run down here; and if it peaks your interest go check out the full story...

... on my site :
https://chasingnothing.page.link/website

... or give the vlogs some love over on Youtube:
https://chasingnothing.page.link/silkseries




So;

I took 2 years prior to the trip, re-building/customising an '83 Honda XL500s trying to create the perfect long distance machine...
It possibly was; but I never got to find out. I lost it because of [reasons] days before the trip was due to begin.

Flew to Japan anyway ... and spent a month on foot in Tokyo instead of riding, whilst trying to sort this 'impromptu change in plans' out.
Bought an '08 Kawasaki KLR 650 from Sydney and had it flown to South Korea.. where I met it and did a lap of that place.
Ferry to Vladivostok and took the Trans-siberian highway around to Irkutsk, before backtracking for a side trip down to Mongolia.
Got as far as UB and Tetserleg... before disaster.

Jammed the carb with shitty fuel, flooded the engine, hydrolocked it and bent the cam - put it on a truck and hitchhiked back to UB for repairs
After unjamming it, it kinda sorta worked (but had still slight loss of compression and was clearly worse for wear) but in general there was a bunch of other problems from it that I couldn't fix in Mongolia (how bout those shipping times?)
Spent a month in UB trying to fix it, went horseriding (best idea ever) and even tried to swap it for a different bike (bad idea).
In the end, good ol' Koji-san @ Oasis hostel managed to fix it just enough to get it back up to Russia
He reckoned it'd be a miracle if the bike had 10,000 Km left in it... short of a total engine overhaul.
This was in Mongolia... I was aiming for Belgium!

Undeterred I limped my sorry little KLR back to Russia, despite constant stopping for overheating issues.
Mechanics in Irkutsk fixed it in a day - on top of the damage to the engine it had 3 other related problems
Took too long getting through the second half of Siberia, went as far as Barnaul then cut south to Semey, Kazakhstan but ran over my visa (that's a story)
Crossed Kazakhstan in a week, no dramas, trying to get south (3 months behind schedule = winter is coming)
Reached Kyrgyzstan and had a good week of really nice riding around Bishkek-Issyk Kul before winter caught up to me and f***ed my s**t up.

Heavy snows from this point on.

I still only had dirt tires and the bike was held together with string by this point.
I kept on with my attempt at the Pamir hwy .. info on the road was that if one got to the other side of the mountain range it was dry as a bone.
Of course each time I crossed one line of mountains, it'd be dry but only for a day or two before the snow would push further south and catch up to me.
I started the Pamir highway alongside a bunch of backpackers in a '73 Lada - after a week of that, their engine exploded, so I was back to my own devices.
Spent a week in Saraytash completely snowed in.
Then I met a Korean guy called Khan who was the only other biker as stupid as I to be caught in the Pamirs during a snowstorm.
After 3-4 seperate attempts at one particular mountain pass we crossed into Tajikistan (another one of those stories).
See photos below.
We'd cross the M45 as fast as possible, riding all day and night 2 days until Khorog (running out of money and therefore petrol) before Khans bike died (broken shocks and damaged chain).
Took his bike apart, borrowed his petrol, and put it in the boot of a passing 4WD.
And once more on my own and riding well into the night on some pretty hectic roads, I made it to Khorog.
Khorog was the first town since Osh (15 days) I'd seen with electricity and internet (power lines had fallen off the side of a mountain somewhere) .. so everyone had assumed I was dead and declared me officially missing.
I wasn't, so this was slightly embarrassing.

Back solo, I finished the rest of the Pamirs - not too much snow at this point... which was nice - so I took the long way to Dushanbe.
Hung out with the bikers in Dushanbe and went riding up into the Nurak and the Fann mountains whilst waiting for visa's to clear
Got incredibly sick (don't try the water in Dushanbe, it's not worth it)

Crossed into Uzbekistan and hit the accelerator from this point on ... believe it or not, but I was actually starting to worry about safety
Crossed Uzbekistan as fast as possible, only detour was to see the Aral Sea (out to Moynak and promptly got lost)
Winter really started to kick into overdrive - air temp was sitting around -10C to -18C and I had some interesting times in the desert out there
Roads started to ice over ... badly. So I cheated 3 times and hitchhiked with truckers.. throwing the bike in the back - this got me from around the Aral Sea to Aktau, Kazakhstan.

Ferry to Azerbaijan and Georgia - crossed the Caucus' in a week, riding through 2 snowstorms ... I really didn't want to hang about.
Spent a week in Turkey, stopping in Istanbul for a breather.
Crossed from Istanbul to Brussel, Beligum in 6 days .. like I said, wasn't hanging about (also I was dodged more snow).

Europe went like this:
Across Greece to Patras, Ferry to Brasi, Italy, all the way up to Florence (slight pause), met up with some surfer mates on the French south coast near Nice for a & breakfast with the boys followed by a quick jaunt across France to Beligum by that evening.
Rolled into my cousins garage in Brussels at 2am (after getting lost in the rain for an hour on the border with France) some 1100km later that day.
And, copped a nail to the front tyre ... the only flat I got that whole trip ... right at the end.
Christmas with the cousins, a train to London via surprise visit to a mate in Eastbourne and then a plane back to Sydney, Australia

No worries.

--

8 months almost exactly - roughly 7 of which were on the bike
25,000+km ... though not 100% because the odometer and speedo broke somewhere near Italy (and I was just setting off speed traps all through France).
Pretty much solo for the majority of it.
Had long stints without speaking to anyone and a bit of culture shock coming back into Europe and then home.
In all; I shot some 4,000 photos of which, I published about 400 - printed a selection off into a small magazine.
Also filmed the entire thing - tried vlogging at the time, but ended up scrapping that and re-editing the whole lot a year later into a very short 4 part series.

These days I'm gearing up for my next trip ... but before I go all in on that, I figured I'd get this little 2016 story out there first now that the videos done.


-- Highlight Reel --

--
Mongolia camping on the steppe :



--
Kyrgyzstan hanging out :



--
Woke up like this. Let the pain commence :



--
The Kyrgyz/Tajik border crossing was ... tricky :



--
This would've been so much easier if I'd planned on riding in the snow and didn't have dirt tyres :



--
Some of you might recognise this pass ... but I don't recommend it at this time of year :



--
Uzbekistan; lost in the Aral Sea... questioning my life choices and having lunch :



--
Azerbaijan; wasn't much warmer :



--
Georgia; Me - By this stage I was getting used to it :



---




Above - My KLR shiny and new in Korea - before I ruined it.

Below - ... Same bike, in Belgium - held together with cable ties. No one wanted to buy it off me so I gave it to a friend for free :







--

And that's it.
Hope you guys enjoyed the tale.

/James

Those are some nice pictures man, do you think that all those problems you had made the experience better in a way or would you have preferred if everything went smoothly?

Hey! Nice ride and report! Haven't seen your video or Vlog yet, will check it out.

In your pics that KLR looks near new ... so how'd you destroy it so quick? Did it just self implode or ...?

Good luck planning your next ride! I'd research the Suzuki DR650. It's quite popular in Oz ... simpler and easier to work on than KLR ... better off road too.

(Tip for Snow riding: Don't do it!) NO tires work ... only hope is fitting steel spikes into tires. Commonly done in Minnesota, USA and other cold places. You need the spikes front and rear to stay in control and get any traction.

Good luck!