Saraghs - Tehran: Aug 23 - Sep 9

Saraghs- Mozduran - Mashad - Quchan - Shirvan - Bojnurd - Chamanbid - Azad Shan - Kordkuy - Sari - Surk Abad - Firuzkh - Damavand - Tehran

Why I Ran

Take a plan incubated over two years and enacted for eight months, largely through a part of the world where visa inflexibility, sparse highway pickings and prohibitive seasons force a long-view itinerary, and you might stumble over something skipped in highschool physics: inertia rides a bike.

Turkmenistan: Aug 20 - 22

Turkmenebad - Mary - Saraghs

Golden Plans

After 40*, roads start to bubble and it´s hard to maintain original dash-across-200km-of-uninterrupted-desert plans.

Following Uzbekistan´s night riding, I thought Turkmenistan might be the place to set a new record. Before midday of the first day I had travelled only 30 km to Turkmenibad, where I instead found a crumbling hotel with a shower I sat under for two hours.

Uzbekistan: Jul 24 - Aug 19

Oibek - tashkent - samarkand - bukhara

Going Solo

I couldn´t get a Coke without comment.

"Adin?" asked the old woman with the rheumy eyes. One?

Tashkent: Jul 24 - Aug 3

Tashkent

How to Build a Central Asian Capital

Aim: To create a city-shaped mausoleum for common sense.

What You'll Need:

The Pamir Highway: Jun 29 - Jul 23

Murgab - khorog - dushanbe

Why By Bike?

Why by bike?

That was the million-dollar question as I slumped over my handlebars, a slight snowstorm pecking at our backs and Ak-Baital pass still a long climb ahead.

Kyrgyzstan: Jun 14 - 27

Irkeshtam - osh - bishkek - osh

Homeward Glances

Sometimes it's the closing in that makes you realise how far you really are.

We had raced from the border with a brief stopover in Osh. The first leg was in a hatchback so crammed we took turns lying on our panniers with feet dangling out the rear, the second in a rack-equipped stationwagon where the comfort of greater sprawl space was offset by the looping mortality song of tyres screeching around blind descents at 130 km/hr.

Xinjiang: Jun 13

Ulugqat

Blind Deaf Justice

Well at least Dheiu no longer has to worry about coming up short if a conversation turns to talk of pushing the Chinese deaf around.

Here's the exchange as a montage. Cue The Benny Hill Show's 'Yackety Sax' for full effect:

Xinjiang: Jun 2 - 12

KASHI

Uyghur Please

Kashi sits in the far northwest, nestled against the Taklamakan Desert in the Xingjian Uyghur Autonomous Region. In its Silk Road heyday merchants converged on this oasis city from Central Asia and China on heavily-loaded, slow-moving caravans.