Incredibly, the wildlife we saw in 1 week on Vancouver Island was more than we observed in the whole of our trip so far! The animal we really wanted to see was the killer whale or Orca, it was on the top of our wildlife-watching-bucket list. We were told that these don't come close to the shore and therefore you need to book a tour to spot them from a boat. But even then this was still considered to be a lucky shot as they only visited these waters 3 to 4 times a month. 

A tour operator told us they had spotted killer whales that same morning and that the chances of spotting them again was very high that day, so if two more people wanted to come along they would take the 4 of us that same afternoon. We waited it out and again we were lucky, two cool Dutchies showed up to join us on the trip. Keeping our fingers crossed that our lucky streak would continue we hopped in the boat, looking like Michelin dolls with our red life suits on, and headed in the direction where the Orcas were spotted that morning.

After half an hour the boat came to a stop and our guide told us that he couldn`t find them, we had to wait for one of the other boats to radio them in and give the location. Just as we were about to give up and head back, one of the other boats spotted them and with high speed we raced to their spot.

And there they were! A pod of 5 Orcas,  2 grown male, 2 female and 1 baby. Absolutely stunning to see these wild animals up close and personal, a dream came true! With 8 minute dives, they all came up at the same time for 45 second swims at the surface. Beautiful! 

Going north from Vancouver we took the scenic road up to the ski resort village of Whistler and found out straight away that we much prefer the less touristic logging roads instead of the main tarmac roads. These gravel roads go straight through the rugged mountains and green meadows of British Columbia where there is less traffic and the chances of spotting wildlife are much higher. It is also easier to find a nice quiet camp spot along the logging roads as the big rental RV’s cannot use them (their insurance doesn’t cover that, yay :)

Canada is overflowing with RV’s both rented and privately owned, we were amazed to see so many and decided to avoid the main touristic routes as much as possible.

Many camp spots were free to use and even provided a table, fire pit, well-maintained toilet and sometimes even chopped wood ready for you to burn: this country is bush camp heaven! Canadians clean up after themselves and follow the “leave no trace” policy to the letter. We loved it and we were doing great on our budget at the same time. Every 3 to 4 days we would do some grocery shopping and get a shower somewhere to freshen up.

We reached the 2 most touristic and well known national parks in Canada: Jasper and Banff, connected by the “most scenic road of Canada”: Icefields Parkway. Yes it was a very nice road... for RV’s. Smooth tarmac surrounded by snow capped mountains, waterfalls and blue lakes on the route. But to be honest, we preferred the rougher, less touristic back country logging roads. In the parks we found many tourist elbowing their way to a selfie spot and needless to say, little wildlife besides deer and elk accustomed to people. We decided it was time for us to move on. 

Driving away from the tourist madness we came across a bush camp spot at a totally secluded lake at the edge of British Columbia. Within an hour we got company from a local hunter who had battery problems with his Quad and was afraid he would have to walk home. We were able to help him out and were treated to funny local hunting stories about moose who got upset and bears chasing his quad. When he left and peace returned to the lake, we were visited by a moose mom with 2 babies, an incredible sight! Check out our Canada video for these adorable images.

Alberta

We left British Columbia and entered Alberta, the scenery changing the instant we crossed the state border. British Columbia is very rocky, with lots of tall trees, blue lakes and waterfalls. Alberta on the other hand resembles Flevoland in the Netherlands. It is flat, very flat, with lots of grassy fields and lots of farming lands. The difference couldn’t be bigger.

But as we drove along, the earth suddenly seemed to open up in front of us to reveal Dinosaur provincial park and the Royal Tyrell palaeontology (dino) museum in Drumheller. This was the most awesome Dinosaur exposition we had ever seen. We were blown away by their multitude of perfect dinosaur skeletons and their research facility. Check out the pictures!

Waterton Lakes National Park

In the south of Alberta, just before the USA border we visited our last Canadian National park called Waterton Lakes. This park has some really cool trails and we decided to stay two days to walk two of these famous trails. The guidebooks didn’t exaggerate. The trails were pretty tough, the first one very steep up with an amazing view when reaching the top and the other 17km through forest, mountain trails, meadows, slippery glaciers and finishing at a completely iced over glacier lake. This was an amazing trail! When we almost reached the top, there was an older lady who came up to Nicolette. She had just passed by Jeroen and asked Nicolette if he was her “fellow”. Nicolette told her he is and the lady sighed and said: “Ohhh he smells so good! And that after such a tough hike, he is amazing!”  Nicolette didn’t have the courage to tell her that we didn’t have a shower for a week...

Indonesia  (2 March – 21 April)

Life was not expensive for us in Surabaya, it was easy to stretch our budget and still live in relative (and sometimes shameful) comfort like the Indonesian upper class does. We spend our days going to the cinemas, scouting car paint shops to get our car coated (for the trip to Canada), arranging car insurance (which failed miserably) and trying out lots of different restaurants to sample the delicious Indonesian food. 

Mount Bromo

On the weekends, we got some days off from our bureaucratic battles with Indonesian customs and we took a train ride to Mount Bromo, an active volcano about a half days travel from Surabaya. A piece of advice for travelling around in Indonesia: use the trains wherever possible! They are very well organized using an airline-style boarding pass system and the ride is very comfortable. Just remember to bring a jacket (you need one anyway for Mount Bromo) as the air conditioning tries to put you in cryogenic stasis.

Entrance fee to the mountain is a whopping 220.000Rp (15 euro) for foreigners and 10.000Rp (0.70 euro) for Indonesians so we opted to take a backdoor horse trail to avoid these costs and buy some souvenirs from locals instead. This trail took us into the eerie sand flats surrounding the volcano where the environment is absolutely surreal. Before we reached Mount Bromo we had to cross a small desert shrouded in mist, as we passed the remnants of an old mosque. You can hear Bromo`s roar growing louder as you approach, turning into a deafening thunder once you arrive at the rim of the crater. The smell of sulfur is overwhelming and if not for the awesome and raw beauty of it all, it feels like you have arrived at the gates of hell!

The next morning we got up at 5 in the morning to catch the famous Bromo-sunrise, resulting in a cool intro of our Indonesia movie (see here).

Back on the road again!

We decided to take the touristic route via Southern Java towards Sumatra, which meant we said goodbye to our China-crossing buddies Ed & Sue, who took a direct route to Sumatra as they had visited most of Java already.

We expected after leaving busy Surabaya that we would be treated to open roads and wide views of rice fields. Unfortunately this was not the case. The ‘main’ roads throughout most of Java (and southern Sumatra as we later found out) are lined with often improvised houses and little businesses, blocking the views of Indonesia`s beautiful landscapes. Even worse, most roads were just as busy as in Surabaya city with endless lines of trucks and mopeds weaving through the traffic. Because of all this, our daily average speed almost never reached above 30kph and death-defying overtaking is the name of the Indonesian driving game. Pretty exhausting if you are like us and want to keep your car in 1 piece! Check out our Indonesia video to get a glimpse of our experiences.

Yogya

Our first goal was to reach the city of Yogyakarta, next to which lie the marvelous Borobudur temple complex and one of the world`s deadliest volcano`s: Merapi. It took us 2 days to get there and during our trip we found out that finding a quiet place to park the car for the night is virtually impossible in overpopulated Java. However, people are generally very friendly and don`t mind us parking our car somewhere. Most are just very interested in us and getting some peace and quiet is therefore pretty rare.

We did find a wonderful spot on the slopes of mount Merapi amidst fields of red hot chili peppers and other produce. Volcano slopes are very fertile due to the ash deposited on them and thousands of Indonesians risk their lives every day working and living in the “blast zone” of Merapi.  The view of the mountain was spectacular, check out the pictures below! 

The next day we headed for the Borobudur temples which are magnificent, but they cannot compare to the awesome beauty of Angkor Wat which we visited in Cambodia. Yes, we have become very spoiled J

Loud!

Half the mosques give wannabe Muezzin`s of around 10 years old the opportunity (and great honor) to announce morning prayers. These kids tend to go full throttle on the microphone once given the opportunity and it sounds, to put it mildly, not very pleasant. And this happens 5 times per day, starting at 6am taking up to an hour per session... We really started to miss the melodic Iranian Muezzins.

To the coast

From Bandung we headed south to the coast in search of some nice beaches but this proved pretty difficult. We did find very nice viewpoints of the rugged Indian Ocean coast, and as population density went down the views on the rice paddies also improved a lot! We parked in the jungle near the entrance of a small national park where we quickly raised a crowd of people around the car. They got bored after a while and we could spend the night in relative peace.

The jungles of the park should contain a large group of gibbons and the next day we geared up to take a short walk through the jungle. However, this being off-the beaten track Indonesia, our peaceful walk was disturbed by a some 20 guys on mopeds following us, so we turned back as the chances of spotting Gibbons had been reduced to zero.

The road along the coast towards the Java-Sumatra ferry was very beautiful and the next day we found a great spot to camp at a recreational site run by a young guy. It was kept clean (rare for local recreation sites) and the views of the Sunda strait between Java and Sumatra lined with fishing rafts were beautiful. The shower / bathing facilities were classic Indonesian; a big tub filled with water with a small bucket. You scoop some water from the tub and poor it over yourself to get a good rinse. It is important not to jump in the tub and bath in it (as a former colleague of Jeroen did when visiting his Indonesian parents-in-law for the first time JJ). These tubs store several days’ worth of clean water also to be used by other people!  

