2017 & 2018 in Eurasia

Legend

Driving
Motorbike
Boat
Bus
Hiking
Plane
Taxi
Train
Cycling

Airole, Italy ‐ Jul 24, 2018
La Spezia ‐ Jul 23, 2018
Riomaggiore
Monterosso al Mare
La Spezia ‐ Jul 22, 2018
Lucca
San Gimignano ‐ Jul 21, 2018
Siena ‐ Jul 20, 2018
Castiglione del Lago ‐ Jul 19, 2018
Gubbio ‐ Jul 18, 2018
Perugia
Assisi ‐ Jul 17, 2018
Spoleto ‐ Jul 16, 2018
Cascia
Norcia
Macerata ‐ Jul 14, 2018
Ancona ‐ Jul 10, 2018
Pátrai, Greece

Our ferry tickets for Italy are booked! We spent a few days near Patras at a campsite and taking care of some car maintenance and paperwork.
Voidokilia beach ‐ Jul 5, 2018

We should have never gone there... With the windy weather and the waves, that place wasn't so nice (compared with what you see on the advertising pictures). Worst of all, our car full of souvenirs, presents and personal items was broken into. When you've been almost all over Asia for a year, poor countries, etc... without anything of the kind happening, it's quite disappointing to realize you are back to Europe, this so-called "modern world" full of greed and thieves! We want to go home now.
Methoni

Sorry for the long delay since our last update... :-) As you can guess, by now we have finished travelling and are back in Airole (Italy). We spent quite some time in the Peloponnese area (2 or 3 weeks), visiting nice landscapes, historic sites, enjoying some greek food and camping. There really many tourists in summer there, especially campervans! The beaches aren't really the best though... We actually came across some of the dirtiest beaches we've ever seen in our lives!

+5

5th July - Methoni castle [Greece]
Byzantin Mystras Castle ‐ Jun 27, 2018

Really nice fortified castle.
Elafonisos ‐ Jun 25, 2018

Nice little island, beautiful beaches. Quite busy in summer and on week-ends.
Monemvasia ‐ Jun 22, 2018

Very nice, well maintained fortified ancient city on a small peninsula.
Korinthos ‐ Jun 20, 2018

Interesting historic place.
Athens ‐ Jun 19, 2018

Back in Athens, we said goodbye to Diego whom we spent a great week with, picked up our car, and planned the next part of our road trip in Greece! :-)
Naxos ‐ Jun 16, 2018

In Naxos we finally got to see some really nice sandy beaches with turquoise water! After touring around with scooters we decided to treat ourselves and booked a sail boat tour for the next day!! :oD It was the first time for Ele and Chris, great experience and company, seafood for lunch, snacks and open bar!! :oD

+20

16th to 18th June - Naxos [Greece]
Paros ‐ Jun 14, 2018

Paros is a bigger island people go for its quietness, water sports, and beaches (which are nice but unfortunately not up to our high standards... after Indonesia and Maldives) :oD!! We toured the island by scooter and overall it was nice and fun.

+12

14th to 16th June - Paros [Greece]
Santorini ‐ Jun 12, 2018

Wooow what an amazing Island!!! Santorini is really particular with spectacular landscapes. The village of Oia is as picturesque and unique as it's been described in all tourist adverts, and the bigger town of Fira was also particularly beautiful - there is a trail between these two villages that is really stunning! We also had a nice guesthouse with swimming pool where we could chill down during the hottest hours (the beaches are not the greatest there).

+16

12th to 14th June - Santorini [Greece]
Athina ‐ Jun 9, 2018

After a week of moving, wild camping and a night trying to sleep in the corridors of the ferry, we arrived in Athens very happy to have a hotel for at least two days! :-D We met Diego the next day and went to enjoy the city and Greek food together. Most attractions are ancient historic places and ruins dating over 2000 years old, including the very famous Acropolis and Temple of Athena. We found a great island-hopping deal at his hostel and so we booked a week together to visit Santorini, Paros [...]
and Naxos - all of them quite popular for tourists.

+16

10th & 11th June - Athens [Greece]
Chios ‐ Jun 8, 2018

Back in the only busy town of the island to take the ferry: destination Athens, where for the second time on our trip we'll meet our dear friend Diego! :-)
Nea Moni

The only site on Chios recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage. It is an old, very well built monastery, that has unfortunately been through terrible events and partial destruction. We met there a French couple who was travelling with their 12-meter sailboat. It happens that their son in law is the doctor is Christophe's childhood town (the world is small, isn't it?). According to them, there are quite many sea travelers / tourists as well!

+9

8th June - Nea Moni monastery [Chios, Greece]
Glaroi beach ‐ Jun 7, 2018

This is probably the best looking sand beach of Chios... It is indeed crowded of young people from town, and it could be the only beach of the island that has sunbeds and is served by a bar with loud commercial music.

+10

6th & 7th June - North-Eastern Chios [Greece]
Lagkada

A sea-side town in the north-west that probably has enough restaurants to feed the whole island! :-D
Nagos ‐ Jun 6, 2018

This town may have one of the best beaches in the north of the island with clear fresh spring water mixing into the sea.
Agio Gala ‐ Jun 26, 2018

A very small village, a historic church and holy cave where according to the legend, a daughter of a king found shelter, healed from leprosy and gained fertility by drinking white water (looking like milk) coming from a breast-looking stalactite. The lady taking care if the tourist attractions and the restaurant let us camp in a nice area near the small river in exchange for consuming at her place.

+5

5th June - Agio Galas [Chios, Greece]
Volissos ‐ Jun 5, 2018

Another nice medieval town... Yes, that's a lot for such a small island! :-D

+7

5th June - Volissos [Chios, Greece]
Anavatos ‐ Jun 4, 2018

An interesting looking town that seems made of many defensive towers (which were actually houses). It also really seemed empty to us, more like a ghost town! :-O We didn't let the ghosts scare us however, and camped on the hill nearby! :-D

+6

4th June - Anavatos [Chios, Greece]
Mesta

Another medieval village next to Olimpi, where we had a lovely lunch - and our first half liter of white wine with it, which got us a bit drunk (after so long in mostly Islamic countries)!

+16

3rd & 4th June - Olympoi & Mesta [Chios, Greece]
Olimpi

Cute little medieval village.
Kato Fana beach ‐ Jun 3, 2018

Beautiful place to swim and where we camped.

3rd & 4th June - on the beach [Chios, Greece]
Pyrgi

A unique village known for its houses covered in decorative tiles.

+6

3rd June - Pyrgi [Chios, Greece]
Emporios

3rd June - Emporeios [Chios, Greece]
Agia Ermioni ‐ Jun 2, 2018

That's where we stayed on our first two days on the island, at a lovely guesthouse with sea view, with the owner Maria spoiling us with their homemade mixed juice, wine and cakes. The weather is still very beautiful - we don't really remember the last time it rained on our trip.

2nd June - Agia Ermioni [Chios, Greece]
Chios ‐ Jun 1, 2018

Finally back in Europe after more than a year! :-O Everything seems so clean and organized, no more free plastic bags at the shops or trash outside, and using Euros again! :-D We we went straight away to Lidl and were shocked to come out with just a few items for 15€... :-() Ahh... for sure, we were not missing the European living costs!
Çeşme, Turkey

For our last days in Turkey, we took it easy, enjoyed the neighboring towns, local food, and we spent our last liras to stock up on Turkish food, tea and spices, and souvenirs including a Turkish tea pot and a third hookah! :-D
Alaçati ‐ May 28, 2018

Nice tourist-friendly seaside town.

+7

28th May - Alaçati [Turkey]
Karaburun ‐ May 25, 2018
Sığacık ‐ Jun 2, 2018

Charming sea-side village.

+6

25th May - Sığacık [Turkey]
İzmir ‐ May 23, 2018

We liked Izmir for its very local, non-touristy atmosphere, the bazaar, the food, and generally good prices for everything.

+10

23rd May - Izmir [Turkey]
Şirince ‐ Jun 22, 2018

Charming hillside village where the locals like to make and sell their own products, especially fruity wines (made of berries or other fruits like apples or melon). We bought ourselves a nice cherry wine!

+9

22nd May - Şirince village [Turkey]
Selçuk ‐ May 22, 2018

Selçuk town is the nearest to Ephesus, and also has lots to see. We refused to pay the ridiculous 90 liras (even the negotiated 60 liras) to put our tent at the local campground, and chose a nice guesthouse for a bit more cash. :-)

+17

22nd May - Selçuk [Turkey]
Ephesus ancient city ‐ May 21, 2018

Turkey's most famed archaeological site, Efessus ancient city.

+20

21st May - Efesus ancient city [Turkey]
Kuşadası

The first town where we saw so many north and south american tourists. Their cruise boats seem to stop here, which makes sense as it's very close to the majestic Efessus historic site.

+9

21st May - Kuşadası [Turkey]
Doğanbey ‐ May 20, 2018

Very beautiful village bordering a national park, with lots of traditional houses.

+11

20th May - Doğanbey village [Turkey]
Miletus ancient city

+11

20th May - Miletus ancient city [Turkey]
Didyma

Little town with a few historic sites around.

+6

20th May - Didyma [Turkey]
Bodrum ‐ May 31, 2018

Another touristic sea-side town up to Marmaris' standards, but with a much more modern architecture. We didn't find it as charming, but we enjoyed our hotel with rooftop swimming pool for a few days! :-D

+7

16th & 19th May - Bodrum & around [Turkey]
Marmaris & Içmeler ‐ May 13, 2018

Very popular touristic destination, similar to the sea-side / beach towns we know in Italy or France. It was hit hard by the recent political troubles... While many western cruise ships used to stop by here until 3 years ago, there are now much fewer tourists (mostly from Russia and the UK). We felt a bit sorry for a vendor in town who told us he lost 500€ per day because of Italian cruises no longer coming here. But for us, it worked out quite well... we had a small apartment with a (shared) [...]
swimming pool for just 10€/night (for us two)! :-)

+15

13th to 15th May - Marmaris & around [Turkey]
Dalyan ‐ May 11, 2018

Nice relaxing riverside town, with good boat connections to the nearby beach, lake, and historic sites.

+13

12th May - Dalyan & around [Turkey]
Fethiye & Oludeniz ‐ May 9, 2018

A nice area with beaches, a lagoon, mountains, a little canyon, etc... We enjoyed a boat trip around the many islands of the bay, and some hiking down the Butterfly Valley canyon.

+5

10th May - hike to Butterfly Valley [Turkey]

+8

9th May - Boat trip around Fethiye [Turkey]
Xanthos ancient city ‐ May 8, 2018

+9

8th May - Xanthos ancient city [Turkey]
Patara ancient city

+10

8th May - Patara ancient city [Turkey]
Kaputaş plajı

Good looking beach.

8th May - Kaputaş beach [Turkey]
Kaş ‐ May 7, 2018

Cute sea-side town.

+7

7th May - Kaş [Turkey]
Karaöz

Beautiful views.

7th May - Karaöz [Turkey]
Çıralı & Olympos ‐ May 4, 2018

We had a nice couple of days these. We slept in a quiet campsite next to the beach, read books, went for swims, visited the Olympos ancient city and the Chimaera site where flames come out of the rocks.

+13

4th to 6th May - Çıralı & Olympos [Turkey]
Aspendos ancient city

Another ancient city, but this one has one of the nicest and best conserved theaters from the Roman era.

+7

4th May - Aspendos ancient city [Turkey]
Side ‐ May 3, 2018

Beautiful seaside town and historic site.

+16

3rd May - Around Side [Turkey]
Alanya ‐ May 1, 2018

Lively city, with a nice castle on the hill with beautiful views. We are starting to see lots of beach tourists, especially Russian and British. It's also an ideal city for stray cats & dogs who have all the food and water they want around the parks. A good example of caring for others.

+14

1st & 2nd May - Alanya [Turkey]
Sapadere canyon ‐ Apr 30, 2018

Little canyon with some nice pools you could jump in. We didn't need this refreshment! :-D On our way back, Elena checked a turtle that was on the road and noticed she was infested with ticks sucking its blood. We brought it to the veterinary to wipe out the colony of around 40 or 50 of these disgusting creatures, and released it back in the forest with some anti-tick powder. :-O

+5

30th April - Sapadere canyon [Turkey]
Anamurium ancient city ‐ May 30, 2018

This ancient city is maybe one of the most impressive we've seen, as it's really large.

+9

30th April - Anamurium ancient city [Turkey]
Mamure castle & around ‐ Apr 29, 2018

Another big castle next to a long beach. It was officially closed but the castle gardener was very nice and gave us a quick tour. We met him again the next morning for tea, and he brought us to visit an old hammam and the fruits & vegetables plantation of his friend / neighbour (mostly strawberries). From here until maybe Marmaris in the south-west, it seems to be a turtle area. Everyday we would stop and move turtles from the road to avoid them to be crushed by careless drivers. This area of th [...]
e Mediterranean is also the home of many sea turtles.

+19

29th April - Mamure castle & around [Turkey]
Gilindir cave & mirror lake ‐ May 29, 2018

A beautiful wonder of nature which entrance is hidden on the side of a cliff.

+8

29th April - Gilindir cave & mirror lake [Turkey]
Atakent ‐ Apr 28, 2018

We decided to have a nice hotel for a change, in a nice, quiet, seaside residential area! :-)
Heaven & Hell sinkholes

An interesting site with two huge sinkholes and a cave that had some mystical meaning and legends for the ancient civilizations.

+4

28th April - Caves of Heaven & Hell [Turkey]
Kızkalesi castles

Two other castles that have seen the Greek / Roman / Byzantine civilizations ruling them.

+4

28th April - Kızkalesi castle [Turkey]
Kanlıdivane ancient city

Another one of the many Greek and Roman towns near the Mediterranean.

+12

28th April - Kanlıdivane ancient town [Turkey]
Tarsus ‐ Apr 26, 2018

Nice town with some historic buildings. We stopped there for lunch before continuing to Mersin for the night.

+4

27th April - Tarsus [Turkey]
Perre ancien cave town

+4

26th April - Perre ancient cave town [Turkey]
Nemrut Dağı Milli Parkı ‐ May 25, 2018

A wild, beautiful, historical and mystical region that really made us love the south-east of Turkey even more!

+32

25th & 26th April - Nemrut national park [Turkey]
Egil ‐ Apr 25, 2018

Little cute town by a canyon.

+5

25th April - Egil [Turkey]
Diyarbakır ‐ Apr 23, 2018

The area of Diyarbakir is very rich in history. Many ancients settlements over 8000 years old have been found and documented in the region. This place has literally seen all major European and Middle-Eastern civilizations going through its lands. And since 3000 or 4000 years, it still has the largest city walls in the world! (if we don't count the Great Wall of China) Today, Diayarbakir is a big city of 1 million inhabitants and one of the main hosts of the Kurdish population. Our host when we [...]
where there, Mehmet, and his family, where one of the warmest, friendliest and most hospitable people we've met. They are actually Zaza, another group of people who also have their own language and culture (a minority however compared with the Turks and Kurds). Mehmet's mother cooked us one of the best traditional dinners we've ever had!

+27

23rd & 24th April - Diyarbakir [Turkey]

+8

23rd April - On the way to Diyarbakir [Turkey]
Mardin ‐ Apr 22, 2018

We had a great time in the old and beautiful city of Mardin, rich in history and wonders (and tourists, mostly Turkish and especially in the weekend!).

+35

22nd & 23rd April - Mardin & around [Turkey]
Dara ‐ Apr 21, 2018

Ancient cave city. History here (and all over southern Turkey) is often talked about in the thousands of years. Mesopotamia is the region of Earth where the first humans started to settle down into permanent sedentary lifestyles - hence the first villages and cities.

+11

21st April - Ancient cave city of Dara [Turkey]
Mor Gabriel Monastery

The oldest surviving Syriac Orthodox monastery in the world, over 1600 years old!

+11

21st April - Mor Gabriel Monastery [Turkey]
Midyat

A great surprise on our way. We haven't heard anything about this town, but thankfully we stopped there for lunch. And walking around the old town center, we discovered a lovely city with beautiful buildings. In Midyat, and also in the towns of the area, Christianity is still in the belief of many people - probably since the time of the crusades. And many churches even use the old Syriac language!

+29

20th April - Midyat [Turkey]
Hasankeyf ‐ Apr 20, 2018

We've been told to visit this historic town now, as in two years from now, sadly, a lot of it will be under water when the dam downstream will be finished.

+12

20th April - Hasankeyf [Turkey]
Nemrut crater lake ‐ Apr 19, 2018

A really nice, unique, a bit isolated lake between the slopes of the big crater. But the weather was quite cloudy and cold when we went there, so our idea to camp at this place went to the trash! :-D

+2

20th April - Nemrut crater lake [Turkey]
Akdamar island

Nice island on Van lake with a very old Armenian / Orthodox church on it.

+7

19th April - Akdamar Island [Turkey]
Van ‐ Apr 17, 2018

We are now heading south, as we haven't visited this region of Turkey the first time. Our European governments strongly suggest to avoid visiting the south-east of Turkey, but talking with many locals, we figured it's clearly a "political closure" by the Turkish government (and diplomats) to discourage foreigners in meeting Kurdish people (and hearing their story about the Turkish government). So we started our trip through the "Kurdish region" (don't repeat that name to Erdogan! :-D) in the ci [...]
ty of Van, where Velat and his very kind family hosted us for two nights. We enjoyed exceptional food, beautiful music and poetry in great company. We see that the Turkish government is really all over the place to keep a tight control on this region. There are frequent police check-points on highways, and big anti-protest and military trucks frequently roaming the city streets - aiming to intimidate any locals with anti-government ideas.

+20

17th to 19th April - to & around Van [Turkey]
Doğubayazıt ‐ Apr 15, 2018

After nearly a year, we're back in Turkey! :-) We are very happy and excited to discover more about this country full of history, beauty, good food and great people. We found a nice campground right near the İshak Paşa palace and went to explore the surrounding countryside. On the same day, we met two other Italian campers and a Swiss one. As they were crossing the border to Iran on the next day, the Swiss guys gave us their remaining two and a half bottles of wine! :-D

+20

15th to 17th April - around Dogubayazit [Turkey]
Kandovan, Iran ‐ Apr 14, 2018

Cute little town with cave houses.

+11

14th April - Kandovan [Iran]
Tabriz ‐ Apr 13, 2018

Tabriz is the biggest city in the North-West, Azeri region of Iran. A lot of people, if not most of them, speak Azeri (and also Persian of course) and have a slightly different culture. Even the landscapes look very much like the country of Azerbaijan, as we remember from the year before. It's a nice city, although not as impressive of beautiful as the central Iranian cities we visited.

+19

12th & 13th April - Tabriz [Iran]
Ardabil ‐ Apr 12, 2018

Our Iranian visa is coming to an end soon so we're continuing towards the north-eastern borders, not sure of which one we'll use yet. Ardabil was a nice one-day stop where we discovered the local attractions and specialties with Babak, our host.

+8

11th April - Ardabil [Iran]
Ardeh ‐ Apr 10, 2018

The scenery in the north or Iran, thanks to the mountains and the Caspian Sea, are a lot greener and wetter than the desert in the south of the mountains. We met Farzin, a nice young guy from a small town who invited us to spend time in his countryside cottage on top of the hills. After a rocky and muddy climb through the forest and grasslands on the hills, our Suzuki brought us to his place. We had a very pleasant and relaxing time.

+6

10th & 11th April - Ardeh [Iran]
Qaemshahr ‐ Apr 8, 2018

We met again with the family of Nooshin and Daniel (whom we met in Persepolis) and had a great evening with them! Nooshin just received a letter of invitation to a university in Prague and is very excited to move to Europe. After telling a lot of drama about how bad people are in Europe (compared with Iran), we reassured her parents that she will be fine and we'll be there for her anytime if needed! :-D

8th April - Our friends from Qaemshahr [Iran]
Babolsar ‐ Apr 7, 2018

Our friends Vahid & Narsis from Isfahan, and Vahid's brother went out to their apartment in Babolsar near the Caspian Sea, and we joined them for two fun days! :-)

+3

6th & 7th April - Babolsar / Caspian Sea [Iran]
Qom ‐ Apr 6, 2018

Since people we met near Varzaneh invited us in Qom and it was on our way, we could not refuse! :-) After some Google Maps confusion and tricky off-road in the middle of the mountains between Kashan and Fordo, we ended up in front of a security gate near a sensitive nuclear plant. After the security guard refused to open us the road to Fordo/Qom, Elena's complaints were finally too much to handle for him... So after checking our nationalities (thankfully we're not American or British!), he final [...]
ly opened the gate - which probably saved us an extra day of unnecessary travel. We met our new friends in Fordo where we visited a honey farm, and two bakeries where different traditional breads were being made. We had a barbecue in their countryside garden, then headed to their family home in Qom where an amazing dinner was served and where we met a lot of interesting people. Qom is a holy city for shia Muslims, so most of its inhabitants are very engaged and respectful towards religion. This was the case of our host, with whom we learned a lot about his religion, visited the holy shrines and Imam Khomeini's house. In other parts of Iran, most young people don't like or even hate Qom because it is seen as the center of the strict Islamic law mandated in the country.

+17

5th & 6th April - Fordo & Qom [Iran]
Kashan ‐ Apr 4, 2018

It seemed to be a smaller version of Yazd to us. Very cute and peaceful desert town. The traditional houses and guesthouses are really beautiful, as are some mosques and the really big bazaar.

+20

4th & 5th April - Kashan [Iran]
Isfahan ‐ Apr 2, 2018

Another one of the major touristic cities of Iran. It is modern, with many historic points of interest. The Armenian quarter and its churches are quite a unique sight in Iran. Our hosts Vahid and Narsis were great cooks, and lovely to discuss and spend time with. We realized there is so much that we don't know about each other's countries.

+18

2nd & 3rd April - Isfahan [Iran]
Varzaneh ‐ Mar 30, 2018

A relaxing desert small town on our way from Yazd to Isfahan. The area offers so much to see and discover! For a change, this time we were volunteering in a guest house: welcoming and talking with guests, helping out with the meals service, etc... This made us realize that Iranian people use so many dishes when they eat - it's incredible! What would normally stand in one plate in Europe or Eastern Asia would require here 3 or 4 plates per person (every different dish requires its own plate; for [...]
example one for the rice, once for the sauce, one for the meat, one for the salad, one for the olives, etc...)! :-O What a nightmare to clean! But for the free accommodation and meals, it was worth it! :-) Iranian cuisine offers really tasty dishes, rich in spices, very different from European and Asian cuisines. And the portions are usually quite big! As a base, rice and bread is generally served in every meal (no rice for breakfast, though).

+23

30th March to 2nd April - to & around Varzanzeh [Iran]
Chak Chak ‐ Mar 29, 2018

An important Zoroastrian shrine / fire temple built on the side of a sacred mountain.

+9

29th March - around the Yazd desert [Iran]
Sand dunes

After a long lonely drive on a sandy road, under the hot sun (and without air conditioning), we reached this isolated camp near the sand dunes. There was a local to offer camel rides, and two or three other cars there from Iranian tourists. For the first time in Iran, somebody pulled out a cold beer from their fridge and gave it to us... Wow, that was amazing! :-D The people we met were clearly not following the country's Islamic rule, as they later started to drink stronger alcohols and the la [...]
dies had their heads uncovered. But in the middle of nowhere there, who cares...? :-D
Kharānaq

A beautiful ancient town not far from Yazd.

+11

29th March - Kharanaq ancient town [Iran]
Yazd ‐ Mar 28, 2018

Beautiful city in the vast Iranian desert in the middle of the country. All the little narrow streets and the particular architecture gave us the feeling to be in a village more than a city of this size! We stayed 3 nights in a very nice traditional guesthouse.

+14

28th March - Yazd [Iran]
Esfandabad ‐ Mar 27, 2018

We had a great evening and morning with Zahra, Ali and family in their small desert village and surroundings.

+14

26th & 27th March - Esfandabad [Iran]
Abarkūh ‐ Mar 26, 2018

Our hosts from Shiraz gave us a rendez-vous in Abarkuh, a small town two hours before Yazd. We were glad to stop again at a smaller, more quiet place (where there are also nice things to visit!).

+9

26th March - Abarkuh [Iran]
Persepolis ancient city ‐ Mar 25, 2018

One of the most majestic and important historic sites in Persia, sadly destroyed by Alexander the Great's conquests, but still well-conserved. Here again, a wonderful family started a conversation with us (happy that we were not in a guided tour) and invited us for lunch. They are from Mazandaran province near the Caspian Sea, and we told us we may meet them there after a week or two. :-)

+9

25th March - Persepolis ancient city [Iran]
Shiraz ‐ Mar 22, 2018

We heard so many great things about Shiraz, so here we are, finally! The city and its historic buildings, the people, and local culture are really amazing. During the Nowruz holidays, the city was full of people, almost all hotels were full, and many people camp in parks outside the city - or even in schools that are kept open for accommodating travellers! With gazoline and diesel costing nearly nothing here, so many people leave for long journeys across their (huge) country. In Shiraz, we had t [...]
he pleasure to meet Zahra and her husband Ali, who hosted us for two nights, brought us to places around town, and whom we met a few days later in another town. Knowing that we are from Europe, Zahra was surprised to learn that we are a married couple! :-D Because most European couples in their twenties or early thirties are just boyfriends & girlfriends (which is a forbidden relationship in Iran) - so on this point, we were just like them! :-)

+29

22nd to 24th March - to and around Shiraz [Iran]
Lar ‐ Mar 21, 2018

We left Bandar Abbas a bit late, so we ended up having lunch in Lar around 4pm... We had a great falafel at a fast food restaurant. The owner was really nice and since we were looking for a bit of Internet, he suggested to use the connection at his home. Then WiFi naturally came with tea, cakes / biscuits, a bedroom in their house, and we ended up spending the whole evening and next morning with their lovely family around town! :-D In short, an incredible experience of hospitality.

+10

21st & 22nd March - Bandar Abbas to Lar [Iran]
Bandar Abbas ‐ Mar 18, 2018

One of our regrets on our way into Asia last year was missing Iran, so we made sure to go through this beautiful country on our way back! :-) It was surprisingly easy to get a visa (online application 2 days before, and we picked up our visa at the airport!). It felt maybe too easy for the Kish Air check-in staff at Dubai who was not aware of it and almost refused our boarding! :-O Since the beginning (boarding the plane), we immediately felt curiously observed by everyone, and at the airport [...]
a couple of people warmly welcomed us to their country and made sure we didn't need any help. We were hosted by a young and very warm couple, who invited us to join their family for the most important celebration of the year: Nowruz, the Iranian new year! (followed by a two-week holiday for most people) We enjoyed the local traditional food and drinks (without alcohol), the company of everyone welcoming us, Iranian music, and a bit of dancing! :-D

+8

18th to 20th March - Nowruz in Bandar Abbas [Iran]
Dubai - United Arab Emirates, United Arab Emirates ‐ Mar 16, 2018

Dubai was just convenient as a stop-over between two flights. Coming from Kathmandu, the level of development and modernity in that city is a shock! But we didn't like it much; although impressive, everything really felt fake and superficial - an outrageous display of what money can buy! It made us sad...

