Crossed Russian-Kazakhstan border late last night and got sleeping place from old train just 15km from border
31.7.2010 3:31:30
Now in Tajikistan together with kari and anders from team2
21.7.2010 20:41:05
On this day my idea was to drive across border of Iran and Turkmenistan, but things happen…
This day continued directly from Day 22, I was just driving through the night to get to the border.
Passed Tehran on very early in the morning, no traffic at all. Managed to get lost a bit since some roads were closed due to some road work, but found the planned route towards Turkmenistan.
My route was taking me through some very nice mountains, but this was my mistake as well. This road was full of small trucks which blocked me from moving fast enough… so I started running behind the schedule very soon.
I climbed very soon after leaving Tehran to 2100 meters and it was very cold as well in that hour.
Again, after coming down from the mountains road took me through some cities and I was totally lost! No signs what so ever! After few trials and errors I managed to get through these and continue. Some cities had these ring roads which took around them, but most of them just ran through.
No issues with gasoline, same continue that I got it either free some someone or had to pay just few dollars to get my tank full. Very nice.
Everywhere I stopped there was very soon many people asking questions that I did not understand at all, young boys with motorcycles or mopeds were following and in general people were very interested on what I was doing in there.
As of these things that forced me to drive slower than planned I started approaching Turkmenistan border crossing at Bajgiran at the afternoon.
Before the border crossing there looked to be new road being built, but for some reason this road was closed from the last 15 km or so and the old road was in very bad shape. Not a problem for me though.
When getting to the border just before 6:00 pm, border officer told me that border was already closed for the day! When asking for a hotel (was not really keen on setting up my tent after riding 36 hrs…) he offered a place in their warehouse and also told me about possible hotel down in the village.
I chose to see the hotel first. It was not really nice experience, did not cost that much and it did had a shower in the room so I was quite happy. There was no towel or toilet paper either in the room, but lucky for me I had those with me… room was very dirty and whole hotel surrounding was still under construction.
Very soon after getting to the hotel after shower my lights went out!
Todays full route looked like this:
Total for the day was 1068 km in 16 hours.
Whole trip total is now 8227 km.
Very soon after the start of the day I found out that last night decision to call it a day was right. Next 200 kilometers were almost all either road works, road not done yet or under work.
Riding a bike during dark hours would have been a nightmare and very challenging. Road was missing all signs and road paintings and it was switching from one lane to another all the time.
Daytime riding was not that bad. I started day early, at 06:05 am engine was already running and I was all ready to take off.
First 300 hundred kilometers was quite easy, but things started banging again. last 250 kilometers on Turkish side was full of police and military checkpoints, stopped counting at 12… Almost all of them wanted to see passport and bikes registration paper and then they went and *check* those. Go figure what was the purpose of that. Road also turned into small mountain road, highest point recorded was 2080 kilometers.
Some parts of this road was under work so there is hope that during the coming years this will be better.
Ride on Turkish side was ~600km. Garmin MapSource is not capable of calculating this route so I was on manual mode. It was somehow trying to go to Iraq as well.
Just before the border I stopped to refuel as I had heard some issues with fuel on Iran side, better go with all tanks full. There was really great people at the station, had tea and great chat event we did not had that many common words… this seems to be the issue on lots of places in here.
After getting rid of these checkpoints, I finally arrived at the Iran border. There the over eager border officer looked at my double passport and started demanding already Iranian visa. And that was in the other passport. I had used this double passport on the places where visas where not needed and that caused now the hassle. And the issue with English language…
But, after some talks he finally understood the issue, stamped my Turkish passport page and off I was to Iran!
Meanwhile, some local young kids managed to play with my GPS which was locked into the bike and did an reset for it. All current trip data was lost, which I discovered just when writing this, no track record on Turkey side last day…
This is how it should have been looking:
On Iran side things went smoothly, I was assigned an border patrol man to guide me through all the paperwork, few rounds to different managers, filling in the Carnet (which is needed for Iran, required 5000€ cash deposit in my case…) and finally the paper that I gave out in the border gate when leaving that I really have my bike when I enter Iran from the border.
