Itinerary Advice from Mongolia to Turkey

[advlust]

Hello fellow travelers.

We are 3 bikers from Singapore who will be bypassing Central Asia, Turkey to Europe next April. I've planned a safe route as it is our first time doing a +10,000km long overland trip. The current route is as follows >

S’pore > M’sia > Thailand > Laos > China > Mongolia > Russia > Kazak > Kyrgy > Uzbek > Kazak > Russia > Georgia > Turkey > Bulgaria > Greece > Balkans > Italy > Switzerland > Belgium > Netherlands

For travel through central asia, we've picked a safe, asphalt mostly stretch as most of our bikes are road bikes. We've skipped Tajikistan and Turk (unfortunately) as I think the pamir highway might be too taxing on our inexperience. Pls see the route below. Instead of going through Kazak all the way up to the Russian border, i decided to bypass Uzbek as I know it's a beautiful place to visit.

Central-Asia-Route.jpg (133.91 KiB) Viewed 2896 times

In southern Russia, I understand there is some unrest in the grozny area in South Russia, i've decide to bypass that area and go south from elista towards the Verkhny Lars (Russia/Georgia) border crossing (See Alt Route below). I've got different information from different websites, but I learnt from another traveler in this forum that he finished a route similar to mine through south russia using the alt route.

Russia_Caucasus_-_Google_Maps.jpg (105.88 KiB) Viewed 2896 times

Does anyone have any advice for a new traveler regarding the above route ? For china, mongolia, balkans, europe and south east asia, I'm confident of the route we've picked, but we're still slightly unsure about central asia and south russia.

We will appreciate any help.

Thank You

[steven]

Southern Russia I do not know well enough to give advice.

Your route through Central Asia looks fine, though, you should be able to enjoy it.

[advlust]

Thank you Steven ! Appreciate your response.

[roro]

Hi,
"south from elista towards the Verkhny Lars (Russia/Georgia) border crossing (See Alt Route below)."


I've done this route (then Georgia and Turkey) with my car in 2015, no problem and very nice trip, especially in Georgia.

RR.

[vadimpamir]

Hi,

Last year we were travelling on a car across the North Caucasus and basically we had no problems on the road, except for Dagestan. Part of our route went from Vladikavkaz to Elista. We crossed Ingushetia, Chechnya and Dagestan. Ingushetia is a very small region, we crossed it less than in an hour, no problems there. In Grozny, Chechnya, we felt quite safe, no checkpoints, no problems with police. From Grozny we drove to Khasavyurt in Dagestan and from Khasavyurt to Elista. In Dagestan we were stopped at each checkpoint and all the time the local police tried to extort money from us. One time they succeeded, all other times we were the winners. In general, we felt quite safe in the region all the time, the only problem was the local police in Dagestan.

Hope this will help.

Vadim

[jelger]

Grozny and the rest of Chechnya is relatively safe these days, thanks to repressive measures.
It's not different than areas such as North Ossetia-Alania or Kabardino-Balkaria. Dagestan has a higher (danger) security profile.