+10

16th & 17th March - Layover in Dubai [United Arab Emirates]
Kathmandu, Nepal ‐ Mar 14, 2018

Our last two nights in Nepal were spent in Kathmandu. We made sure to have enough great Nepalese food before leaving!
Pokhara ‐ Mar 9, 2018

Enough trekking! Two buses took us to Beni then Pokhara, a well located city that became quite large and the main touristic hub of west Nepal (they're currently building an international airport there). Pokhara, compared with Kathmandu, is much more modern and suited to western expectations, less polluted and more relaxing for sure. We enjoyed a few walks by the lake side, delicious food, went up the hill to the world peace stupa, Sarangkot, and another village in between.

+9

10th to 13th March - Pokhara & around [Nepal]
Tatopani ‐ Mar 8, 2018

14th and last day trekking. Quite a nice hike to finish our adventure, as it wasn't on the road and went through a few nice villages. Tatopani is known and much frequented by tourists for its hot springs, which looked a bit sad to us (very small and overcrowded); since we had a nice memory of hot springs in Thailand, we didn't want to ruin it by going there! :-)

+11

8th March - Annapurna circuit day 14 (Ghasa to Tatopani) [Nepal]
Ghasa ‐ Mar 7, 2018

We actually took a break from trekking this day, and decided to go (just a bit) faster with the local bus... On that unpaved rocky and dusty "road" at the back of the bus, it was the most uncomfortable bus ride we've ever been in our lives! In 4 hours, we progressed only 30 kilometers down to Ghasa... x-O
Marpha ‐ Mar 6, 2018

13th day. A little walk for today, only going to the beautiful village of Marpha and monastery. They also make really great apple-based products there, including dry apple slices, apple juice, apple cider and brandy.

+10

5th & 6th March - Annapurna circuit days 12 & 13 (Lupra to Marpha)
Jomsom ‐ Mar 5, 2018

12th day. We continued on the lonely trail from Lupra to the valley, then through the stones of the river bed until Jomsom, capital of the Mustang region. Today's hike wasn't that nice compare to our previous days. Nowadays most people seem to take public of private transportation from Muktinath, so there is no real trail with tea houses as we've seen before, and the bottom of the valley doesn't really offer great views. Jomsom's old town is quite nice.
Lupra ‐ Mar 4, 2018

11th day. As you would understand this day, we woke up late, took all our time, had a nice breakfast, and started to walk slowly. First down to the cute village of Jarkot, then up the hill through a pass and down to Lupra, a tiny and very lovely village a little isolated from the main valleys.

+8

4th March - Annapurna circuit day 11 (Muktinath to Lupra) [Nepal]
Ranipauwa (Muktinath) ‐ Mar 3, 2018

10th day. That night at the high camp was difficult at last. There was ice everywhere around and well below zero temperatures (maybe -15 or -20). Following the advice of a guide, we woke up like them at 3:30am with a little headache and nausea which went away after a few deep breaths and water. We filled up our bottles with hot water from the kitchen (to prevent the drinking water from freezing too early), put on all our available clothes on, crampons, and started slowly under the stars and brig [...]
ht moonlight. The crampons proved their necessity straight away on the slippery narrow frozen trail on the side of the mountain. Our ascent was really slow and our toes quickly felt frozen in our summer trekking shoes... :-S After about 3 hours of frozen patience, we were well above 5000m, about 2 or 3 kilometers from the pass, and the nightmare got worse. As the slopes became less steep and the pass got closer, really cold temperature and strong winds made us rethink our objective and stop for a break. We admitted at this time that it was the most difficult physical and mental effort we've ever done in our lives. Elena (and a Chinese-American woman with us) thought they were going to die today! :-O With this weather, certainly no helicopter would be able to rescue us here, so we came above our worst fears and continued slowly for another two challenging hours with winds disturbing our balance and blowing the snow on our faces (as you can see in some scary alpinist movies! :-D). We walked carelessly near the sign board indicating the highest point (5400 meters) and rushed down straight away to the other side and didn't stop for at least an hour until we could find a place with calmer winds. The long descent until Muktinath (3700 meters) was quite long and hard on our knees but still much more comfortable. We progressively took off our jackets, jumpers, gloves and crampons and took our time to finish our hiking day around noon. After a well-deserved lunch, we spent the rest of the day stretching and resting in the hotel room, with electricity and WiFi Internet finally available (after 5 days without - since Koto!). Glad to be alive and well! :-D

+6

3rd March - Annapurna circuit day 10 (Thorong-La pass & Muktinath) [Nepal]
Thorung High Camp ‐ Mar 2, 2018

9th day. We still felt good after the night, making sure we drink plenty of water all the time, and that we take deep breaths to keep our brain cells alive! (a bit too much for Elena at once who fell "high" with too much oxygen :-D). So we went up to the freezing High Camp at almost 4900 meters, last outpost before the Thorong La pass. The last bit was very steep and very hard to finish. :-O

+14

1st & 2nd March - Annapurna circuit days 8 & 9 (Manang to Thorong-La High Camp) [Nepal]
Ledar ‐ Mar 1, 2018

8th day. After 3 nights spent above 3500 meters, we decided to continue to the halmet of Letdar at 4200 meters. Our pace was getting slower and slower with the air pressure being much lower. After Manang (or maybe Gunsang), there are no more roads or even tracks for the off-road vehicles. So the few tea houses or restaurants on the way are supplied by porters or small caravans of horses. Letdar is very small - a bunch of guesthouses really. The temperature after sunset falls really quickly and r [...]
eally low. There were still some patches of snow and ice around the place.
Manang ‐ Feb 27, 2018

6th day. This morning's hike was the most beautiful of our whole trek through the Annapurnas' circuit. The sun was shining (burning!) through a perfect blue sky and the view of the Annapurnas on the opposite side of the valley was just spectacular! After a very hard hike up in zigzags, we had a very chilled tea break in Ghyaru where we tried the most delicious apple fritters ever! :-O We had lunch in Ngawal which also offered a similar beautiful view. In the afternoon however we took the decisio [...]
n to continue all the way to Manang, which was very long and tiring in the end! We should probably have taken a break in Ngawal and gone through the longer (but nicer) upper trail the next day. Reaching Manang before sunset after 20km, we had the impression to arrive in a far-west / cow-boy ghost town: very quiet, with many restaurants, shops and guesthouses closed! :-D We found a place with hot water for the first day (but still no power); however we heard the neighbouring hotel had a generator running in the evening so we went there the next day to charge our phones (and hoping for WiFi / Internet, but since the area has no power the communication towers didn't work either). On that "rest day" in Manang we went to visit the abandonned monastery in Braka, the Gangapurna lake, and a stupa nearby.

+10

28th February - Annapurna circuit day 7 (a day around Manang) [Nepal]

+16

27th February - Annapurna circuit day 6 (Pisang Upper to Manang) [Nepal]
Upper Pisang ‐ Feb 26, 2018

5th day trekking. After the overnight snowfall and a very cold morning walking up the narrow valley and getting our feet wet, we finally reached upper grounds were the sun warmed us up. The mountain scenery became also very nice, especially when we switched to the north side of the river on the way to Upper Pisang, staying there for the night at 3600 meters. This is our first day without power; thankfully, we could use the guesthouse's solar panels and battery to charge our phone.

+11

26th February - Annapurna circuit day 5 (Koto to Pisang Upper) [Nepal]
Koto ‐ Feb 25, 2018

We climbed a little harder on our 4th day, up to Koto at 2600 meters. We regretfully decided to skip the village of Nache in the morning, but went through Odar, another beautiful village on a quiet hill away from the road and the river. We were aiming to reach Chame on that day but the rain made us stop in the village just before.
Karte ‐ Feb 24, 2018

Continuing through the Marsyangdi river valley, our third day ends in the quiet hamlet of Karte, at 1850 meters. We are starting to feel the cold biting us in our room, the outside toilets/bathroom, and even the dining room. Apparently it's not cold enough for the locals to burn their precious wood. A strong rain battered the metal roof in the evening, which transformed into snow an hour later.

+6

25th February - Annapurna circuit day 4 (Karte to Koto) [Nepal]

+9

24th February - Annapurna circuit day 3 (Jagat to Karte) [Nepal]
Jagat ‐ Feb 23, 2018

End of our 2nd day. Nice hike through a few hills and the side of the mountain, through the nice villages of Lampata (tea break) and Bahundanda (lunch break, dhal bhat again! :-)). We are now at 1300 meters.

+13

23rd February - Annapurna circuit day 2 (Ngadi to Jagat) [Nepal]
Ngadi ‐ Feb 22, 2018

Our first day's hike ended there, a little over 900 meters above sea level. Our highlight of the day was in Bhulbhule: an amazing dhal bhat a local lady cooked for us for just 100 rupees (1$) each, with tea! :-)

+6

22nd February - Annapurna circuit day 1 (Besisashar to Ngadi) [Nepal]
Besisahar ‐ Feb 21, 2018

Where we began our two-week trek through the Annapurnas circuit. We are now at 750 meters.
Bandipur ‐ Feb 19, 2018

Very cute, clean, and peaceful village on top of a hill at about 1000 meters. A popular location for a big cave on the way down to Bimalnagar, local trekking, or paragliding.

+14

19th & 20th February - Bandipur [Nepal]
Bimalnagar

Before our trekking adventure through the Annapurnas circuit, we went for a "little walk" of over two hours and 600 or 700 meters up from Bimalnagar to Bandipur, a beautiful and quiet village where we spent two days. We wanted to leave a day before but a Maoists' protest disturbed public transportation.
Kathmandu ‐ Feb 16, 2018

Kathmandu is still the only landing point in Nepal for international flights. Compared with all other large cities and capitals we've been to, it's quite a shocker: very very much traffic, still no easy way to go from the airport to the touristic city centre (more than 30 minutes by taxi), no modern infrastructure such as trains / trams / metro / bus lanes / tunnels / even traffic lights. We were glad not to have the car for visiting this country. The Thamel area (touristic, with all the guesth [...]
ouses and shops you can imagine) is quite pleasant to discover and spend time around - you can really find everything (but beware of fakes, and remember prices are very negociable!). The food is very good and diverse, with lots of vegetarian options; we were quite pleased. Out of the Thamel area, things are definitely more local and wild; walking is more difficult and the air isn't great to breathe (we bought some masks to make it easier for our lungs). But we found it quite interesting, especially in terms of prices. And even though people speak less or no english, they seem more friendly and interested in us, which gives some local charm to it. Poverty and dirt can be quite shocking in many places. In general, clearly many things are in desperate need of improvement (public infrastructure especially). But maybe this unique chaotic atmosphere is why we liked it so much! :-)

+47

16th to 18th February - Kathmandu [Nepal]
Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia

It's time to fly away again! :-) This time, we are leaving South East Asia for good. While our car is being shipped to a surprise destination, we are going to enjoy a month in Nepal with our backpacks (and warm clothes! It's been a while!). Between Kathmandu and Pokhara, with the majestic Annapurna mountains on our way, we'll only be able to show pictures next month as we don't have our computer. We'll still try to update our locations.
Melaka ‐ Feb 12, 2018

A few more rest days spent in Melaka and at our friend Tim's guesthouse.

+5

15th & 16th February - Chinese New Year in Melaka [Malaysia]
Kuala Lumpur airport
Malé, Maldives

Flying back to Malaysia.
Fulidhoo ‐ Feb 4, 2018

After 3:30 hours on a boat over a rather rough sea, our headaches relieved slowly as we were kindly greeted and brought to our guesthouse from the Fulidhoo jetty. They even insisted to carry all our bags on a wheelbarrow! :-D The sun was shining and showed the beauty of the island from a few kilometers away, with its turquoise water surroundings, coconut trees and white sand beaches. It is the type of paradise we were dreaming of for our "little honey holiday". :-) It's an island of about 250 i [...]
nhabitants, quite friendly, which opened its first guesthouses just a few years ago. So the atmosphere was really calm, local, and relaxing. The Maldives being a Muslim country, we were quickly shown where the "bikini beach" is - the only place where we could wear bikinis (or swim without shirt for men). A few restaurants offered decent food and you could find all you need in the local shops. From the middle of the main street, due to the island's small size, you could see the sea in all four directions!

+43

4th to 11th February - Fulidhoo [Maldives]
Malé ‐ Feb 3, 2018

Not much choice but to land there. It's probably the only international airport of the country. While we saw many tourists being brought to their private speedboats probably bringing them to their luxury resorts / private islands, we chose the "budget way": the next public ferry service to Fulidhoo would be the next day, so we had to stay in Malé, just a 10-minute boat shuttle away from the airport. Arriving there, we understood why most tourists get the private airport pick-up directly to the [...]
ir resorts... Malé felt overwhelmingly busy, every square meter of the island occupied by buildings, people, motorbikes and even cars - we really were shocked that people need so many motored vehicles on a 2km long island! :-O In short, not a welcoming place at all; rather far from the dreamy Maldives you picture. And worst of all, neither of our two bank cards were able to withdraw any money from any ATMs! Luckily we had 100 US dollars to save us, and the guesthouse manager on Fulidhoo accepted a bank transfer for payment. We couldn't wait to get out of this island in the morning.
Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia

We were really in need of good weather and decent beach time, and at this time of the year our latest beach times in Thailand and Malaysia were rather disappointing. With the monsoon affecting the region for a few more weeks, our best bet was... nevermind the price... the Maldives! :-D
Melaka ‐ Jan 25, 2018

One historic city of Malaysia we've been told not to miss. Quite a relaxing place, with a lot of street art and some nice pedestrian areas, good food, a busy night market 3 days per week, many museums, etc... One favourite places were the open-air olympic-sized swimming pool, Indian restaurants, and the friendly SunB Guesthouse - with its manager Tim and cat Kopi - where we met a good few nice people. We loved going out to share various delicious meals with our host and the people we met.

+27

25/01 to 03/02 - Melaka [Malaysia]
Kuala Lumpur ‐ Jan 23, 2018

Back there to meet some friends. We finally got our back-door opening mechanism fixed/replaced, and visiting a tiny bit more of Kuala Lumpur.

+3

23rd & 24th January - Back in KL [Malaysia]
Lumut
Pulau Pangkor ‐ Jan 19, 2018

Really nice and peaceful island. Not so many tourists so it feels quite local in comparison with many islands we've been to. The beaches are fairly nice but the water is not so great. We had the pleasure to meet hornbills in freedom for the first time! We stayed at a guesthouse where the owner feeds them fruits, so obviously they come back every day around 6:30pm (usual feeding time). They also recognize their feeder's whistle so some of them also show up when he calls at different times! :-D Th [...]
e jungle of the island is quite dense and has interesting wildlife: besides the hornbills and usual monkeys, we saw many birds of prey, a huge wild boar (Muslims don't hunt them), squirrels, and for the first time we even saw an owl! The only species we wished were not there are those damn mosquitos and leeches! :-()

+8

19th to 23rd January - Pangkor island [Malaysia]
Lumut

Getting the ferry to Pangkor island.
Penang Island again! ‐ Jan 12, 2018

Our car got into trouble again and we needed to go back to the same mechanic in Penang for a few days. We were quite lucky with the weather - we only had some showers in the evenings. We of course went back to Tony's fantastic guesthouse and explored a little more of the area.

+18

12th to 18th January - Back in Penang [Malaysia]
Cameron Highlands ‐ Jan 9, 2018

After taking a little bit of altitude through the hills and forests, we reach the Cameron Highlands, an area with cooler temperatures that started to develop interest in the colonial times. There are lots of greenhoused strawberry plantations, many nice old tea plantations, hiking trails, and a lot of Land Rover Defenders! Our friends were not short of spare parts there! :-D

+24

9th & 10th January - Cameron Highlands [Malaysia]
Ipoh ‐ Jan 7, 2018

Some car trouble got us stuck here for the night, but we were glad because we had quite a nice time with the young guesthouse's owner, who was really friendly and keen to make us discover the local food.

+4

8th January - Some food pictures from Ipoh [Malaysia]
George Town & Penang island ‐ Jan 3, 2018

For the 2nd biggest city in Malaysia, George Town at first seemed quite intimidating. Coming from the northern bridge, we see a large pack of tall buildings getting higher and higher as we approach the island of Penang. The traffic is quite busy and motorcycles pass you at high speed from left and right. George Town itself has been well preserved (maybe because of its Unesco protected status). Around the center, the buildings are much lower, the streets are not as busy and it's actually quite ni [...]
ce to walk around. There are plenty of cafés, restaurants, street vendors, temples, museums and an original mix of street art. However it was not too long until we felt the urge again to espace from the city and explore the quieter surroundings in the west of the island. Oh, and we met again with Olivier & Henri with their camper! :-D We also met an Italian biker who drove all the way from Italy in 3 months only - quite a rush! :-O

+12

6th & 7th January - West & south of Penang island [Malaysia]

+17

3rd to 5th January - George Town & around [Malaysia]

Dusky leaf monkeys around Penang Hill [Malaysia]

Waiting for the rain to calm down in George Town [Malaysia]
Kangar ‐ Jan 2, 2018

Easy border crossing: 2 minutes to stamp out, 5 minutes to stamp into Malaysia with the car's carnet - no car nor bags check or any other trouble... We realize that the last border where customs have checked/scanned our vehicles was between Kazakhstan and China 6 months ago! :-O South-East Asia is quite easy in the end. We still had 20 ringgit from our previous quick layover in Kuala Lumpur, and this was more than enough for a delicious Malaysian meal at a roadside buffet. The rest of the day wa [...]
s spent trying to get wifi, cash (successful after a few ATM tries), and a local SIM card to make our life easier. Unfortunately the same sad weather is following us since after Christmas, and the town where we stayed didn't have much to offer. Because of the weather, the costs of bringing our car there, and the reviews we read about it, we decided not to go to Langkawi island.

+3

2nd January - 1st day in Malaysia
Satun, Thailand ‐ Jan 1, 2018

Our Thai visa expiring on the 2nd January, we needed to rush down south. But we still had time to enjoy a hot spring waterfall bath (with many other locals taking advantage of their day off). Really nice! :-) But Elena swore that it would be the last hot spring... She can't take it when it's also really hot outside! :-D

1st January - Thailand's extreme south
Krabi ‐ Dec 30, 2017

Nice & busy city. We enjoyed the night markets and street food, and of course New Year's Eve on the beach a few kilometers away. The beaches were full of people (locals and tourists), fireworks and mini hot air balloons - we made sure we had ours too! :-D Happy New Year!

+17

30-31 December - to & around Krabi [Thailand]

Passing to 2018 from Noppharat Thara beach (Thailand)

Trying to take off our hot air mini-balloon for New Year 2018

Thai people like huge sound & light systems in their cars! :-D
Khao Sok ‐ Jan 29, 2018

Beautiful road again from Ranong to Khao Sok. We met two elephants on the way - one male was eating on the roadside (not sure if he was a wild one), one female a few kilometers further was going home followed by her mahout. We stayed in an amazing bungalow bordered by the jungle/mountain and regretted we couldn't stay longer for some activities.

+8

29th December - on the way to Khao Sok [Thailand]

Nice views on the jungle in Ranong province [Thailand]
Ranong ‐ Dec 28, 2017

Driving day again with the usual sightseeing breaks. The road from the gulf of Thailand to Ranong was quite nice. We felt like driving through a Laotian or Indonesian jungle, with the difference of having roads in an excellent condition here! (many of them even better than in western Europe)

+11

28th December - on the way to Ranong [Thailand]
Bang Saphan ‐ Dec 27, 2017

We need to be out of Thailand on the 2nd January at the latest, so we continue to drive south with a bit of sightseing (and lunch break of course). Elena's birthday present was buying a bucket of corn to feed a colony of macaques at a temple! :-) We also saw for the first time dusky leaf monkeys in the wild, on the roadside - darker colour, with white marks around the eyes looking like glasses. The day was ended with a good pizza at a restaurant and a nice stay in a quiet jungle-side guesthouse.

+9

27th December - on the way to Bang Saphan [Thailand]

Elena's birthday celebration feeding macaques! :-D [Thailand]
Cha-am ‐ Dec 26, 2017

After our elephant Christmas time, we only have about a week to leave the country... our 30-day passport stamp is quickly coming to an end! The weather is not as good this morning: no sun, not very warm, and rain started in the morning. So driving today is maybe not a bad activity, since we stay dry in the car! :-D We drove until the beach town of Cha-am (not our favourite), with two stops at a popular floating market and a town park.

+7

26th December - on the way to Cha-am [Thailand]

The 3 cutest cat brothers/sisters ever! [Thailand]
Ganesha Park ‐ Dec 24, 2017

This is one of the days we will never forget. The owner François founded the Ganesha Park with the idea to rescue elephants from the life of slavery they endure in "Elephant riding" or "Elephant trekking" camps. They now have 7 and will soon have 8. They offer tourists or volunteers the opportunity to discover these amazing creatures, approach them and enjoy some time with them ethically. So we did this on Christmas day! :-) They are very impressive and can scare you at the beginning, but the e [...]
lephants here are all female (less unpredictable), have been used to be with humans all their life or almost, and have a strong relationship with their loving mahouts. After a few minutes or hours, you feel them as adorable giants pets. They even purr like cats sometimes! :-D Apart from the elephants, the Ganesha Park has other adorable animals: 5 dogs, 3 cats, and best friends Wendy (a female macaque, found alone when still a baby) and Kebab (a goat). The staff is also lovely and make you really feel at home. It was a fantastic experience and we would highly recommend you to go there if you ever want to meet the Asian elephants. Please never pay people who use elephants as "trekking vehicles" and even less if they have chairs attached to them! It is fine to be on an elephant if it's done right: on their shoulders, if they are not forced to do it, and at their own pace. Besides their own two or three tons, your weight just feels like if you were carrying a little cat. Visit ganeshapark.com for more info!

+20

25th December - a day with elephants [Thailand]
Kanchanaburi ‐ Dec 23, 2017

We were finally happy to leave Bangkok... It took us one or two hours to leave the capital as there was so much confusion between the GPS directions, all the "double" and one-way streets. :-O While we were waiting to spend our Christmas with Elephants at the Ganesha Park (very excited!), we walked around Kanchanaburi and visited its old "Death Railway" bridge and World War II museum.

+12

24th December - Kanchanaburi [Thailand]
Bangkok ‐ Dec 15, 2017

Bangkok was quite an amazing surprise: it is definitely our favourite big city we've travelled through so far, along with Istanbul. Apart from the main attractions, which are nice but expensive and overcrowded, we tried to discover another Bangkok. We went to lose ourselves into the little streets, markets and parks, watched some surprising animals living in the city: big water lizards roaming in the canals or sunbathing on the riverbanks, kingfishers perched on trees above the water and waiting [...]
for they preys, squirrels jumping between trees or crossing the streets through electric lines, and even a little monkey living freely in a neighborhood. It is lovely to see that people take care of cats and dogs who seem to eat as they please (we didn't see any skinny or miserable one); people even dress them up! :-D We found most people nice, smily and helpful. An off-duty policeman was happy to spend around 15 minutes to advise us on where to go and what to see, or how much a taxi / tuk-tuk ride should cost. Highlights of our wherabouts are the old town (quite entertaining even though it's a big tourist hub), the amulets market, "Little India" where we could find both busy and quiet streets and our favourite foods, the messy but also interesting Chinatown, and some other "more Thai" quarters, both modern and traditional. Some parks and canals are also surprisingly quiet and very pleasant to be around. You can really find anything you like in Bangkok!... Except parts for our car apparently - the Suzuki garage kept our car for a whole week without being able to do much as our car specs are unknown to them. Not even the filters could be changed! We were quite disappointed about it but they didn't make us pay for the check-up and little repairs. For Christmas, Christophe got himself a new phone (to replace the one that fell in Indonesian salt waters), and Elena got a new tooth (to replace the one pulled out in Hanoi)! :-D

+101

15th to 22nd December - Bangkok [Thailand]

Water monitor swimming in Saranrom Park, Bangkok [Thailand]
Pattaya ‐ Dec 13, 2017

Probably the "Las Vegas of South-East Asia", with many high modern buildings, many party places and old westerners going with young Thai girls. But we didn't find it so bad at all. Traffic was fine, and a large nice park overlooks the city and the Gulf of Thailand. We even met nice people: a Dutch woman who - like us - feeds stray cats, and two other westerners who send stray dogs to the clinic to sterilize them.

+13

13th & 14th December - Around Pattaya [Thailand]
Ban Chang ‐ Dec 12, 2017

+12

11th & 12th December - Rayong coastline [Thailand]

Crabs doing their business on a Thailand beach
Lan Hin Khao beach ‐ Dec 11, 2017

Nice area and nice views, but the beach and water were not up to our standards to take a bath. Lots of trash, and you wouldn't see your feet once the water reached your knees...
Klaeng ‐ Dec 10, 2017

We liked our local community tourism experience so much that we went to see another similar place. This time, it was more about discovering the local fruit orchards and food. They took us on a motorbike/tuktuk tour around the local plantations of coconut, durian, jackfruit, mulberry, banana, plam trees, etc... We went to pick up mulberries, which they later gave us with two bunches of bananas. We had the pleasure to drink and eat a delicous fresh coconut, mulberry juice and wine - we also bought [...]
a bottle. For dinner, as well as for breakfast, we were served seafood (between other things). We've probably never eaten so many shrimps and squids in our life! :-D

+26

10th & 11th December - Klaeng village [Thailand]
Mangroves board walk

A nice long board walk in a large forest with mangroves of all ages, shapes and sizes.

+7

10th December - Mangroves board walk [Thailand]
Chao Lao beach ‐ Dec 8, 2017

We finally found a decent beach area to stay at. Cheap and good accomodation and food, a great beach with good water quality and not much trash, nice locals, and not so many tourists (mostly Thai tourists taking advantage of their days off). We regretted we didn't stay longer than two nights.

+10

8th & 9th December - Chao Lao beach [Thailand]
Ban Nam Chieo ‐ Dec 7, 2017

After being in the middle of the party island tourists' craze for three days, we really felt the need to discover a more quiet environment... We went looking for "the real Thailand". Back near Trat city, a mixed muslim/buddhist community lives and likes to welcome tourists to show them their lifestyle and customs. When we arrived, we were lucky to find a group of Thai tourists who came to visit this community as well. We were invited to join them for dinner, dancing, cooking and hat making. We f [...]
ound this experience very funny and entertaining. The village itself is very cute, built all along the canal and between mangroves (it is actually a little fjord). We stayed in one of those stilt houses.

+23

7th & 8th December - Ban Nam Chieo [Thailand]

Preparing delicious sugar & coconut milk sticks [Thailand]

Delicious coconut roti prepared in Ban Nam Chieo [Thailand]

Muslim / Thai dancing in Ban Nam Chieo [Thailand]
Ferry port to Koh Chang
Ko Chang island ‐ Dec 5, 2017

We were expecting to find a quiet, relaxing tropical island with nice beaches, but our hopes were quickly brought down. Driving down on the west side, all the few kilometers from north to south are fully occupied by luxury hotels and resorts, most beaches are private, or overcrowded, and not even that nice. "When you're in Thailand and expect to be in Indonesia..." :-D Traffic is also quite bad for such a little island. And even more than we noticed in Cambodia, we are seeing a lot of western me [...]
n with very young Thai girls; Thailand is indeed well know for sex tourism - especially in coastal areas, islands and party places. Thankfully, the island is a lot more quiet on the eastern side - more jungle, and the beaches are replaced by stones and mangroves.