All in all, paperwork at the border took only 1 hour, did not had to wait on these official queues, I was invited to managers office directly at the border.
Iran side roads looked excellent.
For Iran I had now planned to ride through the night towards Teheran and further on to Turkmenistan border and these roads on good condition gave me all the tools for that.
First days driving on Iran side looked like this:
And yes, right after I came out from border to the city, I managed to get lost. Needed few extra error and trial efforts!
Thing that messed this up was my idea to ride through the lake. This was not on Garmin’s maps and because of that all roads were missing as well.
Iran side marking roads with signs is interesting issue: sometimes there are clear signs, sometimes they are only on Arabic, sometimes only in western letters and sometimes both, sometimes they are before the turn, sometimes they are only on the road where you should have already turned. Go figure. This caused issues also later on the next day…
Road across the lake was a toll road, but as I entered the booth, guy was just smiling and chatting and after that just said good trip and sent me away without any payment done. Which was good as I did not have any Iranian currency, only dollars and euro's.
Same was also on the road from Tabriz to Tehran, this was some 440 km toll road. Excellent condition motorway, 120 km/h speed limit. On this road there was a lot of people selling you fruits and stuff, looks like families are like living in there.
Everywhere I stopped people came to me and in case they had tea, that had to be taken as well.
Fuel, this was an interesting one. I had not given or taken the fuel card from the border so I was a bit in dark on this, but this was not really necessary. First stop for refueling my bike there was really nice couple just letting me to get fuel from their own card and did not accept any payment on that! Other places was the same, on one case there was manager of the station who charged 10USD for 33 litres. Not bad.
All in all, this day gave me some 1285km driving.
Whole trip looks now like this
About 7159 km in total.
Day started early, I had clock waking me up at 05:00, quick shower and off I go. Anne was still almost sleeping…
At 06:05 I had everything on the bike and engine running. Plan was to drive as close to Iran border as possible using D-400 road.
Beginning was the same as before towards Antalya, after that excellent highway but then road started going around some mountains and mileage stopped running. It was soon pretty clear that I could not drive the 1600km to the border, but something less than that.
At some point I hit even bigger highway, some 450km excellent driving at 130km/h so that took me a bit further.j
At end of day I had driven 1062km in 14 hours, not that bad. Decided to take an early night when darkness arrived, found hotel just as ordered.
I still have some driving to do Team 1 & Team 2 are already very close to each other:
Distance between Team 1 & 2: 553 km
Distance between Team 1 & 3: 3325 km
Distance between Team 2 & 3: 2960 km
Above can be seen in http://www.juvander.fi/FIN2PAMIR.
This was the route:
Whole route looks now like this
5924km in total. And actually some extra as I visited Antalya to get my bike service.
My family is now back in Espoo, Finland. Arrived a bit late due to issues with the plane. But anyway are now safely back home.
Tomorrow morning at 06:00 it starts again towards Iran. Some 1500km driving ahead.
Woke up early on the morning, had an service served for my bike at 8:30am. Some 60km drive there and same back in the hot weather…
Agreed service was to change motor oil, oil filter, valve clearance check and general inspection for the bike.
After few hours waiting got bike back washed and serviced, not I’m ready for the next part of the trip.
According to the report, everything is ok, even break pads were still good. Those I have now spare ones with me anyhow so can switch them in case needed.
So back to the hotel and pool to enjoy rest of the day!
Waiting for local bmw service to fix my bike for the next part of the journey
6.7.2010 10:46:40
This was the last day towards meeting my family at Antalya airport. Started morning early, I had only 140 kilometres to the Antalya airport.
Road took me through some mountains and then down again via small canyon. On this road I first time took ABS button into use and disabled that. I have had some previous bad experiences with my LT on this bumpy small roads where all breaking power had been gone and I had some near situations on going out from curve. But with ABS disabled, no issues. My R1200GS Adventure is one of those rare bikes where you can disable this feature.
When coming down from the mountain, air was getting warmer and warmer. 38 degrees Celsius when I finally came to Antalya town.
I had one more stop to be done at the local BMW dealer to see if I could have my bike serviced here. I needed basically oil change, new oil filter and valve check.
