To cross the border from China to Kazakhstan you must take a bus. Tom covered this in his post Borderline Ridiculous. Here is what is was like.

It was all well and good deciding to skip the Uzbek and Kazakh deserts and the accompanying 45-degree furnace. We still had the problem of getting three cyclists, bikes and bags all the way from Bukara to the port of Aktau in Kazakhstan. In this part of the world at least, the machinations of getting [...]

Coming to you LIVE from the ferry terminal. An as it happens blog post with bonus video. We are in our 9th hour of waiting for a ferry that apparently arrived today. For a the full story read on… I found out that the ferry had arrived after wandering in to the ticket agents office [...]

This post contains as much information about the visa and the ferry process as possible that I promised cyclists and backpackers who are are heading from East to West along a similar route to us. Anna, Ruben, Leon, Peter and James. I hope your travels are going well and this information makes your stay here [...]

A lot has happened since I last wrote a post about our route. Previously we had planned to cycle the majority of Kazakhstan. This idea was put to bed after a long conversation about visas, road conditions and sightseeing with David from Stan Tours. As you know since then we have cycled through Kyrgyzstan and [...]

The stop-start-stop cycle of visa extensions and applications has been a wearying and frustrating necessity for the BB team in the first half of our journey to Ireland. We’re sick and tired of waiting instead of riding. However, there is nothing much we can do about it. The only alternative would be to jump on [...]

We’ve seen a lot of horses grazing by the roadsides on our way from Almaty to the Kyrgyz border. Sadly, a lot of these fine steeds are not destined for the Grand National at Aintree or a lifetime of lazy equestrianism, but rather the dinner table for Sunday lunch. Horsemeat is quite a delicacy in [...]

Relates pages for this post Azerbaijan LOI (letter of invitation) Uzbekistan LOI Stan Tours Contact information

As I mentioned in the last post, for the most part the people of Almaty are very cold and unhelpful. Their city on the other hand is gorgeous. I took an afternoon to wonder the lush tree laden streets of Almaty and walk through their numerous parks. This is some of what I saw.

I mentioned in my post “First Impressions Count” about how friendly the people of the Kazak country-side were. If Almaty is the first place you come don’t hold your breath. The experiences I had with the people in the 5 days that we stayed here were far from pleasant, enough so that I have no [...]

The only good thing about waiting for visas is having a little downtime to update family and friends about the trip so far. Since we had a few extra days in Bishkek I thought I’d update our online photo albums with four new ones from the Stans.

I thought it would be worth a mention as to how to catch a taxi in Almaty as it is definitely nothing like hailing one of the million cabs in South Korea or China. It’s relatively straight forward really. Simply stand on the road with your arm out in a downward fashion 45-75 degrees to [...]

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 [...]

As mentioned in previous posts, while in Almaty a bunch of vacationing Peace Corps helped us out. One of the most useful things they taught us was that there are apartments for rent in most major cities at less than the price of a hotel room. So after spending a couple of nights in a [...]

On day 3 of riding in Kazakhstan, with no water left and after a rough and windy night in the desert, we pulled in to a little oasis happy to be able to refill our bottles. While consuming various sugary drinks, two Belgian cyclists pulled up. They had just come from the Sharyn Canyon and [...]