It's all in my head...

The Kosheen song 'it's all in my head' was a familiar friend over the last while. As has been 'the final countdown' (Im not even that big a fan of it), Pink Floyd's 'your possible pasts', Foo Fighters 'learn to fly' and an assortment of The The songs amongst others. A psychologist might be able to piece together a story from all those but Ill accept any theories in the meantime.

Those reading who aren't motorcyclists might struggle with this but there's no radio on a bike. When Im in a car (apart from on odd occasions in the Nissan I had for a while) I always had the radio on and it seems strange not having music. After I got a bike for the first time about 14 years ago I tried one journey with a Walkman on and it was horrid. I can't even explain how horrid it was and that was with a nasty old GPZ500. It was just wrong.

Now while the trip so far hasn't been like my first trip into Europe when I shouted and screamed in my helmet I still have a good heavy dialogue with myself. Sometimes Im silent for ages but there's generally something rumbling away in that hat of mine, and music is often that. So I guess that there's something rumbling away in my head to make me think if these songs in particular but I'm just not sure what.

As each journey commences and continues it's utterly dependent on what's gone ahead of it. Paranoia occasionally creeps in, like after I was stopped five times in two and a half hours in Uzbekistan (another story) and then a couple of days later stopped in Kazakhstan where there seemed to be an attempt to extort money again under the guise of me having no insurance. While the insurance claim may have been legitimate and I got away wallet intact it made me worry and I couldn't find a clear answer as to whether I needed it or not.

This entry is being pieced together is Semey in the north of Kazakhstan and as I write it Im digesting dinner and a few beers and contemplating a couple of hours drive north into Russia tomorrow. There should be tyres in Barnaul for me within a couple of days and the path ahead should be fine.

Coming back to the title of the blog, it really all is in my head. With such a long period day to day with no real company other than strangers trying to piece together the same familiar questions in Russian / local language / English, I get a long time to think. Sometimes that leads to songs and in the particular moment has led to me playing an album under the guise of Global Communications that I've though about a lot over the last few days.

Within that communications link Im aware of how hard work it can be to get things organized, sometimes its fun but for some reason I cannot remember Russian words for numbers in their teens. This is a particular pain because the bike has a 16 litre tank before reserve and most times I stop for fuel I need to ask in advance to be delivered a volume of fuel in the teens.

It's also led to a bit of a hard spell for me following catching up with a very good friend and her tour group recently. After five days of almost solely English conversation with Irish, French, English, Australian and Canadian folk Im dumped back on my lonesome again almost half way round the world right in the depths of paranoia following the police multiple extortion evening. Just as I start to get past that then Im hit with the fear about insurance.

Mostly however I've been able to contemplate what actually happening around me, from the surreal expanse and beauty I've met in Kazakhstan to the sheer heat and wonderful people I've met in Uzbekistan, the bizarre feelings I've met in Turkmenistan bubbling along there also.

I've also managed to think about the surroundings, so far I've almost been in China, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Iran. Part of me feels almost cheated in that I've not been able to pass over those borders and see what's beyond, almost as if I'm hard done by. The surroundings also sometimes hit me in the sense that Uzbekistan seems so far away, and as for Turkey? Wow. And Im not quite half way through...

So, in my head. Its a busy place while also a quiet one. Listening to my own thoughts and / or the bike. Thinking about music, noises, traffic or preconceptions. Then there's the simplicity of it getting dark and there being nowhere to stay so I'd better find a spot somewhere off the road to pitch up for the night. Its a very different place to what it was just six months ago when my head was filled with trip planning, trying to lose a bit of weight, stresses about work, how I might feel or approach different elements of the trip.

I mentioned preconceptions above. Those, like it or not colour your mind to experiences too. Im in Semey, just 220 - 240km away from the site where the Russians detonated some 456 nuclear warheads. I half expected a nightmare place but it's really pleasant with a river running through and good people, Im not staying more than one night and despite a mild curiosity I'm going no closer to the site or the museum half way there.

The preconception of Kazakhstan as almost desertlike has also been blown from my head as the east side at least appears more than capable of sustaining nomadic grazing for millennia.

The preconceptions of appearance, of mentality, of approach to others have also been challenged and then there's the cities themselves. Ashgabat so unbelievably strange, everywhere in Uzbekistan so spectacularly pretty, and then I return to Soviet planning and architecture. While in an earlier post I said I could appreciate what they were trying to do after driving through a dull and gloomy Bucharest, Ive caught a glimpse of how it could work in Almaty. The roads there instead of being able to sustain at points 10 - 12 lanes of chaotic traffic manage an orderly six. There's sunlight. The buildings have benefitted from some upkeep. There are so so many areas of greenery, fountains, park and statues. While I struggle personally with the absence of an obvious centre, there's so much for a community constantly there and provided that it all just seems to hang together.

All I do know is that once I've sorted new tyres out for the bike I'm off on the road again. There's the road from Barnaul to Mongolia then Ulaan Bataar where I'm likely to be stressed properly about fuel availability and my abilities on the bike. Experience isolation probably in a way I've never yet seen or may be likely to find again while meeting people who are likely to be the most genuine, different people to me that I could ever imagine. And that's likely to be followed a few weeks later with a huge culture change as I enter Japan. It's hard to believe what's happened so far never mind what's to come, bring it on.