We found a nice hotel where we could sleep in the car for a small payment, close to the Way Kambas national park, one of the last sanctuaries for Sumatran Tigers, Elephants and Rhino`s. It holds a huge amount of wildlife and the best way to explore it is by boating through the interior. We met a Hungarian sea-kayak instructor who frequently visited Sumatra in search of wildlife and we decided to take him along on a short safari on the parks roads. The rangers had to accompany us for a nominal fee (for our protection, against the wildlife… Riiiiight). Once we arrived at the center of the park we were allowed to wander through the jungle on our own, which was pretty exciting because we often had to cut our own trail through the jungle and the grounds were littered with fresh Elephant dung. Less exciting were the massive leeches we had to remove from our legs after the walk J

The boat trip the next day was the highlight of our Indonesia adventure. Lots of exotic birds, rare monkeys, deer and even a salt water crocodile. We came close enough to a herd of wild elephants to smell them (much like a zoo) and to see the trees move as they quickly retreated into the jungle upon our arrival. 

Once at the western coast of Sumatra, we were treated to one of the most beautiful beach camp spots we have come across during our travels. In the evenings we were treated to the most spectacular sunset of our trip!

The quick way back to Surabaya

In the mean while we were discussing with our shipping company how to get the car to Canada. It turned out they had a container available to ship out from Surabaya on the 23rd of April which would take 30 days to cross the pacific to Canada.

This sounded good and we took the fast toll roads back to Surabaya, avoiding Jakarta altogether and travelling the toll roads along the northern coast of Java. The contrast with the other roads in Indonesia could not be bigger. Almost no traffic, meaning no hair-raising incidents every 10 minutes, yay! Except for 1 idiot who wanted to give Jeroen a high five while driving 90 kph…. really??

Once back in Surabaya we checked into the same excellent-value-hotel and started cleaning the car, as we knew Canadian customs could be very picky about dirt under the car and in the tire grooves. We heard of a German who got send back to Germany after dirt was found under his car.... ouch. By the time we were done (5 days later), the car had a new underbody coating, freshly painted sidesteps and roof box, tailor made seat covers in the color of the car, and the inside and the outside of the car were thoroughly cleaned. The car was ready to ship... we thought...

Epilogue

From all the countries we have travelled through, Indonesia appeared to us to have the lowest environmental awareness and the biggest difference between the rich & poor. It also suffers from religious fanaticism and open discrimination against the rich Chinese middle class and gay people. Traffic has been the most terrible of our trip so far, with infinite congestion on every road except the single toll road the country has. See our dash cam video featuring the appropriate Magnetic Man`s ‘Getting Nowhere’ song.

But the people were friendly, interested and helpful to us, despite our Dutch colonial past. The food is amazingly good and there is a raw and immense beauty in the volcanic landscapes of the islands we have travelled through. Stick to the tourist sites and you will have a great vacation. Rent a car and drive through Java and Sumatra and you will discover the real Indonesia with some pretty low ‘lows’ and some very high ‘highs’!

In Kuching Jeroen lost his wallet, whether it was lost in the streets or got stolen is uncertain but what was certain is that the car papers and his driver license were in there... As we have done many times before on our adventure, we quickly changed our plans and decided to skip our Japan backpacking plans and go back to the Netherlands to get new papers.

Malaysian Kuching was a lovely city by the way, much more laid back than Indonesian cities and their police officers were very helpful in getting a ‘lost items report’, although Jeroen had to type it himself J

The main attraction of Kuching is a little bit outside of the city; a nature reserve for recovering Orang Utan apes. The place was magnificent and with set feeding times it was not hard to spot the gentle giants and shoot some great pictures!

We loved the jungle boat tour in Sumatra so much that we arranged to spend another day on the water in the Kuching jungle. We spotted salt water crocodiles, many birds species, monkeys and a magical firefly show. The funniest was the Proboscis monkey, also known in Indonesia as the “Dutch monkey” because of its big nose and beer belly J

Meeting the Spanish episode 5 

From Kuching we took a flight north to Kota Kinabalu to meet up with our Spanish friends again, who were shipping their car from mainland Malaysia to Malaysian Borneo. They would arrive the next day and we spend our day visiting a salt water crocodile farm, see pictures below! We also enjoyed a wonderfully authentic (and very romantic) Italian dinner at the seashore. 

It was marvelous seeing Javi and Ines again. We could spend 2 days in tropical paradise together before our flight to Hong Kong. We visited a mangrove forest and spend a whole day snorkeling around the small Islands on the coast of Kota Kinabalu. We`ll let the pictures do the talking!

Hong Kong  (29 April – 3 May)  

To Hong Kong! As Jeroen had never been here, Nicolette could be his lovely guide. The small city-state isn`t the total chaos we imagined it would be, but that`s probably because Phnom Penh easily takes the chaos trophy J If you stay a bit away from the tourist traps the city is also pretty affordable and by taking the various ferries we could see a lot in the few days we had to spend here. Real highlights were eating in a completely packed Chinese lunchroom where no tourist ever comes, seeing the nightly skyscraper light show and visiting lovely Cheung Chau Island to witness their famous Bun festival. Some advice to all South-East Asia travelers, Hong Kong can easily be added to any SE Asia trip and we can highly recommend it!

Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville`s Otres beach was nice, but the beautiful Thai beaches had spoiled us. The restaurants were a great place to relax, eat and drink and get into the Cambodian rythm. The downside was that Cambodia doesn`t have very strict law enforcement and lots of people come here to get stoned and party all night. Let’s just say, Sihanoukville is no Koh Chang, but we enjoyed the laid back, hippy atmosphere and the white sand palm tree beach. Interestingly the beach next to Otres, which is mainly used for recreation by local people, closely resembled a…. garbage dump…. Sadly, just like in Iran, the local people have zero environmental awareness…

National Parks

After a couple of days relaxing we headed into the mountains. Cambodia has a couple of beautiful national parks, which charge little to no entrance fee. There are hardly any other visitors which gives room for wildlife and plenty of places to bush camp. During our 4 weeks in Cambodia we tried to spend as much time as possible in these national parks to enjoy nature to its fullest. We were warned though, that we shouldn`t stray off the beaten track because millions of landmines are littered across the countryside. See our previous blog post for more information on Cambodian landmines.

Cambodia`s road infrastructure used to be one of the worst in the world. Not surprising, since after decades of civil war the country is also one of the poorest in the world... But to our amazement, lots of roads were brand new and in very good shape!

We soon learned why… The Cambodians sold large swaths of lands and national parks to Chinese investors who cleared much of the forests to build luxurious vacation resorts along the coast and in the mountains. They also loaned huge amounts of money from the Chinese, which was all used to improve the Cambodian road infrastructure.

But we would be hypocritical if we said we were not loving these new roads. We took one of them into the Cardamom mountains and soon were all alone in a beautiful jungle, with big Hornbill birds flying overhead and monkeys calling in the distance. 

On the way back we tried an “old road”, and we soon understood the need for road improvements! It started out ok, a bit steep and narrow but nothing our car couldn’t handle. The conditions then quickly worsened, leaving us 4x4-ing across some very challenging terrain.

Soon the path became too narrow and made us come to a full stop because it was completely overgrown by dense bamboo forest. This road had beaten us, we had to turn back. We managed to get back on track and made a promise to each other not to experiment with these kind of tracks in Cambodia anymore!

Our experience with the Cambodians

The Cambodian people were really friendly to us. Because most Cambodians we met spoke very little English, they were a bit shy and getting into a nice conversation proved to be difficult. But what we loved about the Cambodians which we met is that they are laid back and respect other people’s privacy. We were never bothered when bush camping and only got friendly waves, smiles and thumbs up from the locals when we drove past.

What we really found funny was the typical Cambodian clothing, especially of the women. Adult women wear “Brigitte Jones like” pyjamas as daily street wear in all kinds of funny prints (incl. Sponge Bob!), sometimes combined with fluffy bunny flip flops! 

Car trouble!

Our car didn`t agree with Cambodia. We had our first flat tire, we broke our airconditioning and our fresh water pump, our auxilliary battery died and the clutch decided to lose pressure every once and a while... The tire and battery were easily replaced, the airco we could fix temporarily and having no running fresh water was annoying but we could manage without. However, the clutch issue was particularly nasty as it caused the car to suddenly start driving even with the clutch pedal depressed… Very scary, especially in busy city traffic with motorbikes zooming past us left and right!

We tried to fix this by pumping any air out of the system (bleeding) and refreshing the fluids. But this only made it worse. Jeroen figured out that we had to replace a vital part (master clutch cylinder) to fix this problem. Delivery time: 2 weeks...

Our Cambodia visa was going to expire in 5 days and the initial plan was to drive back to Laos, then through Thailand to reach Malaysia overland. With the car in this condition and a lot of uncertainty on getting a second permit to enter Thailand again, driving to Malaysia just wasn’t going to be an option.

From being almost a year on the road, we got accustomed to changing our plans. Then we heard that our China Crossing friends Ed and Sue were rejected to enter Thailand. Because of this, they were forced to ship their Landcruiser from Cambodia to Indonesia in a big container, which happened to have space for our car, so we decided to join them!

During the shipment we could have all the needed parts shipped to Nicolette’s friends Hjalmar and Nynke in Singapore and combine the pickup with a nice social call to them. We managed to cram both cars in the container and then we found ourselves to be homeless for the first time! We strapped on our backpacks and were on our way to Malaysia. 

The next stop would be the Cameron Highlands in the Northern interior of Malaysia, a lush green mountainous area with some beautiful scenery. Bright green tea plantations are draped on gentle mountain slopes, surrounded by moss covered forests and low hanging clouds, very pretty!

We booked a tour with a group of youngsters :) for a hike through the so-called ‘Mossy Forest’, views of the tea plantations and a visit to the local tea factory. It was fascinating to see the whole production process from the tea plants to actual tea. We had an excellent guide who took us on a challenging hike through the cloud forests pointing out things we would have never seen or realized ourselves.

