The road ahead

Here is a brief pictorial introduction to the first party of our journey:

The route for Andy and Pete from Islamabad to Osh along the Karakoram Highway

The Pamir Alay from Sary Tash

Hitching to China, with a Pamir mountain backdrop.

More to come soon...

Vis-à-vis your visa fee

Others they look at internet, they do; you not so.

- Tajik Embassy Bureaucrat in Austria

The quest for visas is now complete. After enduring post office queues, rudimentary websites, turgid forms, dubious delays, obscure stapling practices, bemused bankers and hapless London excursions, we now have the seven pieces of paper allowing us to pass freely without let or hindrance. If nothing else we've got ourselves some pretty looking passports.

A long night at home

I woke this morning to find it wasn't and that lunch was festering in the sun, long overdue. The afternoon, spent recovering from the garden party fatigue contracted in a sunny, end-of-term Cambridge, has all too quickly become the dead of night. It was eaten by a host of tasks of limited value: learning the art of Sudoku, catching up on Botswanan Detectives, perusing the web, browsing photo albums and considering whether I should unpack yet. This is why I'm still up, setting up this blog from which I can post the Letter from Stan.