+10

6th & 7th December - Koh Chang island [Thailand]
Ferry port to Koh Chang

We were curious to visit the 2nd biggest island of Thailand, so we took a ferry to Koh Chang with our car (first time on an island for our car) - there are indeed roads in a good state on the island too! :-)
Trat ‐ Dec 4, 2017

We just took it easy on the first day in Thailand and only went to the next major town. Thailand straight away appeared to us as a developped country - almost like home! Great road infrastructure, modern buildings everywhere and a great choice of everything to buy and eat. There are even large supermarkets / shopping centers!
Koh Kong, Cambodia ‐ Dec 3, 2017

Back in Koh Kong before entering a new country: Thailand! We enjoyed some good food and brought the car to be washed.

+4

29th November & 3rd December - Koh Kong [Cambodia]
O'Soam ‐ Nov 30, 2017

Another remote town with an eco-tourism center. This time, we managed to reach it from the south - the road was indeed in a much better state than from the north, and also quite scenic through the jungle! It's a beautiful area around a reservoir, with much jungle, plains, plantations, etc... We were lucky to meet Mr Lim and stay at his guesthouse. He's a very energetic middle-aged man who helps his village, and gets local and foreign volunteers to participate in his diverse projects. At this tim [...]
e, he was starting to build a school who will soon be used for teaching English and computer skills. It's quite impressive how in one day the main wooden frame of the building quickly stood up; okay, we helped a little carrying the wood from the boat and digging the foundations! :-) We met other travellers who were also really enjoying this quiet and cooler part of Cambodia. We went for an interesting guided hike through the jungle, grasslands and rice fields in a protected area for the critically endengered Siamese crocodiles (we didn't see any). Others went to spend a night in the jungle, or went to discover some remote waterfalls.

+27

30th November to 3rd December - O'Soam & around [Cambodia]

Jungle road from Koh Kong to O'Soam [Cambodia]
Koh Kong ‐ Nov 29, 2017

A good town we used as a stop-over. We just went for a walk through the nearby mangrove forest and enjoyed some western food - after so much rice 3 times a day...! :-O When we returned there on the 3rd December we also decided to offer a good much-deserved wash to our car before entering Thailand. :-)
Chi-Phat ‐ Nov 27, 2017

A quite remote and very cute village that has surprisingly quite much to offer to tourists... thanks to the presence of a community-based tourism organisation. Besides the development of basic needs in the village, the eco-tourism seem to have a positive effect on people towards foreigners: everybody smiles to you and says hello or comes around for a short conversation, without expecting to sell you anything or beg for money. At the time we were there, the village power generator wasn't working [...]
so every house of business worked as much as possible during the day and switched on their own generators when needed for limited hours.

+12

27th to 29th November - Chi Phat village [Cambodia]
Sihanouk / Otres ‐ Nov 25, 2017
Koh Ta Kiev ‐ Nov 24, 2017

Little beach break on this quiet island where we camped one night.

+3

24th & 25th November - Koh Ta Kiev [Cambodia]

Little cliff jump north of Koh Ta Kiev island [Cambodia]
Sihanouk ‐ Nov 22, 2017
Kirikom National Park ‐ Nov 21, 2017

A little haven of peace a little in altitude with very nice temperatures. We enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere near the little rivers, lakes and temples all around those pine tree hills that reminded us a little the mediterranean forests. One of the past Kings had a home there, and it seems to be a popular pic-nic destination now. Fortunately, it wasn't the weekend so we were almost alone. The only negatives are the 5$ entrance fee for foreigners and how much money most local vendors try to get fr [...]
om you... more than double what it's worth, for everything! Always always ask and negociate the prices before, or you better go away if either you or they don't understand.

+16

22nd November - Kirikom National Park [Cambodia]
Udong

Little break from driving. We went to walk and view the nice temples and monuments around.

+7

21st November - Temples in Udong [Cambodia]
Kampong Luong

Impressive floating village (or little city) populated by about 7000 inhabitants. It has everything: grocery stores and boat-riding vendors, phones shops, mechanics and welders, boat dealers, churches, temples, a school, a gas station, etc... If we were dropped in the middle of it with a canoe, we would probably take hours to find our way back.

+21

21st November - Kampong Luong floating village [Cambodia]

Boat ride through Kampong Luong floating town [Cambodia]
Attempt to go to O'Soam ‐ Nov 20, 2017

The wet weather from the past two days unfortunately made it too difficult and risky to reach the Stung Atai Dam reservoir with our car - at least from the north. After almost two hours of 4x4 driving in 1st and 2nd gears, we were forced to turn back as the terrain became dangerously hilly and slippery. Unfortunately our car does not have the appropriate tyres or enough ground clearance for that.

+5

20th November - attempt to go to O'Soam [Cambodia]
Krakor ‐ Nov 19, 2017

Little town near a quite large floating village one of our hosts advised to visit. Unfortunately the weather wasn't great so we just spent a night there and went away the next day to another destination (which we didn't reach either because of the weather).
Battambang ‐ Nov 18, 2017

As the 2nd biggest town of Cambodia, it appeared to us a lot more quiet and easy to drive as Siem Reap. Even the town center wasn't congested and had plenty of parking spaces available. We enjoyed visiting the nearby cave temples.

+18

19th November - around Battambang [Cambodia]
Angkor temples ‐ Nov 17, 2017

Probably the most popular historic site of South-East Asia, it is the symbol and pride of Cambodia. The complex is indeed very impressive and multiple days or maybe weeks may be required to discover it all... but one day at 37$ each was enough for us. The crowds of people (it's a real "mass-tourism factory"!), sun and heat eventually made us escape the site at 4pm. Our last visited temple was the famous "Angkor Wat" which you see on most travel pictures and the Cambodian flag, but we were so ove [...]
rwhelmed by all the site's "challenges" that we didn't fully appreciate it - and our camera had no more battery, and we forgot the phone in the car! :-D

+47

17th November - Angkor temples [Cambodia]
Siem Reap ‐ Nov 16, 2017

With the majestic Angkor temple complex besides and the busiest international airport of the country, it is the main gateway for tourism in Cambodia. We finished our Christmas shopping around the town center's vibrant night market where we also had dinner, and we sent our parcels away to Europe. Driving in that city is hell, so we found a quiet countryside guesthouse owned by a very nice Cambodian lady and her German husband - with lovely food and a friendly dog family (parents & puppies)! :-)

+4

16th November - Siem Reap & around [Cambodia]

+9

16th November - On the road to Siem Reap [Cambodia]

Game of shuttlecock on the streets of Siem Reap [Cambodia]
Phumi Môréal ‐ Nov 15, 2017

Cute little village near the Koh Ker temples complex. It was either "market day" or "market time" of the day, as the two main streets were full of vendors everywhere. We observed how they make coconut milk (never saw this machine before)!

+3

15th November - Phumi Môréal village [Cambodia]
Koh Ker temples

Much less known and popular besides the famous Angkor and Preah Vihear sites, this temple complex probably deserves just as much attention... The structures may not be as impressive, but the peaceful atmosphere, really few tourists & vendors, and the much lower entrance fee make it quite special.

+17

15th November - Koh Ker temple complex [Cambodia]
Stung Treng ‐ Nov 14, 2017

After an hour drive at night on a dark dusty road, we reached the first town after the border for a well-deserved good night of sleep. The Mekong becomes even bigger at this point where the Sekong river flows into it. People are quite friendly, and a lot of things are offered at the shops and markets.
Laos-Cambodia border, Laos

After another 9 or 10 hours of bus, we walked out to get our car in Laos. Nobody stopped us for passport control on the Laos side... anyone could easily enter the country illegally- as Christophe did for 5 minutes to get the car. :-O Love Laos! :-D The Cambodian customs officer finalized our paperwork and tried to get 50$ for this job. He passed us his phone with somebody supposedly from the "Ministry of Tourism" who told us "all of that paperwork" will cost us 50$. When finished, the total cost [...]
on the invoice was clearly showing 55.000 KHR (=14$). So we gave a 20$ note and patiently waited that he gives us back the change (slowly and reluctantly, with a very sad face). Finally, after all that hassle, we were free to go! :-)
Phnom Penh, Cambodia ‐ Nov 13, 2017

We did well to come back to Phnom Penh early enough as our driving authorization was ready a day earlier.
Kampot ‐ Nov 10, 2017

Busy city contrasted with beautiful and peaceful surroundings around the rivers, sea, rice and salt fields, mangrove forests, etc... Higher grounds and colder temperatures are just a 30-minute drive away to Bokor mountain.

+28

10th to 11th November - Kampot & around [Cambodia]

Exploring the mangroves at night between Kep & Kampot [Cambodia]

Music near Lok Yeay Mao monument on Bokor mountain [Cambodia]
Kep ‐ Nov 8, 2017

Also known as "Kep-sur-Mer", since colonial times the French have always loved this coastal area of Cambodia, so much that many of them still come in to open new businesses. Life seems peaceful and slow-paced here; there is even a large man-made beach in the middle of the peninsula. The area is quite famous for its seafood (especially crab) and pepper. We didn't miss going to the "crab market" for a delicious lunch - best crab and and squids ever!

+17

8th & 9th November - Kep [Cambodia]
Phnom Penh ‐ Nov 5, 2017

We survived three days in this big busy city. We've been told that our document for driving our car in Cambodia will be ready a week later on the 14th November (only one person can sign it and was away and busy all that week). So we quickly checked out the must-dos: the central and night markets, the vibrant city center, the royal palace (from outside only), and the sad "killing fields" - memorial & audio-tour regarding the terrible genocide that happened 40 years ago.

+16

6th & 7th November - Phnom Penh [Cambodia]
Laos-Cambodia border, Laos

This is as far as we could drive our car for now! :-( Cambodia no longer accept the international "Carnet de Passages en Douane" since a few months and now require a permission from the Ministry of Tourism. So we left our car at the border and took the next bus to Phnom Penh for that super exciting paperwork to do... :-(
Nakasong
Don Det ‐ Nov 2, 2017

+16

1st to 4rd November - 4000 islands [Laos]
Hang Khon

Most southern town of Don Khon island (there's a bridge linking Don Det and Don Khon islands). Cambodian waters are just one kilometer further south! It's very nice to cycle though the little tracks of these two islands.
Li Phi waterfalls

We rented two bicycles and went to the Li Phi waterfalls on the Mekong river. Not that impressive and not really worth the high entrance fee, but we had a nice bike ride and walk there.
Don Det ‐ Nov 1, 2017

The town of Don Det, in the north of Don Det island, is quite small, but everything is there to accomodate any tourist's demands: luxury resorts of budget bungalows, any type of food, transport and tour operators (even for attractions that are back inland), and parties at different places every day. So it's missing a bit of local charm in our opinion, but we found and enjoyed a nice 3€ bungalow on the river a bit south of town - the family owning the place was really nice and even the food was [...]
cheap and good! :-)
Nakasong / 4000 islands

Nakasong is probably the main port for going through the "4000 islands"; the town isn't really attractive but near the water, it's full of activity and merchants sell everything that island residents and boat owners may need. We could park our car for 15.000 kip a day and took an little boat to Don Det island - just a 5 or 10 minute trip. The evening atmosphere was very pleasant and peaceful, with orange/red lights remaining on the horizon from the sunset.
Phu Salao, Golden Buddha ‐ Oct 31, 2017

Temple and big Buddha on top of a hill overlooking Pakse and the Mekong. The monks there seem to really love cats, rabbits and dogs as there were so many of them around - and we could see they were well fed! :-)

+8

31st October - Phu Salao & big golden Buddha [Laos]
Wat Phu

So in the morning we got our car fixed, and in the afternoon, on the road to the Vat Phou historic site, a stone hit and cracked our windscreen... :-( We can still drive and wait for replacing it though. Vat Phu is a ruined Khmer Hindu temple complex almost 1000 years old listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage. The temple and surroundings are calm and feel quite mystical - we liked it.

+10

31st October - Vat Phu ancien temple & city [Laos]
Tad Gneuang waterfall ‐ Oct 30, 2017

We then continued south to reach another waterfall, and decided to take a 37km shortcut (instead of 78km on the main loop road)... not so bad at the beginning, but it took us nearly 2 hours in total as the "road" was more like a 4x4 challenge track for most of it! :-D This resulted in feeling problems with the car's steering mechanism; on the next day in Pakse, the mechanic found that one metal piece holding the engine was cracked and bent, letting the engine come against the steering system. Th [...]
at piece was soldered and straightened, and hopefully will last.

+3

30th October - More waterfalls [Laos]

Huge preying mantis on the Bolaven plateau [Laos]
Mr Vieng coffee place

Instead of viewing all the waterfalls of the Bolaven plateau, we thought it would be nice to visit a coffee plantation as coffee seems to be cultivated everywhere there. After an interesting little tour by an organic coffee maker, we tasted really the most delicious coffee we've ever had! To demonstrate his plantation was organic, he showed us a branch fully infested of those aggressive big red ants, cut off the branch and crushed all the ants with his bare hands (instead of using non-organic pr [...]
oducts)! :-O

+2

30th October - Mr Vieng's coffee plantation [Laos]
Pha Suam waterfall & park

+6

30th October - Pha Suam waterfall & park [Laos]
Pakse ‐ Oct 29, 2017

A good base for touring the nearby Bolaven plateau and visiting one of the most important archeologic sites in Laos.
Thakhek ‐ Oct 28, 2017

Since we spent the whole morning in beautiful Konglor, we only made it to Thakhek that day. It was the perfect excuse to return to our favourite pizza place in Asia so far: "Patalaï"! :-)
Konglor ‐ Oct 27, 2017

We wanted to spent one more night with Sibylle and enjoy the beauty and peace of Konglor village once more, so we went back there for a second time! :-) It looked very different than 3 months before: the little green rice sprouts became high and yellow, and all mostly harvested... the barriers around the fields have been brought down and buffalos were free to roam into the fields to eat the rests and generate the "compost" for the next plantation. The muddy roads became very dusty, and people we [...]
re enjoying swims in the river under the hot and sunny weather.

+8

28th & 29th October - back in Konglor [Laos]
Ban Nakhai

Our plan was going south towards central Laos while avoiding going through Vientiane. So just when it became too busy and populated we took a left turn and enjoyed some nice backroads in the north-east of the capital. Night was coming and there wasn't much accomodation around, and the few ones we saw weren't really attractive. We were actually looking for adventure, hoping to sleep in a rural village or maybe under our tent. Before nightfall, after asking a few locals for a place to sleep (witho [...]
ut success), we spotted a remote temple on MapsMe not far from us, and decided to give it a try before looking for a camping spot. The monks were actually very welcoming and accepted to host us for a night (or more if we wanted) without hesitation. We met a young buddhist woman there who was also a guest for a couple of days (for meditation) and spoke good English - this helped us to understand and get around. We had mattresses and mosquito nets on the deck open to the outside, where we fell asleep listening to the forest sounds. We even had hot showers, and were invited to participate at the evening (6:30pm) and morning (4:30am) prayers - yes, everybody was awake at 4am! :-) Monks only eat breakfast and lunch (no dinner), but a lady who works at the temple came later that night and prepared a large delicious meal for us! On the next morning at 6am the monks were driven out to the village for the almsgiving ceremony and returned with their jars full of rice - which they had for breakfast with other vegetables. Once they were finished, we were allowed to finish the rest of their meals. Astonished by the kindness and generosity of the monks (and staff - or volunteers), we went to see the head monk with the Thai lady for leaving a donation, and went for a nice walk around the area before hitting the road again. This seems to be a fairly recent temple and we were apparently the first (non-Thai) foreigners to show up there.

+5

27th October - night & walk at the temple [Laos]
Tha Heua ‐ Oct 25, 2017

For the first time in a month and a half, our car started without issues and is going on a road trip again, and Sybille joins us for a few days ! :-) We were looking at the map around at that intriguing northern area of the Nam Ngum reservoir, and noticed some guest houses in the south of Tha Heua. This was a real mind-blowing discovery, an amazing hidden location that made us spend a lot of money a bit too quickly for a bungalow on the water, a swimming pool and free kayaking! :-O In the mornin [...]
g, we met another "Christophe", a French expat, animal saviour and rights activist who manages a wildlife sanctuary. We couldn't resist the cuteness of his recued bear Bouba playing around with a baby monkey. We're really admirative of his long battle with some fake animal NGOs who make millions with fake donations, animal trade and cruelty in the background... More info: http://freebouba.org/

+11

25th & 26th October - Tha Heua [Laos]

Swimming snake on Nam Ngum reservoir near Tha Heua [Laos]
Luang Prabang ‐ Oct 23, 2017

Our "back home" moment in this lovely city. Our friend Sibylle arrived there one day earlier and we joined her again to visit the other side of the river. We stayed at our favourite "Jumbo Guesthouse on the Mekong" with our friend Monica and two other guests from Malaysia... whom we went with to eat a great italian pizza at the best place in town "Secret Pizza"! On the next day, for our last morning in Luang Prabang, we woke up at 5:30am to go witness the Buddhist almsgiving ceremony in the vill [...]
age - monks from the local temple come to collect food from the locals every morning at 6am.

+4

23rd to 25th October - back in L.P. [Laos]
Nong Khiaw ‐ Oct 19, 2017

To get us back to the "civilization", we had to continue by boat one hour down the Nam Ou river until Nong Khiaw. A nice town as well, even though it feels different with the roads and normal traffic. We spent time again with Sybille, our Swiss friend we met in Muang Khua, and other travellers we met between those towns on the Nam Ou river. Our days there remained quite lazy and relaxing, with great food (& Beerlao), a bit of hiking and kayaking.

+12

19th to 22nd October - Nong Kiaw [Laos]
Muang Ngoy ‐ Oct 18, 2017

+15

15th to 19th October - Muang Ngoy & around [Laos]

Rush hour in the forest in Muang Ngoy [Laos]
Huay Bo

A bit further south from Ban Na, this village is about the same size and has two guest houses / restaurants at just 1€ per night for a room (well, bamboo hut)! :-O The walk from Muang Ngoy was beautiful as we took the shortcut through the rice fields and could watch the locals harvesting their rice.

+11

18th October - Walk to Huay Bo [Laos]
Muang Ngoy ‐ Oct 16, 2017
Ban Na

A nice hour walk away from Muang Ngoy brought us to the charming village of Ban Na, where we found the locals very friendly and happy to meet foreigners.

+6

16th October - Walk to Ban Na [Laos]
Muang Ngoy ‐ Oct 15, 2017

Our Austrian friend Monica from Luang Prabang told us about this boat trip on the Nam Ou river from Muang Khua to Muang Ngoy. So we took that boat with five of our newly made friends, and enjoyed the ride with great views on the jungle, mountains and small villages on the way. We were 7 passengers at the beginning but the boat driver often stopped in many locations to pick up and drop off locals (and packages) who use this boat just like we use buses back home. At some point were were over 20 pe [...]
ople on this boat! :-O After four hours and sore bottoms (we were sitting on wooden benches), we finally arrived in the peaceful village of Muang Ngoy and treated ourselves with a bungalow in front of the river. Really nice and peaceful village in a fantastic location! We initially thought of staying one or two nights there, but we loved it so much that we happilly spent four nights. The same "magic" happened to our friends who loved the relaxing atmosphere of that place, so we enjoyed it even more with their company.

+6

15th October - Muang Khua to Muang Ngoy [Laos]
Muang Khua ‐ Oct 14, 2017

For the third time we're entering Laos, we were a bit shocked by how this border post took as much money as they could from us... On the two previous occasions, we only needed to pay for our visa fees (30 + 35 USD ; yes the Italians need to pay more than the French!). But at this border, for every person, there was an extra 1€ for a "visa-processing fee", an extra 2€ for "week-end overtime", and an extra 3€ as a "stamp fee"! :-O The border staff were basically passing our passports betwee [...]
n each office and each of them asked us for all those surprise mandatory fees - or we wouldn't get our passports. We needed to borrow money to friends we made on the bus to get through all that non-sense. One last surprise: when we finally got our passports with visas and stamps in hand, a fourth office asked us to take a "body temperature check" (seriously!), which of course they charge another 1 or 2€. We all laughed out loud and ignored the "temperature check" officer with our well-deserved documents in order. The small town of Muang Khua however is cute and welcomed us well into the country - we felt "back home" again! (apart for a moment when nobody could withdraw money because of a power outage in town) We spent some time with our friends met on the bus and new ones made later during the day.

+5

14th October - Muang Khua [Laos]
Sa Pa, Vietnam ‐ Oct 9, 2017

After many hours of slow scooter riding (except the last two hours on highway and good quality roads), we finally arrived in Sapa. The weather was nice when we arrived, but quite cold as it is a bit high in the mountains. On the next two days however, the weather was miserable... rain all the time! So we didn't do much, except trying to fix our scooter for the last time, and finally selling it for peanuts. :-D On the third day We decided to take a bus to Laos... We had our ticket and were ready [...]
to go in a few hours. And suddenly a familiar face showed up at the hotel's reception: our Uruguayan friend Alex from Nola Guesthouse in Laos! Wow, the world is small! :-D He just arrived in Sapa with the bus from Hanoi and a few Hmong "mama's" were following him to convince him staying with their family in the countryside. Well, it happened that they eventually convinced us! :-D So we got our bus ticket changed, told Alex goodbye, and hiked three hours to reach our host's modest wood & bamboo country home. We spent a lovely evening with that young lady, her husband and two young children (they loved the little toys we brought from town!). The parents cooked really delicious food from the little fire pit in their house, we had some of what they call "happy water" (rice wine) and "happy flower" (guess... it involves breathing in a bamboo water pipe)! :-D On the next day, we went for a long hike down the beautiful valley to Tavan and back up to Sapa to take our night bus to Laos.

+16

10th to 13th October - Sapa & around [Vietnam]

+7

9th October - Cốc Pài to Sa Pa [Vietnam]

Making a heart with fern

Saying hi to children on our way to Sa Pa [Vietnam]

Scenic road between Cốc Pài and Sa Pa [Vietnam]
Cốc Pài ‐ Oct 8, 2017

Many less tourists now on this road, which we can call the "waterfalls road"; there were really waterfalls at every curve, on each side of the valley, and the most scenic rice field terraces we've seen so far. The road conditions however were terrible towards the end, sometimes taking us over an hour to cover 30km... At the beginning, the road was in very good state and we apparently were driving too fast (over 50 km/h) so traffic police pulled us over and asked 700.000 VND (about 26€) as a fi [...]
ne. Seeing that there was no proof (picture or video) and that the police didn't even bother writing a receipt for us, we just said we don't have money and needed to go to an ATM. After 15 minutes or patience staying near the police officers, they finally realised we won't be so easy and let us go.

+13

8th October - Ha Giang to Cốc Pài [Vietnam]

Panorama from the road between Hà Giang and Cốc Pài [Vietnam]
Hà Giang ‐ Oct 7, 2017

Finishing the loop through beautiful roads again. A bit of rain refreshed us and made us drive a bit slower.

+7

7th October - Yên Minh to Ha Giang [Vietnam]
Yên Minh ‐ Oct 6, 2017

From Mèo Vạc, we are actually entering the famous "loop" that is so much advertised for biking in north Vietnam. We understand why, as the views are stunning all the way, we would easily put that road in the top 5 best roads we've driven on our whole trip since January! Mountains, cliffs, high passes, rivers, typical villages and rice field terraces... it has it all! We took a break in a traditional village welcoming tourists, were we could visit a very nice old house, see people dressed with [...]
traditional clothes (we actually see this a bit everywhere in this region), little girls making and selling nice flower crowns, and we tasted their delicious bread made of buckwheat and chestnuts.

+34

6th October - Mèo Vạc to Yên Minh [Vietnam]
Beautiful road with many ethnic villages

Panorama from the old French fort in Đồng Văn [Vietnam]
Mèo Vạc ‐ Oct 5, 2017

We're reaching the extreme north of Vietnam. We feel it (and our scooter feels it too) as the roads start to go up and down quite a lot... Beautiful landscapes and rice terraces are in our every day ride now, along with the local ethnic minorities populating those mountains.

+13

5th October - Bảo Lạc to Mèo Vạc [Vietnam]

Approaching the Mã Pí Lèng pass from the south [Vietnam]

View from the belvedere near Mèo Vạc [Vietnam]

Rice grains being extracted from the plants after harvest [Vietnam]
Bảo Lạc ‐ Oct 4, 2017

We are starting to see a lot of nice things on our way up to the very north. We are also starting to realize that we will be driving long hours each day to cover just over a hundred kilometers...

+14

4th October - Ba Bể to Bảo Lạc [Vietnam]
Ba Bể lake ‐ Oct 1, 2017

Quiet and peaceful place. Our guest house had really great cooks, so we enjoyed the evening meal their offered in the company of other long-term travellers like us.

+11

1st & 2nd October - Ba Bể lake [Vietnam]
Cao Bằng ‐ Sep 30, 2017
Pác Bó

An interesting memorial and museum about Vietnam hero Ho Chi Minh (or as they call him: "Uncle Ho"), and further down lies a beautiful park with a turquoise river and their springs, and the most amazing butterflies we've ever seen.

+23

30th September - Pác Bó and around [Vietnam]
Cao Bằng ‐ Sep 29, 2017
Nguom Ngao cave

Nice cave beautifully lighted, that we could visit on our own. We entered and exited from different points, and walked for maybe one kilometer inside...?

+14

29th September - Nguom Ngao Cave [Vietnam]
Ban Gioc waterfalls

After the most scenic road we've driven in Vietnam so far, we reached the world's 4th largest waterfalls that are between countries' borders. We could say hi to Chinese tourists on the other side of the river, who in turn took pictures of us... of course! Our faces are much better than stupid waterfalls... :-D

+5

29th September - Ban Gioc waterwalls [Vietnam]

+9

29th September - Road to Ban Gioc waterfalls [Vietnam]
Cao Bằng ‐ Sep 28, 2017

We stayed there two nights to take our time to visit some attractions in the area, such as the Ban Gioc waterfalls, the Nguom Ngao cave, a Ho Chi Minh memorial, and the Lê Nin springs and park. The city is nice itself, not overcrowded or too small. There is a huge market, cute little streets with vendors everywhere... we really enjoyed the roasted chestnuts! And we gave ourselves a treat: maybe the best pizza place in Vietnam: "Pedro's Pizza".

+6

28th & 29th September - Cao Bang [Vietnam]
Lạng Sơn ‐ Sep 27, 2017
Tien Yen ‐ Sep 26, 2017

On our way up north, this town had accomodation for us, but not a lot more to offer except a great barbecue restaurant to cheer us up! :-) We managed to spend a day without eating any noodle soup!