Some of the prettiest beaches in the world can be found on islands that lie just off the coast of Malaysia and now that we were car/homeless, we had an excellent opportunity to visit one of the nicest islands, Perhentian! Again a bus ride, which should take 5 hours but ended up lasting an annoying 11 hours because of a huge detour to collect more people from the middle of the country. But we were just in time to catch the last speedboat of the day to the island. This boat ride was rougher than we expected, but pretty spectacular, check out the video!

The snorkelling on Perhentian was absolutely epic and after 2 days of relaxing and enjoying the company of 2 lovely British backpackers, we left for Singapore. Again by bus because there is just no cheaper way to travel through Malaysia to Singapore. As usual in SE Asia the bus turned up 3 hours late and drove us in a 12 hour race-like ride to Singapore. As our British friend Rob commented; ‘Where else in the world is a public bus the fastest thing on the road’ J

Singapore

Singapore is familiar territory for Nicolette as she has been there 12 times before. For Jeroen it was the first time, so Nicolette made a plan of all the things she wanted to show Jeroen and see again herself. Singapore is known for its modern high-rise but it also has a nicely preserved old city centre and botanical garden, and its Zoo and Bird park are rated amongst the most beautiful in the world. Singapore is also known to be a ‘fine city’, meaning that you can get fined for a lot of different things, most famously: using chewing gum and neglecting to flush the toilet!

We made a plan for 4 things we wanted/needed to do in Singapore: 

1. Visit Nicolette’s old friend Hjalmar and his family who live an expat life in Singapore for the past 2,5 years
2. Picking up our car parts
3. Sightseeing
4. Applying for a USA visa as we couldn’t apply for an ESTA because we have been in Iran

Sightseeing in Singapore was nice for both of us as the city has really changed since Nicolettes last visit. Singapore zoo is indeed the most beautiful in the world, mainly because Singapore was once a jungle and in order to create this zoo, the only thing they needed to do was groom the plants and trees, bring some animals into the place and build some paths and fences. Check out the video to get an idea what we are talking about!

Bangkok

There were some things we really wanted to arrange in Thailand, so first stop: Bangkok! Our to-do list consisted of: 6 new tires for the car (in case you’re wondering, we carry 2 spares), Japanese Encephalitis vaccinations at the Bangkok hospital, Christmas gifts for our family and friends, a total car cleaning, and the very necessary night out to the cinema  which we had missed so much over the past months J.  Within 2 days we arranged everything and were ready to crash at a Thai beach. 

And paradise it was! The camp spot was located in between two resorts, at the most beautiful palm-tree-lined-white-sand-beach we could imagine. We met with Debbie who was really surprised we actually came and spend 3 lovely days together. She introduced us to a Dutch guy called Tommy who had sold his business in Holland, packed up his things and moved to Koh Chang. There he had a wooden house build, from which he started a SUP business (Stand Up Paddling). He had two of his Dutch friends come over to visit him and together with them we had a great time eating, drinking, SUPping, snorkelling, swimming. Thai beaches are hard work J

Khao Yai national park

Khao Yai national park has good asphalted roads going through dense jungle. Every couple of meters we had to brake for rogue monkeys crossing the road which really felt like the national park experience we were looking for. Khao Yai still has some elephants roaming around but the chances to spot them are slim, unfortunately we only saw their tracks and piles of dung in the roads. But we were treated to a lot of other animal-encounters, like Toucans, Sambar deer, large Monitor Lizards and many monkeys crawling around our car.

It felt like camping in a zoo without the fences, not very natural but a cool experience.

Cambodia

As Thailand limited our stay to a maximum of 30 days, we crossed the Cambodian border with the intention to leave our car in the capital Phnom Penh. We were heading home for Christmas to see our family again and arrange stuff we couldn`t do from a remote location. But before leaving we had one week to visit Siem Reap in the north of Cambodia where the ancient city of Angkor  is located!  

Phnom Penh

Fellow Overlanders provided us with an address of a garage in Phnom Pehn for long-term parking our precious car during our visit to the Netherlands. It was owned by a Norwegian businessman who also produced body armor for the protection of people removing landmines. He likes to help out Overlanders by storing their car for a daily parking fee.

We went to check the place out and found our German friends Wanja and Julia there! They were not allowed into Thailand so they were preparing their car for shipment to Dubai and drive the car home. We had a great dinner together and exchanged stories on the last month we spend apart (after all, we traveled 3 months together!). It was really great to see them again.

The next morning we headed to the airport to fly home and finish Part 1 of our adventure, exited and ready to make plans for Part 2!  

Never during our travels have we and our car been tested as during our China trip. Let`s just say that we are not made to travel in a 6 car group with a fixed itinerary and a guide for 38 days, travelling a distance of 7500km!

Entering China

We started out with a 2 day delay on our itinerary in Kashgar because the border crossing didn`t go as smoothly as planned. There we learned that every Chinese problem can usually be solved with a lot of patience. When that is not enough a large bribe does the trick. Strange start of our Chinese journey where we learned to have more patience we as travellers could handle.

Happy birthday

We both celebrated our birthdays in the first week of our trip and these are the special moments you really feel blessed with such nice travel mates. They organized not 1, not 2 but 3 birthday cakes for us, one of them home/car-baked by Julia. They sang happy birthday for us multiple times also through the walki talkies in several languages and from our guide we got traditional Tibetian scarves to wish us good fortune. Really cool way to celebrate our birthdays.  

Leaving Kashgar we headed for the ancient capital of Tholing, where we would visit the magnificent Tholing monastery. It took us 4 days of driving to get there, as distances in China really are huge, and we steadily climbed from 1700m altitude to the Tibetan plains between 4000 and 5000m. Thank Buddha for our acclimatization in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan! The Tholing monastery was nice, but for us the real highlight was a detour through Zamjan Stone Forest, a series of geological formations resulting in a massive canyon through which we were allowed to drive! We missed our drone so much...

Mount Kailash trek

The next days we had a big challenge ahead: the mount Kailash Kora. This 'kora' is a 53km round-trip hike around the Buddhist`s most sacred mountain, where we met many Buddhist pilgrims wearing their colorful clothing and happy smiles while doing this grueling trek over a 5600m high pass.

The Tibetans are culturally the opposite of the Chinese. Where the Chinese are generally rude, loud and ignorant to others, the Tibetans are a warm and caring people. We felt like they would give us their last piece of bread if we were in need of it. 

At Mount Kailash Jeroen had his first ever physical breakdown and nearly collapsed due to a the lack of sleep and food for the past days (he is 38 now, no wonder J). Sleeping is hard above 4500m, especially if you suffer from Periodic Breathing at altitude, causing you to wake up every minute with a feeling of suffocation. Annoying and very tiring! The loss of appetite is also normal and you should eat more than your body wants to in order to compensate. After an hour or so of rest in a tea house along the way, Jeroen could continue and finished the trip with the others in 2 days. 

Kailash is said to be a tough trek, we didn`t expect it to be this hard, but the awesome beauty makes it very much worth while!

It was one of the best treks we have done in our lives, so incredible to make the Kora amongst a huge crowd of devoted pilgrims. After the first day we were the only non-pilgrims on the trek. Buddhist teachings say that if you do the Kora 13 times, all your sins are cleansed.

Or if they do it 1 time 'procrastinating'. This means taking 4 steps, falling down on the ground and stretching out, standing up, again taking 4 steps and so on, for the whole 53km! We were honored to be allowed to follow in their steps.

Mansarovar lake

After our Kora and being 1/13 cleansed of our sins J, we could relax a bit at Mansarovar lake. It was extremely windy but the sights sure were beautiful!

Mount Everest

As we headed deeper into Tibet, the mountains of the Himalaya that we could see in the south grew higher and higher. We were getting closer to Everest! It took another 4 days and about a 1000 more km`s to reach the legendary Rongbuk monastery, located at the Tibetan base of Mount Everest.

It quickly became clear to us that this place had become a high profile tourist location. Busloads of tourists come here to get a look at “Goddess Mother of the World” as the Tibetans call Everest. So where all the tourists take the minibus to the basecamp, three of us took a mountain path to Everest …. and kind of got lost :)  We ended up about 200m above basecamp, at a viewpoint covered in Tibetan prayer flags, which we later learned was very much off-limits. It felt great to move a bit off the beaten track and not follow the crowds, our bad behavior was rewarded with some of the best views of the great mountain! The only bad part was that Nicolette sprained her ankle on the way down, which made walking and driving the next days very difficult for her. 

Lhasa

The rest of the time we just soaked up city live by strolling through little alleys in towns and cities like Lhasa and Shigatse. For Potala palace in Lhasa we made an exception and loved visiting this beautiful home of the Dalai Lama. 

Shangri-La

Next stop was the city of Shangri-La, meaning ‘Paradise’. The city was touristic but had a nice laid-back atmosphere.

Tiger Leaping Gorge

We had another trek on our 'China tour' itinerary; Tiger Leaping Gorge. But Jeroen had just had a nasty cold and Nicolette`s ankle was not healed yet, so we opted to just drive the Tiger Leaping gorge road. The first part is extremely touristic and, much to our amusement, they even have guidelines for the Chinese tourists how to behave! The second part of the canyon is much more quiet, resulting in stunning and peaceful views of this natural wonder.

Lijiang and Dali

As we had left Tibet by now, the places we visited became classic Chinese. By the time we entered the cities of Lijiang and Dali no trace of Tibetan culture could be found. These 2 cities are said to be the most touristic places in Southern China and it soon became clear why, as both are very scenic. And although the touristic shops are crawling with Chinese tourists (and the occasional European) they, have retained a pleasant ‘old Chinese city’ atmosphere that we very much enjoyed, especially in Lijiang.

