Silk Road

Turkmenistan Turkmenistan borders Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan in the north and has the difficult neighbors of Iran and Afghanistan to the south. It is eighty percent desert with a population of 5 million, 90% Muslim. The fertility rate is very high – 35% of the population is under 15 years of age and only 4% is…

Tbilisi Georgia to Baku Azerbaijan We felt sorry to leave the wonderful people in Tbilisi and fully appreciated the difficult struggle they will have entering a market economy. They have been abandoned by the Russians, and saddled with a heavy hangover from a long period of Russian domination and the lack of a free market.…

Tbilisi Georgia I forgot to mention the tour of the Stalin Museum at Gori. Stalin was born in Georgia. The museum traced his life as an early revolutionary, and showed us pictures of his boots and his hat and pictures of him with his various commanders. Omitted from the presentation was that he was the…

Trabzon Turkey to Tblisi Georgia We left Trabzon in the morning and passed through the bureaucratic border crossing – four different Turkish officials and three different Georgia officials – with 20 motorcycles. There was quite a Byzantine snarl of red tape. No one had to unload, but some suspicious looking young French boys in an…

Amasya to Trabzon This was a glorious day riding over (I believe) the Caucasus Mountains in Turkey running along the Black Sea – approximately 400 miles of beautiful mountain riding curving through switchbacks with long inclines and descents. The roads were carved out of the side of the mountain with rock ledges overhanging the road.…

Istanbul to Amasya We left our hotel in Istanbul as a group and maneuvered our way through the old city to the ferry – a high speed double deck catamaran. We cut across a bay in the Sea of Marmara and proceeded through some beautiful switchbacks into the hills south of the Sea of Marmara…

Getting Started in Istanbul This trip began with two days of hard labor. The Byzantines certainly know their bureaucracy, and provided two days of Customs clearing paperwork and runaround just to get our motorcycles into the city. Have to hand it to them, the bureaucrats have upgraded and automated their processes. The software glitch was…