26th September - Nice BBQ in Tien Yen [Vietnam]
Cai Bau temple

The pagoda (or temple) is fairly new and nice, but the best we found is the view overlooking Bai Tu Long bay. It was a little bit of a detour off our original itinerary but totally worth it. On the road we found a little restorant not looking particularly nice, but really delicious with no extra proteins in the food (like ants, mosquitos, etc.) which is quite unusual. :-D

+10

26th September - Cai Beu pagoda [Vietnam]

View on Bai Tu Long bay from Cai Bau pagoda [Vietnam]
Hạ Long ‐ Sep 24, 2017

We're back on the main land in Halong, the main location for multiple-day Halong Bay boat tours - but we decided to skip this as we've seen enough on our day tour from Cat Ba. Instead, we went to visit the (modern) west side and (more authentic) east side of the city; it was rainy, but a bit of freshness was very welcome! :-) A friendly Vietnamese young lad (named Viet) and his sister randomly came to meet us when we were having lunch in a shopping center; we had a good converstation and he paid [...]
for our meal without us noticing! :-O We kept in touch and went for some awesome seafood with him and one of his friends (oysters, clams, fish, with a mix of vegetables). They even gave us a lift to our hotel after our "iced yogurt" dessert!

+17

24th & 25th September - Halong city [Vietnam]
Tuan Chau port

Ferry port near Halong city.

+4

24th September - Ferry to Halong city
Gia Luan port

Northern ferry port of Cat Ba island.
Cat Ba ‐ Sep 23, 2017

+19

21st & 22nd September - Cat Ba island [Vietnam]
Ha Long Bay boat tour

One of the best cruises we have ever done! Amazing views with hundreds of islands, eagles everywhere, floating villages, and of course hundreds of other boats enjoying this unique place in the world. There are many hidden beaches and caves. We had a delicious lunch on board of the boat, and a bit of kayaking time; we could navigate between 3 little lagoons connected through caves/tunnels.The only regret is seeing so much trash in the water a bit everywhere.

+29

23rd September - Boat tour of Cat Ba & Halong bays [Vietnam]
Cat Ba ‐ Sep 21, 2017

What a beautiful island! We spent 3 days there, in a nice guesthouse out of the main city called "Sweet Potato", run by a lovely friendly family. We had enough time to quickly explore the island by scooter, and had a great day on the water in the Halong bay.
Phu Long port

We still needed a short ferry trip to reach the island.
Cat Hai port

Since early September this year, we can now drive through the longest bridge in Vietnam on the way to Cat Ba island. It may sound cool, but it's not really scenic, long and boring, and with muddy/rocky parts to drive before. Most importantly, it saves us a long and more expensive ferry trip!
Hai Phong ‐ Sep 20, 2017

Since Christophe isn't an expert motorcyclist, we thought it would be safer to not drive more than 2 or 3 hours in a day, so we stopped in Hai Phong. Quite a large city too with a similar atmosphere - not touristic at all, though!
Hanoi ‐ Sep 16, 2017

So we survived the hurricane and took a 6-hour train to Hanoi with the cheapest option: hard wood chairs! :-# Luckily, there was air conditioning and blankets were provided. It was a pleasant trip anyway, and were quite impressed that the train honked its way through some of the narrowest streets when arriving to Hanoi's central station. You could see shops, restaurants, people and scooters standing less than a meter from the train! We later found ourselves walking on rails when we were looking [...]
for our guest house! :-D We haven't explored much of the city yet, but we really like it! It's very chaotic (noisy, wild traffic, dirty and smelly) but beautiful in this way. All streets in the center look quite the same so we got lost a few times - you really need a map there! As we'll stay in Vietnam for a month and still want our flexibility, we decided to buy a scooter to explore the north of the country.

+34

16th to 20th September - Hanoi [Vietnam]
Vinh ‐ Sep 14, 2017

Another 12 hours on a bus, but more comfortable this time as we had a much bigger bus with beds! :-) The driver was also a real racer, with a lot of energy pressing the horn for slower vehicles ahead to let us pass. Not sure if we'd have gone much faster with our car! :-O Once in the city, we found a decent guesthouse, had to walk at least 1 hour around the city to find a working ATM, and prepared to stay indoors the whole next day! We just learned that one of the most powerful hurricanes in yea [...]
rs, named "Doksuri", was going to hit the country.
Phonsavan, Laos ‐ Sep 12, 2017

So our new adventures bring us to... Vietnam! :-) We applied for an e-Visa online and are hoping to get it on the 14th. We decided to get closer to the border in the meantime and chose Phonsavan... we had the most ridiculously slow bus in our lives: 9 hours for 260 km, sitting in an overloaded old rusty small bus, without many stops! :-O Foreign (or at least European) cars can't enter Vietnam freely (a little like in China), so we left our Vitara in Luang Prabang for another month. We've also [...]
been told driving cars or larger vehicles in Vietnam can be quite a nightmare with its infamous traffic.

14th September - Sleeping bus from Phonsavan [Laos] to Vinh [Vietnam]
Luang Prabang ‐ Sep 8, 2017

We kind of felt "back home" in Luang Prabang, in a town we know now quite well, with our car, and with a new 30-day visa! :-) Let's take a little break here and decide on what's next.

10th September - Chilling in Luang Prabang [Laos]
Kuala Lumpur airport, Malaysia ‐ Sep 7, 2017

Connecting through Kuala Lumpur on our way back to Laos.
Lombok International Airport, Indonesia
Kuta ‐ Sep 5, 2017

At the end of our month of "holidays" in Indonesia, we went back to take it easy in Kuta, enjoying the beaches, surfing, food and drinks, etc... :-)

+2

5th to 7th September - Back in Kuta [Lombok, Indonesia]
Sambelia ‐ Sep 4, 2017
Petagan, Pasir, Pasaran & Kondo islands

We felt quite privileged that day to afford a boat for just the two of us with two crew members and snorkeling equipment for the whole afternoon! Well, we thought 32€ must be worth it, and we were indeed not disappointed at all! Our first island was Gili Pasir, the smallest piece of land we've ever seen! :-D It's basically a little sandbank with many dead corals the sea has been bringing over to it. We successfully reached the top at maybe 1 meter above sea level! Our next top was in the wate [...]
rs near Gili Petagan (mangrove forest), were we went swimming with hundreds or maybe thousands of curious colourful fish coming around us. The bottom was really rich in corals; a lot more than at the other highly touristic spots! We then went for a beach and drink break on Gili Pasaran, were we saw snakes in the low waters, and fish of course! :-) We finished our trip at Gili Kondo. After swimming a bit away from the beach, we reached a magnificent coral reef. Compared to the others we had seen so far, this was a real multicolour coral forest, also with plenty of beautiful fish! We took our time to swim against the current for a while, then let ourselves go with it to come back.

+19

4th September - Peragan, Pasir, Pasaran & Kondo islands [Lombok, Indonesia]
Sambelia

Curious about the less popular islands in the north-east of Lombok, we decided to go and see! :-)
Bayan ‐ Sep 3, 2017

One of the main starting points for trekking up beautiful Mount Rinjani. We were not really sure if we would do it... The fact that you need 2 or 3 days, a guide, and the costs turned our decision to a "no" for this time. We'd rather do it another time (if we come back to Lombok in the future). So that time we just went for a nice hike in the monkey-populated jungle to see two nice and large waterfalls.

+6

3rd & 4th September - Waterfalls near Bayan [Lombok, Indonesia]

Sendang Gile waterfall [Lombok, Indonesia]
Bangsal port

Back to the mainland of Lombok and our scooter!
Gili Air ‐ Aug 31, 2017

We thought of staying there just two days and one night, but in the end we felt so relaxed and comfortable that we spent 3 nights! No really doing much, but very enjoyable! The peace of not having any motor vehicles there is priceless. We went for a snorkeling trip around all 3 islands... cheap, but on a crowded little boat with 40 other people! :-O At least, we saw a turtle this time! :-D

+12

31st to 3rd September - Gili Air [Lombok, Indonesia]
Bangsal port

We decided to not waste more time around Senggigi, so we went to the port to go to the islands everybody talks about from Java to Lombok. We parked our scooter at a guarded "scooter park" at the port, and chose one island in particular: Gili Air.
Senggigi ‐ Aug 30, 2017

We kept our scooter from Kuta for doing a "tour of Lombok", and stopped in Senggigi. Apart from a few beaches and some temples overlooking the sea, we didn't find this place really exciting after having enjoyed our time so much around Kuta.
Kuta ‐ Aug 28, 2017
Mawun beach

Our 5th beach of the day! :-D We should have stayed longer to the previous one instead... That one, although it is nicely shaped in a half circle with nice hills around, was quite a disappointment when we came closer and saw the dirty water, lots of garbage, and were approached by quite a few annoying vendors. If you go to Lombok, you can skip that one! :-)

+2

28th August - Mawun beach [Lombok, Indonesia]
Mawi beach(es)

Mawi is the most popular for expert surfers; the waves get quite high and powerful, and people can surf them for maybe 20 to 30 seconds before they crash on dangerous rocks. To go there, it seems you need to have long blond hair, tattoos, Quicksilver or Rip Curl branded shorts to be accepted in the "surfers club"! :-D But the best reason we found to go there is the other hidden/secret beach you can find behind the rocks in the north after waking through a little trail. One word to describe it: p [...]
aradize! :-O Almost nobody, and one of the best sand and water you can find out there!

+6

28th August - Mawi beach(es) [Lombok, Indonesia]
Selong Belanak

One of our favourite beaches is this popular one: with lots of space, even for the number of people, you get cheap sunbeds, all the drinks and food you may want are for sale there, the water and the sand are beautiful, and it's probably one of the best places to learn surfing. On the second day we went there, we rented a surf board for the fun; Christophe successfully slided on 3 or 4 waves (after many tries in 2 hours)! :-D

+7

28th & 29th August - Selong Belanak beach [Lombok, Indonesia]
Serangan beach

Very large, peaceful, and clean beach where not many tourists seem to go. We were there in the late morning for at least an hour and we met only 2 fishermen, and the "parking guy" asking for his change. Let's talk about this: parking at beaches (and other touristic places), although there is tons of space everywhere, really seems to be taken seriously by a local "mafia"... If you park your scooter 100 meters away from the area, they'll come to see you and almost force you to pay for your space, [...]
or at least threaten the security of your scooter. Some of them can't even prove payment is required, and others have some fake tickets printed out to justify the fare. Other touristic sites claim that you need or force you to take a guide (dramatically increasing the prices) while you can see the locals or domestic tourists on their own doing whatever they like probably for free. Equality is definitely not the national motto here!

+5

28th August - Serangan beach [Lombok, Indonesia]
Kuta ‐ Aug 27, 2017
Kelambu, Stokel & other waterfalls

For a bit of change, we went to visit those popular waterfalls we've seen advertised all over Kuta. It was great to have a bit of a hike and fresh mountain water. You could use those waterfalls as showers, or for massage (with the heavy water falling down), or swim in the natural or built-in pools at the bottom. We were surprised and pleased to see many locals going there too (it's much cheaper or maybe free for them!); and as always since we're in Asia, we're always asked for selfies! :-D

+9

27th August - Kelambu, Stokel & other waterfalls [Lombok, Indonesia]
Kuta ‐ Aug 26, 2017
Beach harbour

Back to Lombok's main land.
Gili Kedis

The cutest island; you can walk around it in under 5 minutes! :-D There is still a bar, toilets, sunbeds, swings, etc... Very well equipped for its size!

+6

26th August - Gili Nanggu, Sudak, and Kedis [Lombok, Indonesia]
Gili Sudak
Gili Nanggu
Beach harbour ‐ Sep 26, 2017

Out of the millions of tour operators in Kuta, we finally booked a driver and snorkeling tour to some of the tiny islands in south-west Lombok... From initial prices soaring over 1 million IDR for 3 people, Elena used the best of her negotiating skills to bring down the price to 1 million for 5 people! A German couple who was interested in the same tour was walking by and agreed to join us. After an hour and a half on the road, we hopped into a little boat and visited the cute tiny islands of Na [...]
nggu, Sadak (with a lunch break there) and the smallest beach island we've ever seen: Gili Kedis, just 50 meters from one side to the other! The snorkeling was nice, starting from the beach of every island; many fish, some corals, etc... A nice day! :-)
Kuta ‐ Aug 25, 2017

We made it back to Kuta before sunset after a nice refreshing scooter ride... It only took us an hour and a half. When people tell you it takes 3 hours, they want to sell you their taxi service! :-)
Pink beach

Elena's wish to see the "Pink beach", after hours of bumpy roads, sore asses, and exhaustion, finally came true! :-D We realized it was 15:30 and had only half an hour to spend there if we wanted to make it back to Kuta before sunset. And guess what? The beach wasn't pink! :-D The mix of disappointment and exhaustion made the situation so hilarious to the point we could no longer control our laughters... Sometimes you get the best from the worst! :-P We must admit that the area was really beauti [...]
ful with nice cliffs and even a stone bridge over the sea; this allowed us to take some nice pictures.

+5

25th August - Pink beach [Lombok, Indonesia]
Ekas beach

On our way to the "Pink beach", we stopped for lunch and a quick swim at this beautiful beach. Lots of boats parked but almost nobody around... just some locals having a nap.

+4

25th August - Ekas beach [Lombok, Indonesia]
Kuta

Finally, things become much easier! :-) Hotels and guest houses with scooters for rental everywhere, all types of food you may want, and plenty of transport and tour operators... They have the answer to everything! (with a price of course) We spent 4 nights there, and three full days with our friend Diego. There are beautiful beaches for every taste all over the southern coast of Lombok... with many people or without a soul, with restaurants/cafés or without, for beginner or advanced surfers, [...]
etc... really many options for your own paradise! Or if you prefer traditional villages, the jungle and fresh waterfalls, it's not too far away.

+3

25th to 28th August - Few pictures from Kuta [Lombok, Indonesia]
Mataram ‐ Aug 24, 2017

On our first day on Lombok we weren't really prepared to know where to go, how, and where to sleep. So we'll say "Booking.com" brought us to Mataram, the largest city in Lombok. The guest house was nice but we just shouldn't have come to that place... we discovered a really busy and boring city, where our best moments were probably spent at the shopping mall (or the guest house)! :-D We couldn't even find scooters for rent, since it's not a touristic place at all... In the morning, we went stra [...]
ight to Kuta, touristic hub of Lombok!
Lembar

Public ferry from Bali to Lombok: 4 hours + 1 hour loading and unloading time.
Padangbai ‐ Aug 23, 2017

We finally met our friend Diego! :-) We chose Padangbai as it is the main port for ferries going to Lombok. We planned to stay longer on that island, which is about the same size as Bali but with much less people. We took the time to enjoy two beaches before hopping on the boat... Quite nice but with strong waves and currents, so a bit challenging to swim in! :-D

+5

23rd August - Padangbai [Bali, Indonesia]
Ubud ‐ Aug 22, 2017

On our way to Ubud, we had the chance to stop by a coffee and tea maker, and have a taste at different tasty samples. Ubud is a nice lively town with lots of tourists and beautiful surroundings. We couldn't miss the popular and funny "monkey forest", where those macaques look quite cute at first, but can be real monsters! :-) One of them stole two little sweets from Christophe's backpack, and another one was getting mad at Christophe for preventing him to open the backpack! :-D We even saw anoth [...]
er one get away in the jungle with one of the tourists' smartphones. We later went for a beautiful walk through the nearby hills and rice fields, viewed some nice hindu temples, and had some great food! One of the positives of having so many tourists around is that the choice and quality of food is generally much better! :-)

+33

22nd August - Ubud [Bali, Indonesia]
Pemuteran ‐ Aug 20, 2017

We went just 10km further in Pemuteran to enjoy the nice beach it offers, and meet again our Canadian friends we met in Java. We had our first real beach day, on sunbeds and in the warm sea water; exhausting! :-D In the evening we walked up the nearby hill with them and friendly children from their guesthouse, and booked transportation for the next day together to Ubud.

+9

20th August - Pemuteran [Bali, Indonesia]
Pejarakan ‐ Aug 19, 2017
Mejangan island

One of the favourite activities in the area is "snorkelling", especially around the Menjangan island, which is part of the only national park in Bali. For this again, we could easily negotiate a price down by 30%. We suspect that our tour organizer went around the national park's entry fees for us to make a better profit... He asked us to wait for the boat to pick us up at the beach while all the others took it from the "official" port (where people probably pay their tickets). After a bumpy hal [...]
f an hour ride on a little boat, we finally arrived at a quiet spot for us to enjoy. Masks / snorkels / swim fins on, and we're ready to jump in the water. A short distance from our boat, the coral reef eventually appeared, and we suddenly realized we were inside a big tropical aquarium: corals and flora of all colours, and hundreds of fish even more colourful. We even saw the famous "Nemo" fish from the Disney movie! :-D For pictures, we're sorry but our camera isn't waterproof. so we just took some snaps of the area above the water... :-/

+2

19th August - Snorkeling around Menjangan island [Bali, Indonesia]
Pejarakan ‐ Aug 17, 2017

We found a cheap friendly guesthouse in the town we stopped at. We had a room with a large mattress on the floor, a toilet, and a tube spitting (cold) water above our heads. Simple, but functional; we actually enjoyed staying there. :-)

+22

17th August - moving to Bali [Indonesia]
Gilimanuk ‐ Sep 17, 2017

Crossing the little strait from East Java to Bali was only 5 kilometers, but the regular ferry took 1 hour to cover that distance! :-O But at less than a euro for two people, can we really complain? Once our feet were on Bali island however, we were the target of all possible transport offers you can imagine. People tried to sell us a 30km taxi trip for 250.000 IDR (16€); they went as far as following us to the place we had lunch at, and waited that we finished our food to keep offering us be [...]
tter prices... we eventually accepted at 100.000 IDR.
Ketapang ‐ Aug 17, 2017

The guy of the rental place gave us a lift to the ferry terminal for going to Bali.
Banyuwangi

Giving our scooter back to the rental place.
Licin

Village, rice fields & coconut trees near Licin [Java, Indonesia]
End of the hike

Back at the bottom with hundreds of other tourists. Our car waiting for us brought us back to our guest house in Licin.
Ijen crater

So in the dark, after maybe 2 or 3 hours of effort up to the crater and down inside (with our gas masks on), we could finally see the famous "blue fire" caused by sulfur gas combustion. It has become such a popular site that hundreds or maybe thousands of people were hiking up and down with us, making it quite difficult on the narrow crater trails. The sulfur carriers were also working at that time and we should of course let them pass with their 70 to 90kg loads (carried in two baskets joint by [...]
a wooden stick) and without masks. Once out of the crater, we followed the trail going to the sunrise view point, like many other people. The 17th August is the independence day of Indonesia, and so many locals came as well on this public holiday with their country flag and singing their anthem.

+9

17th August - Ijen volcano & acid lake [Java, Indonesia]

Around Ijen's crater rim on Independence day [Java, Indonesia]

Blue fire in Ijen's crater [Java, Indonesia]
Ijen hike starting point

For maybe the first time in our lives, we woke up at midnight to start our day! :-D We met again with Justin and Jessica, our Canadian friends from Quebec, and had a driver and car to take us to the hike starting point.
Licin ‐ Aug 16, 2017

We moved to that other place in order to visit an other popular attraction, the Ijen volcano with its acidic crater lake, which is the biggest in the world! On the first day however, we rented a scooter to go to our guest house 11km away; for two days, it cost us the same price at a one-way taxi ride. Christophe, who had never ridden a scooter or motorbike before, insisted to have an automatic scooter, and Elena thought they will never give us the scooter when Christophe asked how its works! :-D [...]
Well, the guy at the rental place did not seem to worry and gave us a 100cc automatic Yamaha... no driving licence required - he was happy with an ID card and the money. The ride up to the village, as Christophe's first kilometers on a scooter, were quite stressful: driving on the left on potholed and unpaved roads, Elena screeming in the back, and too focused on keeping the balance to think at anything else... In the end, we were glad to have the scooter. Christophe gained confidence and we went exploring the area on the next day, found some jungle hikes with beautiful waterfalls and pools, nice views on rice fields, and really nice and friendly locals... We were looking for a place to eat in a village, and a family invited us to eat the best meal we've had in Indonesia so far!

+24

16th August - Around Licin [Java, Indonesia]
Banyuwangi ‐ Aug 15, 2017
Probolinggo
Cemoro Lawang ‐ Aug 13, 2017

More or less on our way, we couldn't miss the Bromo active volcano and its national park. On the bus going there, we made friends with a Canadian couple and two German friends, whom we went hiking at night with, up to the Bromo crater. The sight of some red fire and the extremely loud combustion noise (like a military jet on full throttle) was very impressive. The sunrise was really nice and we slowly became to see the hole crater and peaceful surroundings. Every day, hundreds of jeeps with tour [...]
ists pay lots of money to go to another point for sunrise; we were glad not to have chosen that option! :-) Later on the same day, we went to that popular sunrise view point to actually see the sunset. With very little tourists, the hike and sunset was also very peaceful and enjoyable, except maybe for one drone flying above our heads with that annoying mosquito sound! :-( Just a minute after the sun went down, we felt the cold straight away (we were at 2700 meters), and only 15 minutes later we needed to use our phone lamp to see where we put our feet. It gets dark very quickly there!

+21

14th August - Bromo national park [Java, Indonesia]

Sunrise on Bromo's crater ridge [Java, Indonesia]

Bromo crater at night [Java, Indonesia]
Probolinggo

We needed to stop here to take a bus going near the Bromo volcano.
Surabaya ‐ Aug 11, 2017

Landing in east Java, Indonesia. Surabaya was convenient to land at, but we should maybe have moved away the same day to a smaller place! :-D This city is really huge, with the same population as the biggest European capitals. Traffic come from all directions: scooters, cars, minivans, bicycles and pedestrians all fight to make their way into the streets as fast and as close to each other as possible. Once out of the airport, we took a bus that we believed was going close to our guest house... [...]
of course it didn't bring us there, but only at the southern bus station of the city (not even half way!). So we took another bus, and guess what? same story :-O At this point, between the heat, the mess all around and the previous mistakes, we must have looked very confused and desperate so that a local young lad came to help us. :D And thanks to him and two other nice Indonesian tourists who spoke good English, we finally took the last minibus to get near our hotel. That "hotel" was also quite an experience... It reminded us pictures we've seen of "capsule hotels" in Japan, except that there was just a curtain for our privacy, and so no noise isolation between the four occupied double beds in our room that probably didn't exceed 10 square meters. Our "private space" was basically just enough to insert the mattress inside. There was another bed above us and two others besides. And because we are so lucky, one of the occupants had a crying baby with us! Awesome! :-D On the next day, we changed the hotel (private room with bathroom for 1 euro more), and walked around the city for hours without finding much to see... We should have made a better decision and gone away instead!

+7

12th August - Surabaya [Java, Indonesia]
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia ‐ Aug 9, 2017

Okay, we had the idea of surprising our friend Diego at his home in Kuala Lumpur, but it happened that he was flying to Luang Prabang on the same day for a few days! :-D We just waived hello to each other when he came out of the AirAsia flight at Luang Prabang before we boarded on that same plane. We'll meet him again shortly enough. We only had a day and two nights in Kuala Lumpur, so we can't say much about it: we just saw a big metropolitan city, with lots of people and traffic, with really g [...]
ood and really cheap Indian food! Yum... but expensive alcohol.

+10

10th August - Lay-over in Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia]
Luang Prabang, Laos ‐ Aug 8, 2017

We finished our Laos loop in Luang Prabang, a city we previously enjoyed and that has great flight connections. We indeed planned to meet up with Diego (our great Brazilian friend from Dublin) in Bali and spend a couple of days around there; we thought we'd actually spend one whole month backpacking in Indonesia to make the most of our flights. So... we left our car at a guest house and will get back to it in a month! We decided to thank our great old Vitara a with stickers representing the coun [...]
tries we've been through so far; she should be proud of it! :-)

+5

8th August - road to Luang Prabang [Laos]
Na Kout ‐ Aug 7, 2017

This isn't normally on tourists' agenda but we found a very nice place to stay (very positive reviews) through Couchsurfing and Booking.com, so we decided to experience it. It is a property owned by a large local family, which one day hosted an Uruguayan volunteer (Alex) who ended up staying there for over 15 years! Alex, a very warm hearted person in his fifties, is still there to manage the guest house and was there to welcome us and show us around the beautiful surroundings of this village: l [...]
arge rice fields with a very well designed irrigation system, lots of papaya trees, huts on stilts and rivers to refresh yourself in. We also met Ann from Australia who spent many years in here as well. We can say that Alex and the volunteers over time have made a really good job with this guest house: it is very well set up, traditional style, and one of the main reasons it is so special is that there is no WiFi! :-D The message is clear in the kitchen: "No Wifi, talk to each other!". Luckily there were other (Workaway) volunteers and guests to socialize and play card games with; we had a great evening. In the morning we went to visit the surroundings and could just simply enjoy the scenery, the peace, nature, and seeing young kids from the village enjoy probably one of the best childhoods life can offer: running through the rice fields and jungle, climbing into trees to pick up rose apples, jumping and swimming in the rivers and little blue lagoons, and keeping on exploring their land with infinite energy and an amazing smile on their faces.

+7

7th August - Na Kout village and area [Laos]
Pha Tang ‐ Aug 6, 2017

On our way north out of Vang Vieng, we stopped by the popular "Elephant cave". It's called this way because of a stone formation looking like an elephant inside; it was hard to find it. :-) But we preferred the village and rural area around, with nice rice fields, rivers and lagoons.

+30

6th August - Elephant cave park & Pha Tang temple [Laos]
Vang Vieng ‐ Aug 3, 2017

The Vang Vieng area is really beautiful, with jungle and rice fields like almost everywhere else, but also plenty of vertical mountains, caves and blue lagoons to take a bath in. The town itself is very tourist-oriented, and is also known as the "party city" of Laos (lots of music bars, happy hours with even free drinks, drunk tubing on the river, etc...). We stayed in a bungalow on stilts near the river. We thought the rain season was slowing calming down as we had fairly nice days lately, but [...]
we had there a full day and a full night of rain. We really thanked the stilts to keep us dry, as the water on the path at the bottom was reaching above our knees.

+41

3rd to 6th August - Vang Vieng and around [Laos]
Vientiane ‐ Jul 31, 2017

We took a little break in the capital of Laos and brought our car to the garage for quick fixes and a bit of maintenance. Vientiane is quite a large city with a fairly small center and a promenade near the Mekong. We found it a bit chaotic and missing charm though, compared with the rest of Laos. But we really appreciated that we could easily find different, international food. We had only one of two noodles soups there! :-D

+11

31st July to 2nd August - Vientiane [Laos]

+29

06 - 31st July - Road to Vientiane & Buddha Park [Laos]
Paksan ‐ Jul 30, 2017

This day we finished that popular "Loop" and continued our way up towards Vientiane. There were some cool springs to see on the way, but we could not go all the way as we can see from the pictures... too much water! We did not want to risk crossing a lake-size river with current! What else to say... well, another noodle soup for lunch! :-D

+10

30th July - Finishing the Loop [Laos]
Thalang ‐ Jul 28, 2017

We're now south of "the Loop"; it is indeed quite a scenic road. We stopped in Thalang on a higher plateau filled with quite much water everywhere (especially in this season), creating many islands and flooding the bottom of (mostly dead) trees. Thalang is in the middle of that scenic land: we stayed in great little bungalows over the water for little money and randomly met our Swiss motorcyclist friend Dominic there!