Shaken but not stirred we left the next day for the city of Khorog along the Tajik – Afghan border, the lowest point on our route at around 2000m altitude J Since this area has seen a lot of combat the last years and is still not considered stable, we decided just to pass through to fill up on fuel, food and cash. And a bit of souvenirs, as Julia bought a traditional Tajik dress which immediately gained her the favor of the Tajik people, great tip for all you travelers out there!

And then it became a bit harder

How great the first stretch of road in Shadora valley had been, the last 50km were hard, probably the hardest we had done so far and they even gave fearless Wanja an adrenalin rush. We had to climb steep roads and cross crumbling bridges, boulder-strewn rivers and huge rock slides. Wanja and Julia’s car got suck in the swampy mud and we needed our sand plates to pull them out. It was a magnificent experience. The ride may have been a bit tricky for the cars, but we both came out very dirty but undamaged and were a hell of a lot driving experience richer!

The last part was a big river crossing, but because we were there in the right season, the river was low and the crossing safe. We actually kissed the asphalt when we came out as we were very glad to have made it out without a scratch.

Visa run to Holland

The weeks in Holland were quite intense as we had to arrange a lot of stuff; first of all to visit friends and family, hug our cats, get our Chinese visa and, most importantly, buy 6 boxes of chocolate sprinkles and 3 kg of cheese.  We were very lucky with our Chinese visa. 1 week after we obtained the visa, the Chinese shut the door to foreigners, presumably for the G20 summit. Not getting our Chinese visa would have meant a major change of plans as we would have to go round China and ship from Russia to Japan… or something like that… But all went according to plan and 2 weeks later we were on a flight back to Kyrgyzstan.

Return to Kyrgyzstan

We had been in touch with fellow China crossers Wanja and Julia, a young couple on a sabbatical travelling to South East Asia in their VW Transporter van. She is a doctor who just finished her studies and he is an experienced automotive engineer, a great skillset when it comes to overlanding by car. We agreed to meet each other for a drink in Bishkek and ended up travelling together for the next 3 months!

The landscapes in Kyrgyzstan are even more stunning than those in Kazakhstan. Huge lakes against backdrops of snow-capped mountains, you get the picture (if not, read on or watch the Kyrgyzstan dashcam video J) We headed for the country`s biggest lake, Issyk-Kul. Here we were invited by a group of friendly but very drunk Kyrgyzians for a crazy Shashlik BBQ, which came to a very abrupt end when a thunderstorm and massive rain showers chased all of them away. It was a lot of fun while it lasted. 

Trekking!

Considering our terrible physical state after 6 months driving in the car, we were fearing the China / Tibet adventure with planned hikes over 5000m high mountains. So after Issyk-Kul we decided to do some mountain hiking and headed east towards the mighty Tien Shan mountain range and the backpackers town of Karakol. The hike we decided to do was a 3 day beginner trek instead of the 6 day hike to a glacier. Never during our trip have we been so happy with our decision J

Us still being a bit lazy and insecure about our capabilities, the first 5 km we were driven in the back of an old Soviet UAZ truck driven by a local madman. We also met our guide, a nice fellow who spoke no English (English speaking guides were sold out) but who looked experienced. That observation was correct. In fact, he was so experienced that he was always 200m ahead of us, trying to pace us up and down the mountain. Which soon became pretty annoying.

But the hike was amazingly beautiful, the first day took us to a camp at 2500m, only a 400m climb from our starting point at 2100m. A nice way to start, considering we were carrying 10kg+ of camping gear on our backs. The second day went all the way up to 3900m over steep passes and through a hail storm, but with incredible views. Mr. Guide had us cross a wood log bridge over a fast-flowing river about 10 hours into the hike. We were totally destroyed; not the best of ideas. But we survived and that evening we were rewarded with great food and hot springs to relieve the muscle ache of our weak bodies. 

Song-Kul Lake

We decided our next target should be Song-Kul, a high-altitude lake where we could visit local nomads and ride horses. We found an amazing camp spot at a hill overlooking the lake and stayed there for 2 days, enjoying the views, taking incredible photos and of course, riding horses! Nicolette got a headache that really knocked her out and being at 3200m altitude, we feared it might be altitude sickness. Fortunately, Doctor Julia could quickly determine it was her ‘normal’ cluster headache.

Kyrgyz-style horse riding was quite a different experience than we expected. Of the 4 horses we rented (no guide, no cap, just ride J) 1 was quite active and could be kicked into gear with a single word (yes, unlike European trained horses, Kyrgyz horses are voice-operated) and 3 of the horses were dead boring. Upon returning the horses we inquired to why they would not move, and the owner simply replied; “You need a whip for these horses”. We asked why we were not given a whip then. ”Because you didn`t ask for it” Right. J

At the end of the loop around the lake we entered our first non-highway road of Kyrgyzstan, going all the way from Song-Kul to Jalal-Abad (the one in Kyrgyzstan, not in Afghanistan J) It was pretty bad. Lots of potholes, corrugation (wash-boards) and stray animals on the road and with Wanja and Julia driving in front of us lots of dust was kicked up. But the cars held out fine on these bad roads, it is amazing how much abuse they can take!

The drive took us through some beautiful landscapes and rural villages, where people are still nostalgic about the old Soviet times.

Peak Lenin

2 days later we were ready, but decided to make a last stop at the base of 7000m high Peak Lenin near the Tadjik border, to get our bodies used to the high altitude. The drive from Osh to Peak Lenin was only 4 hours, and when we arrived, we could not believe our eyes. The mountain range literally rises 4000m up from the plateau and forms a huge white mountain barrier between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. There are lots of yaks and marmots (which still carry the black plague, we didn`t know and just found them very cute J). The electronic gas pedal of Wanja and Julia`s car decided to retire here at 3600m and -10°C, but the boys like a good challenge and after 2 days it was fixed. Camping in this area is a very cold but very epic affair, check out the pictures!

Tajikistan here we come!

There are some people cycling the Pamir region in Tajikistan, but not all make it and have to be evacuated. The food is scarce, clean water is non-existent and the altitudes can have a devastating effect on the body. On the way to the border we met an evacuated Spanish guy who lost about 25% of his body weight because of exhaustion and food poisoning… his British travel mate wasn`t doing much better, as he also suffered a mental breakdown…

We understood not to take this part of the world too lightly and prepared ourselves for a real expedition. Tajikistan here we come!

Kazakhstan and we started off on the wrong foot. We should have taken this is a bad omen for things to come… First of all a border officer wanted money to open the gate because it was almost closing time (we didn`t pay him, we were tired and happy to camp there). Secondly, our suspension broke about 20km into Kazakhstan, because the roads were just as bad as on the Turkmenistan side. Our beloved Land Cruiser couldn`t take it anymore. Our luck was that we could still drive, so after about 300km through oil fields and a night of beautiful bush camping along the Caspian Sea, we arrived in Aktau. Here a lovely young lady working at the Toyota garage (see photo ;-) took care of us and our car and 1 day later we could continue. Hurray! 

Receiving our first camel love 

We moved eastwards into the marvelous beauty of the Mangistau region. The region is little visited, but full of geological wonders, such as Lion`s rock, which you can see below, where Nicolette had a close encounter with a curious camel. It was in need of some love J

Endless steppe

There is some real beauty in Kazakhstan, in the form of the endless Kazakh steppe. Roads seem to go on forever towards the horizon and you rarely see other traffic. Strangely enough, this made the roads pretty intense to drive, because we would coast along over perfect roads and all of the sudden a huge pothole or a broken piece of asphalt would appear, putting the brakes of the car to the test! 

We made good progress by driving all day and then eating and sleeping at truck stops. Not the best 'guide book pretty’ places but the Plov (rice dish) and Pelmeni (meat & onion mini-dumplings) were excellent. Also, most truck stops are guarded, which is very nice as this part of Kazakhstan is not the safest, with a high crime-rate and the recent terrorist attacks in the nearby city of Aktobe.

The road we chose took us to the fishing village of Aralsk at the infamous Aral Sea, a Soviet ecological disaster where so much water has been drained for the irrigation of cotton fields that the Sea is actually drying up. But things on the Kazakh side of the Aral Sea are improving with the construction of a dam in the middle of the sea. Waters are expected to reach the shores of Aralsk in 2017, but the Aral Sea will disappear entirely in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan...

Baikonur rocket launch!

The scenery along the way from Uralsk to Baikonur had changed quite a bit, from green grassland steppe to almost desert-like conditions (with lots of camels hanging around) in the area of Baikonur. 

Both the Russian space port and Russian-leased Baikonur city are not accessible unless you are willing to pay... a lot. The Russians charge 500 euros for a spot where you still need binoculars to see the launch and for 5000 euros they take you within eyebrow-burning distance of the rocket J 

So why go then? Well, it “should” be possible to witness the launch from the main road 30 – 40km(!) away. 

We camped at a local café run by 3 local boys and their aunt who let us use their internet and ‘lounge room’. In turn we invited them to go see the launch with us the next morning. One of the boys confessed he had never seen a rocket go up although he had been living in Baikonur city for 16 years! 

We took position at a launch-watching-spot we scouted the day before and turned the NASA countdown and live feed on at our phones. We were ready! 15 minutes later the counter hit 0 and…nothing… 

After 10 seconds Nicolette yelled “THERE!!” and a bright little speck of light could be seen moving upwards with amazing acceleration! It was incredible… with binoculars the shape of the rocket could clearly be seen and after 2 minutes the 4 booster rockets could be seen separating from the main rocket and falling down to earth. Mission accomplished!!

Our first victim

To give our cars the needed attention, we went to a dodgy area of Almaty called ‘Car City' where we shopped for gear oil and just-in-case parts for our China trip. 

