Bishkek to Osh: 6 days on the bike, but a mere 50 minutes to fly back on the plane.

Kazakhstan fast become the land of little luxuries for Team BB- 3 nights in a real apartment, home-cooked dinners, regular food in the supermarkets. A far cry from sleeping in tents in a sun-streaked desert, washing oneself with a parboiled packet of baby-wipes. In fact, I think one or two of us would probably have [...]

Crossing international borders by air is usually an efficient process. Just line up, hand your passport over, smile politely and wait for your exit or entry stamp. Oh, were it that simple to cross by land. Our trip across the frontier at Khorgos took most of the day and a most of my patience. When [...]

Would you trust a gambling machine called “Russian Roulette”? Me neither.

In Kazakstan, a Mars still helps me work, rest, and play. Mmmm.

Or at least, they wont be televised live. Our steady stream of posts and videos is set up that way for a reason: to ensure that you, the reader or viewer, are drip-fed just enough high-quality content to ensure your continued interest. Were we to drown you in a deluge of info, you might get [...]

We are now in possession of our Kazakh visas. They have an entry date of June 25th, giving us a definite exit date for China. We can’t enter Kazakhstan before that date and, barring any unforeseen complications, should comfortably reach the border by then. Finishing our first country, the largest one of the trip, will [...]

I said before the trip that it would make us appreciate the simpler things in life. One of those things would definitely be the use of a proper porcelain throne. Squatting is the norm for pretty much all of Asia. The people here have been doing it all their lives and have developed the necessary [...]

We’re going to be camping a lot more this week as our passports are awaiting processing in the visa office in Urumchi. All hostels, guesthouses and hotels are supposed to ask for our visas and register all guests, foreign or local, into the PSB (Public Security Bureau) system. Since we don’t have the passports, and [...]

6 hours of waiting for a visa application that took less than 5 minutes to file. The efficiency of bureaucracy is truly a global constant.

Desert camping seems like a fun and carefree idea, until you consider the local wildlife. On Tuesday afternoon, after one of our rest stops, I spotted a massive spider nestling on the back of Jared’s rear pannier. It was about the size of an open fist, legs included, and a bright mix of white and [...]

Who needs collagen injections when you can just get a passing bee to sting you on the lip?

Bee trucks are one of my least favorite sights on the roads here in Gansu. I thought the itinerant bee farmers in Shanxi were bad enough, but at least they and their hives were stationary. The trucks are a mobile menace to navigation, leaving a steady stream of disorientated and disgruntled bees in their wake. [...]

The sound of explosions has been a regular feature of our travels – hardly surprising, I suppose, in the country that invented gunpowder and fireworks. Barely a day goes by without the the machine-gun staccato of firecrackers, rockets and other pyrotechnics. Riding through some of the smaller cities was an experience akin to driving through [...]

Ok, confession time. I’ve got a serious coke habit. I thought I could handle it. It started off small; just a lunchtime hit to get me through the afternoon, but before I knew it, it was out of control. In the hot days before Xi’an, I was on 4 bottles a day. At 600ml a [...]