Rise and Shine in Atyrau. Today is Russia day - our time in Central Asia will come to an end and we will be on our way to Europe pretty soon.

When we left our host hugged us goodbye and said with a broad smile on his face:"motorcyclist = friendship!" Yes, sir!

Next morning we headed to the kazak border -  we arrived there after two hours and it took us another three hours to get through.

"Welcome to kazachatan" we shouted at each other again and drove of into the sunset.

Bukhara felt like coming home - when we arrived we met people we knew on every corner. There was the austrian lady from the samarqand guesthouse, the son of the hotelowner who begged us to play football with him and Rachmat and his son Rachim who run the "cheaper-than-you-think.-bar". In our Guesthoese we ven met Guanto. a Taiwanese Cyclist who we alo met in Samarqand. Was cool to see all theses people again one last time - because we gonna be out of here tomorrow. We gonna head to the border as fast as possible - enough of Uzbekistan - we need a change after spending so much time here... funny thing - we stumbled over Kim - a korean (Surprised?)rider who we also met in Samarqand and as he is heading the same way we decided to go ride together. welcome Kim to Team Monkeykings!

Good news - two days after the mechanics started to fix the bike the spare parts arrived in Samarqand. Now Chris has to pull out the money for both - the machanics and the spare parts. But doesnt matter now - the most important thing is that we can get going.

So we came back to Samarqand with the train on Monday. As there was no second class tickets available anymore we had to take the doublepriced first class tickets. 

But that was totally worth it as you get seats that cant be reclined and russian soap operas that are on maximum volume... but we could manage to turn down the volume as it would make the baby in our compartment cry all the time and not just sometime. but the lovley grandma managed to calm the baby down by clapping steadily in her hands.. overall I have to say that public transport still sucks.

We took the train from Samarqand and arrived three hours later in Bukhara. Very fast for the 300 km but also quite boring. With the bikes we would have used one day to get there.
We checked into a cheap hotel and strolled trough the city.

Next morning we awoke in Antika B&B. Such a nice place. There is just a wodden gate from outside but once you enter there is a lush green garden which rooms to each side. Beautiful.

One thing patrik couldnt fix was chris lightswitch. Actually he was driving without front light since we left shanghai. His front leds where working instead and annoyed everybody who came towards us. Patrik told us about a booth at the bazar who could have a replacement. In stock. We ended up driving the shopowner trough the whole town to hunt down the desired switch. Not so easy in a country where nobody drives motorbikes. We didnt find it in the end but the shopowner gave us a huge glas of cherry jam instead. Not to bad. We said rachmat (thank you) and left to the border. Today was uzbekistan day.

We had another day till our uzbek visa starts...and that day we will spend in in Osh. Osh is the second biggest city in kyrgyzstan... Its superclose to the uzbek border and therefore a lot of uzbek people life there. Its a very oriental mix as this is one of the first original silkroad cities.

Early in the morning some guys woke us up by parking their Lada right in front of our noses. After inspecting our bikes and posing for a few pictures with our helmets under their arms they were off to their rowing boats and out to the water to go fish. We had our quiet peace again and could get up an hour later. Thanks to the extended supermarket spree the day before we had a great breakfast and after a swim in the lake with what must be the perfect temperature for swimming we were off to a great start into the day. 

In the days at the hostel we heard a lot about Ala Archa, the popular mountain valley close to Bishkek where everybody went for hiking. We also heard from everybody that it wouldn't be possible to ride the motorbikes into the valley and over the dirt road pass at it's end. But it just made too much sense in our heads to not try it. ride into a beautiful nature reserve, take a not very frequently traveled dirt road over a pass between snow capped mountain tops and down the southern side, only to arrive into an area where beautiful twisty roads would be waiting for us and bring us even in the right direction. 
But it wouldn't all work out as we imagined. 

The last 5 days we spent in bishkek in the tunduk hostel., tunduk means north in kyrgyz and its also the name of the cross on top of the nomads yurts. And it is the symbol in the kyrgyz national flag. The hostel itself was the perfect place to hang out a few days and get visas done. It is run by a swiss dude who also stranded here a few months ago. The pool in the garden pays up for the bunk beds and in general the atmosphere is very family. Its like u hang out in a friends apartment who just comes around in the morning to make some delicious pancakes for you and otherwise isnt home for the whole day.

Next day we took a rest on the beach of lake IssyK Kul and got a big sunburn as reward.

First we didnt cross any border for a month and now we crossed two borders in just two days. 

19th of august was the day that we marked in our plan as the day we gonna leave china. I would have never believed it...but we gonna get over the border on that exact date... If the chinese bureaucracy allows it. We heard some horror stories about a long procedure and some expensive documents that we dont really own. But we where confident that we can talk our way out of this and drove off to the border in Huoergosi.