When we left our parking spot, Nicolette managed in one smooth turn to wedge the gate-beam of the parking area between our spare tire and the car. We didn`t notice, so when we took off we yanked the whole installation off its socket and bended the beam… much to the horror of the parking attendant who dashed out of his office waving and yelling… 

A (very) long story followed, in the end our insurance proved pretty useless, we couldn’t agree on a price to cover the cost of the replacement of the beam, so we ended up driving to the “beam store” (yes there is actually a store like that) and buying a new one and delivering it to Car City. Everybody happy. Cool experience but let`s not do that again J

Almaty

We spend a week in an apartment in Almaty while the car was being fixed. This gave us time to visit the markets, to walk in the parks and to catch a movie in a luxurious mall cinema. We found Almaty to be a very laid back city and a week gave us the opportunity to experience what it is actually like to live in it. And this is why we travel, not to tick off the Lonely Planet sights, but to experience life in other places.

Charyn Canyon

But there is a Lonely Planet sight in Kazakhstan that really is a must-see; Charyn Canyon. We can try to explain the beauty of this ‘Grand Canyon’ of the ‘-stan countries’, but you better check the pictures below and watch the drone video we shot there, the place is amazing!

National park Altyn Emel

We said goodbye to Javi and Ines and headed towards the national park of Altyn Emel for some more nature viewing. On the way we booked tickets for the 26^th of July to fly out of Almaty back to the Netherlands to arrange our Chinese visa. During our trip it turned out that getting a Chinese visa is almost impossible in any other country then your home country, very annoying. 

National parks have a strange status in Kazakhstan; they are publicly accessible but they have the same security measures as military bases. So lots of paperwork (and money) in order to gain access. But it`s worth the hassle. Altyn Emel is very beautiful, completely void of people, with many huge birds to watch and ancient sites like petroglyphs (caveman rock drawings) to visit. We could even bathe in the lake! Cold but necessary!

How we almost ended up in a Kazakh jail

Back in Almaty we checked in at the same apartment again to spend the last 2 days in Almaty before we flew back home. Little did we know that we would not go anywhere…

Erken, the owner of the apartment, was kind enough to drive us to the airport. After dropping off our luggage and passing through passport control, things took an unexpected turn. A very serious lady told us we had overstayed our visa (30 day visa valid until 22 July). We disagreed and showed the entry stamp of June 27th and the registration form with the 27th of July written on the bottom as last exit date. Apparently the immigration officer who wrote this on our registration form made a mistake, so the next thing we heard was "You will not fly today! You broke the law! You are going to the police now, your bags will be taken off the airplane!"… 

Bye bye tickets, hello Kazach law system.

We were taken to a senior border control officer who told us that: "The migration police officer in Aktau made a mistake by allowing you to stay until the 27th of July ... and you broke the law"….  WTF?! For him this was not at all contradictory so he happily explained to us what was going to happen:
1. “You report to a military base tomorrow where our statement would be taken”
2. “You go to the administrative court in Almaty to be judged”
3. “Depending on your statement (and the mood of the judge) you will receive either a fine, or you go to prison, or you get deported to your home country on the first flight out not to be allowed back in for 5 years (so no access to our car for 5 years!)

What happened next was a roller coaster ride where Erken (see picture below), became our driver, translator, lawyer, guardian and friend. We ended up in a 5 minute court battle with Erken and the grumpy judge shouting at each other in Kazakh. Erken won, resulting in just a 60 euro fine for us. We were so happy! 

4 days of bureaucratic misery later we were allowed to leave the country on a special exit-visa and we had a great goodbye dinner with our hero Erken. And a big thank you to KLM, who were kind enough to return us the tickets in full!  

Entering Turkmenistan

The message is clear, Turkmenistan wants us in and out as fast as possible, 5 days in our case, since this is the period they have allowed on our transit visa. We heard stories about motor-bikers who were asked by the Turkmen border officials if their bike was fast… when they enthusiastically answered ‘Yes!’, the official proceeded to change the transit visa from 5 to 3 days!

Before crossing the border we took our video drone apart to avoid any misunderstandings about us being spies or worse, journalists. Turkmenistan really hates journalists, especially when they write something ‘unapproved’ about their current or former president. An unfortunate French female journalist / human rights activist died in prison in 2006 because of a sharp article she was writing on President Niyazov. Turkmenistan is now rated as having the second-least freedom of press in the world, only surpassed by North-Korea… So we were prepared for the Turkmen border officials… we thought.

The last checkpoint was easy and we were allowed to proceed into Ashgabat, a gleaming white city build by the previous president to show off his power. The city was built by a French company and has cost so much money that it left Turkmenistan virtually bankrupt, although the country has huge natural gas reserves. 

All the buildings are marble-white, adorned with golden ornaments and blue glass. The cars in the city are mostly white, with the occasional and very daring silver car driving in between, so you can imagine how our camel-colored Land Cruiser stood out from the crowd. Before entering Turkmenistan we were ordered to clean the car, because entry with a dirty car is illegal in Ashgabat and we could be rejected by the border officials. But the weirdest thing is that there seem to be almost no people in the downtown buildings, streets and parks, only cleaners, police and military. The downtown part of Ashgabat is clearly meant to amaze, not to be effectively used...

Away from the center, the city more or less came alive, there were a few shops, a decent restaurant and even some people in the streets.  The 2 days gave us more than enough time to both relax at the pool and explore the city. We were told it was forbidden to take any pictures of the buildings in downtown Ashgabat, but apparently this also goes for the parks… Nicolette found this out the hard way as she was screamed at by a police officer from across the street when she was taking pictures of 1 of the central parks. So we developed a new strategy; drive around in our car with the excellent dash-cam, secretly videoing the whole city.

This worked like a charm, see the results HERE! 

The second day we visited the very new and sterile bazar just outside of the city. It mostly sold cheap Chinese goods so it wasn`t very interesting and we tried to change some money, but without result. There should be a black market at around 5 Manat per Euro, but as this is very illegal, people were too afraid to change money with us here. So the only other option was changing money in the city mall against the official rate of 3.7 Manat per Euro. So be it, we were not spending a lot anyways. After another stroll in a huge empty park with only police officers, we headed for a high pyramid shaped building which had a nice panorama bar. The guys running it didn`t mind us taking a look so we could photograph the whole city, safely out of sight of the police officers :-)

Into the deserts

We learnt that the last stretch of road from Turkmenistan to Kazakhstan was a real car-breaker, so we decided to cut our Turkmenistan journey 1 day short to prevent overstaying our visa if the car broke down. This meant that the next day we had to drive in 1 straight line to the oil & gas town of Turkmenbashi, located on the Caspian Sea coast. As soon as we left the city the landscape changed drastically into a real desert (Turkmenistan is 80% desert).

The Road from Hell

A good night`s rest helped us a lot and the next day we were ready to take on the dreaded border road into Kazakhstan! The first part was pretty bad but do-able, lots of potholes but still reasonably surfaced, and it took us along the beautiful Caspian Sea coast dotted with big oil & gas rigs. Again we got checked several times, this time by military guys controlling access into Turkmenistan (ours was the only road) with 1 guy making 5 phone calls to confirm that we were allowed to be there!

Ramadan

In the mean while the Ramadan period had started and we were anxious to see how it would be experienced in Iran. We were told we could be sent to jail or be deported from the country if we were caught eating or drinking in public. For the same ‘crime’, Iranians would be punished by whiplashes. We were amazed to see that so many people didn`t participate in Ramadan! People were eating and drinking in the parks or cars, and so many told us that although they are Muslim, they drank water and even had some food during the fasting period between sunrise and sunset. This is something that was unheard of 5 years ago!

Of our journey through Iran we liked Esfahan as a city the most, it truly is the jewel of Iran, incredibly beautiful! The main square is lined with ancient mosques and the nicest bazar in all Iran.

We met a nice jewel-seller who we had dinner with, while later that evening we met a very nice family in the central square with whom we shared fruit and stories until 1am at night. Travel in Iran during Ramadan is not that bad at all.

Persepolis

After Esfahan we did a 500km drive south to the city of Shiraz, where we wanted to visit the ancient capital of Persia; Persepolis!

That day with 42 degrees it was blistering hot, especially when you are officially not allowed to drink during the day. Nicolette did a nice imitation of a ‘walking shower’ in her Sharia-approved dress and we managed to spend a nice couple of hours exploring the beautiful ruins.

At the Kazakhstan embassy for some reason we got our visa, but with a validity of 30 days instead of the regular 90 days…. which would come back to haunt us in Kazakhstan in a very bad way. But we were too excited to pay much attention to it and started to prepare for the much feared Turkmenistan transit visa application!

The Turkmenistan visa lottery

The next day we went to the embassy at 8:30. Don`t think the consulate is a nice place where you can come in and have a chat with the consul about the needed documents etc. As an unworthy and annoying tourist, you are directed to a 30x30cm hole in the wall where a grumpy guy hands you some forms to fill out. He then closes the window until 10.45 and when opening again, he takes the forms and checks them. If something is then wrong, you will have to come back the next day because the consulate is only open until 11.00am. We were told it would take 10 working days for the visa to be ready… and our Iranian visa was about to expire in 9 days, so we had to request an extension for our Iranian visa. More bureaucracy, yay!

For our next stop in the city of Damghan, we decided to use a hotel after many nights in the car. The hotel we wanted to stay in was fully booked so we went to the other hotel in town. Big mistake, as the staff acted like we were the first tourists ever to stay here. The next morning a guy knocked on our door with a telephone in his hand, ‘It`s for you’, he said to Nicolette. Completely baffled because no one knew we were in Damghan, she answered the phone. It was the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, checking up on us… Fortunately we were in Damghan according to our submitted plan and after asking Nicolette dozens of questions, the Iranian interviewer was satisfied and we never heard from them again. 

