Well we’re back in Russia for our 3rd motorcycle tour. It feels great, the weather is fine and hot, we’re looking forward to the traverse.Get a sneak peak from the video peak below.
[SlideDeck2 id=3032]
Sojourn in Stalingrad
The most famous building before the 1942 battle of Stalingrad was the city’s Department Store (think Kircaldie & Stains). It was a showcase for The Soviets new economic model. As you can see the building was pretty flash. Today we spent a bit of time in the basement of the old Univermag Dept Store located […]
Back to the Motherland
So begins our 3rd bike motorcycle ride in Russia. We’ve ridden both edges of this massive country the north to south and now we get to ride across it. So nice to be back and despite a bit of a laborious border crossing from Georgia, once in Vladikavkaz (capital of North Ossetia) the hospitality was […]
Bye Georgia
Tomorrow we bid our final farewell to Georgia, crossing into Russia for the big haul eastwards. Georgia has been a blast- not a single rainy night, the only train we encountered was Stalin’s and that wasn’t at midnight, but the country will long remain on my mind as being on a bold journey to break […]
Taste of Azerbaijan
The first country to sample on this leg of our never ending world-by-bike motorcycling traverse has been Azerbaijan. Despite a corrupt road police force the people have been absolutely marvellous – friendly and welcoming – and most humbling, so many have refused to take any money for services rendered. Nobody will accept our ‘keep-the-change’ and […]
Yaa hoo Baku
In contrast to the rest of Azerbaijan, the capital city Baku is as modern as any city and demonstrates all the glitz befitting an oil kingdom. From the abundance of Maserattis, to the Paris-meets-Dubai architecture, through to the proliferation of restaurants and bars it is difficult to reconcile the Azerbaijan’s capital with the dirt poor […]
Azeri cops
Spent too much of today playing cat and mouse games with Azeri cops. Four cars of them in total trying to pick out the tourist amongst the traffic for a misdemeanour they could extract a bribe for. We were down to 20kph at times with one cop car tailgating us and another in front. Their […]
A Fine Day
Well it started out like that but ended up being a day of fines. Despite there not being a cloud in the sky Georgian Customs managed to rain on our parade by fining us NZ$500 per bike for “overstaying”. Spread over the 10 months we’d left our bikes parked up in Tbilisi since the end […]
In Dublin’s Fair City …
In Dublin’s Fair City … .. where the construction cranes are so pretty. The Irish republic is having a fair economic boom right now, with economic growth on a par with that of China. Difference is that Irish GDP per capita puts it amongst the richest seven countries in the world (as is Norway) – […]
Goodbye to the Scottish Isles
In Dublin now, not long until our return to NZ, having spent 2018 so far pretty much wandering the globe. Hopefully glimpses of summer are starting to appear there so our quest to have a retirement of continuous summers gets off to a good start. We’re not back abroad until we get back on the […]
