Our plans

We've begun to realise that we've been heading in the wrong direction. We've managed only to progress from 77 degrees longitude in Delhi to 74 degrees in Bishkek over the last 22 days. At our current rate of westerly progress it will take around another 543 days to get back to London. Whilst our employer is usually willing to be fairly flexible about such things, we'll probably need to return to work before mid-2011. Also, although Gemma's Mum can no doubt cope with all the preparations, our wedding in May is (arguably) going to be less successful if we don't actually attend.

So, we've decided to change our plans slightly. We'd originally been planning to head South out of Kyrgyzstan into the Eastern part of Tajikistan. This would take us back to slightly nearer to Delhi than Bombay is and to within a few days walk of where we were in Pakistan a couple of weeks ago, which slightly defeats the point. We're now going to head into the northern part of Tajikistan, and only spend 7-10 days there in Khojand, Dushanbe and the Fan Mountains.

More significantly, in terms of an overall route, we've finally given up on ever hearing back from our agent about an Iran visa. Instead, we're planning to get an Azerbaijan visa in Tashkent and travel through Turkmenistan to the Caspian Sea and take a ferry from there.

We'll try to update the map up top at some point. In the meantime, we're heading even further East to Karakol (78 degrees longitude) on the shores of Lake Issy-Kul tomorrow. Apparently, there are vodka stands on the beach. I'll let you know how/if this manages to be compatible with the Russian habit of sunbathing standing up....

T.