Video of the Pamir Highway.

It has been a long time since posting, it feels like almost a life time ago. We got a bit slack and never really gave the blog the finish it deserved. Left you all lingering in Switzerland.

It was a bit of a non eventful finish, with a few brief stop offs in the rest of the countries we traveled through on the way back to the UK arriving in time for Christmas and New Years with friends and family.

We traveled home to Oz after New Years with a quick stop in Malaysia to see some of my family.

Like is back to normal now, and we are locked into the every day rat race with a mortgage, full time jobs and two dogs to care for.

We even sold the troopy!!! but bought another more offroad capable 80 series Cruiser, so get out bush and have a bit of fun when we can.

After hooking up with Nic that we met in Kazakhstan back here in OZ I thought it was time I out together some of our footage and made a video of probably one of the highlights, the Pamir Highway.

Enjoy!!!

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Liechtenstein and Switzerland

From Austria we diverted our route to Switzerland so we could pass through Liechtenstein. Which I struggle to pronounce at times. It’s only a very small country of 160km* but the richest in the world so far as the GDP goes. People have bigger backyards than this in Australia. It’s also one of the two double land locked countries in the world. Uzbekistan being the other.
The whole country is virtually situated in one valley which has the Rhine river, a motorway and train line running through the centre.
There is all sorts of controversy with the banks here too, as with Switzerland many multinational companies channel their money through the banks to avoid tax amongst other things.
Because Liechtenstein is not a member of the EU there is a border checkpoint from Austria. We were hassled about out windscreen which had been broken since Uzbekistan but we gave them the usual spiel that it had just broke and we had one on order in whatever city we were closest to at the time.
Once we were allowed in we decided to take the more scenic route to hotel we had already booked for that night in Switzerland.
First thing we noticed about Liechtenstein was how perfect everything is.

Liechtenstein castle

Austria

Crossing into Austria was uneventful, with a line on the road and a few small signs to indicate that you have actually crossed the border and now in another country.
We headed straight for Vienna as we had a few things planned there. There is a lot of fascinating history to Vienna so we decided on doing a walking tour to get the full story’s about the different attractions. There are so many beautiful buildings in town each with it’s own story. The architecture is very impressive, every building is adorned with statues on every corner or cornice. There is a real sense of pride to Vienna, everything is well kept, people are well dressed, very polite and nearly everyone speaks English. We also noticed Vienna was more multicultural than a lot of the other cities we had been through.

St Stephen’s Cathedral Vienna

Hungary

Hungary marked a bit of a milestone for me, I had driven through Hungary about 4 years ago. Meaning that this was no longer a new road travelled, nor was the rest of our route back to the UK. It was kind of sad for me but Jess was still on new grounds so I was excited for her to see what was on offer.
It is also our entry point into Central Europe leaving behind the Balkan countries. We headed straight for Budapest which was not too far from the Romanian border. We crossed the border in the evening, this also marked the end of border checkpoints and passport checks. This was obviously easier but kind of leaves that sense of adventure behind when you practically drive over a border with out knowing it.

Budapest by night

Romania

Sneak preview of the fantastic weather

As we drove into Romania we had a complete change of plans. Our original plan was to drive from South West to North West but Jerome had just read about some crazy salt mine that was open to the public in a different direction. We would also then be able to travel through Transylvania. Our time was limited so we decided to wing it.