+16

28th July - Road to Thalang [Laos]
Thakhek ‐ Aug 27, 2017

While in the area, we heard about a touristic itinerary called "the Loop", which tourists usually start and finish in Thakhek. It seems we started it already, so let's continue! :-) We finished the day in Thakhek, where we had the best pizza since we left Italy accompanied by a pastis... What a pleasure! It came at a dear price, though. x-)

+13

27th July - Road to Thakhek [Laos]
Konglor ‐ Jul 25, 2017

This area was so nice and peaceful that we decided to stay two nights there, in the middle of the rice fields. Konglor is also popular for its 7km long navigable cave; we had our boat tour in there of course! Racing on this little boat in the dark was quite an experience. Our driver obviously knew the cave and turns very well... If we where driving it at that speed ourselves we would certainly have crashed on one of the cave's walls. :-O

+29

26th July - Konglor [Laos]

Konglor rice fields and mountains in central Laos

Coming out of Konglor cave [Laos]

Entering Konglor cave by boat [Laos]
Na Hin ‐ Aug 25, 2017

Continuing our way south through the center of Laos, we enjoyed very scenic roads and a few stops in small villages, visiting old stupas, a school, and other attractions. The young children at the school were very happy to meet us; the teacher had a fairly good English and invited us to take pictures and learn a few Lao letters (which we forgot a minute later!). The landscape in the center of the country slowly becomes flat, with more rice fields, and some mountains with surprisingly steep slope [...]
s and plenty of vegetation.

+27

24th & 25th July - Road to Konglor [Laos]

Wet shortcut between rice fields in central Laos

Strange butterfly sticking to the bottom of leaves [Laos]

Noisy jungle near Na Hin [Laos]
Viengthong ‐ Jul 24, 2017

Just a night stop here and mechanic stop to get our exhaust pipe re-fixed... the fixings eventually gave up on the vibrations from all the bumpy rocky roads and potholes we've been through so far! :-D
Phonsavan ‐ Jul 21, 2017

In the middle of the country, Phonsavan is a little out of the way for many tourists, but we decided to go there and see what the story is. It is actually quite well known for the Plain of Jars, which is the main attraction: a large number of megalithic stone jars, up to 6 tons for the biggest one, are scattered across a few hills and their "quarry sites". There is still a bit of mystery as to why they were built, and how they were transported to the different sites. By visiting those sites and [...]
walking through Phonsavan, we also couldn't ignore the amount of bomb shells and craters dating from the U.S.'s "secret war" in Laos and almost uninterrupted bombing for 9 years... Millions of remaining unexploded ordnances (UXO) still affect the countryside where people still come across them. According to the "Quality of Life Association" in Phonsavan, already 13 people lost limbs or their life in 2017 because of UXOs. And more sadly, a large proportion of victims are children who always run and play around their rural villages. There were so many bombs dropped on Laos that the local people had to do something with the waste. So you can find many vendors selling things like key rings or bottle openers made of recycled bomb shells, or restaurants and coffee places using them as separators. We also saw little boats made of large bomb shells down the road. It feels maybe a little too much to take for a country that was mutilated by those, but it seems the people have gone over it anyway, and it surely helps to remember what happened.

+47

21st to 23rd July - Phonsavan & around [Laos]

+11

20th & 21st July - road to Phonsavan [Laos]
"The Living Land" rice farm ‐ Jul 20, 2017

Nice educative organic rice farm. We didn't take the half-day tour there as it's quite expensive, but these guys are certainly doing well by promoting organic rice farming, as opposed to using the other destructive methods most farmers now do. Hoping the message reaches Lao farmers to change their methods!

+11

20th July - The Living Land rice farm [Laos]
Kuang Si waterfalls

Beautiful waterfalls and forest around. The bears' conservation park is also quite nice and educative. The bears here were rescued from hunters, accidents, or illegal activities, and now have some space to live decently and in security.

+32

20th July - Kuang Si waterfall and park [Laos]

Walking down through Kuang Si waterfall Laos

Platform at the edge of Kuang Si waterfall [Laos]

Walking near the edge of Kuang Si waterfall [Laos]
Luang Prabang ‐ Jul 18, 2017

Luang Prabang is maybe the "touristic capital" of Laos. It is indeed a nice, old city with history, almost 40 buddist temples, many markets and places to eat and shop (many of them especially designed and priced for tourists). We (mostly me Elena =D) of course found ourselves guilty of buying some asian-style cheap clothes and souvenirs. Many evenings, we ended up at the food market with our friends from the China trip, and try the different local specialties there (except the insects); the bone [...]
s or unfinished food would naturally go to the next cats or dogs we met! :-) One morning we enjoyed a boat trip on the Mekong river to some attractions in the north: * a village where they make rice wiskey, herbal wine and other rice liquors in bottles with dead snakes, big spiders or scorpions. That's not everyday we taste wine at 10am! :-D * two caves on the side of a mountain with hundreds of old sculptures of Buddha. It seemed to be the end point for many tourists on the boats. In the meantime, our car front-left wheel was clamped by the local traffic police, as apparently we parked on the wrong side of the road... We learned (too late) that we needed to change side every day. The road signs for it are completely different. The lock of the clamp was very small though, and by the looks of how the traffic police is organised, we decided it was safe enough to break it and just go! (instead of paying a fine over 30€).

+26

19th July - Boat trip on the Mekong river [Laos]

+50

18th & 19th July - Luang Prabang [Laos]

+7

17th July - Road to Luang Prabang [Laos]

Noisy jungle insects around Pak Ou caves [Laos]
Xieng Kok ‐ Jul 16, 2017

We took a little two-day road trip up to the North-West of the Luang Namtha province until the Mekong river, forming the natural border with Myanmar. We keep enjoying the peace and generous nature of this relaxing country.

+34

15th to 16th July - North Luang Namtha province [Laos]
Muang Sing ‐ Jul 15, 2017
Luang Namtha ‐ Jul 11, 2017

In the middle of the northern Laos jungle and plains of rice fields, Luang Namtha is the gateway to many adventurous activities: trekking, canoeing, visiting remote and tribal villages, etc... Life and people here, compared with China, clearly feel much happier and easy-going. And we were happy to see much less trash in the nature! We enjoyed a two-day trek in the nearby Nam Ha national park, with a third day canoeing down the Nam Tha river. Food was brought to us by local villagers, picking ex [...]
tra veggies on the way and banana leaves for our plates; we ate with hands or with chopsticks made from plants on the way. We slept in very rural / tribal villages, in simple house on stilts made with wood, bamboos, and leaves for the roof. For cooking, a simple space with a few wood logs did the job for cooking; no gas or electric hobs there! The shower was the fountain outside, for everybody. :-) And we never met happier kids than we saw there: living simply, outdoors, enjoying games with wood sticks, empty plastic bottles and old tyres... We though them how to play "noughts and crosses" and "one two three sun", and they were continuing on for hours! :-) We clearly noticed that tourism is very well established, with cheap and good quality guest houses, western food easily found, and a lot more "whites" (western tourists :-D) than we've seen on our whole trip so far! Ahhh... we need to get used to them now! :-D

+61

11th to 13th July - Trek in Nam Ha national park [Laos]

+29

10th to 15th July - Around Luang Namtha [Laos]

Trekking through the Nam Ha jungle [Laos]

Shamanic ritual in tribal village of Nam Ha national park [Laos]

Playing with little monkey in tribal village of Nam Ha national park [Laos]

Trekking in the Nam Ha jungle [northern Laos]

"Welcome to Laos" under harsh monsoon weather! :-)
Mohan, China ‐ Jul 9, 2017

We made it! :-) Tomorrow we'll be in Laos finally. We arrived early enough at an outdoor garage/mechanic to use the lift for taking out Amaury and Chantary's car from Pierre and Cécile's truck. The evening was used to celebrate our group adventure and exchange our plans in Laos, as we felt a bit sad to leave each other.

+25

7th to 10th July - way out of China
near Mengyang ‐ Jul 8, 2017

Another long driving day... We chose to not take the expensive motorway (0.60 yuan per KM !) but we kind of regretted it later... it added 40 km for us, and millions of curves every few meters all the time! Average speed probably around 40 km/h... x-( Our hotel this time was not in a town but on the side of the road, in the middle of the now tropical forest, with lots of noise from insects and birds we never heard before. A nice change. Banana trees, buffalos, the humid heat, and the frequent ra [...]
in on our way are already preparing us for the south-eastern Asian countries! :-)
Zhenyuan ‐ Jul 7, 2017

"Normal" day for us, after driving 300 km on small, slow but beautiful roads, we arrive at destination, have a nice and cheap noodle soup and beer, and go to bed! :-) In the meantime, we learned that all the rest of the group, vehicles and rooms were searched by police for drugs! :-O
Dali ‐ Jul 6, 2017

Another quite nice town on our way, but just after seeing Lijiang and Shuhe, we were no longer impressed. We're finally together with the rest of our group (now 11 without Pascal) and continuing fast out of China; we can't wait to feel real freedom again! :-D

+9

6th July - Quick stop in Dali [Yunnan, China]

Ice cream artist in Dali old town, Yunnan (China]
Shuhe (Lijiang)

Only a few kilometers north of Lijiang old town, we enjoyed walking though this similar old town / village, which is more quiet. It seems to be popular for taking wedding pictures, as we came across two couples with photographs on our way. :-)

+32

6th July - visiting Shuhe [Yunnan, China]

Nice Chinese flute melody in Shuhe old town, Yunnan (China)
Lijiang ‐ Jul 5, 2017

Lijiang is one of our favourite cities we've seen in China. The old town is really big and very well preserved; all buildings were renovated in the style of the old China times, and the multitude of canals gives the impression of being in a city like Venice or Amsterdam (minus the boats). Most of the city centre is made for the tourists, with hundreds (thousands?) of shops, restaurants and guest houses / hotels. At night, all the bars around the main canal turn into night clubs and compete to be [...]
the loudest and wildest for attracting the crowds of crazy Chinese party-goers (and little foreigners maybe). It really feels like a big festival in the middle of the week! Lijiang is clearly a party city.

+109

5th July - visiting Lijiang [Yunnan, China]

+4

4th July - Road to Lijiang [Yunnan, China]

Parties all over the place in Lijiang, Yunnan (China)

Funny little puppy trying to pull away Christophe's backpack
Shangri-la ‐ Jul 2, 2017

Because we needed to bring Pascal at the Shangri-la hospital as soon as possible, we left our group behind and had some more time to visit this fairly nice town. Now that we're in the Yunnan province, with less restrictions than in Tibet, it seems it is more prepared to receive foreign tourists... indeed, we started to see white faces again! :-D And suitable accomodation can be found at a quarter of the price! Fueling up your car is quick and without questions, and even camping is authorized in [...]
this province! :-)

+29

3rd July - Visiting Shangri-la [Yunnan, China]

+7

2nd July - Road to Shangri-la [Yunnan, China]
Diqing ‐ Jun 30, 2017

What do we have for this day? Well, we needed to get Pascal to another (better) hospital, so we left the rest of the group behind. As you can see on the pictures, the road was full of stones (big ones or piles of small ones), and we often had to "force" our way through the narrow parts against the opposite traffic. But sometimes you lose at this game and need to reverse! :-) That's how Pierre blew up one of the truck's tyres by reversing and hitting a sharp stone... Remember it happened over a [...]
week earlier on our way to Lhasa? Well, they couldn't find tyres in Lhasa of the same dimensions, so they had no more spare to replace it now... x-( It was not an option for the whole group to wait on this dangerous side of the road to get this resolved (the mountain was slowly falling apart), so most of us went to Deqin almost 2 hours away. Most importantly, Pascal needed medical care sooner rather than later. Pierre & Amaury stayed with the truck for 3 days waiting for new tyres, and the guide stayed around the nearby villages. In Deqin, the hospital staff was not really cooperative and even though they made new X-Rays, the doctor wasn't confident to fix Pascal's shoulder and found all possible excuses for us to go to the next bigger city (e.g. they have better equipment, better specialists, etc...); we suspect he was also reluctant to touch a foreigner, for some reason. We convinced our guide to let us go on our own to Shangri-la the next day to get Pascal to a better hospital. That made our group separated into 3 parts across different provinces (the truck was still in Tibet)... Our guide was nearly panicking; how to justify that with the Chinese authorities!? :-D

+10

1st July - Road to Deqin [Yunnan, China]

Scary drive on the edge of mountains between Tibet and Yunnan [China]
Markam ‐ Jul 29, 2017

Another very scenic drive through mountains, cliffs and canyons, where we needed to keep dodging the stones on the road. But the misfortune hits our group again: Pascal's eyes missed a pile of earth on the road at around 70km/h, resulting in him falling and rolling over a few dozens of meters... Not sure if his shoulder was dislocated or broken, anyway he was not in a state of riding his bike again. But it seems for all difficult situations we have quick solutions: Olivier, who has a motorbike d [...]
riving license, continued with Pascal's damaged bike, and Pascal came into our car. We went ahead to the next hospital/clinic where X-Rays were taken; the doctor was willing to relocate Pascal's arm into his shoulder, but the pain was unbearable for this move and they did not have anaesthetics. Pascal decided to wait for being at the next hospital; the pain, the doctor's young age and the state of the clinic were not reassuring here.

+18

30th June - Road to Markam [Tibet, China]

Nice drive through the cliffs in eastern Tibet
Baxoi ‐ Jun 28, 2017

As far as we can remember, this was a day without issues, and probably one of the most scenic roads we've driven through since the beginning of our trip. What a pleasure! :-)

+24

29th June - Remaining drive to Baxoi [Tibet, China]

3rd week in China - by Dominic

Driving in east Tibet towards the Yunnan province
Not sure where exactly...

Continuing our way out of Tibet, fairly nice and smooth that day... but the rush and stupidity of Chinese drivers on this road once again brought some trouble to us! x-( First, some accident made us queue for nearly an hour. And of course when one lane was free, the opposite traffic with again hundreds of military trucks was let through before us. Then a few minutes later out of this queue, on this sinuous road, a huge bus overpassed Pierre and Cécile's truck and cut in front of them before a c [...]
urve, eventually stopping completely. Pierre's anger was not appreciated at all by the Chinese bus driver, so that guy decided to wait for the police and show them some scratches on the right of the bus, telling the police they were caused by Pierre athough both vehicles didn't touch each other! :-O After hours of debate with the police, the two conflicting drivers, witnesses and our guide went to the nearest police office at least half an hour away to settle this down. The rest of the group stayed around a number of houses in construction, waiting for them... We eventually were allowed to set camp here for the night as a one-time exception, and put our mattresses inside those unfinished houses. Luckily, they already had running water! :-) And to conclude the driving misfortune, the fault was once again given to the "bad foreign driver", although the Chinese bus driver was clearly in fault. 1000 more yuans thrown again to the Chinese! :-# Note: the bus driver initially claimed 5000 yuan to fix those old scratches on the bus and as "psychological compensation". There is maybe a way to fight this with more time and the help of a lawyer, but everybody knows that tourists want to keep moving and not lose time with those boring and time-consuming process, so money settles it.

+17

28th June - Attempt to reach Baxoi [Tibet, China]
Nyingchi ‐ Jul 27, 2017

Normal 400km driving day today, no problems! So, that's it, enjoy the pictures! :-) Well, we still needed to fuel up that day and that was a pain; the fuel station employees did not know how to deal with foreigners, their chief needed to call their boss, then registered one of us, etc... We waited a good half hour at least to get the diesel pumping into our tanks. Oh, and we almost forgot... Our car's "Check Engine" yellow light came up again, but it seems for a different problem now: it decides [...]
to randomly accelerate on its own! It didn't bother us too much though. In town we tried to find a mechanic with a diagnostic tool; we found two, but none had the reference of our Suzuki Vitara. Since we can still drive almost normally, we gave up in our research.

+12

27th June - Road to Nyingchi [Tibet, China]
Lhasa ‐ Jul 26, 2017

Finally, we reach Lhasa, capital of Tibet and one of the most important places of Buddism. We were all really excited to stop and enjoy a day or to without driving. But suggestion from our guide: let's fuel up our vehicles before so we won't have to do it before leaving town... bad idea! x-( Within 40 minutes, only the bikers managed to fill up their tanks, not without difficulties... In Tibet a rule says that motorcyclists can't fuel up their bikes directly from the pump to the bike's tank; ac [...]
cording to them (or well, most likely according to the stupid Chinese officials), it is safer to pour the gasoline into jars and then into the bikes... with the bikes kept at some distance from the station. In the meantime, for at least 20 minutes, two cars and the truck were waiting near the diesel pump, but none of the dozen people working at the station would give us any attention... we gave up. They were all interested at the big debate on how to fill up the motorbikes; and how dirty was the jar their provided to transport the gasoline. We still arrived at our hotel before night and enjoyed a good evening in the old town. Lots of us tried the yak burgers! :-) Well, it's basically like beef. The next day was incredible as we expected... We started with the Potala Palace which we could only see from a little distance because the entrance was really at a ridiculous price for us... :-O ! The city is obviously much more touristic than many others on our way: lots of tibetan souvenir shops and restaurants, but you could still feel the strong buddish atmosphere and influence in people's everyday business. We saw many people during the day walking around the Potala palace and the many other temples in town. Careful: always walk clockwise around buddist temples, and turn the prayer wheels clockwise! This is good for your karma, and your future life (which for some, is more important than the current one). The architechture is quite recognizable as Tibetan, but some Chinese roofs still sneak into the skyline. And to ensure people know this is China, there are lots of Chinese flags all over the place (on all street lights sometimes), Chinese cultural and political propaganda. Obviously, things like Tibetan flags, the current Dalai-Lama pictures, or audio-visual content about Tibet from other countries are strictly illegal! We proposed our guide to watch the movie "7 years in Tibet" with us but he was too scared to accept! Although he is Tibetan and we sensed his feelings are mostly for Tibet rather than "China", he would never say so, or never say anything against Chinese political positions. :-) A little out of town, we visited the Sera Monastery, one of the oldest and most important buddhist monasteries in Lhasa. We witnessed the interesting philosophical discussions junior monks had with senior monks; even though we could not understand the conversations, it was quite a show seeing the monks arguing with so much to make their point. When the senior monks corrected the juniors, you would see them clapping one hand above the other in order to "crush the ignorance" (one of the main human challenges according to Buddhism).

+20

26th June - Sera Monastery, Lhasa [Tibet, China]

+61

25th & 26th June - Lhasa [Tibet, China]

Buddhist monks in philosophical debates at Sera Monastery in Lhasa [Tibet, China]

Pilgrims, locals and tourists turning clockwise around the Potala Palace [Tibet, China]

Dance performance on the street in Lhasa [Tibet, China]

Driving through colza fields between Nagqu & Lhasa [Tibet, China]
Namtso Lake ‐ Jun 25, 2017

This morning some of us went to see Namtso lake, a large lake (sacred lake for Buddist believers) lying at about 4800m. Our Suzuki Vitara went up to the 5200m pass twice without issues! :-) The snow that fell there overnight was melted by the time we reached it. We spent some time walking near the south-east of the lake, where there are some little temples carved into the rocks; the first buddist temples we stopped by in Tibet!

+18

25th June - Namtso sacred lake [Tibet, China]
Gongtang ‐ Jun 24, 2017

We decided to add one more stop on our way to Lhasa as the road takes a lot more time and energy as anticipated. This gave us the chance to go to Nam Co lake on the morning after.
Nagqu

That's where we were supposed to end up the day before. One part of the group managed to reach that town, but the slower part arrived there only before lunch. We were ready to continue all together again, at the request of our guide and authorities.

+8

24th June - Road to Nagqu [Tibet, China]
Amdo ‐ Jul 23, 2017

We broke another record that day, with two passes over 5200m and around 70 km spent over 5000m. We slept a bit better the night before but still needed to take a painkiller in the morning around 6am. The landscape is very similar than before at this altitude, quite flat, with maybe more green grass. We haven't seen any trees for a while now! :-) The altitude issues were more severe for some of us. One of our team members had his lips turned purple and needed to go to the hospital for a good dose [...]
of oxygen. Others had stronger nausea, vomiting or headaches. Let's add some more drama: the truck blew a tyre... :oD On this day, and the following days, we lost a lot of time, hours, in traffic jams (most of them caused by stupid truck drivers trying to pass each other without visibility, stopping in front of each other and blocking the way). Most of the traffic is composed of trucks, as it is currently the main and quickest road for them to reach Lhassa from mainland China. As a result, after spending almost all day in the car we were very tired and negotiated with our guide to not reach our destination of the day. He was quite scared about this idea at the beginning because of the millitary zone nearby and because a part of our group had already reached the other town (it is forbidden for our group to be separated), but after some negotiation with the local police it became possible. Only 280 kilometers in... 10 hours? 12 hours? We didn't count but that's probably not far from the truth.

+4

23rd June - Road to Amdo [Tibet, China]

Crazy truckers on the way to Lhasa [Qinghai, China]
Tanggulazhen ‐ Jul 22, 2017

After a night above 3000m, we kept climbing, with this day two passes above 4800m. After the first pass, we never went back below 4500m. This came up to be a challenge for us as we felt quite short of breath, light-headed, and we needed to force ourselves to breathe properly multiple times. Our second night was spent at 4600m... With our normal breathing rate being insufficient for this thin air, we woke up in the middle of the night at 3am with strong headaches; a simple pain killer did the job [...]
to get us going for the day... We never felt like that before.

+12

22nd June - Road to Tanggulazhen [Qinghai, China]

2nd week in China - by Dominic
Golmud ‐ Jun 21, 2017

On the way to Tibet :oD we drove through our very first high pass above 3600m, and didn't go lower than 3000m after that. At this altitude, we didn't feel any issues. The top of the pass is beautiful, and quite different than what we are used to see: fairly flat - it doesn't give you the impression of being so high! The pass is decorated with tibetan mantras, stupas, and plenty of the colourful buddist prayer flags. We noticed that most mountain passes are similar in this way. Now on the high pl [...]
ains, we start to see lots of yacks, and some antelopes.

+12

21st June - Road to Golmud [Qinghai, China]

Between Dunhuang & Golmud [Qinghai, China]
Dunhuang ‐ Jun 20, 2017

Finally a day off from driving. We took advantage of a well-deserved break to rest, visit one of the main attractions nearby (sand dunes and Moon Crescent lake) and the town with its markets and tasty restaurants.

+36

19th & 20th June - break around Dunhuang [Gansu, China]

Dunhuang sand dunes and the camel riding mass tourism [Gansu, China]
Kumul ‐ Jun 18, 2017

New day, new drama: in the first few minutes trying to get out of this burning city (the hottest in China), a random motorcyclist decided to crash into the side of the Iveco truck. So these few minutes became a few hours of debate between the injured Chinese motorcyclist (and we suspect one of his friends came to provide false testimony), our innocent friends on the truck, the traffic police - all through the translation of our guide. In the end, it was decided that the "poor" Chinese motorcycli [...]
st who didn't look at the traffic was the victim, the "ignorant foreigner" needed to pay a few hundreds to get out of this mess. :-O So we could eventually leave and continue our road in the early afternoon. And because the day started badly, it had to get worse... the heat and long ascents on the highway put too much stress on the truck, which ended up overheating. The cooling fluid container, which cracked with the pressure of the boiling fluid, started to leak. Luckily, the team had the material to get the cracks patched up. In the middle of the drama, we noticed a Chinese truck driver behind was cutting watermelons, keeping the shell and throwing the sweet and juicy red part on the floor. We asked our guide about this; she explained that trucks carrying fruits and vegetables get reduced toll fees on these highways, and showing watermelon shells at the toll did the trick. We where delighted to be offered big chunks of watermelons; we had to return the shells, though... Not a problem! :-D The 4-star hotel waiting for us at destination was quite a relief after that day! :-)

+14

18th June - drive to Kumul [Xinjiang, China]

1st week in China - by Dominic

On the way from Turpan to Kumul [Xinjiang, China]
Turpan ‐ Jun 17, 2017

Another day driving, a little more this time, over 400km... we still need to drive through those long and expensive motorways, at no more than 90km/h; our vehicles aren't really adapted for high speeds. :-) But there was no other choice. The scenery keeps changing slowly, and after losing altitude towards the Gobi desert we really started to melt under extreme heat (around 45°C) as we do not have air conditioning in our car. At some point we even preferred to close the windows of our car becaus [...]
e the wind was blowing us like a huge hair dryer... we never experienced such sensations before! :-O We still went out for a walk and dinner in the very hot city of Turpan, and if you didn't notice from the pictures, we really get delighted by Chinese food again. :-O After having a hard time in previous countries, Elena feels like in paradize with all the delicious vegetarian options.

Our China-crossing "team" cruising through the Xinjiang highways
Kuytun ‐ Jun 16, 2017

Now the serious stuff begins: many hours driving, many police check-points, and gas stations guarded by security personel (our guide needed to scan her ID card to let us inside the station and fuel up). Driving in the cities is quite a pain: the road rules we know in our countries do not really apply here, and there are so many police staff and vehicles tempted to stop you at any time (especially as a foreigner). :-O This morning one of our motorcyclists collided with a cyclist driving the oppo [...]
site way... and the cyclist expected excuses to let us go. The Xinjang province is an "autonomous region" that was previously part of the former Turkistan, with a Muslim majority and its own language, but now under tight control and rules imposed by China. On the night before we met a young guy who explained that to us, and even though he was born there, he told us how much he hates China and how careful you should be with your political views here. In simple words, it's a similar situation than the one of Tibet you may have heard about. Finally, we made it to our hotel and had a bit of time to go out for a walk, barbecue & beer. Cities are quite far apart in the Xinjang province, and they're usually quite big and modern. Unfortunately the Chinese government imposes to self-driving foreigners (like us) to stay in "foreigner-approved" hotels which come quite expensive; and the police also has to know where we stay every night. So our camping adventures are on hold for now.