When I got there, we agreed very quickly to have this on next Tuesday and on the same time one of the BMW recall ones was to be done as well.
After this, to the airport where after short search I found correct terminal and our tour guides as well. They were a bit wondering why we had 4 persons on the trip and only 3 on the plane… but after I arrived this was quite easily explained…
Plane was ~20 minutes late, I was waiting out in the sun for some 2 hours before everybody was in the bus and it was ready to continue towards our hotel.
From Antalya airport it was some 64 kilometres to our hotel and we also made one extra stop to leave people on the way.
Finally arrived to our two weeks hotel in Kemer / Kiris where this is located and also found a parking place for my bike. Hotel security was after me as well when I just ran after the bus and our bus driver had some explaining to do who was this mysterious guy from Finland with motorcycle driving behind the bus…
This was the route for this day, 208 kilometres.
Total route is now 4862 kilometres
Had an *early* morning, started the bike before 9am and started driving towards Egirdir, which is a city by the lake, a bit more than 100km from Antalya.
On the way spotted one GS driving behind me and once I stopped to get some water, this bike followed me to get gas. It turned out to be an Canadian guy, living in Dubai who had just flied to Istanbul and rented a bike from there and is now driving around. We drove few kilometers like this until I turned south towards Antalya from Sakarya.
From Sakarya road was excellent, partly newly done, partly under work but in general in good condition.
On the way enjoyed according to my tradition (which is to have one Big Mac Meal On The Road in new country) some food.
This was in Afyon.
During this stop I also emptied my gas canisters so that I would not have to make another stop. After that I just drove to the destination I had chosen.
After driving 634 km in 9 hours I finally arrived to my hotel.
This brings me total driving of 4654km.
So tomorrow is just two hours drive or so to meet my family at Antalya airport!
Day started as normal, not so early as I was not expecting long journey from Sozopol to Istanbul.
Route I chose was excellent, this was small road that approached Turkey from Bulgarian side, lots of turns and it took me 650m high. Couple with bicycles and one motorcycle came towards me otherwise I was pretty much the only one moving on that road.
Border control was really fast, nothing special.
After I got on the Turkish side, road was 3-4 lanes wide, newly done and parts of it was still under construction. Quite an contrast to what was on Bulgarian side.
Rest of the trip I took motorway, it cost 5 local currencies to drive to Istanbul.
On the way there I also made it to the local BMW dealer to see if I could arrange my oil change. Place that was on BMW catalog listed as motorrad dealer was not there, same company but different location. Got one guy to phone them up just to find out that they are all booked so it is to be seen if I can arrange this in Antalya then.
On the way to the hotel Zumo did magical things and went just off. This needs to be seen if this was just one of those moments or is it now going to be doing some fun stuff…
Just around the corner at the hotel I found a car washing place and took my bike in there to get it washed.
Now it really looks like a different bike again!
This was the route I took:
350 kilometers in 6 hours.
This comes to total
4020 kilometers done this far.
Now in turkey
1.7.2010 12:35:53
When arriving yesterday I saw notice in the bikes computer: LAMPF!. Had a broken head lamp.
No worries, I had two spare H7 in my toolbox so just got and switched in new one. Now I have only one spare to go…
With my LT with xenon driving lamp not really used to this, it has never needed this kind of lamp fixing. This lamp in GSA lasted now some 15tkm.
Waking up in Bucharest and looking out was a bad choice: It was raining again…
After having breakfast things started looking a bit better, rain has stopped. And after I had packed and ready to go, even sun was showing some light.
While on the road, it looked couple of times like its going to rain, but it did not.
During one stop this little thing came out from somewhere and started begging:
I also had some water crossings on the way, when going over the river from Calarasi to Silistra
But I made it
And here was also these dogs, they came with the ferry and left with the ferry…
So this day was driving from Bucharest / Romania to Sozopol / Bulgaria:
437 km in 8 hours, this will bring my total mileage to 3670km:
Next is Istanbul.
Some river crossing from romania to bulgaria, got bike wet again
30.6.2010 14:34:00
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