Update: Sat 01:55

Friday, 26 August

The key to turning up at 9:05 at the Kazakh embassy is not to be very disappointed that after the woman eventually deigns to recognise your existence she types "12" into a calculator and shoos you away. The upshot of which is that after yet another tea+surf at Cafe Merve I picked up my Kazakh visa at 12. Hoo-bloomin'-ray!

To Tashkent, then starting at 12. It been cooler in Dushanbe with poor visibility but that nothing compared to heading into the hills. General visibility is down to about one kilometre and there are a few spots of rain. I change into my jackets waterproof liner with sublime timing as only a few landslide avoidance tunnels later the heavens open. Very wet.

It's calmed down a bit when one of the landslide tunnels is evidently the Anzob Pass tunnel. There appears to be no end to it. Luckily I happen to be following a private taxi (read: any old car) in and start to weave across the tunnel in its tracks.

In the end the tunnel isn't the worst bit of road I've ridden on, perhaps I'm more blasé about these things, now, but it is a rotten concrete road in an unlit, smog-filled, water-logged, pot-holed 5km bore-hole. I did hit a few unexpected 30cm deep water-filled pot-holes but more because the car was weaving more dramatically that I could bear to follow or I had to follow a different path as it was going too slowly.

There's the usual (in these parts) gravel road over the high pass for 22km as well. The Chinese are there building a tunnel but no clues as to when it'll be completed.

I'd been wisely advised to avoid the nominal main road which would have crossed the TJ/UZ border three times (using up one of your single entry visa's entries each time -- oops) but the paper map indicated a road that didn't exist. I asked some policemen who mentioned Buston then later some guys manning a toll-booth (bikes go free even when they knock the barrier off its hinge and close the barrier on a car that's just paid) who confirmed the Buston road.

The paper map is wrong again here with the Buston road being a nice shiny new road now, rather than some backwater. Unfortunately, I arrived at Buston at dusk which meant that in the first instance the TJ staff wanted to eat something (it's currently Ramadan) and then I had to negotiate the border unable to see anything. Luckily it's quite quiet.

The Uzbeks proceeded to be a pain in the arse, mind, wanting to X-ray luggage (I suggested the metal panniers might fuse their machine so they relented and subsequently never bothered to search them) but the X-ray man wanted to see things in the bowels of the bags. Just get over it, it's a camera or laptop, you've seen them before, right?

Six people wanted to see my passport and/or vehicle documents! What for? You all stand next to each other! Grr!

Anyway, it was only a two hour crossing (pretty normal) but that mean it was 21:30 with a 100km ride to Tashkent n the pitch dark with the fuel reserve light coming on and only the first man's dodgy USD-Som deal to go on. Suffice it to say the small towns don't have their fuel stations open at night.

I arrived here at 23:30 and managed to enthuse the reception bloke to buy me some food and I'll pay him back tomorrow. Of course I might then end up with rather more Som than one can usefully use in a morning.

The Uzbek Independence celebrations are already having an effect a week in advance with tourists apparently unable to use the more black market exchange booths (a 30% improvement).

Currently at lat/long: n41 17.355 e69 16.112

Hotel Kovshan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.