+31

16th June - drive to Kuytun [Xinjiang, China]
Yining ‐ Jun 14, 2017

Our group needed to go to this town in order to get everyone's driving paperwork ready: temporary Chinese driving licenses, Chinese technical control, Chinese car license plate, and Chinese car insurance... In order to drive your vehicle in China, all needs to be Chinese (+ our guide of course). :-D These two days spent there were very difficult. We needed to spend the whole day (from 9am to 6pm) waiting between different offices and services... and that wasn't finished. We only got some techni [...]
cal controls passed and some of the papers prepared. On the next day, after waiting all morning, we eventually received our temporary license plates and driving licenses. The technical control is a must-have in order to get your license plate and the right to drive your vehicle. For such an important thing, the test bed was quite a joke... they basically drive your car for 1 minute across 50 meters, only testing your brakes and seeing if your lights are properly working. Sensors and computers tell how well your car does and decide if it passes or not. Ours did well! :-) but three of the cars didn't pass the first time; the braking values output by the computer were not all above the minimum requirements. The officials suggested that they go again through the same tests but on another test bed (which they said had less strict sensors); the second test was then a success for two of the cars. Unfortunately the very nice 27-year-old Nissan Patrol GR from Amaury & Chantary didn't make it through, even after adjustments made on the braking system... They brought it to the mechanic on the next day to make whatever is necessary to pass the test, but they ended up deteriorating the braking system on that car they had actually never seen before. That car model has indeed a very specific braking system which is not taken into account by the tests (and there is no way to go around it - computers and numbers are what matters apparently). In China, people say cars over 20 years old are good for the scrapyard. At the end of the second day, after expiring all the options, we all came to the conclusion that the Chinese "adventure" was over for Amaury and Chantary with their Nissan and their would either need to ship their car (extremely expensive) or go back to Kazakhstan... But sometimes, miracles happen and friendship is stronger than ever! :-) One of the other French couples, Pierre and Cécile, with their Iveco truck, proposed to destroy their interior (kitchen, living room and storage) in order to fit the Nissan into it! :-O So that was it: since we all wanted to leave town the next day, the whole group helped almost all night to make it happen. We were good to go, all of us! :-)

+26

14th & 15th June - Yining [Xinjiang, China]

Big pre-work choreography (?) spotted in Yining, China
Horgos, Kazakhstan ‐ Jun 13, 2017

With the whole group, we went about 10 to 15km from the border camping in order to spend less time in the morning to get there. We did well as we were the first ones in line; two buses came shortly afterwards behind us. As we expected, it wasn't a quick border at all... On the Kazakhstan side, many different offices to go through, each of them writing your references on paper and giving you a stamp (4 in total), and passport control of course. On the Chinese side, countless checkpoints, luggage/ [...]
car/body scanners, different checks inside our cars, etc... Getting out of the border area was quite a shock compare to Kazakhstan and the previous countries: all is very modern, full of lights, perfect road infrastructure, large buildings, lots of electric vehicles (scooters especially), and shops to find everything you need.

+6

13th June - Border crossing [Kazakhstan-China]
Zharkent ‐ Jun 10, 2017

We finally got to know (almost) the complete team who is going to cross China with us: the new ones we didn't meet before are Michel with a very nice Land Rover Defender, and Pascal and Dominic on their Honda "Africa Twin" motorcycles... That make four Africa Twins! :-O We learned than Michel's wife was waiting for us in China. We spend a few days knowing each other around this town, getting some extra equipment and getting our cars checked. The town itself doesn't offer much for tourists, but [...]
there is a nice market, decent places to eat, cheap accomodation, and all we needed.

+11

10th to 12th June - Zharkent [Kazakhstan]
Camping next to Shonzhy ‐ Jun 9, 2017
Charyn Canyon ‐ Jun 8, 2017

Near Shonzy, by the Charyn river, we met and camped for a few days with the two other "China teams" we already knew (Land Rover camper and the Iveco truck), and with a third one (Chantary and Amaury with their old Nissan Patrol GR). These news China team members were camping near the river with another French couple travelling with their dog in an impressive Renault 4x4 truck revamped from the military. We had a few good barbecue evenings there. :-) Charyn Canyon was just a 30-minute drive away [...]
and was really worth a look. The scenery is beautiful, like a small version of the American Grand Canyon, and lots of jerboas (something between a rat and a marmot - apply fantasy! :-D), rabbits, and eagles preying on them. There is an option to sleep at the bottom of the canyon near the river but we decided to just spend the afternoon there.

+21

8th June - Charyn Canyon [Kazakhstan]

In the middle of Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan
Shonzhy ‐ Jun 7, 2017

It started to rain after nightfall... not to worry about, we thought, as we were well entertained through a game of cards in the comfortable living room of Cécile and Pierre's truck. We went to bed when the grass were only getting a bit wet, and fell asleep fairly quickly. In the middle of the night we woke up from the sound of more heavy rain hitting our tent and the temperature getting colder. So after a night of interrupted periods of sleep, and now uninterrupted rain, we had no choice but [...]
to undo our tent in this nightmare! We actually decided to go switch on the car to warm up as our mattresses were extremely cold. The base of the tent was under a few centimeters of ice cold water and mud. :-O And tragedy: the truck got stuck in the mud. Multiple attempts digging, using/breaking a bit of equipment, and the two other 4x4 cars together were not successful to pull it out for good... It got stuck again every time after a few meters. We then went to Kegen 13km away with our Suzuki to seek help... If our two 4x4's togheter couldn't pull the truck, we thought it would take at least a good tractor or one of those Russian Kamaz 6-wheel-drive truck. But no luck to find one (or one available at least). The best we could find was an old Russian UAZ 4x4 car. It was really falling into pieces (broken windows, rust everywhere, engine working randomly, etc...), but it had good tyres and nervous petrol power to pull the truck on its own! Then somewhere in this adventure a tube of the truck's air compressor (supporting the brakes and suspensions) was broken. The damage was limited thankfully and it was not too difficult for Pierre to fix it with the bunch of tools and spare parts he has. Back on the road, we drove up to Shonzhy to meet more French travellers...

+8

7th June - Stuck in the mud & road to Shonzhy [Kazakhstan]
Camping near Temirlik ‐ Jun 6, 2017

Together with Olivier, Henri, Cécile and Pierre, we had a last lunch in Karakol and went to the direction of Kazakhstan at its most south-eastern border. This road was beautiful but much longer than expected (because of the road conditions and herds of animals not letting you through). We arrived at the border at 5:45pm just before closing time (at 6pm) but the customs were nice to quickly check all three vehicles before calling it a day. Very quiet border in the middle of nowhere... just grass [...]
lands battered by the winds and the mountains in the background. We continued driving for about an hour and found a quiet spot to camp not far from Temirlik (or the slightly bigger town Kegen). We couldn't think how bad this camping spot would be until the next morning...

+8

6th June - Back to Kazakhstan

A herd of horses hijacking the road around Jergalan, Kyrgyzstan
Karakol, Kyrgyzstan ‐ Jun 2, 2017

We found a very friendly, cheap guesthouse, hosted by a lovely lady and her cute one-year-old daugher and dog. Thanks to the low price, it was quite a busy place, where we met many travellers, especially French... they're everywhere! At the tourist office, we met Cyril, another French lad, with probably our favourite off-road car we've seen so far: a Toyota Land Cruiser with lots of modifiations to sleep and cook in it, 2 spare wheels, 2 fuel tanks totalling 300 litres, in order to survive in e [...]
xtreme conditions; really impressive! :-D We went with him to a local traditional festival near the moutains near a village named Jergez. After parking in the middle of (wild?) cannabis plants, we were invited to ride horses, to have a tea in a yurt, and to visit a very old water mill. The same day we met 2 other 4x4 Land Rover campers; one French couple (again!) in their forties who planned to travel at least 5 years with it, and two young dutch lads. We later met one of the young French couples who will be on the same trip through China with us, Pierre and Cécile, with their real "house on wheels": an 8-ton delivery truck fully equipped with all you need to live! With them, and Oliver and Henri in their Land Rover, we tried to go to the Altyn-Arashan hot springs. But 12 km before those, the tracks became impossible to go through... even our friend Cyril with his serious Land Cruiser didn't dare going further the day before. The Russian Kamaz 6-wheel-drive trucks seemed to be the only ones able to go all the way there. We decided to set camp there, and spent the evening chatting and playing cards. On our last day, we went to the weekly animal market. Many farmers from the region come with their livestock to be sold: cows and calves, bulls, sheeps, and especially horses! The most serious buyers come there and get the best deals from 4 or 5am; let's admit we didn't wake up so early! :-)

+36

2nd to 5th June - Karakol & around [Kyrgyzstan]
Barskoon valley

Continuing further east, we took a turn in Barskoon into one of the valleys going south. We attempted to hike up to one of the highest waterfalls but we ended up giving up near the end as it became quite difficult and as it started to rain. We could still make decent photos of the waterfalls, flowers and the views. :-)

+20

2nd June - Barskoon valley [Kyrgyzstan]
Bokonbayvo ‐ May 31, 2017

The area around Bokonbayevo and Tong has a lot to offer, with beautiful beaches on Issyk Kul (where we set our camp with our friends) and challenging mountains to hike nearby; we did the "easy one": a nice panorama walk up to 3400m, from where we could see quite much of the southern part of Issyk Kul (when the coulds allowed it).

+27

31st May to 2nd June - Bokonbayvo area [Kyrgyzstan]
Fairy Tale canyon

Original and very colourful canyon / valley with interesting rock formations.

+18

31st May - Fairy Tale canyon, Tosor [Kyrgyzstan]
Tong ‐ May 30, 2017

Beautiful beach areas around here. We slept in a nice "yurt camp" that felt quite much like a wild summer beach resort / club, with a bar and music, outdoor toilets and showers, and some modern features like electricity in some of the yurts, etc... No WiFi but we could get some (slow) mobile data around here. :-)
Salt Lake ‐ May 29, 2017

A little peaceful salt lake with interesting animals living around it.

+10

30th May - Salt Lake in Kyzyl Tuu [Kyrgyzstan]
Kochkor

We came back to Kochkor for the next night. The guest house we went to was fully booked by French sporty pensioners who came cycling on the Kyrgyzstan high-altitude scenic roads. They offered us pastis and we enjoyed the traditional music that was played after dinner.

+2

29th May - Evening with traditional music [Kyrgyzstan]

A few seconds of Kyrgyz folk music from Kochkor, Kyrgyzstan
Song Kul ‐ May 28, 2017

We met two of the guys who will join us on our trip across China, Henri & Olivier, with their Land Rover / camper! We decided to take the only open road at the time (= the one with the lowest mountain pass at 3140m; no problems with snow). It took us almost 2 hours from the main road, though a beautiful rural valley with countless yurts, herds of horses, cows and sheeps, wild marmots, and a few soaring vultures. We arrived at the lake at a perfect time with the sunset reflecting on the water. W [...]
e realized this lake and the surrounding area is actually quite large, so it took us some time to figure out how to get close to the water for camping. We wanted this probably too badly that we ended up at night stuck in muddy tracks. After maybe two hours failing to pull the camper out of it, we called it a day and decided to go to "bed": in the car for us, and in the leaning camper for Olivier & Henri. The beautiful clear sky and quiet landscape made it quite nice anyway! The next morning was dedicated to getting ourselves out of that situation: digging, finding stones to lay down under our tyres, breaking the shovel and using a spoon to continue digging, leaving an "SOS" message on the main road 2km away in case someone would drive by, etc... Finally after 3 or 4 hours of efforts and the best of our ideas, we managed to pull the heavy camper out of the mud! :-)

+35

28th May - Bishkek to Song Kul [Kyrgyzstan]
Bishkek ‐ May 27, 2017

With our Chinese visas in our passports and two weeks to spare before our entry in the country, we decided to go back to Kyrgyzstan as we'd only seen little of it. Bishkek was just for a night, where we enjoyed a chilled afternoon and evening in a friendly hostel with fellow travellers - you don't visit Kyrgyzstan for its cities! :-)
Almaty, Kazakhstan ‐ May 25, 2017

Back to Almaty to get back to our car! This time we chose the much cheaper option of 22 hours of train in 3rd class: at least 30 bunk beds together in the same car, all occupied and without air conditioning! :-O But at 28€ for two, it's hardly disputable.
Astana ‐ May 21, 2017

Astana (capital of Kazakhstan since 1997).... At first you get impressed by modern buildings, amazing shopping centres and cleanliness. After a couple of hours it all becomes a bit boring because the city centre is spreat all over the place, and to reach different places you need to catch overcrowded buses. Despite all the above the most important is... WE GOT OUR CHINESE VISA !!! :oD Mission accomplished! :-)

+37

21 to 24 May - Astana [Kazakhstan]
Almaty ‐ May 19, 2017

We accelerated our progress and went quickly to Almaty for the nightmare of getting a Chinese visa abroad... After us and multiple people trying in multiple capitals since the beginning of our trips, the only option was confirmed to be in Astana, capital of Kazakhstan (and maybe the only place where non-residents can apply for Chinese visas). To avoid a long, boring and exhausting 2-day road trip through the steppes of Kazakhstan, we preferred to take a one-and-a-half-hour flight with SCAT Airli [...]
nes; quite nice! The city of Almaty is close to the mountains separating Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. We were not really in the mood of visiting and we didn't see many attractions on our way so we took only a few pictures.

+6

20 & 21 May - Almaty [Kazakhstan]
Kara Balta, Kyrgyzstan ‐ May 18, 2017

After driving almost all day through spectacular sceneries and two mountain passes above 3000 meters, we were happy to take a break in the first city available.

+18

18th May - Driving the north M41 [Kyrgyzstan]
Sary-Chelek ‐ May 17, 2017

There was a dreamy camping spot near this beautiful lake but the thunderstorm made it impossible. The park is really nice, in a remote area about 17 km from the closest village, Arkit. We enjoyed the calm and the nature for a few hours there, then decided to go back to the village for a dry place to sleep. Our "room" was basically a wooden platform with a roof and sheets around it to act as walls :oD; our beds were soft mattresses that look like thick winter duvets. A kitchen space outside was w [...]
orking with wood fire and there was also a wooden home-made covered dining room. For 400 som (about 5,50 €), it did the job and kept us dry for the night - the loud river besides did not even bother us! :-)

+23

17th May - Sary-Chelek [Kyrgyzstan]
Arslanbob ‐ May 15, 2017

After the past few days spent around big cities, we are finally in a small village surrounded by green vegetation and the largest walnut tree forest in the world. Unfortunately, walnut season is around September/October so we could only taste the last picking - still, really good ones! Here we discovered CBT (Community Based Tourism): not only being like a basic tourist office, it gathers a network of local and traditional families who open their doors and accommodate you for little money. When [...]
walking through town and between the fields and forest, people all know how to recognize tourists and say "hello" (especially kids who are so sweet!). And without any surprise, because there are no asphalt roads, everybody here has a Lada Niva or other old soviet vehicles to do the dirty job! :-)

+25

15 & 16 May - Arslanbob [Kyrgyzstan]

Nice picnic spot near Arslanbob, Kyrgyzstan
Osh ‐ May 13, 2017

Now in our 13th country after Italy: Kirghizstan. After Uzbekistan, getting things done here is finally much faster and easier: local cash and sim card, diesel, cheap accomodation were all taken care off within an hour; living in a dream! :-) We have to say that people here were much more helpful and willing to practise their English with us. Osh is one of the main towns in the middle of the silk road, just touching the Uzbek / Kyrgyz border. It is a multicultural place, there is a huge bazaar [...]
that never ends (at some point, we were wondering how far the other end was...). Around midday, the sun and heat were quite tough so we bought 2 beers and enjoyed it in the garden of the hostel, and we went back to climb the little mountain at 5pm for a nice panorama.

+14

13 & 14 May - Osh [Kyrgyzstan]
Marg‘ilon / Margilan, Uzbekistan ‐ May 12, 2017

The drive from Tashkent was quite nice passing through the mountains. We planned to sleep in the Fergana valley for the night before. We spotted lots of hotels and guesthouses on MapsMe and GoogleMaps around Margilan and Fergana, so we thought we'll try our luck and ask around for prices: a really different story there! After being offered a "discounted" price of 45$ by one hotel, we went to find a "guesthouse", hoping it would be cheaper. We found nobody at the place indicated on the map, but [...]
walking a bit further, one of the neighbours' door was opened. Asking about where the guesthouse or hotel is, the lady without hesitation told us "right there" (in Uzbek or Russian), showing one of their rooms on the first floor... "How much?" we asked, "nyet" the lady replied. She gave us mattresses and pillows, a delicious soup (similar to borscht) and breakfast in the morning. We somehow communicated with them and especially with the children... With hand gestures, pictures from our phone and a little book with images, they tried to teach us some words in Uzbek that we instantly forgot - it's such a hard and different language! In short, were really positively surprised by the great hospitality of these people; what we've read about the Fergana valley is actually true! :-) We found the people on the street and in the shops a lot more friendly too. And to finish, as it was our last day in Uzbekistan, center of the great "Silk Road", we really needed to go visit a silk factory. We had a private tour from the owner or manager: from the colony of worms eating leaves and producing the silk, we were taken all the way through the process of the finished products, seeing the tiny cocoons made of 3 kilometers of silk, how they roll it, colour it with natural ingredients (plants, spices), and how their make clothes or carpets with it. The sad part is that so many baby worms must die for the production of silk; after the silk from the cocoons is totally extracted, the larvae are exposed to the elements and can't survive (that's when the Chinese and Korean use them to cook their special delicacies).

+18

12 & 13 May - through Fergana Valley [Uzbekistan]

Lady working at Yodgorlik silk factory in Margilan, Uzbekistan
Tashkent ‐ May 11, 2017

Nobody really advised to go through the capital. It does not have many historical places or any particular points of interest for tourists. The truth is that we could find an affordable hotel in that city to crash for the night (the other towns on our way until the border with Kyrgyzstan do not offer such "opportunities"). We just spent a quick afternoon and evening walking through a park, a really huge market / bazaar, and learned how to get around with the metro.

+17

11th May - Tashkent [Uzbekistan]
Jizzakh ‐ May 10, 2017

Just a night stop.
Zaamin National Park

We read good things in a touristic book about the Zaamin National Park, one of the most preserved and authentic mountain areas in Uzbekistan. So we planned to cross this park from south to north. It gave us some really nice sights, but to our disappointment, about half-way in it, a military barrier didn't allow us go further... so we went back the same way; it was still very nice and worth the time, though.

+14

10th May - Zaamin National Park [Uzbekistan]

Lonely broken road in the Zaamin National Park, Uzbekistan
Samarqand ‐ May 8, 2017

Samarkand is also a very nice city. The thing is however, after having visited Khiva and Bukhara, we didn't feel as impressed as what we expected... Well, the main historic buildings and monuments are quite incredible, but still similar to the ones in the other two cities. Samarkand maybe loses a bit of charm as it is quite big and all those historic buildings are a bit far from each other. We really liked the big market! :-) Our guest house was a few kilometers out from the center, allowing us [...]
to rest in peace in a more quiet area. The host family was very friendly. We also met two chilled French tourists whom we made some conversation with and exchanged good travel tips. In the last evening we went to a big barbecue in the area on the side of the street; quite an interesting place... you select your choice of meat (or even vegetables) skewers from a 10-meters long table, and give it to the staff who's grill it the way you want!

+25

9th May - Samarkand |Uzbekistan]
Bukhara ‐ May 6, 2017

Bukhara just did the job at impressing us with the local architechture, majestic madrasas and mosques, and a very well preserved / renovated old town. Really worth a visit! We had booked a room in a guest house there but the host was not able to accomodate us as the plumbing broke down. He was nice enough to bring us to one of his friends' hotels a bit further... From 17€/night at the first place, that new place's owner wanted 30$; that's when our negotiating practise began: Elena's unhappy f [...]
ace and Christophe starting to look at Booking.com made the price go down to 20$, breakfast included! :-) We also discoved that a good exchange rate is actually around 7800 soums for the dollar (double the official rate!). They really love those U.S. dollars!

+51

7th May - Bukhara [Uzbekistan]

Nice madrasah / mosque during prayer time in Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Xiva / Khiva ‐ May 5, 2017

Khiva old town is really beautiful and out of the ordinary. In the middle of the famous "Silk Road", this town has maintained its traditional architechture (walls made of stones, covered with a mix of mud and hay). Most of its "madrasas" have been converted into marketplaces or museums. Khiva, and some of the other historic towns in Uzbekistan are real intercontinental meeting points and see a lots of long-term travellers passing by, going from Europe to Asia or the opposite; just in our guestho [...]
use, we've met 3 cyclists (2 French, 1 NewZealander), 2 backpackers from Canada, a Russian couple travelling by car, and we've seen a serious Lada VAZ-2101 from Czech Republic parked outside.

Traditional entertainment in Khiva, Uzbekistan
Nukus ‐ May 3, 2017

For this day, finally arriving in a city, we had three simple goals: withdraw some more local cash, filling up our fuel tank, getting a local SIM card, and finding a place to sleep; what a DISASTER! =-( * CASH: there are no such things here like ATMs, cash machines, or easy places available to get cash in Uzbekistan (even in banks!). We've been told the only place where this was possible was at the national bank which was already closed for withdrawals at 4pm. Thankfully, one of the employees h [...]
elped us and contacted a friend who could exchange our remaining Kazakh Tenges to get us going for today. * DIESEL: this also seems almost non-existent in this country, especially in this area. All local cars run on gas or petrol only. Diesel is for professionals only (trucks, buses, tractors...). It is still possible to find, but at a huge price (1€ per litre, double the price of petrol here!) - and sometimes only in dirty plastic jars from the black market. We found one at a station for the same price (after asking at least 10 stations), so that's where we went, hoping for better quality. * SIM CARD: we know that it's possible according to other foreigners, but we've been rejected at two different shops/operators because we don't have Uzbek passports... We'll try again. * HOTELS: we visited maybe 10 of them, and all of those were full except one where they proposed us a room without windows for 35$... Having no choice, we tried to get it but the hotel wouldn't accept us paying in their local currency! We discussed with them and another local who was at reception and found some disturbing practises around here: > Locals must pay in soums (UZS) only, not dollars. > Tourists must pay in US dollars only, not soums! > And the best part is, if you do the math, that tourists pay double the locals' price! (it's actually displayed in the hotel rates chart at reception) We've asked about it in one of the hotels and the receptionist he said it's not even due to a government policy or levy; hotel bosses simply fill up their pockets much better with tourists!! So to conclude, we slept in our car in front of the last hotel we tried.

+15

3 & 4 May - road to Khiva [Uzbekistan]
Jasliq ‐ May 2, 2017

Ok, back on the road: because of the unexpected time lost at the border, we went "only" till Jaslik 250km away (instead of Nukus) - 3 to 4 hours with the same flat and desertic scenery going past. It was like playing an old racing video game with the same programmed scenery repeating over and over. We tried to break the record of how many potholes we avoid! But sometimes you just have to choose which ones are the worst, or drive in 1st gear to be sure your car will come out of it in one piece! : [...]
-D Thankfully, the wildlife of the desert made our trip more exciting too! We saw a fox, countless prairie dogs and even turtles crossing the road, or others who didn't make it alive... :-/ After Kazakhstan we didn't see many camels and dromedaries; we imagine the environment is really too hard and remote for such big animals to survive.

+3

2nd May - through the desert to Uzbekistan
To Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan

After about 80km on a terribly broken / potholed road (driving through the offroad tracks was often a better option), we arrived at the border. There were hundreds of meters of queuing for both trucks and cars! It was not monving at all! We started to be scared with the minimal amount of food we took with us. But thankfully, being tourists helped us there! The Uzbek people queuing in front of us started to speak with us, trying their best in Russian, which we finally understood after a few body [...]
language tricks. :-) Apparently there was a 3-day wait to reach the beginning of the queue from there. They told us we could skip the whole queue, which we did of course (although a bit embarassed with this "discrimination" against Uzbek people). It still took us 4 or 5 hours and plenty of paperwork to get to the other side - but we had to pay nothing except 2 photocopies. Once on the Uzbek side, we went to get car insurance. That's when loads of black-market money exchange guys came to chase us to make business: 1 USD for 4000 UZS. Despite our first thoughts (we're getting screwed here!), we found out that the actual dollar value was under 3800 UZS; did we really make a profit out of this? :-)
Beyneu ‐ May 1, 2017

Last town for us before the border to Uzbekistan (or nearly 500km in the desert before the next town of this size). We stopped there for the night and to fill up our fuel tank.

+10

1st May - on the road to Beyneu [Kazakhstan]

Never ending desertic flatland between Say Otes and Beyneu, Kazakhstan

Interesting scenery in Mangystau region, Kazakhstan

Racing with horses in Mangystau region, Kazakhstan
Ushtagan

We were a bit disappointed to see camels and dromedaries without sand dunes around them - like you see on movies and travel magazines. But luckily, this place with lots of sand dunes was not too far from Shetpe so we decided to take a few hours and litres of diesel for it. :-) It's really a place out of this world. Only one road goes there and only there... Well there are always multiple off-road options, but who knows where they bring you, how far, and what if you get stuck alone without phone [...]
network coverage? :-O This town is kind of an oases, with some trees and a few people living there. At one point we were scared by seeing a man wearing something white over his head (similar to the Ku Klux Klan pointed hats!); but after spending some time in the desert, we probably found the reason: to protect again sun and sand!

+20

1st May - Ushtagan & around [Kazakhstan]

Horses running in freedom near Ushtagan, Kazakhstan
Shetpe ‐ Apr 30, 2017

We took advantage of this "large" town to find a hotel and hopefully diesel tomorrow (long queues of cars at petrol stations seem quite usual here - not sure why).

+7

30th April - on the road to Shetpe [Kazakhstan]

Nice small mountains in Mangystau region, Kazakhstan
Otpan Tau historical and cultural complex

We had quite an unexpected and great time there! Our goal was just to go visit this site and museum, but we found ourselves parking the car in the middle of what seemed to be a large gathering. Cultural note: our friend Aigul from Aktau told us the Kazakhs celebrate Nowruz (beginning of spring) around March 13-14 by gathering with their families. However this is not always possible because of the long distances and the state of the roads in this period, so they do it in April. Kazakhs also keep [...]
a strict record of their ancestors (complete family tree) for at least 7 generations to avoid congenital disorders. We met there one of these extended families; there were maybe between 100 and 200 people. Inside a sort of munucipal building looking like a yurt, a picture (or rather drawing/painting) of the family's 7th ancestor was on display: a proud warrior from the 18th century. Everyone was really interested to see us, western foreigners. Kids especially, but also grown-ups all pulled their smartphones to take selfies and videos - we're probably all over the Kazakh social media right now! :-D We were also invited to drink fermented camel milk (:-O) and have a meal with them: horse meat (not accepted in Elena's vegetarian diet) with aromatic rice; we were at least 10 people eating with our hands (must use your right hand only!) in one big bowl; what a challenge! :-)

+14

30th April - family reunion at Otpan Tau [Kazakhstan]
Karagiye depression

Following tracks for about half an hour south from the main A-33 road, in the middle of a flat (but still a bit green) desert, we arrived at the 5th deepest land depression on Earth at an altitude of -134 meters. A long time ago, this was the Caspian Sea, so there remains a large white area (not sure if there is more salt of water).

+7

30th April - Karagiye depression [Kazakhstan]
Aktau ‐ Apr 28, 2017

After spending nearly 30 hours on the ferry and struggling to find our way through millions of paperwork at the port, we finally rewarded ourselves with a nice hotel where we arrived around 11pm (the hotel policy allowed us to check out at the same time the next day! :-D). The next day we met Aigul, a friendly local lady who introduced us to Kazakhstan and Aktau, showed us amazing pictures of the beautiful Mangystau region, and where to find them. Here, most of the touristic and beautiful sites [...]
are referred with GPS locations and are accessible with 4x4! - so we saved some of them on our Google Maps. Aktau has a beautiful sea side with views on sunsets over the Caspian sea (which of course we didn't see :-D).

+10

29th May - Aktau [Kazakhstan]
Ələt (Alat port), Azerbaijan ‐ Apr 26, 2017

+15

26 to 28 April - from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan
Ateshgah (Fire temple) ‐ Apr 25, 2017

This site was originally like a bigger "Yanar Dag" centuries ago, and the multiple civilizations passing by have constructed their "fire temple" on this spot - fueling their own religious beliefs and rituals (Hinduism & Zoroastrianism, if you've ever heard about it!).

