a trip to the moon

So, after leaving Samarkand some darker clouds drew upon Gnu and me.
She started boiling and on the night of 24 of June I was being pulled
into Schymkent by an old Mazda, with 2 blond Russian girls waving
hands and singing on top of it and a few other members of the
Schymkent Adrenalin Biker’s Club inside. Well, that night I didn’t go
to bed very early

… and in the next days Gnu’s engine was opened into
pieces, water and oil circuts checked for contact (the radiator was
full of mud, seemed to be antifreeze with oil),

… the gasket was however intact, so we cleaned the water pump, cooling circuit,
changed the cain to DID x-ring, changed the sprockets, changed the tires
(she has MEFO Explorer, and I switched from 18/140 to 18/120 in the rear.. I’m
just one now and less lugage). Gnu seemed in excellent shape and I
left Schymkent on the evening of 28. What I had gained in these days
was my “reconciliation with the Russian people”, a lot of knowledge of
my bike, and … hmm.. it’s even hard to talk about friendship. I
could say that these people spend hours after hours, after hours with
me to help me out, without asking for any money, without knowing me
before.

A simple phonecall in the night telling them that a fellow
biker (?some talk on that as well?) was in trouble was enough to make
them organize and grab their passports and they would have crossed
into Uzbekistan to pull me.. but fortunately, I was already in their
country. I could say that they hosted me, that they gave me food, I
could talk about Den, the 14 years old boy that staied around me the
whole time, that know so much about bikes at his age, about his honest
and inocent way of being, about the seriousness he always had in
his eyes, about the way he covered the tears when I left with his
father’s sunglasses, about the such hard, hard, hard breaking away
feeling, and than about the way Gnu had puncture the next day, about
the man that tried “to help” me by taking my wheel and breaking the
camera valve so that I couldn’t move along on my own and his
suggestion of a 100S worth “evacuation” with a trailer. People and
people. So many things to say but I have to go now.

I am in Almaty and I’ll head into north and soon into Mongolia.

I travel not for trafficking alone,
By hotter winds my feary heart is fanned.
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
I took the Golden Road to Samarkand.

And still, there is a hidden strong and a bit scarry feeling that
after all the ever changes and mind romances, it is the road and the
simplicity of it, the 1 second in which the woman, the horse, the
mosque are already behind, the 1 second like every other one, it is
the road that’s going to trace deeper than anything else and (for the
moment) unchangeble into my soul.

Samarkand, the capital or Timur, the most
evocative city of the Silk Road. The first milestone for me in the
trip was Baku and the second one is Samarkand. The next to come is
Mongolia.

The odometer shows 8409km from
the start. I was evaluating that we’ll do 20.000 at least. It’s gonna
be more than that, possibly a lot more, but we (it’s me and Gnu now..
never completely alone ) haven’t taken the straightest roads and
detours have always been a pleasure. We are both in good shape, no
sore bones, no signs of getting tired (but we try to be disciplined,
take the right brakes, keep focused, turn the right screws, observe,
plan and hit the angles when we see them). And we move and don’t look
back. Not for now. But i know there will be a time for that as well.

Buhara, Uzbekistan. Beautiful. I crossed the Caspian Sea (17/18) and yesterday the Turkmenistan, too. Hot. Today Antilopa Gnu heads tu Samarkand and tomorow to Taskent.