Author Archive | Gareth Morgan

On a bike trip like this you have to have a computer if you’re going to maintain a website and write media columns. My first thought was to bring a laptop, one of those rugged types mounted in gel. The vibrations from being in a pannier was bound to be a test for any ordinary […]

The day has started bleakly – pouring rain and a falling temperature. Early start because we have 300kms of mud and gravel roads to cover before we get to the promised land – China! The pass is 3,572m so it’s going to get a lot colder. Two hours in, first puncture. Brendan’s a puncture-fixing fella […]

As our readers and listeners will know this has not been a trip without its share of tummy troubles. They are ongoing and relate to the state of the food we eat (rotten meat in stews isn’t uncommon) and what utensils and any raw vegetables have been washed in. The sanitary conditions in the villages […]

We have our disabled bike back on the road again – thanks to a slowhorse courier from Germany and a superb effort by the team of Sanar Motors, the BMW car dealer in Tashkent. Those boys performed beyond the call of duty and helped our chief engineer Dave, who had been left behind in Tashkent […]

That’s right. Tashkent has been our “official” half way point where we service the bikes and where the 2 guys that are doing “half-Marco’s” actually swap on the bike they’re sharing. So Phil has just flown home, having done his half of the trip and Selwyn flies in and takes over that bike. But would […]

Smack in the middle of the middle section of the Silk Road sits Samarkand – home of Tamerlaine or Timur the Lame, he who succeeded Genghis and Kublai Khan as the tyrant of tyrants of these lands of Central Asia. Timur was even more cruel but because he was Muslim the locals are so proud […]

As if she hadn’t had enough problems with men on this tour – what with the unruly masoginyst mob of Agre in Eastern Turkey who pushed her from her bike; to the “fashion police” of Iran who told her to wear her Burkha properly – Jo has got in strife with a man once again […]

The Silkriders wish to convey their condolencies to the families of Neil and Carol Bishop, so tragically killed in a road accident in Turkey. Without knowing anything apart from what’s been published about their horrific accident, we have often recounted at the end of a riding day through these parts on how many near misses […]

Bound (more likely unbound) to happen, tummy upsets and worse are guaranteed to descended upon anyone travelling through the 3rd world. A generalisation about travel in these parts is that you eat what the locals eat – well as much as possible, keep your hands clean and purify your water. These are the keys to […]