On to Golestan national park!

We found a nice spot near Loveh waterfall. We were asked by some young guys to join them for a shaslik BBQ including a shisha, which was very nice, until at one point our hosts started rolling little tubes from plastic foil?! We were pretty clueless what on earth they were doing until they pulled out a bag with some brown paste in it. They laughed, pointed at it and said ‘Afghanistan!’…. so this was either heroin or opium and they started happily smoking it away. Remember, this is Iran and they hang you for possession of over 30 grams of narcotics! So we decided to make a polite but very quick get-away and headed back to the car to spend the night in nature close to the waterfall. Despite the encounter with the druggies we liked it a lot at the waterfall and the next day we spend chilling out and swimming in the freezing waters (again fully clothed of course). We attracted a lot of attention as the Iranians had probably never seen this before and were staring in disbelief at these 2 blue-eyed idiots playing in the freezing waters of the waterfall.

While Jeroen and our new Polish friend Jacek were doing some laps in the pool, the Iranian guys attempted something that resembled controlled drowning. But the men`s pool was nice, with full spa facilities and a gym, all included. Just don`t run bare-foot on a tread-mill as Jeroen`s feet found out the painful way.

In the women`s pool it was even worse than in the men`s pool, no attempts at anything resembling swimming was made, all the ladies were just standing in the shallow part chatting with each other! And then there was the swim cap. Absolutely no hairs were allowed to appear from under it, so every time a few hairs dared to pop out, a loud whistle from the life guards sounded and the hairs were hastily put back in place.

Holy Shrine visit

 
We visited the Holy Shrine of Mashhad together with a Swiss girl Elena we met at Vali`s guest house. At one point we accidentally entering the area reserved only for Muslims. At each entrance men and woman are separated and then Jeroen lost Nicolette and Elena in the massive crowds. When the girls started looking for him, they attracted attention… a lot of attention, of very angry chador-clad women. Instead of offering help or guiding them to the exit, these women were yelling and pulling on Elena and Nicolette`s chador to a point where things got scary and a guards wanted to takethe girls away for their own safety. They escaped and fled back to the entrance where Jeroen was waiting for them, completely oblivious to what had been going on…

The moment we stepped through the gates into Iran we had arrived in a different world. Headscarves, long trousers and shirts were mandatory and had to cover everything but hands, feet and faces, especially concealing Nicolette’s female curves as much as possible! 

The Iranians are the friendliest people we have met on our trip so far. Not a day passed by without being invited to lunch, dinner or some (non-alcoholic!) drinks. 

We have visited many of the silk route sights and were blown away by all the beautiful mosques, bazars and the many traditional houses open for tourist to visit. 

Starting at Tabriz, a Turkish/Kurdish city, experiencing the true Iranian culture for the first time, buying a proper wardrobe for Nicolette and getting used to the Iranian driving style.

At our next stop in Zanjan we stopped at spot in the middle of nowhere an Iranian man passing by (there are always people, everywhere!) took pity on us poor travelers and shared some wonderful bread with us. Before we knew it we were invited to his garden a little further up the hill where we spend 2 lovely days relaxing and chatting with our new Iranian friends.

Meet the Spanish

During the past few weeks we were in touch with a bunch of fellow travelers also looking to cross China by car. One of these were a Spanish couple, Javi & Ines, who happened to be travelling through Iran too. So we arranged to meet on our next stop in Qazvin near the famous Valley of the Assassins.

Soon enough we discovered that we were on the same page about travelling and some company is always nice, so we headed into the mountains to the Valley of the Assassins together. We proved to be a great team, as our Land Cruiser beast nicely complemented their luxurious Mercedes Sprinter which is equipped with shower, toilet and dining table for 4 persons!

From Alamut Castle we started moving towards the Caspian Sea, via a barely used dirt road that passed over a 3200m high pass. The map showed a restored ‘caravanserai’ (ancient silk route hostel) located at the pass and we liked the idea of spending the night there, as a real part of our Silk Road travels.

Because the road was so little-used we expected few people at the caravanserai, but soon after we made it to the top, an old Land Cruiser showed up with 9 drunk people in it. Remember, this is Iran and alcohol is illegal! Doors flew open, people moved out and the music was turned on to have a party at the roof of Iran, way out of sight of the religious authorities. Of course we were invited to join, and soon enough we were dancing and drinking with our newest Iranian friends, 1 of which was a high ranking military official… The party lasted for a couple of hours until the Iranians were too drunk to continue and headed home down the mountain at dangerously high speeds, leaving us in peace and quiet to have a nice dinner and admire the beautiful starry night.

13100     KM

3            Timezones

11           Countries

1573       Liters of diesel

Diesel prices

Nights

Meals

*        All sandwiches, nothing fancy

Kutaisi

Since we didn`t really prepare for Georgia we just thought we`d head for the capital Tbilisi with 1 stopover in Kutaisi, a small city that doesn`t get many tourists. Here we found the new meaning of hospitality, for which Georgia is so famous. While sitting in the living room of our guesthouse after dinner, a good friend of the owner came in, actor, poet and all-round nice guy Giorgi Zanguri, with 2 Russian friends, Andrei and Theodore. After chatting with us for 10 minutes, Giorgi invited us to join in on a Georgian Supra (a feast in which drinks and food are shared among new and old friends), expressing his wish to share food, drinks, stories and love with us (yes these were his exact words).

Walking through the streets of Kutaisi we saw a beautiful opera building which we wanted to see from the inside. We noticed a banner of a band playing at that very moment, so we decided to try to get in. We knocked on the closed door, it opened but these people only spoke Georgian and Russian.

Tbilisi

Next up is Georgia`s wonderful capital, Tbilisi! This city is a must see for everyone visiting Georgia. It is busy, but there are many quiet areas to relax, sightsee and enjoy great Georgian food. Highlight of our Tbilisi visit was having dinner with our Russian friends we met in Kutaisi. We started with just the 4 of us and ended up with a group of 15 people of 7 different countries, including 2 Dutch guys on an internship at the Dutch embassy.

The next day visited the Tbilisi market and took an hour to relax in one of the natural sulfurous hot springs, just as travelers into the east have been doing for 500 years. Very nice and very hot! After all the driving we did over the last few weeks our bodies really appreciated this.

Our guide was a camp fire expert and made a nice fire every day so we could cook great meals and drink tea made from local herbs. We slept on wooden bunk beds in mountain cabins which are open to everyone and the first night we met a nice group of people. Jeroen took out the whisky, Vazha his own home made Georgian wine, and a Russian couple brought cognac. Very helpful when spending the night at 1500 meters altitude J

Akhaltsikhe

Before leaving Georgia we wanted to visit two more sites we had seen in the guide books. They were both in the South of Georgia, near the Armenian border around the city of Akhaltsikhe. At the guesthouse we were surprised by a Chinese girl, whom we met the days before at the mountain cabin, she coincidentally booked a room in the same guesthouse. Fang (her name) was travelling solo through Central Asia for 3 months, very brave! We invited her to come along sightseeing with us, which was a great opportunity for us to test out the jump seat intended for our future Chinese guide.  Conclusion; if the guide is the same petite size as Fang, he/she will probably survive 20 days through China`s bumpy roads, but he won`t be very happy J

On the way to cave city of Vardzia we visited a monastery build in an impossible location with an access road so insanely steep our car stalled. Ok this will get a bit technical; if somebody knows if you can safely put a HZJ75 in low gear (4L) without engaging the free-wheeling hubs when driving on tarmac, please let us know! So safe to say we failed miserably to go up by car (we forgot our dashcam chip that day, so no blooper footage available, lucky us ;-) ). As punishment we had to walk up, but we could definitely use the exercise and we were rewarded with some spectacular views.  Our destination Vardzia was a huge cave city build in the mountains that once housed 2000 people. Nowadays there are still monks living there, but the empty houses are opened to tourists. Check out the photos of Vardzia.

Armenia

The border of Armenia was like a scene out of a Charley Chaplin movie. The road to the entrance of the border was full of deep potholes; we needed our 4WD to get through. First the Georgian exit border: some standard questions, paper work and car checks and a very friendly ‘have a good journey’ to send us on our way. Very easy. To get to the Armenian border we had to drive through a construction site with no signs (or clue) on where to go. After a couple of tries driving around in ‘no man’s land’ between Georgia and Armenia we found the road to the Armenian border. 

Then to our surprise the police officer asked: ‘How much would you like to pay?’ and handed Nicolette a pen and some paper. WTF? Nicolette wrote ‘0 DRAM’ which was a bit too low for the cop, so after some haggling we settled at 10.000 DRAM, or 19 euro. We had to pay cash and put the money between the papers he was holding and drove off. After re-thinking what had just happened, we came to the conclusion we had just lost out corruption-virginity J

Let`s say so far Armenia doesn`t agree with us. Continuing our trip towards Yerevan a thunderstorm started and the heavens literally opened up, throwing such severe hail and rain showers at us that our car snorkel saw its first action! Check out the dashcam video of Armenia.

On Thursday morning in Yerevan we went to the Iranian consulate for our visa, but it turned out that the needed information for our visa request did not yet arrive at the consulate. Bad timing, because Iran has its weekend on Thursday and Friday and Armenia on Saturday and Sunday, so we were stuck in Yerevan for at least 5 days. We didn’t really mind as we had a nice guest house and this gave us a very necessary break from the continuous travelling we had done so far. Yerevan as a city was nice but not particularly interesting like Tbilisi or Istanbul. We did manage to find an English spoken movie at a nice Cinema and we had our leaky air conditioning system fixed by a very helpful mechanic.  

