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For so long, I'd been dreaming about the sandy steppes of Kazakhstan, the mighty mountains of Kyrgyzstan, Persian plovs on roadside stalls in Tajikistan and turquoise tiles in the towns of Uzbekistan. In short, I wanted to explore Central Asia. Without setting foot on a plane. This would take some preparations.

 

 

Over the last two years, I probably read more overlanding blogs than have ever been written, learnt about traffic dos and donts in each country, lamented in advance the seemingly ubiquitous speed cameras in Kazakhstan and the lack of second-hand LPG cars available in my country, triple-checked whether we needed visas, notaried translations or any other paperwork, got a terrific workout by jumping through a million bureaucratic hoops and explored more Silk Road sites on Google Maps than most locals will ever care to see in their lifetimes. I fine-tuned and discarded dozens of possible itineraries, got anal about the weather (not too hot, not too cold, no sandstorms and preferably no floods of tourists either), researched the food (I definitely want to try kumys and manti), brushed up on my Russian and did all I could to get my bad knee to play along. It's a part of me, so it definitely WANTS to travel.

 

 

We deliberated for months over which car to take: it should be comfy, relatively easy to repair in Central Asia, able to tackle bumpy roads, and easy to drive for hours at a stretch. Above all, it must be trustworthy. I thought about buying a sturdy 4WD, but the good ones don't come cheap, and do I really want to find out two days into our trip that my knee does not like driving an SUV for hours at a time? In the end, we decided on Old Trusty. Our 18-year-old Honda Civic, a bit rusty and battered, but he's managed 220,000 km without a single incident, so he's earned this trip. We treated him to a new IMA battery in Holland (while we took some time out on a windy Dutch beach), had the windows in the back darkened, bought a spare fire extinguisher and two jerrycans, and even cleaned out the interior. He was as ready as he would ever be. And so were we.

 

5 August was my last day at work, and two days later I decided that I wanted to keep a daily online travel blog. So Sonia and I spent the last three days at home getting my site ready and learning how to do everything that I usually do on my laptop on an old tablet and basic smartphone. Needless to say, the hours flew by and in no time it was Tuesday morning and we were on the road towards Russia and, eventually, the stans.