I (Lodewijk) have done numerous trips of which 2 were major ones.  For the first trip through the Middle East and West Africa I used a Landrover which was stuffed with a lot of gear and clothes.  On my second trip in 2004 I used a motorcycle with only a fifth of material.  On this last trip I was probably the least prepared fool on the road.  I literally read 3 books, visited 5 websites and bought 9 maps (only the maps turned out to be useful).  In the end I still did not really find what I was looking for so I fell back into the comfortable 'I'll probably figure it out there and then'. 

So I wanted to drive to Mongolia and that corresponded a bit with the famous silkroad (but then backwards).  That's how I came up with the name of the website.  I took off to Eastern Europe and spent the whole summer in Poland, Hungary, Czech and Slovak Republic, Romania and Bulgaria.  In Turkey I drove straight to the eastern part after having chased embassy staff for visa in Istanbul for 2 weeks.  Turkey is the nicest countryside I have been driving through.  Actually it is probably the nicest country I have ever been in.  I met some truly great people and families which were all incredibly open minded and showed some of the fines hospitality.

I went all the way to Azerbaidjan after crossing Georgia which was the worst part of the trip.  Alcohol, corruption and ex-USSR architecture were ingredients for my decision to just cross this asap.  But then the Great Caucasian Range lies in Georgia which makes you forget all the foregoing.  

My bike is back and stored and waiting for its next trip ...