This is after the border to Kyrgystan. I’ve already heard that Cannabis is growing there along the road and I can verify that. I also heard that it’s bad weed and you get headache from it. I can’t verify it. Kyrgystan drivers are just driving too reckless for any experiments like that.
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After Tashkent I went back to Kazakhstan. As a first sign of autumn the nights are getting already cold and in the evening the smell of coal is in the air.
I took a train to Samarkand in Uzbekistan to speed up a bit and to get to the other side of Turkmenistan. There you have some great medieval islamic architecture but I didn’t feel like staying long. After all the waiting for the Turkmen Visa I felt like getting back on the bike.
Arriving in Aktau, Kazakhstan back on the Caspian Sea I realized that after putting my bike back together it wasn’t in such a good state at all. If you haven’t changed your chain for 6000km you don’t have to do it anymore.
From Tiraspol to Odessa it’s not far but you would have to exit staight to Ukraine without getting a Moldovan exit stamp in your passport. So, to avoid any trouble with the Moldovan immigration police in the future and because I like walnut trees I took a little detour back to Moldovan officially controlled territory and got my Moldovan exit stamp in the very south where Moldova is only 2 kilometers away from the black sea.