EHHH....RIDE DAH NAK HABIS??? DAY 27: SAMARKAND – TASHKENT (318KM)

 

17^th June 2013

Finally....today I will be heading to my final point for my Central Asia ride – Tashkent. I began from this city about 4 weeks ago, and now, I am completing my circle and heading back to the same place where I started. My emotions? Hard to tell. After all the challenges that I had been through, I am happy that the journey had been successful and was nearing to an end without any major problem, but regretted too that it had been too rushed. I couldn’t believe that its going to end very soon. Anyway, since I had an appointment with Pawel, my agent at 2.30pm, I couldn’t delay much. After saying good bye to Jeremy, Brentt, and the GH owner, I made my way north east via M39 to Tashkent.

With Jeremy and Brentt....very nice friends....wonder when can I meet them again?

 I was not aware that my rear ream was dent until being told by a worker at a petrol station. The dent was quite serious and I was worried if it couldn’t last until I reached Tashkent. I had to ride slowly to avoid holes (fortunately the road improved by lots).

 

The wind was still strong until I almost reached Tashkent. I had some problem to find fuel as I didn’t top up much since I am going to send DREAM straight to the cargo office upon arrival to Tashkent, meaning I must made sure that the tank was only a quarter full. There were many petrol stations along the way, but almost all were not operating bcos they had finished their fuel supply. After checking around, I got some fuel after the 5^th petrol station I stopped by. As in Tajikistan and Afghanistan, there were check points at all provinces in Uzbekistan as well, but luckily they didn’t stop me. At this point, I didn’t have the mood anymore to entertain the same repeated questions by the locals or the authorities.

At last, I arrived Tashkent after riding slowly for 4.30 hours. The funny thing was my GPS still wanted to play jokes with me. About 1km for me to reach the Malaysian Embassy, the GPS suddenly hanged and not instructing me directions anymore. I felt like throwing it away. Thank god I was already around the neighbourhood which housed lots of other embassies and it’s not difficult to find someone who could speak English to direct me the correct way. I arrived at the embassy and was given a warm welcome by Mr Ridzuan, Madam Haryati, Madam Hamidah, Mr Farhod and Mr Mahmud. They congratulated me for my success and were so eager to hear my story. However, I had to keep the stories until later as my agent had already waiting for me at the cargo office.

Syukur...syukur...
syukur padaMu ya Allah...
kerana mengizinkan hambaMu 
menamatkan ride ini dengan jayanya...

With Msian Embassy in Tashkent's staff

I rode DREAM’s final route to the cargo office and settled all the documents with help from Pawel and his friend. The process took about 1 hour, and after that Pawel sent me back to the embassy.

My agent Pawel (right), and the team

Again, I spent the night at Madam Haryati’s place. It was so good to finally able to eat delicious homemade Malaysian food cooked by her. Thank you very much, Yati, for the hospitality. The night was spent chatting about my Central Asia solo ride challenges and what I had seen along the way.

 

 

p/s: A more detailed story about my journey will be told in my upcoming book. More beautiful pics of course. STAY TUNED.....