Luckily the documentation for our visa arrived on Monday so we could pick up our visa the next day. To escape the city we headed for a night of bush camping at lake Sevan at 2000 meters altitude. The lake had a lot of exotic birds for Jeroen to photograph and we even had a pretty good internet connection to call friends and hear what we have been missing back home. 

Although at times very relaxing and beautiful, Armenia has not quite been the experience we were hoping for and we figure we should have consulted an Armenian friend of ours for some advice on where to go and how to deal with the officials here.  

We are looking forward to Iran now! 

Greece

Maybe it`s because we fell in love with Albania, but entering Greece after Albania felt a bit like a cold shower to us. After a hassle-free border crossing (which included buying a duty-free bottle of Glenlivet, yay!) we found ourselves in a landscape much less lush and with endless road works, well, now we know where all the European money went ;-) Also the prices of food and accommodation tripled compared to Albania. Not what we had expected, but then again, we are getting a bit lazy and didn`t do much research either into this broke holiday-paradise. The Greek animals are better-behaving though, in Albania we had to dodge 4-legged creatures on every road (without warning signs) while in Greece every 100m a sign warned us for crossing sheep, deer, cows and wild hogs but we never saw one on the roads!

Our first stop was Ioannina where we found a simple but official campsite at a lake home to the regional rowing academy. From our car we could watch them shooting across the lake in 8- and 4-man boats, Olympians in the making! Every morning their warm-up consisted of a 10 lap run passing our car, which woke us up and made us follow their example by doing some much needed running ourselves.

The city itself has some nice sights including an old but active Byzantine church from which the eerie Byzantine chanting (singing) can still be heard. The first night we were treated to some severe rain showers and thunderstorms right above our heads with thunder so loud, it was almost scary. The rain didn’t stop until late afternoon the next day, which gave us plenty of time to plan the next leg of our journey.

After Mycenae, we headed for Delphi directly, skipping Athens in favor of Thessaloniki. The route took us over some very scenic roads, as the site of Ancient Delphi is located high up in the mountains. The site is stunningly beautiful; draped on a mountain slope with breathtaking views of the surrounding area. It features some reconstructed temples, a large theater and higher up the mountain a large stadium where the Pythian games, the predecessor of the Olympic games, were held. 

Now this is a nice Greek city! It has a nice atmosphere, its very clean and has a large campsite with lots of facilities to prepare for our trip through Turkey. The city itself has some very nice bars and eateries, and we could even find a shop that could provide us with black & white ‘incognito’ license plates for the car without an EU or NL logo J The only sad experience was the dead sea-turtles that we encountered on the Alexandroupolis beaches. We are not kidding, 2 of these majestic creatures were lying on the beach, apparently this happens every year as turtles returning to their birthplace are injured by fishing boats and nets.

Turkey

Time to head for Turkey! We have decided to keep Turkey short and sweet (kinda like baklava J) and travel in a straight line along the Black Sea coast towards Georgia. We have 2 reasons for this: first is the internal (lots of protests) and external (lots of wars) conflicts in a country that is slowly sliding into a dictatorship. Second is that in 2016, the Ramadan period is from the 6^th of June till the 5^th of July. During this period it is prohibited in Iran by law to eat or drink anything, including water, when the sun is up and the dress-code is enforced even stricter. We don`t mind taken part in this, just not the entire duration of our stay in Iran, so we aim to enter Iran in the last week of May. 

Our first stop in Turkey is Istanbul, a huge metropolis positioned on both the European and the Asian continents and the symbolic start of the silk route into the East. The old center of Istanbul is a cultural mix ranging from young people dressed in the latest fashion to niqab covered Muslim ladies.

We found it fascinating that in Istanbul there are shops selling the most imaginative lingerie situated next door (and selling to the same clientele) to the shops selling all-covering Sharia (Islamic law) approved clothing. Since the latter is much needed for Nicolette to visit Iran legally (unfortunately for Jeroen the lingerie is not mandatory) we decided to buy such a ‘Sharia approved dress’ for Nicolette. She was determined to directly give it a try in the streets of Istanbul to see how it feels. Bad idea. Encountering an Islamic culture for the first time together with the confining effect of the clothing was a bit too much. The 20°C in Istanbul turned Nicolette into a walking shower, and to think that in Iran it will be 40°C didn`t make her very happy! On the positive side, it did provide much needed experience for the travels through Iran and gave Nicolette a brief insight in the daily life of a Muslim woman.

The city has been the focal point of terrorist attacks on tourists in Turkey, with suicide bombings in 2015 and 2016 costing many lives. When we walked through the city we noticed police and military armed with automatic rifles at every major tourist site and there were airport-like security measures in place at every museum. Somehow seeing all these security measures made us feel a lot less safe. The upside of all this misery is that Istanbul is no longer overrun by tourists, leaving the tourist attractions we visited pleasantly quiet.  

Highlight of our visit to Istanbul was the magnificent Topkapi palace and its surrounding grounds, which was once home to the Ottoman Sultans. The palace has been turned into a must-see museum, where many of the riches of the Sultans are on display, including an 86-carat diamond, the 4^th largest in the world! 

After Istanbul we headed east, towards the cities of Amasra and Sinop along the Black Sea coast. The winding coastal road connecting these cities has absolutely stunning views and we had plenty of time to admire them as 300km took us about 8 hours. The possibility to take this road will end soon though, because a highway is being built to replace it (partially in the Sea, see the picture of our GPS below) and when it becomes fully operational, the old road probably will no longer be used.

Trabzon was our last stop in Turkey, where we got a taste of the infamous Georgian driving style, a mad dash to fill up any empty space on the road. Apparently, leaving any space between you and the cars left, right and in front of you is for sissies. Fortunately our car makes an impression, giving us right of way in situations where we almost certainly would have been bulldozed over if we were driving a Fiat 500. In Trabzon we were taken good care of by the hotel manager, who made sure our car was in a safe spot (always a bit of worry in cities) and assisted us in finding a nice Turkish-style restaurant to end our visit to Turkey with.

We`ll come back to Turkey when the storms have died down because it sure is a beautiful country!

Montenegro

We booked a Ferry from Bari (Italy) to Bar (Montenegro), a 9 hour overnight trip on a shabby boat operated by a corporation with a pretty bad reputation. Safe to say, we were not looking forward to it. Getting on the boat was a 5 hour hassle, but once on board it wasn`t too bad as we were given a cinema-like chair in a pitch black room so we could get some sleep. As we took our seat we noticed the song coming out of the speakers: Sting – Message in a bottle (for those unfamiliar with the song, it is about a sending an SOS to the world) which we tried not to take as a bad omen J. The next morning when the sun lit up the room, we understood why the ferry company kept the lights off: the furniture was old, dirty, broken or ripped apart, but at least we safely arrived in Montenegro!

From Bar, we drove to the Bay of Kotor (a Norwegian fjord look-alike) on roads that were in a lot better state then most Italian roads are, where we found the most stunning views. At the best view along the coast, we stopped to take a picture and noticed a rusty sign that said ‘camping’. The term ‘camping’ was a bit of an overstatement, but we parked our car anyway and enjoyed the amazing view after which Jeroen went fishing. He didn’t have much luck; after being taught by a 100-year old local guy how to fish in this bay he caught 1 (very) small fish which was eaten by a cat when Jeroen wasn’t looking… 

There we met our first fellow ‘overlanders’, Swedish Emmelie and Kiwi Harley, who are on their way from South Africa to Sweden in their Land Rover Defender. It was cool to listen to their stories and to learn from their experiences and encounters along the way, they even went through Sudan and Egypt and crossed the border to Israel, something many people say is impossible nowadays. We ended up spending two great days together, saying goodbye felt sad and we hope to meet them again someday.

Also check out our dashcam video of Montenegro. 

Albania

Magical! That pretty sums up our impression of Albania. All our expectations were exceeded, roads are decent to very good, general safety is outstanding, the food is cheap and of excellent quality, and the hospitality and friendliness of the Albanian people has to be experienced to be believed. Albania is thinly populated and not yet discovered by tourism, which made us ‘the talk of the town’ passing the small villages; almost everyone waved and smiled as we drove by. Our opinion may have been influenced by our low expectations created by all the horror stories we have read and were told. 

Now there is some truth to these stories, as Albania has been through some particularly grim periods the past 60 years. After WWII, the country was plunged into isolation, led by Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha. After emerging from the communist era in the 1990's, Albania's weak economy was devastated by a series of pyramid schemes (partially backed by the government!) in which 70% of the population lost all their belongings. Civil war broke out in the entire country and it took almost a year before things settled down again. Then in 1998 the Kosovo war broke out, in which both the Albanians and the Serbs committed war crimes. From 2000 onwards the politics and economy of Albania stabilized slowly but steadily and nowadays a positive vibe can be felt in the whole country, as Albania is making it`s comeback!

The Albanian mountains are home to many wild animals, such as brown bears, wolves, lynxes and venomous snakes. In other countries sightings are rare, not so in Valbona. We hiked a 13k mountain trail during which we encountered 3 horned vipers (the most venomous snake found in Europe), numerous lizards and birds and 1 unidentified 4-legged creature which stared at us for a while (we stared back!) and then slowly walked back into the forest. Exciting!

We also picked up 2 lovely dogs who stayed with us during the last 5K of our hike, followed us to the campsite and kept watch the whole night next to our car. Sounds cute, but throughout the night every mouse, lizard or fly got a five minute barking concert... The dogs turned out to belong to Catherine, so the next day we brought the dogs back and had a chat with her. She told us about her encounter with a mother bear and its cub last year which didn`t end too well. Upon noticing the cub she yelled enthusiastically for her boyfriend to come and see, which the mother bear didn’t like too much. The bear slammed her to the ground by whacking her in the face, after which it took off, leaving Catherine with a nice scar as a reminder.