+2

25th April - Ateshgah of Baku [Azerbaijan]
Yanar Dag

One of the main attractions just outside Baku is this "mountain on fire". Like our Iranian friend joked about it, it is indeed "just 2 meters of fire" coming off some stones thanks to natural gas leaking at the top of that hill. Interesting sight nevertheless! :-)

+2

25th April - Yanar Dag
Khinaliq

Very traditional mountain village at an altitude of 2,350m in a splendid remote countryside. It is accessible from only one unpaved road going through a cayon and higher steppes / mountains.

+14

25th April - Khinaliq & Gudiyalchay valley [Azerbaijan]

Driving back through the gorge from Xinaliq, Azerbaijan
Quba ‐ Apr 24, 2017

Creepy place, never go there! :-D We maybe didn't visit the right way, but it's not a town we felt comfortable in... People on the street were staring at us strangely, and at night you could see almost nothing in the city - no public lighting - and only men where hanging around (not one single woman outside!). We also stayed in a dodgy "hotel" and had poor quality meal, both really overpriced for what it was... We still decided to give it a second chance and visit during the day; but we didn't [...]
find anything really special or interesting except maybe the handmade carpets factory. One good thing is that this town is close to the Caucasus mountains, with nice landscapes and villages over there.

+15

24th April - Quba [Azerbaijan]
Baku ‐ Apr 20, 2017

Really nice and modern. Walking into this city centre doesn't feel any different to any of the western European trendy cites. It's quite another world compared with the rest of the country we've seen. There's all the shopping you want, high buildings, expensive car dealers, etc... Thanks to gas and petrol! We were hosted by a young and very friendly Iranian guy, Mostafa, who's been there for 5 years. He has the unbelievable chance to live in a former office space (14th-15th floor duplex) that hi [...]
s former employer let him take care of - just not to have it unoccupied, so free rent. Our host introduced us to his friends and the crazy world of the HHH (Hash House Harriers) - look it up on the internet! We had some fun time. :-)

+79

21 & 22 April - Baku [Azerbaijan]
Gobustan mud volcano

After a fun off-road session, we arrived at Elena's favourite amusement park! She went straight away to put her hands into the flowing mud and spread it on her face! :-D It's quite a unique place really: at the top of a little mountain, you can see all those baby volcanos spitting mud.

+13

20th April - Qobustan mud volcano [Azerbaijan]

Little mud volcanos bubbling at Qobustan, Azerbaijan
Qobustan prehistoric site & museum

Fascinating modern and interactive museum explaining how this arid / desertic part of the world used to be a savanna in prehistoric times. The nearby petroglyphs (about 6000 recorded) and archeological research show that until 15000 years ago, this region was populated by aurochs (wild bulls), wild asses, Persian wild goats, wild horses, gazelles, lions, wolves.

+22

20th April - Qobustan archeologic site [Azerbaijan]
Qobustan ‐ Apr 19, 2017

Only a night stop. We met a courageous South-Korean cyclo-tourist who was going from Hamburg (Germany) to South Korea, through a similar itinerary.

+17

17th to 19th April - First few days in Azerbaijan
Şəki (Sheki) ‐ Apr 18, 2017

Welcome to Azerbaijan :=D
Lagodekhi, Georgia ‐ Apr 17, 2017

We spent just a few hours and enjoyed our last lunch in Georgia (and last khachapuri) under the warm sun and bird songs. Good bye Georgia! :-)

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17th April - Lagodekhi [Georgia]
Telavi ‐ Apr 16, 2017

Capital of the Kakheti region, it has a few unique landmarks. We had a walk and a quick lunch there.

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16th April - Telavi [Georgia]
Gremi

Old little fort and monastery that on our way of our day trip. Quite nice. Easter atmosphere.

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16th April - Gremi [Georgia]
Ilia lake

We decided to go on a road trip that day and stopped by this lake.

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16th April - quick stop at Ilia lake [Georgia]
Sighnaghi ‐ Apr 15, 2017

Beautiful place, laid back and peaceful, with amazing views. If we planned to settle down in Georgia, we'd probably choose this town! :-) It just sits on top of a hill in the middle of the Kakheti region well renowed for its wine. As a tourist, we were invited a few times to taste local home made wines and have a few bites for free!

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15th & 16th April - Sighnaghi [Georgia]
David Gareji monastery ‐ Apr 13, 2017

We know, right? another monastery... x-D But this one was quite interesting as it required us to drive on mud tracks for at least half an hour in the middle of nowhere. Our scenery was made of low green and brown hills, sheep herds, warning signs about nearby millitary base and possible unexploded ordnances away from the tracks. The monastery itself is quite original as it is partly built into caves (reminding us the well known "Cappadocia" region in Turkey - that's what we mention now every ti [...]
me we see little holes in the mountain!).

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14th April - David Gareji monastery and surroundings [Georgia]
Tbilisi

Back in Tbilisi to continue the investigation on our diesel engine problems that keep coming back. Tegeta Motors proposed us to get their loyalty card! :-D But at least we know where those issues most likely come from now.
Stepantsminda ‐ Apr 11, 2017

That's where our car (also named as "Catorcina" / "old rusty car") really showed us what it could do, and it's not bad! Unfortunately the photos and videos are not in 3D so don't really show how challenging the track was. To give you an idea, it took us half an hour to drive 4km, all done in 1st gear and 4x4 mode, and occasionally needing to drive backwards when taking it the wrong way. This hard work was rewarding though, with an amazing view awaiting us on top of the hill. At the bottom of the [...]
valley, the town was relatively quiet, looking like an old rural mountain village, except the bar/restaurant we went to for dinner (probably the only one open), where lots of tourists where spending their evening.

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11th April - Gergeti Trinity Church near Stepansminda [Georgia]

4x4 adventure between Stepansminda & Gergeti Trinity Church, Georgia
Jvari mountain pass

Amazing road and scenery, next to the Gudauri ski resort. We were lucky with the weather, and were interested to get cable car or chair lift tickets to go to the top (3200m), but guess what... Everything was shutting down at 3pm! :-O Nevermind, the views at Jvari pass were already more than satisfying and free! :-D We also skipped the 100€ per person paragliding tours.

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11th April - Drive to Stepansminda [Georgia]

Panorama near Jvari mountain pass, Georgia.

Driving near the Jvari mountain pass (2.379 meters), Georgia
Anauri

Little stop to stretch our legs and visit that little fort & monastery complex. We generally don't see so many tourists in Georgia but that time we where flooded in a large number of Russian tourists! :-D

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11th April - Anauri fortress / monastery [Georgia]
Tbilisi ‐ Apr 10, 2017

Very nice and vibrant capital city with history. It is nicely situated near forests and low mountains, but the traffic and polution in the center also felt overwhelming to us. You can find almost everything you want there, and at every price too! We had a very good and luxurious wine-tasting and Georgian degustation experience in a central trendy restaurant; and the other day we had a decent meal for a tenth of the price in a fast food. Our time there was however essentially focused on properly [...]
diagnosing and fixing the issues we've been having with our car for 2 months now... :-X So we discovered "Tegeta Motors": a real paradise for car problems! Over a huge area, you can find there several large buildings, each one of them specialized in something (ours was the "Diesel Service, at gate 42" told us the dispatchers at the entrance). We also had to go to the "electrical problems diagnostics" area where they gave us vouchers for free coffee at the bar overlooking this impressive "car-fixing factory". And they sopke English! This says it all! :-D
Akhalkalaki

Just a quick night stop in this town in the middle of a cold, frosty, arid and uninviting plateau. We didn't see anything special or attractive there.

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9th & 10th April - from Vardzia to Tbilisi
Vardzia ‐ Apr 9, 2017

Super nice place, sort of a little Georgian "Cappadocia" dug into a mountain side in a beautiful valley. Apart from the holes (caves) in the mountain, it is actually quite different than what we saw in Turkey. We were a bit nervous walking through hundreds of meters of tunnels deep into the cliff (hoping the power wouldn't fail and leave us in the dark)! :-O

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9th April - Nuns monastery near Vardzia [Georgia]

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9th April - Vardzia cave city [Georgia]

Snowy drive between Akhaltsikhe and Vardzia, Georgia
Sapara Monastery

We've gone there based on really good reviews we're read and people's suggestions. But well, it was in the clouds and under the falling snow just for us! :-D We couldn't see a tree! And we don't know what panorama people are talking about there! The church has nice old paints inside. We didn't risk the hike up to the castle.

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9th April - Sapara Monastery [Georgia]
Akhaltsikhe ‐ Apr 8, 2017

One-night stop in this town that was on our way. The fortress is really amazing. It's has been quite modernized though, so you don't really get a feeling of the middle ages. But it's well worth a visit (even under the rain, like us!).

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9th April - Akhaltsikhe [Georgia]
Borjomi ‐ Apr 7, 2017

Known for its mineral waters and hot springs, we were not really impressed by the place... The hiking trails through the central park and its valley were really badly maintained, we got lost a few times because of a lack of signs, it wasn't that good looking and tons of waste were littering the forest (sorry for killing this place! :-D). But at the same time we probably didn't spend enough time to fully appreciate the area (we didn't go into the National Park). We tried to take a few nice pictur [...]
es nevertheless.

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8th April - Borjomi [Georgia]
Surami

Quick break from the car in this town where we spotted a castle to have a walk to.

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7th April - quick stop in Surami [Georgia]
Motsameta ‐ Apr 6, 2017

Home to two orthodox monasteries (Gelati and Motsameta) this was our last stop before going back to our hostel in Kutaisi. We particularly loved the look of the Motsameta monastery, surrounding nature and pieceful environment it lies in.

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6th April - Gelati & Motsameta monasteries [Georgia]

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6th April - Scenic drive from Nikortsminda to Kutaisi [Georgia]

Peace & nature at Motsameta monastery, Georgia
Nikortsminda

Mostly known for its 11th century orthodox cathedral, we stopped there to have a quick look at it.

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6th April - Nikortsminda cathedral [Georgia]
Tsageri

Significant enough town, close to the Caucasus mountains and within easy reach through a nice road (in good state!). We would have like to go explore further one of the narrow valleys but we preferred to stick to our plan / schedule and continue on the main road.

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6th April - Tsageri & around, at the foot of the Caucasus [Georgia]
Kumistavi (Prometheus Cave)

Nice and quite a large cave worth a visit if you go to Georgia (although not as impressive as the one we saw in Slovenia). The lights actually make it quite beautiful. Taking pictures was allowed so here are a few of them! :-)

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6th April - Prometheus Cave [Georgia]
Kutaisi ‐ Apr 5, 2017

Just a town where we stayed 2 nights. We didn't really visit it much as we went on a road trip for the whole day to visit other locations. We took a few pictures nonetheless.

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6th April - Kutaisi quick visit [Georgia]
Khala & Chakvistavi (Mtirala National Park)

Beautiful rural area of Georgia where people live in old houses or farms, and mostly eat and drink their own products. Our hosts made us a really good khachapuri with homemade bread and their own cows' cheese. The village we stayed in (Khala) was very simple: one main road (the only one in asphalt), and all the other roads between the properties probably needed a 4x4 or other off-road vehicle.

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5th April - Mtirala National Park [Georgia]
Zeda Makhutseti ‐ Apr 4, 2017

We went to discover what's on the main road of the south-west of Georgia (which is the only road crossing that part of Georgia!). It took us a while to get to that town (loads of huge pot holes to avoid, parts of rocky and muddy road, cows crossing in front of you randomly, etc...). There was a nice waterfall and old narrow footbridge. We would have liked to go explore further but our plans for the next days and the poor road connections through the country made us change our mind.

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4th April - Quick trip to Zeda Makhuntseti [Georgia]
Gonio fortress

Interesting piece of history on our way, we decided to have a look at it. Basically only the fortified walls and some foundations are still standing... a bit disappointing, even for 3 lari each! :-) But the museum inside made it worth it in the end. Lots of well conserved little items; jewellery, explanations, etc...

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4th April - Gonio fortress [Georgia]
Batumi botanical gardens ‐ Apr 3, 2017

We've never seen a botanic garden of that size before. It actually spreads over a few hills on the sea side, and it is somewhere you could really enjoy at least half a day in (if not a whole day). Part of the beauty is that it still looks quite wild; it isn't like just a collection of as many plants as possible. All the trails going through the park are very enjoyable and could fill up the entire day hiking if you like.

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3rd April - Batumi botanical gardens [Georgia]
Kobuleti

We didn't really visit the town but the nature reserve close to it where fauna and flora is protected. The scenery and feeling was very peaceful, quite different to the "outside world". We could imagine ourselves walking through wild African plains.

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3rd April - Kobuleti nature reserve [Georgia]

Frogs' party at Kobuleti nature reserve, Georgia
Batumi ‐ Apr 2, 2017

Modern and lively city on sea-side with lots of space and unique landmarks. In our second guest house, the receptionist was surprised that we stayed only 1 night; we understood "what?? just 1 night? Batumi = as Vegas!" :-) We eventually stayed 2 nights.

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2nd April - Batumi [Georgia]
Sarp (Turkey to Georgia border), Turkey ‐ Apr 1, 2017

We suddenly decided around 4 or 5 pm to go directly to Georgia. There seemed to be 1 or 2 roads going through the mountains but people told us we needed special permissions to use those borders. So as it was already late we decided to take the safe option of the sea-side border. We arrived around 18:30 and queued for about 6 hours to get through 2 Turkish check points; the Georgian were really quick - they let us go with a warm "Welcome" after just 2 minutes checking our passports. Strangely the [...]
waiting time didn't feel that long, as there was a lot of "interesting" things to see around the queue... such as random people negociating a few liras to get you pass a few cars to save time, or the lucrative business of the local Mosque's toilets at 1 lira each (with that 6-hour queue and people waiting for buses going the other way). Now past the border, where to sleep: - The guest house we booked originally this day replied later that they actually didn't have any rooms, - So we booked another guest house, arrived there at around 01:00 in the morning (we found the street number, but no indication of a guest house there and a building partly finished), the dog probably woke up the lady who showed us the unfinished building and made us understand she won't be able to host us. - We went back to the gas station where we made a full tank earlier and asked people for where to sleep. They eventually gave us the WiFi password for us to find a place which would be open for check-in at this time: we booked one in Batumi. - We arrived in Batumi around 1:30 am at the location provided but no sign of our hotel... We asked a local passerby whom we showed the name and address of the hotel; he told us there is another street in the city with almost the same name. That was of course the other one... we could finally check in after finding the place and waking up the receptionist sleeping in the lounge's couch. Sweet dreams... what a day! :-D
Borçka Karagöl

It was clearly not the best time to go there as the lake was frozen and all the rest was under 2 meters of snow, but we had a free entrance! We still enjoyed our hiking adventure there, and met a very friendly group of Turkish policemen who insisted that we join them for a lunch in the wild, which was really good.

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1st April - Borçka Karagöl & good bye to Turkey
Ardanuç ‐ Mar 31, 2017

A quite different scenery surrounds this town, much more rocky and less green as near Artvin. There is a castle which we couldn't find any way to climb up to, and an interesting small canyon where we took nice pictures.

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31st March - Ardanuç [Turkey]
Artvin ‐ Mar 30, 2017

Large city interestingly all spread over a steep mountain side. It was a good base to explore the Artvin region that offers much to see. We stayed there 2 nights.

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31st March - Artvin & around
Ayder

Nice summer resort at an altitude of 1350m. We were hoping to hike to a village higher up at 2200m but the snow made it too difficult (we don't want to mention our poor energy and physical condition! :-D). We had a better time having a tea on a terrace and enjoying a free zip-line tour.

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30th March - Ayder
Zil Kale ‐ Mar 29, 2017

Nice castle who was used to keep control of the valley and protect the merchants during the silk road times.

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29th March - Zil Kale
Uzungöl ‐ Mar 28, 2017

Little lake-side town in the mountains. Most buildings are actually for accomodating tourists (hotels, guest houses, restaurants, tour companies, etc...). We were surprised of the much higher prices of accomodation, food and activities in the north-east of Turkey, but realized it may be driven by the high number of tourists from the petrol-rich middle-eastern countries. Everything is translated in Arabic and the islamic culture seemed quite stronger and more conservative within the tourists who [...]
were there. The road continuing up in the valley is quite nice and goes quite far; we enjoyed a bicycle ride there.

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29th March - Uzungöl
Soumela monastery

Just an hour away from Trabzon, this old orthodox monastery was quite impressively build on the side of the mountain. Unfortunately at the time it was under renovation so we couldn't get really close. We still enjoyed a little hike on the road and in a forest trail under a bit of fresh snow from the day before.

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28th March - Soumela monastery
Trabzon ‐ Mar 27, 2017

We did not spend much time in the city itself except in the evening with our host, his friends, and two of the motorcyclists who will be our road companions in China. Sorry for only posting a few pictures... :-)

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26th & 27th March - Trabzon & around
Sera Gölü

Cute little lake close to Trabzon with lots of cafes and restaurants around. Even in the cold and rainy weather some people were renting the pedal boats! :-D
Çınarlık

Nice spot in a bit of altitude which offers really great views. Our host from Trabzon brought us here. The weather wasn't the best but the views weren't too bad anyway.
Ordu ‐ Mar 26, 2017

We've been advised to stop in this town and take a cable car ride to the top of the mountain nearby. It was quite nice indeed. Some paragliders were taking off from up there too.

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26th March - Ordu
Ünye ‐ Mar 25, 2017

Our first stop along the Black Sea coast, just for the night before continuing east. We had some nice and cheap vegetarian "çiğ köfte" wraps for dinner.
Amasya ‐ Mar 24, 2017

Occupying a few kilometers around the Yeşilırmak valley, Amasya is quite a charming city with lots of ottoman houses hanging over the river, a castle with amazing views, other historic sites and lots of bars and restaurants. We were hosted by a young Turkish worker / student who showed us around.

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24th & 25th March - Amasya
Ortahisar ‐ Mar 22, 2017

Cute little village with a cave castle that offers a great view over Cappadocia. There are some interesting sites to visit around.

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22nd March - Ortahisar & around
Ürgüp

Our balloon flight ended up near Ürgup. We went to visit that town later in the day. It is a town that also has its share of funny rock formations and caves, hotels, restaurants, etc...

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22nd March - Ürgüp

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22nd March - Balloon flight

Balloon flight over the Rose and Red valleys in Cappadocia, Turkey
Göreme ‐ Mar 21, 2017

In the very middle of Cappadocia, this little town is very friendly and tourist-oriented. We stayed there three nights as it is a very central and practical location for everything there is to do and see around.

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23rd March - Rose, Red and Love valleys

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21st to 23rd March - Göreme and around
Zelve Open Air Museum ‐ Mar 22, 2017

Nice area that spans around 2 or 3 little valleys, with interesting rock formations and explanations of some of the caves of the area (churches, wineries, etc...).

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22nd March - Zelve Open Air Museum
Paşabağ ‐ Mar 21, 2017

Quite an interesting site with many mushroom-shaped rock formations, and a nice panorama on the arid scenery of Cappadocia.

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21st March - Paşabağ (Valley of the Monks)

Sceneny around Paşabağ (Valley of the Monks), Cappadocia, Turkey
Çavuşin

Nice village with an impressive number of caves (probably more than actual homes!), with a number of them on sale - if you're interested in renovation! :-)

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21st March - Çavuşin & around
Love Valley

Another unique feature of Cappadocia is this valley of phallic-shaped volcanic rock pillars. Curiously (and coincidentally), it was naturally shaped, not human made! :-) We first saw the valley while driving off-road on the west ridge of the valley, then came back a few days later with better weather to walk through it.
Uçhisar ‐ Mar 20, 2017

Beatiful city in the center of Cappadocia, next to the "Pigeon Valley", with lots of caves and "fairy chimneys" - many of them renovated as houses or hotels.

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20th & 21st March - Uçhisar & around

Fairy chimneys and caves north of Uchisar castle in Cappadocia, Turkey
Kaymaklı

Fascinating underground city. First built around 2800 years ago, it was used by multiple civilizations to stay hidden and well protected from their ennemies (up to 5000 people could live in it). Only 10% of it is open to tourists and it's already quite impressive. It used to be connected with the Derinkuyu underground city 10 km away through a long tunnel.

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20th March - Kaymakli Underground City
Nevşehir

Probably the largest city in the region of Cappadocia. We were hosted by two Iranian couples and had a chance to celebrate their own New Year in the early afternoon (according to the Solar Hejri calendar).

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19th & 20th March - Nevşehir
Sultanhani ‐ Mar 19, 2017

This town was on our way and a large well-preserved caravanserail still stands here from the silk-road times. We also had really great local filled bread (sort of pizza) for lunch.

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19th March - Sultanhani & on the road
Sille

Cute little town out of the city with nice views, its traditions and artisants, and traces of cave homes (similar as we saw later in Cappadocia).

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19th March - Sille
Konya ‐ Mar 17, 2017

Nice city, young (lots of universities), and a lot about culture and religion. It is a pilgrimage destination for people following the Sufism religion (variation of Islam), and it's where the famous "whirling dervishes" originate from. We had the chance to spend time with our hosts, which made our stay there really great.

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17th & 18th March - Konya

Whirling Dervishes' religious ceremony in Konya, Turkey
Eğirdir / Kale ‐ Mar 15, 2017

Two nights in this small and quiet spot on Eğirdir lake to recover from the cold Christophe caught after coming out of the hot waters at Pamukkale. Apart from a few nice views, there isn't much to see or do in the area.

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15th to 17th March - little break @ Eğirdir / Kale peninsula
Pamukkale ‐ Mar 14, 2017

Small but very touristy because of the mineral thermal waters coming off from the top of the hill and creating those white travestine deposits and pools.

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13th March - Pamukkale & Hierapolis
Laodikeia ancien city

Remains of a quite large Greco-Roman city (almost 2300 years old) that transported us into the fascinating environment they used to live in back then. We wish we had a time-travel machine to see how this city really looked like.

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14th March - Laodikeia
Uşak

This was just a one-night stop before continuing south. We had the chance to stay with Volkan, a very hospitable Turkish man (and experienced adventurious traveller/hitchhiker) and his visiting mum Fatma (very good cook - we had a delicious dinner and breakfast!).

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13th March - Road to Uşak
Aizanoi historic site

On our way, we decided to stop by to take a look. The site was closed for visits at the time,but we could still see the remains of the Temple of Zeus behind the fence, and a large theater/stadium.
Cumalıkızık ‐ Mar 12, 2017

Beautiful old Ottoman village where the typical architechture has been preserved, and people (and the local laws) make every effort to keep a way of life as it used to be in the past.

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12th March - Cumalıkızık
Bursa ‐ Mar 11, 2017

Old capital of the Ottoman empire, Bursa is now the 4th largest city in Turkey (2,5 million people) and its history offers lots of interesting places to visit. We were hosted by a very nice Bulgarian / Ukrainian couple who showed us around and spoilt us with food! :-)

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12th March - Bursa
Nicaea / Iznik

Quick visit in this small town with great history.

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11th March - Nicaea / Iznik historic town
Istanbul ‐ Mar 6, 2017

For one of the largest capitals in the world with around 15 million inhabitants, this one has surprised us for the best! One week was definitely not too much to visit... we still feel that we know almost nothing about it. So many different charming districts, historic places or other modern points of interest, lots of space to relax or enjoy a walk, and the markets and food diversity is quite impressive; you can really find everything you want in here! It's also a city where our stray cats frien [...]
ds are probably the most spoilt in the world... all of them have more food and water than they can take, and in many cases people built them little shelters outside their homes. So cool !!! :-D

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6th to 11th March - Istanbul
Sultanköy ‐ Mar 5, 2017

After a night being sick and still not feeling great for the rest of the day, we didn't want to go to the huge metropolis of Istanbul straight away. So we stayed at this nice sea-side hotel.

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5th & 6th March - road to Istanbul
Alexandroupoli, Greece

Unfortunately we fell sick from a bad fried fish / seafood experience the night before so we didn't really do or see much there. We decided to head to Turkey just after checking out (at noon) and eating a small yogurt with fruits which was our only meal for the rest of the day.
Fanari ‐ Mar 6, 2017

Another (larger) fishing town with nice views and beaches.

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4th March - Fanari
Porto Lagos ‐ Mar 4, 2017

This seems to be a popular place for a day break and eating fish. There are also two very nice monasteries on 2 islands connected by foot bridges.

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4th March - Porto Lagos

Flamingo looking for food in the low waters in Porto Lagos, Greece.
Komotini

Quick stop in this town where we had a walk around the center / pedestrian areas.

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4th March - quick stop in Komotini
Xanthi

Quite charming city center. There was a lot of activity and people on the day we were there. Most bars, cafés and restaurants were full.

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4th March - Xanthi
Loutra Volvis ‐ Mar 3, 2017

Short coffee (actually beer) break by this quiet lake, much needed after a morning spent in crazy Thessaloniki.

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3rd March - Koroneia & Volvi lakes
Thessaloniki ‐ Mar 6, 2017

Very large and expanded city. There is a nice long walk by the sea, and a decent square / pedestrian area with shops, cafés and restaurants. Some historical monuments may be worth a look or a visit. But we didn't feel comfortable this city to stay longer than one night there... too much buildings / concrete, traffic, noise, pollution, and not enough green and quiet areas to enjoy. We spent a good part of the morning to find a car space at a walking distance from the center, but that was mission [...]
impossible - we did like the locals... well into the side-walk! :-D

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3rd March - Thessaloniki
Leptokarya ‐ Mar 2, 2017

Nice scenic drive though the back roads from Meteora to Leptokarya. We could see lots of snow at the top of the Olympus moutain range. The view on the sea was quite amazing after the last mountain pass.

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2nd March - driving to Thessaloniki
Kastraki ‐ Feb 28, 2017

Little town just outside the bigger one, Kalabaka, at the foot of the majestic Meteora. We put our tent there, which was the only one in a really huge camp site (what kind of tourists go to Greece in February...?).

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28th Feb to 2nd March - Meteora

Driving through Meteora, Greece
Trikala

It is an important historic city, has some nice old streets and buildings worth a look, but we were not as much satisfied with it as we were with Kastoria. We decided to go closer to the famous Meteora after spending the morning here.
Mesopotamia ‐ Feb 27, 2017

We went to enjoy the nice weather in a park and follow the tradition of flying kites with our host and his friends (+ beers & food of course!).
Kastoria

Beautiful city sitting between the mainland and an island/hill in the middle of the lake. We spent a great time with our host Giorgos, his family and friends. Lots of festive bon fires were lit up around the city, where we enjoyed free food, wine and traditional music. The day after, which is a public holiday in Greece, it is a custom to fly kites out in the park (this was a failure - not enough wind!) and be vegan (until Easter really, but almost nobody does it so long). We really felt we didn' [...]
t stay long enough in this town.

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26th February - Kastoria & around

Greak live music & improvised dancing in Kastoria, Greece

Festive evening in Kastoria (Greece) after the carnival.
Zvezdë, Albania ‐ Mar 26, 2017

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26th February - St Naum to Kastoria through Albania
Sveti Naum, Macedonia ‐ Feb 26, 2017

Just 1km from the Albanian border, the Saint Naum orthodox monastery was built over a thousand years ago. It also borders numerous beautiful springs than flow into Ohrid lake. Lots of peacocks live there (maybe more than monks?).

