After the fellowship on two wheels had crossed the thousand towers, we all got reunited in Osh. We spent a couple of lazy days resting, eating properly and remembering all those stories that would bond us forever. A couple of days later, each of us would go his own way but the adventure would always remain in our memories. Stuart and Jirka left their bikes stored in Osh and flew back home, to Norway and the Czech Republic, respectively. Fabian rode his Yamaha north to Omsk in Russia and caught a train to St Petersburg, then drove the rest of the way to Finland and finally got on a ferry to Stockholm. Jani drove to Almaty, where he had family, left his bike there and flew to Moscow. Willi caught a plane back to Germany where he would get surgery on a broken collarbone.

As for myself... I still wanted to see Kyrgyzstan and therefore drove to Bishkek. The road from Osh crosses three very high mountain passes and the weather was getting really bad, with lots of rain and temperatures dropping to almost freezing. As soon as I arrived in Bishkek, I got sick and could not leave the city for a week. Fortunately, I met very nice people in town and I was never alone. I hanged out those days with Johanna, an Italian girl from South Tirol who lived in Miami and whom I had previously met in Khiva. Then I also bumped into Uri, the Israeli guy I met at the hostel in Khorog. And last but not least, I got to know Aika, a Kyrgyz girl who lives in Germany. She made me really like her home country despite not being able to leave the capital due to the weather and my sickness.

When I recovered, had a Kazakh visa on my passport and the weather got better, I hit the road again and rode Scarlett to Almaty. FINALLY, I went to a BMW dealer, had my bike serviced, replaced the cracked front tire and bought some extra winter gear. It was getting late in the season and I needed to cross Kazakhstan all the way to Uralsk, before the Siberian cold arrived in the area. As soon as my bike was ready, I pressed the fast forward button and started driving west. In one day I covered 800km to Turkestan, where I spent two nights and visited the most important historical site of the country: the Mausoleum of Khoja Ahmed Yasawi.

Next day, another 800km exhausting haul... on the way, the road passes near the Russian 'secret' city of Baikonur. This is where the famous USSR cosmodrome is located, where Laika and Yuri Gagarin were rocketed into space.

Nowadays, the Russian Federation still rents and manages the cosmodrome and nearby town, which are nearly impossible to visit independently. In fact, I was not even sure if I needed a special permit to just drive on that road so I did not risk getting into town, being arrested by the Russian police and having a huge problem. I just stopped at a junction where huge antennas could be seen in the distance, probably connecting to satellites and other spacecraft.

I made it to Aralsk before sunset and the post-apocalyptic atmosphere was even stronger than I had expected. I knew the town had a thriving fishing industry in early Soviet times, which is now gone because of the Aral Sea disaster, but I could not foresee how depressed and depressing that place currently is. Most accesses to the city were physically blocked, giving the impression that the government is actually trying to kick out its remaining residents or hiding the disaster to the outside. I had to drive off-road for a while and went to the city center, which is near the former port. This is where the sea used to be 50 years ago but, due to stupid irrigation policies in the former USSR and present day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers do not feed enough water to the sea and the shore retreated a hundred kilometers to the south.

The disappearance of the sea has caused extremely high levels of unemployment and a general desertification of the land. The consequences are dramatic: garbage and broken vodka bottles everywhere, unfriendly residents who are suspicious of foreigners taking pictures, a few surviving cafes and restaurants with almost no customers, frequent windstorms that cover the city in dust... and surreal posters where the president of the country, posing with some fishermen on their boats, promises to bring back the sea.

Two nights later, I started driving to Aqtöbe, 600km to the northwest. The weather had become much better and the temperature was around 20-25 degrees during the day but dropping to freezing levels overnight. The landscape was unbelievably monotonous, flat steppes for hundreds of kilometers without anything else than the occasional resting area. I found it very funny that the road sign for resting area included a tree, since I had not seen a single tree for days.