We liked Valbona so much that we ended up staying for 4 days at Tradita enjoying the fresh mountain air, with a total bill of 56 euro’s (food, drinks, shower and tip included!)

Tirana

Our next stop was the capital of Albania, Tirana. Our 2007 guidebook said ‘the most polluted city in Europe with trash everywhere and suicidal traffic, crossing the street in Tirana is only for extreme sports enthusiast’. So we were bracing ourselves for a genuine ‘3rd world country capital’ encounter.

Well, apparently the Tiranians (Tirans is probably not correct) have been spending the last 9 years cleaning up their city and taking driving lessons! Although busy we found the drivers in Italy far worse while cities like Florence are more littered then Tirana. Tirana is a lovely city with lots of young people visiting hip bars and with plenty of green to take a stroll through. There also are some very interesting museums, but the Albanians have a hard time figuring out what to do with their communist past. As wounds of this period run deep, most of their 'commie' history has been erased from view and the few remaining reminders are in pretty bad shape. 

In the afternoon we had another hassle-free border crossing from Albania to Greece and as we said in our Albania-dashcam-video, we will surely go back, hopefully to find the country in the same or maybe even better state than we left it!

Pisa

We drove from Cinque Terre to Pisa to see the leaning tower, not expecting military security armed with assault rifles keeping a close eye on the crowds every move. Their presence didn`t worry anybody it seemed, and it was really amusing to see the poses people were assuming to get their photo taken (pushing, kicking, leaning into the tower, you name it, it happened) So as good budget-minded Dutchies we took out our self-made sandwiches with peanut butter and enjoyed the show. 

Purchasing next-day tickets for the Sistine chapel was not possible, so we tried the next morning only to find a two hundred meters long line! So we decided to go to the Colosseum instead. It was very nice, we rented an audio-video guide that contributed a lot to the whole experience and gave us an informative history lesson on how the people were entertained in those days. The Colosseum, which seated 50.000 people, has a very bloody history when you realize that at one point during a period of 123 days over 10,000 men (gladiators and prisoners sentenced to death) and 11,000 animals (from chicken to lions) died in publicly accessible games. With the Colosseum tickets we could also enter the Roman Forums (market places) and the ruins of the imperial palace, the Palatino. Dating from the 1st century AD, the forums and the Palatino occupy a massive area in the middle of Rome, good to see that this is being preserved for all to see. 

Castellabate

From Pompeii we went to Castellabate were we had arranged a villa owned by a friend of Nicolette’s mother. We knew there was no heating in the house and were warned by the owner it could get pretty cold in there, but we figured it was the south of Italy so really, how cold could that be? Well apparently the owner was right: very cold! So for the first three days we were not able to relax, fortunately we had some chores to keep us busy & warm. By the fourth day the house had gotten a little warmer and we arranged a heater, nice!!!

In Castellabate we met with Nicolette’s brother, his wife and two kids and had a lovely time together. Because it was Easter, Nicolette and her nephew Jelmer played hide and seek with 22 chocolate Easter eggs for about 30 times. Again, again, again they went. 

Kids are great for a day or three ;-) but now aunty Nicolette and uncle Jeroen are going to relax before heading off to Montenegro!

Part two of our journey was scary, exiting, challenging and great fun!

Monaco & Monte Carlo

We thought it would be fun to drive through Monaco & Monte Carlo with our 3-ton truck as we passed it anyway on our trip from the Cote d`Azur to Milan. And fun it was, but mainly pretty scary as the roads have narrow hairpin turns up and down the mountain and are filled with cars that cost the same as the average house in Holland. So we were aware of the fact that if we would crash into anything here, we would have a very displeased insurance company.  But Nicolette did a good job, a few close encounters with a nun and a suicidal moped driver, but not an (additional) scratch on us or on any of our fellow road users and we were rewarded with breathtaking views of this movie-set-like country/city/town/centre-of-the-universe (whatever they like to be called). 

Drive to wintersports

Next morning we drove to the airport to pick up Loes and Sebastiaan so we could drive to Val Gardena (Ortisei) for a week of winter sports. They had reserved a rental Panda prepared for snowy conditions but at the collection Hertz decided in all their wisdom to give us a car with summer tires. But no worries, winter tires would only cost us a measly 20 euro per day extra ( which for 7 days rent adds up to double the rental fee). Unacceptable, so this turned out to be a heated 2 hour discussion, which we won in the end, and we were awarded a Panda 4x4, which turned out to be the best car we could have hoped for.

Navigation showed Ortisei as a 4 hour drive, in normal conditions, but this was the day the mother of all snowstorms decided to hit the Alps. It already rained heavily all the way to the mountains and as we gained altitude the rain changed into snow and visiblity turned to near-zero. So we drove slowly and steadily.

Because we started our trip 2 hours later than expected, it was dark when we reached the mountains which was also the moment the snowfall got worse, a lot worse. Then at the worst moment possible, we took a wrong turn which made us go up a steep, snow covered mountain track where we had to turn after 2km of climbing. Going up was no problem, but within 50 meters on the way back down, Nicolette lost control over the Toyota and it started sliding. She steered towards the mountain wall to prevent the car from sliding down the mountain, luckily the car stopped just before hitting the wall. Jeroen then engaged the 4 wheel drive and took over. He did great (going down at an average speed of 6kph) and got us back on track safe and sound. 

Going up the correct road we noticed many 2WD cars at the side of the road stranded, we were still ok. Then we saw some cars at the side of the road which had crashed into each other or into some other obstacle, we were still ok. Then everything came to a grinding halt as we had to climb a 14% incline which had almost 10 cm of snow on it (with only 8km left to go). There was a chain of stranded cars on our side of the road blocking our way, not able to go up or get back down. We thought we would get stranded there, but the next moment a snow plow came to the rescue, we jumped in our cars and followed it in its tracks all the way to Ortisei. Many other cars tried the same but couldn’t follow and got stranded. Our next challenge was that the apartment was situated on top of a 20% little street, no possibility of parking below, so we took a leap of faith, put the pedal to the metal and made it, sooooo happy and relieved that we and the car were undamaged that evening. Both our cars did great considering the circumstances. Panda 4x4 did better than many Audi’s, BMW’s and Volkwagens. 

Wintersports in Ortisei

The next day we could start to enjoy our winter sports week together and it was great! Lots of fresh snow, sometimes limited sight due to clouds, but overall good conditions and more importantly, no broken bones or torn ligaments. In the evening we played Ligretto and Wazabi, which (especially Ligretto, go look it up, it is one crazy card game) brought out a highly fanatic side of us. We celebrated Loes her birthday on the Friday with a delicious restaurant dinner.

Cinque Terre

After a week in the snow we could use some sun & sea so we decided to head for Cinque Terre. These are 5 villages situated on the coastline of the Italian Riviera a little to the south of Genova, and are an UNESCO world heritage site. People used to be able to walk along 4 beautiful trails connecting all 5 villages, but in 2011 2 of these trails unfortunately were taken out by massive landslides, so we were able to visit 3 villages with a nice view on the 4th. The walk was quite tough with lots of uneven Inca-trail-like steps carved from the rock, but look at the view, spectacular!

Time for some culture, we`re off to Pisa, Florence and Siena.

Our first on-the-road blog entry! So many things already to write about, lets sum up the events of this week:

25th of February we left home, we must admit it was pretty emotional having to say goodbye to our family and friends. What we experienced was so much love and care, we felt blessed. Everyday life is so busy that we tend to take this love for granted, saying goodbye made us realize this. 

The next morning we set course to the tiny village of Billy-Sous-Mangiennes in the north of France where we visited the mother of our friend Ewoud, she lives there in a beautiful villa at the country site. We enjoyed her hospitality, stories, jokes and her museum-like house complete with collection of old cars and car parts (pm us if you need any Mercedes part, we`ll hook you up ;) )

A little to the south lies Mont Saint-Michel, which is a definite go-to place on our bucket list. Budget-wise we could choose between a good restaurant or a campsite with shower; we chose the restaurant, and found a great french one (Le Grillon) in the tiny village of Pontorson where we made all heads turn because we were probably the only non-locals there and the made the average age go down a lot :) Finding a place to pitch our car is never easy in the dark but we found a nice field, with Mont Saint-Michel as our view, so beautiful!! Visiting Mont Saint-Michel felt like a day of time travel to the middle ages.  Amazing experience!

The next 2 days we drove to Les Camargue, a nature reserve with flamingos and wild horses, were we arrived late only to find all campsites were closed for the season, so we parked at a car park along the road, very abandoned. But at 7.30 AM (we were up and dressed) a knock at the door, and an official asking for 12 euro parking fee. Surprised by this we obediently paid the fee. 

From the flamingos we drove to Mandelieu at the Cote d`Azur, through St. Tropez and along a most beautiful coastal road to enjoy a day of rest at a nice campsite with WiFi and a shower. After 3 nights without, these everyday commodities are very welcome (we know; not very hardcore travelling , but hey, this part of our journey is supposed to be our vacation!). Here we visited the holiday park I (Nicolette) spend my summer holidays as a child. So cool to visit, to recognize the park, the house and the facilities, but nothing of the town. I think back then, I didn't care much about that. Now I see it is actually a very nice (and ridiculously posh!) place. 

Tomorrow we will drive to Milan where we will meet Jeroen`s brother Sebastiaan and his girlfriend Loes to start our winter sports week. More about that in our next blog. 

Tomorrow is the big day that we leave to start our journey, last packing, last goodbyes, and then we are off. Feels like Bilbo Baggins, we're going on an adventure! Exciting!