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25th February - St Naum
Velestovo ‐ Mar 24, 2017

Quick hike from Ohrid to Velestovo (& back).

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24th February - hike to Racha & Velestovo

Eagles soaring over the hills near Velestovo, Macedonia.
Kalishta ‐ Feb 23, 2017

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23rd February - Struga & Kalishta
Struga

Looking to kill time while we wait for our car to be fixed, we decided to visit this smaller town north of the lake. Just 20 minutes away, you can already sense a stronger Albanian and Muslim influence. It has its charm, but it's quite small in the end. Just a few hours were enough for sightseeing, so we went for a walk to the next town (Kalishta) where we had lunch in front of the lake.
Galichica mountains ‐ Feb 20, 2017

We went as high as we could until the snow blocked us... and the clutch of the car gave up. We still managed to get back to Ohrid to get it fixed. Thankfully our hosts still had space for us for the 5 extra nights we spent there, and helped us to get the best care for our car (and with translations!).

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20th February - Galichica mountains
Trpejca

Very nice village with a beaches and cliffs around it.

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20th February - Trpejca

The calm and beauty of Ohrid lake, from Trpejca (Macedonia).
Museum on water / Bay of bones

Interesting and original spot where a prehistorical pile-dwelling has been partly reconstructed. The real remains of this settlement can be explored in summer by diving under water. We first viewed this from the distance on the Monday but it was closed, so we came back on Saturday/

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20th & 25th February - Museum on water
Lagadin

One of our hosts mentioned a beautiful guest house / hostel with the best view on Ohrid lake: the Robinson Sunset House. We stopped there by curiosity, and were offered coffee by their lovely owners. It is indeed quite a unique spot.

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20th February - quick stop at Robinson Sunset House
Ohrid ‐ Feb 19, 2017

Great and lively lake-side city with a pretty old town. Our hosts Zorica and Tomas - whom we'd recommend - have been very welcoming and made sure we didn't miss anything, any attractions or good restaurants here.

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18th to 24th February - Ohrid
Galicnik ‐ Feb 18, 2017

We had a nice 1:30 hour hike up to that village from Janche. Our host from the past night told us this was the nicest village in Macedonia... not sure about that! :-D We didn't meet anyone for 3 hours and it was effectively a ghost town. Probably a different story in summer as there seems to be some tourist infrastructure. It was good to do a bit of exercise for once, though... :-)

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18th February - hike from Janche to Galichnik
St John the Forerunner Monastery

Very nice Othodox monastery with great views on the valley. All monks have beards and dress in all in black, and Elena also had to wear a long black skirt too - sign of respect to the Virgin Mary.

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18th February - another monastery visited! :-)
Mavrovo ‐ Feb 17, 2017

Curious about seeing the Mavrovo National Park, we found a friendly hostel in the middle of it. Let's be honest, it is probably not the best destination to go in winter as a tourist. Except for a bit of skiing maybe (25km of slopes), we didn't see much more to do around. Better to go there in summer!

+11

17th & 18th February - Mavrovo & around
Burrel, Albania ‐ Feb 16, 2017

It's rather our car that decided we would stay here for the rest of the day and night! Luckily some fantastic locals helped us to get it sorted. Thanks to Miri who was speaking perfect Italian, we also had a comfortable stay in a hotel with view, and a great homemade dinner.

+27

16th & 17th February - driving out of Albania through Dibër country
Ulëz

We had a coffee break at a bar-restaurant that probably has the best view on the lake. Double enjoyment with the warm and sunny weather! :-)

Regional Natural Park of Ulëz, Albania
Tiranë ‐ Feb 14, 2017

Tirana is quite a interesting and interesting capital city. Even though it hosts less than a million people, we felt like being in one of the busiest European cities. The traffic is heavy and although there are rules, it is still fairly unorganized and scary; you need to really throw yourself into it - either driving, cycling, or walking - to progress through; unfortunately there is no express circular road to make it easier in the centre. There is a large nice park with a lake near the centre t [...]
hat we enjoyed in a sunny day, and a modern and very welcoming city centre with lots of options for food, drinks, nightlife. Like we already noticed in Shkodër, the difference between the rich and the poor is quite shocking; you probably see more people driving a Porsche Cayenne, Range Rover or one of the latest BMW or Mercedes than the number of people and children begging or looking for valuable things into bins... :-/

+32

15th February - Tirana
Krujë

Important and strategic city in medieval times, Krujë hosts a beautiful and well renovated castle, with a very nice museum inside about Skanderbeg who successfully defended Albania against Ottoman offensives. Really worth it. There is also cute old-style bazar in the old town at the bottom of the castle.

+15

14th February - Krujë
Koman

The Koman dam and the lake that starts from it creates a water connection between lots of remote settlements where no roads currently go. Unfortunately nobody could offer us a scenic boat trip at the time we were there - better luck from the month of April probably when the ferry service starts.

+10

14th February - road to Koman

Real free-range chikens in Albania
Shkodër ‐ Feb 13, 2017

Back in Shkodër to fix our car's problem once and for all (hopefully - we'll see in the next days); it was becoming really annoying for us (and those behind us). Our mechanic friend replaced a broken fuel pump sensor that was messing up the fuel pressure regulation. This also seems to have cleared the engine sign on the dashboard. We should be good to go further now!
Shëngjin ‐ Feb 12, 2017

Seaside and beach town that has quickly developped thanks to the recent tourism. It offers kilometers of sand beach, lots of bars and restaurants, and probably thousands of rooms and apartments (continuing to grow). We were surprised it was actually busy at this time, but this was because the weather was nice and it was Sunday. Once the sun came down the city quickly went empty and we were nearly the only souls wandering on the promenade! :-) We even had a chance to experience a completely dark [...]
walk home thanks to a power outage in the evening affecting the city. This seems to be actually quite common; we witnessed a few power outages in the small-size towns we stayed at in the past 2 days.

+10

12th February - Shëngjin beach resort
Lezhë ‐ Feb 14, 2017

We enjoyed a hike up to the fortress where we had nice views of the countryside, mountains, and the Adriatic sea.

+16

12th February - Lezhë fortress
Mjedë ‐ Feb 11, 2017

Our bed for tonight.
Perla bar / restaurant

We enjoyed a very nice dinner at sunset there, with view on the lake.

+2

11th February - Dinner at Perla bar restaurant
Attempt to go to Theth

Theth is generally a highly touristic spot in northern Albania, but it is pretty much cut out from the rest of the country in the winter. We just started to drive up towards the mountain pass but the snow and ice started to make it difficult pretty early, so we took a break in an amazing silent and beautiful place, a few nice pictures of the area and came back.

+15

11th February - Rruga per Thethe
Shkodër ‐ Feb 9, 2017

First stop in Albania: great and beautiful city, even getting nicer with a lot of road works and constructions at the moment. The people in this country have a really different approach with foreigners / tourists than in the other places we've been so far; they are extremely welcoming and helpful, interested is us and to tell us about their country and regions. We quickly fell in love with this atmosphere. The way to drive is interesting too, without many signs, no traffic lights or clear priori [...]
ty rules - pedestrians, bicycles, motor vehicles and animals all share the same space. Our host told us "Mercedes have priority here". It seems to be kind of true! :-D The most spoken foreign language here is Italian, so it makes it a bit easier for us. We met very nice and helpful people at "Samsel Travel" who know and could share a lot about the country. One friendly and patient mechanic also fixed a problem with the clutch on our car.

+40

9th-10th February - Shkodër
Ulcinj, Montenegro

Another great old town sitting on the Adriatic sea. Summer tourism here seems quite advanced with trendy and luxury hotels and restaurants all over the place. But like in many other places we were the only tourists around at this time! :-D

+17

9th February - Ulcinj old town
Stari Bar

Very nice old town / fortress that we understand is going to be "revamped" overtime as much as possible with artisan and art ateliers, etc... It would be interesting to come back there in 5 or 10 years.

+42

9th February - Stari Bar
Bar ‐ Feb 8, 2017

Large breakfast in front of the sea for two + coffee = 6€

+3

9th February - Breakfast treat in Bar
Sutomore

Our bed for tonight. Even though our room costs us just 10€, our hosts have been very welcoming: "mama Dragomir" served us homemade cheese, bacon, and bread with a cold beer on their terrace with view on the sunset over the sea! They'll have a great review! :-)

+3

8th February - Last night in Montenegro
Virpazar

Very nice little town ideally located in the most beautiful part of Skadar lake.

+19

8th February - Virpazar / Lake Skadar

Skadar Lake views from between Godinje and Virpazar

Driving into Skadar Lake National Park, Montenegro
Danilovgrad

We stopped there for a quick and cheap lunch (burek + sweet small cakes), and to take a break from driving our car that has been acting up... engine stopping multiple times while driving (we suspect a fuel pressure problem). The car worked fine afterwards coincidentally, but we'll need to get this looked at anyway.

+2

8th February - On the way to Skadar Lake
Ostrog Monastery

Beautiful orthodox monastery impressively encrusted into the cliffs, with a nice panorama on the valley.

+10

8th February - Ostrog Monastery
Lake Slansko

We drove there to have a look at the lake from above, which was indeed very nice.

+2

8th February - Lake Slansko
Nikšić ‐ Feb 7, 2017

Where we stayed that night. There is a good enough looking old fortress, nice large lakes with mountains around, and that's about it. When we walked through the city center in the evening the most attractive place was probably the Irish pub with its live music echoing on the street! :-D

View on the lakes when arriving in Nikšić
Žabljak ‐ Feb 6, 2017

Žabljak is on a plateau in the centre of the Durmitor mountain region and with an altitude of 1456 metres, it is the highest situated town on the Balkans. This is our home for tonight.

+17

6th & 7th February - Žabljak & around

All white driving out of Žabljak, Montenegro
Tara River bridge

High bridge crossing the Tara river canyon where we had some nice views of the valley. Lots of outdoor activity centers are based around here, including rafting, canyoning and a huge zipline passing over the canyon! :-O Sadly this is not a winter activity and we couldn't enjoy the thrill... Rain and snow started to fall when we were there.

+8

6th February - driving through the Tara River canyon
Biogradska Gora Lake ‐ Feb 5, 2017

This park is quite nice and we went for a 1,5-hour walk around the lake - we didn't meet anybody doing the same but could follow ealier foot prints in the snow! :-D We found it sad that such a nice place isn't looked after in winter at all - everything was closed and nothing except the road to go there was cleared; there could be very good cross-country skiing trails around the lake.

+8

5th February - Biogradska Gora lake
Kolašin

Kolašin seems to be a quite well established city which usually hosts the tourists (like us) visiting the Biogradska National Park.
Morača Monastery

Most churches and monasteries in Montenegro seem to be orthodox. This is one of them, which our hosts from Podgorica advised us to stop by.

+4

5th February - Morača Monastery
Podgorica ‐ Feb 4, 2017

We stopped there for the night as it was on our way and convenient, and we were curious to see this capital city we had never heard about. We understood indeed that the very few attractions / points of interest around would make it unattrative to tourists - the shopping center seemed by far the busiest place of the city. We were lucky however to meet a couple from there who hosted us and taught us how to prepare "burek" (some pastry roll with fried onions and potatos inside), which we had for br [...]
eakfast - it takes a bit of time, but it's very good and probably our favourite specialty from the Balkans; it's difficult to find anything without meat around here! :-)

+6

4th February - Podgorica

From Cetinje to Podgorica - view on Skadar lake
Njeguši

We eventually came out of the clouds around this village and could take the few pictures of it and the plateau it lies on... but no chance to get any better panoramas.

+9

4th February - Lovćen & Njeguši
Lovćen national park

Unfortunately we were quite unlucky with the weather. We still went for a drive around the National Park, hoping to get some nice views, but for the most part we were in the clouds and couldn't see further than 5 to 10 meters ahead.
Cetinje ‐ Feb 3, 2017

Driving into the mountains and clouds with 10-meters visibility and road works on the way, we stopped here for tonight - hoping to have better wheather tomorrow to visit the Lovćen national park. We cheer up with a nice restaurant meal! :-) Cetinje is the Royal Capital and now secondary capital of Montenegro.

+11

3rd February - getting to Cetinje

From Budva to Cetinje in the clouds
Sveti Stefan

As uninformed as we travel, we thought were going to visit a cute little fortified island / old town but we discovered that is it actually a private hotel resort! :-O The security guy stopped us before we could even start walking on the small strip of land making way to the island... Thankfully we didn't go into the 2€/hour parking for that! :-D For those who are interested, spending a night there in the cold and grey month of February would cost you 750€ / night.

+2

3rd February - Sveti Stefan
Budva ‐ Feb 2, 2017

Clearly a summer-only beach & party destination. Apart from a little old walled town, there's not much to do or to see in winter.

+14

3rd February - Budva
Kotor

This town was probably the nicest one along the bay, with a cute old town full of cats and an impressive fortress occupying the mountain above it.

+34

2nd February - Kotor
Perast

Halfway along the bay, this place offers nice views on the bay and the two little islands in the middle.

+11

2nd February - few pictures of Perast
Risan

We had a quite big breakfast in the morning so we decided to go on a slow drive around Kotor's bay, with multiple stops for a few nice walks. This was the 1st town.

+5

2nd February- quick walk in Risan
Kumbor ‐ Feb 1, 2017

Where we slept. Nothing special to see apart from the view on the bay.
Herceg - Novi

First city we stopped in, shortly after passing the border. For once we see a sea-side town that still has some life in winter, although there is space for a lot more people in summer.

+17

1st February - Herceg Novi, Montenegro
Sokol Grad, Dunave, Croatia

Small castle impressively built out of reach on a big piece of rock. Unfortunately we didn't have cash and they didn't take cards so we didn't get in (it wasn't cheap anyway); we just took pictures from outside and continued towards Montenegro through a nice small road..

+7

1st February - Sokol Grad [Croatia]
Dubrovnik ‐ Jan 31, 2017

Really well located and impressive walled city that attracts many tourists (and film directors) from all over the world. It also seems busy enough in winter. The down side is that the prices of most attractions, food and accomodation there is pretty much just like in western Europe.

+62

31st January - Dubrovnik [Croatia]
Trebinje, Bosnia and Herzegovina ‐ Jan 30, 2017

Last city before crossing the border to Croatia. We spent our few remaining "Convertible Marks" to fill up the car with diesel as it will be more expensive in Croatia and Montenegro, our next destinations.

+11

30th January - on the road to Trebinje

Nice desertic road (M6) north-west of Trebinje, Herzegovina
Stolac

Had lunch and went for a hike up to the old fortress.

+8

30th January - Stolac

Muslim prayer echoing over Stolac (from the fortress)
Međugorje ‐ Jan 29, 2017

Sacred place for Catholics were the Virgin Mary has been seen appearing by a woman since the early eighties.
Kravica

For the first time on our trip we saw waterfalls that aren't frozen! Yeay!

+6

29th January - Kravica waterfalls

Kavica waterfalls in Herzegovina

Kravica waterfalls in Herzegovina
Počitelj

Nice old walled town and castle on top of a hill overlooking the Neretva river.

+20

29th January - Počitelj
Blagaj

Had a walk to the top of the hill where an old castle is.

+21

29th January - Blagaj
Mostar ‐ Jan 28, 2017

Mostar is a fairly large city. The main attraction is the small old town and the old bridge which are indeed really nice. Those were revamped for tourism however (with so many cafés, restaurants and shops) and misses a bit of authenticity. It seems quite dead and empty in winter but we believe it would be really full of tourists in summer.

+18

28th January - the road to Mostar & old town

From Sarajevo to Mostar
Vrelo Bosne

A little heaven of peace and nature just ouside the busy city.

+17

28th January - Vrelo Bosne park

Peaceful and beautiful Vrelo Bosne
Sarajevo ‐ Jan 26, 2017

Lovely capital city with an amazing mix of cultures that seem to live quite well between each other. Elena's favourite pastime is to feed the poor street dogs who need to survive under harsh winter temperatures. :-)

26th & 27th January - misplaced Sarajevo pictures

Unfortunately we cannot post the pictures we took in Sarajevo at the moment as we cannot put our hands on them... sorry! If we find them back we will add them.
Visoko

A "pseudoarchaeological" theory claims that on this site are the oldest man-made pyramids in the world. We just drove by there to have a quick look at these particular triangular hills. More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_pyramid_claims

+2

26th January - Visoko's pyramids theory
Konjic ‐ Jan 25, 2017

Sleeping in this nice town tonight. We'll probably visit it a bit tomorrow. We've had trouble to find our guest house but the people have been really nice and helpful.

+6

26th January - Konjic
43.828954, 17.490234

Quite a spectacular (and a bit scary) drive until there, through a large icy, snowy, and cold desolated area (no trees, almost no houses or cars on the way). The scenery could make you believe you are in Greenland, Antartica or Mongolia in winter.

+9

25th January - First day in Bosnia & Herzegovina

Driving through desertic land in Bosnia & Herzegovina
Livno

Lunch break in this nice little town.
Kamensko, Croatia

Smooth border crossing into Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Split ‐ Jan 23, 2017

Two nights spent there to chill down from the every-day driving and enjoy the warmer weather. Large city with a quite small but beautiful and very lively centre, large pedestrian areas and lots of well-preserved old buildings. We also went for a long hike across the forest park / hill nearby.

+56

23rd to 25th January - Split & around [Croatia]
Zadar ‐ Jan 22, 2017

Another coastal city with a nice walled town centre, and lots of boats docked in the port (it looks like everyone may have one!). The sun and temperature on that day made it quite enjoyable. An interesting feature in this town is the "sea organ", making unique sounds (music?) along with the size and power of the waves hitting it.

+31

22nd & 23rd January - Zadar & around [Croatia]

Nice clear water in Zadar

Sea organ's sounds in Zadar
Vrelo Koreničko ‐ Jan 21, 2017

Our bed for tonight in a very nice quiet area.

+8

21st & 22nd January - warm comforting evening & cold lazy morning [Croatia]

Driving through frozen east Croatia
Rastovača

National Park with lots of lakes and waterfalls. Maybe not the best time to visit in winter (not everything was open because of the snow and ice), but it certainly rewarded us with unique views and cheaper entrance tickets! :-) But it was also the first attraction where we were annoyed by the amount of visitors and had sometimes trouble walking because of it. :-#

+51

21st January - Plitvice Lakes National Park [Croatia]

Plitvice Lakes - bird pecking on tree

Plitvice Lakes - nice little waterfalls

Plitvice Lakes - the great waterfall
Rakovica ‐ Jan 20, 2017

Our home for tonight. We'll explore the national park tomorrow.
Lička Jesenica

+10

20th January - the coast & behind the mountains [Croatia]
Brlog

This is a time where we also wanted to go a bit off the main roads... but we were happy to have a 4x4 and just enough diesel for that part. It took us over 1 hour to reach the next point on our map and another half hour to find a petrol station! :-D Great views though, some good snow driving practise and finally had to use the 4x4 function for the first time! :-P
Senjska Draga

Drastic change here: at this mountain pass, the scenery impressively changed to an all-white snowy and frosty landscape...
Drivenik

We sometimes like to go a bit off the main roads to discover these nice little quiet places.

+3

20th January - Drivenik [Croatia]
Rijeka ‐ Jan 19, 2017

+10

20th January - Rijeka [Croatia]
Plomin ‐ Jan 18, 2017

Stopped in this little village hoping to find a place to eat... One restaurant was open but wasn't very welcoming and a little overpriced. So we kept going and a little further there was that unbelievable hotel with restaurant up on a cliff with amazing views on the sea; that was our lunch!

+7

19th January - nice lunch at Plomin [Croatia]
Labin ‐ Jan 19, 2017

Nice and lively hill-top town with nice views and medieval features.

+7

19th January - hilltop town of Labin [Croatia]
Trget

Little sight-seeing detour around the end of this fjord.

+3

19th January - the Fjord at Trget [Croatia]
Pula ‐ Jan 17, 2017

Big enough town with old roman structures but also lots of modern naval / port activity. Large nice natural parks around, ports, beaches, which would be enjoyed best in warmer days.

+25

18th January - Pula & around [Croatia]
Pula

We went for a walk in this park around a very large Austro-Hungarian fortress (closed / usually open for event, concerts, etc...) and found a very interesting hippie-like property with a beautiful view and lots of interesting features.
Rovinj

1 or 2 hours stop in this very nice town at the edge of the Adriatic waters, with lots of parks and islands. The persisting cold wind didn't make us want to stay much longer. We'd rather come back in summer! :-D

+16

17th January - Rovinj [Croatia]
Kloštar

Quick sight-seeing and pictures stop around this little fjord. It would definitely be a very nice spot in summer.

+3

17th January - little fjord before Rovinj [Croatia]
Grožnjan

Quick stop in a cute old hilltop village.

+10

17th January - quick stop in Grožnjan [Croatia]
Finida ‐ Jan 16, 2017

First hour in Croatia, first troubles: after the border check and Google Maps making us drive 10 times more than we should, we found our AirBnb place for the night was closed. We called the host who told us we wasn't doing business with AirBnb anymore... yet we were able to book. Quick stop for a relaxing green tea and WiFi access to find another place here.
Plovanija

We thought than Croatia being in the EU would have made the border crossing smooth, but we've got checked out for a good half hour with countless and repeating questions about where we're going and if we do or have drugs (or even guns or explosives) with us, and all the big trouble we could have if we don't follow the law! :-O The officer even asked for an explanation of the anti-diarrhea medication we were carrying with us. :-D
Piran, Slovenia

Last quick stop in Slovenia before crossing the border into Croatia: a complete change of scenery in less than an hour drive, going from the cold snowy and frosty landscapes to the typical Mediterranean coast with olive trees and vineyards. Unfortunately we've got some really freezing wind from the cold east than reminded us of our Dublin winters... brrr :-# So we decided to stay warm and have a nice menu in a seaside restaurant. :-)

+15

16th January - Piran & around [Slovenia]
Ocizla ‐ Jan 15, 2017

Found a cheap warm place to stay in the middle of the hills. Not much to see around (apart from the caves / canyon we went to yesterday). We've been told Trieste in Italy is nice but decided to skip it.
Matavun

The Škocjan Caves lie under a beautiful quiet area an even though their visit is quite an expense (16€ each), it was totally forgotten once we saw what's underground. Obviously making it into the UNESCO list of natural wonders; definitely worth it.

+5

15th January - out of the Škocjan Caves [Slovenia]

15th January - the Škocjan Caves

As we were not allowed to take pictures inside the Škocjan Caves , we can only barely describe them and suggest you have a look at the official pictures and videos on the park's website:
Dolenje Jezero

Beautiful flat area in the middle of a few hills, where a lake changes in size quite impressively depending on the weather and season. It was pretty much all frozen when we were there. This was advised to us (as an all-seasons spot) by an Italian couple from Triestre.

+11

15th January - to Dolenje Jezero [Slovenia]
Ljubljana ‐ Jan 14, 2017

Very cute and relatively quiet capital city, it was actually magical with all the fresh snow that fell overnight.

+63

14th January - Ljubljana [Slovenia]
Kranj ‐ Jan 13, 2017

Nice city with a historic town centre on top of a hill, an interesting museum of the region, a network of tunnels used as shelters during WWII, and a small canyon built by the river over the ages. Perfect to spend the afternoon before reaching Ljubljana in the evening.

+4

13th January - afternoon in Kranj [Slovenia]
Bled

The iconic lake and island you see on every advert about Slovenia. Very nice indeed, but €€€ !!! :-D

+12

13th January - Lake Bled [Slovenia]
Stara Fužina ‐ Jan 12, 2017

Largest lake in Slovenia, with lots of hiking, cycling and skiing locations. We thought it's be better in spring or summer time.

+21

12th January - Bohinj lake & around [Slovenia]
Bitnje ‐ Jan 11, 2017

We found a cheap AirBnb apartment between the Bohinj and Bled lakes, and it was so nice we decided to spend 2 nights there. Snow finally started to fall down on the second day.
Kranjska Gora

Vršič mountain pass at 1,611 metres

+33

10th & 11th January - the Julian Alps [Slovenia]
Bovec ‐ Jan 10, 2017

Now in Slovenia, we decide to slow down a little as the cost of everything is a bit lower :-) Starting North West in the direction of the Triglav National Park (Julian Alps), we spent a bit of time around Bovec before hitting the scenic roads of the national park.
Gorizia, Italy ‐ Jan 9, 2017

Last stop before Slovenia where we had a great time with AirBnb hosts and a quick visit of the castle in the morning.

+25

9th & 10th January - driving through Friuli [Italy]
Grado

Stopped there to watch an amazing sunset over the Adriatic sea. Apparently a big summer spot with loads of hotels and beaches (empty when we where there).
Aquileia

On our way to the next country, Slovenia, we stopped by this small historic town with loads of roman antiquities. Interesting but quite dead in winter.
Palmanova

Stopped in this town as it was on the way and it has an interesting layout / fortifications in a shape of a star, but there wasn't much to see apart from that. Could have been skipped! :-)
Venezia ‐ Jan 8, 2017

No matter the cold (-7°C in the morning), Venice is still beautiful and full of tourists. We were actually impressed by the size of this floating city but could view the most important landmarks and attractions in a day. We wished to have the finances to afford a full week there as it really deserves it. :-)

+45

8th January - Venezia [Italy]
Venezia ‐ Jan 7, 2017

Willing to visit Venice, staying and parking our car in a camping in Marghera (on the other side of the bridge to Venice) was a much cheaper option. 2 nights there in a warm small mobile home. On the 2nd day, we had no water as the plumbing across the camping side froze! :-O
Padova

Padova is another nice historic city with an impressive "basilica" and the usual fancy shopping areas - not for us! :-)

+9

7th January - Padova [Italy]
Convento Praglia

Still driving east, we stopped by this monastery (Abbazia di Praglia) but it was closed for visits. The souvenirs shop was still open though, so we bought one of the monks' liquor (grappa) to survive the cold weather ahead. :-)
Verona ‐ Jan 6, 2017

As a UNESCO heritage historic city, Verona was certainly worth a visit, with all its impressive roman age monuments and buildings, and more recent landmarks such as Elena's favourite "Casa di Giulietta" (Juliet's house, from the Romeo & Juliet love story). :-)

+11

6th & 7th January - Verona [Italy]
Bardolino

Driving back from the lake towards Verona, we stopped there for coffee and watch a beautiful sunset.

+18

6th January - Garda Lake [Italy]
Riva del Garda ‐ Jan 5, 2017

Continuing to cross northern Italy, we couldn't miss the Garda Lake, the largest one in Italy. Fantastic views, very cute villages along the road, hot wine and hiking made it an unforgivable stop.
Pavia ‐ Jan 4, 2017

Arrived in the afternoon after a nice scenic drive along the coast of Liguria. Pavia is on a quite flat plateau. We visited this nice city by foot in the evening and had a quick look at the "Certosa di Pavia" (monastery) in the morning.

+7

4th & 5th January - Pavia [Italy]
Airole, Italy ‐ Jan 4, 2017

Starting point & goodbyes to family, friends and our cat.