Once in Aqtöbe, I found a cheap motel, spent the night and continued driving the next morning since there was nothing interesting in that oil town. The weather was getting worse... it was 6 degrees when I started riding in the morning but, by the time I got to Uralsk in the evening, it was -1 and snowing. I was so glad that I had bought proper winter gloves, a thermal T-shirt and a balaclava in Almaty... and even with all that gear, I was freezing on my bike. Uralsk had nothing interesting but I had to visit the Russian consulate to apply for a transit visa. It took almost a week but I got it without issues... when I was about to leave, I realized that I had a problem with my registration papers in Kazakhstan and some locals helped me solve it by bribing the migration police with 100 USD. The obscure registration process seems to be designed to get into the pockets of tourists.

On the day I wanted to leave the city, the temperature was -6 degrees. It was sunny and it had not rained or snowed for days, though, so the roads were clean. That ride to Atyrau was the toughest of my life... during the first couple of hours I was doubting whether or not I would make it. My fingertips were getting frozen, even with winter gloves and my heated grips turned on to the maximum. Every hour I had to stop somewhere, drink hot soup, tea, eat something, recover body temperature and ride again. After a very long day, I reached Atyrau, another oil-boom city by the Caspian Sea.

I met very nice locals and travelers in Atyrau and, two nights later, I drove to the Russian border. It was very cold, always slightly below zero, but somehow it felt OK after the previous ride. I crossed the border without issues and checked in a hostel in Astrakhan. Back to civilization after one week on the steppes... then the next day I got to Elista. I stayed for two nights because it is a very interesting city, the capital of the Republic of Kalmykia and the only Buddhist area geographically in Europe. Check out Lenin watching over a pagoda.

The Kalmyks arrived in this region, east of the Ural river and north of the Caucasus, from the Mongolian plains a few hundred years ago. They brought their religion, food, customs and Asian looks but coexisted pretty well with the Russian Empire. After World War II, Stalin suspected Kalmyks to cooperate with the enemy and deported all of them, including children, women and the elderly, in cattle wagons to gulags in Siberia. Ten years later, Khrushchev allowed them to return but only half of the original population made it back. It is a really special place that made me feel that, after 4.000km driving west, I was back in the heart of Asia.

The main attraction of Elista is the New Khurul, a temple built in the Tibetan style after the fall of the Soviet Union. One of the caretakers was so surprised to see a Spanish motorcyclist visiting Elista in that season that he showed me around the temple for free. People were very nice in general and I got a good physical and emotional rest from the hardships of previous days.

After Elista, time for one of the last long hauls to Vladikavkaz and the Georgian border... but the Russian traffic police stopped me on my way and, after a half an hour discussion, they let me go once I gave them all the cash I was carrying. By the time I got to the border, it had closed for the night and I had absolutely no money to buy food or accommodation... they did not accept credit cards and the nearest ATM was 50km behind. A nice lady who worked at the cafe invited me to tea and pastries, which became my dinner, and I camped at the truck parking lot. It was cold in the mountains but I had proper gear and managed to sleep well.

Next morning I crossed the border and drove up to Stepantsminda, where I had already been in the summer. The weather was great so I just had brunch there and continued to the Jvari pass, which was clear of snow. Then down to Tbilisi, where I ate khinkali, churchkhela, spent the night and continued to Armenia. At the border, they did not want to let me in because of the ongoing ebola crisis in Spain and I had to convince them that I had not been to Spain for months to avoid blood tests and a huge delay... then once more I was stopped by the traffic police (my fault this time, I did not see the sign that marks the start of a village) but finally I got to Yerevan, where I wanted to stay for a few weeks.

Back to the present time, I have spent one month and a half in Yerevan, volunteering for an NGO. I worked with the university in the geothermal heating design for an eco-village in Nagorno-Karabakh, a very interesting project where I got to know great people. However, my assignment is over now and I am leaving tomorrow... the weather is still not that bad and I will try to make it to Spain before Christmas.

Wish me luck :)