We are currently living in a "Disco-Tech" club in Almaty, Kazakhstan.  The owner also runs an off-road motorcycle touring business from the same location and is very passionate about ridding.  In our normal fashion, we met some people on the street and ended up staying with them.  We followed one of his employees on his scooter on a very convoluted path back to the club.  We rode through the gates of a carnival, drove around a stadium, and then hopped on a side walk.  The narrow side walk followed a canal on one side and had low hanging branches on the other.  I looked down at my GPS and realized that we had done a complete circle.  I couldn't stop laughing as the branches slid off the top of my helmet and I looked over at the lights of the carnival.  Finally, we arrived at the club and met the owner (Sergae).  He was more than happy to help out some fellow cyclists in need and has been most hospitable. 

Almaty is the last big city that we will reach before we hit the Chinese border so we are trying to set things up from here.  China does not allow motorcycles over 250CCs and our bikes are 3 times this size.  We have three options:

1. Originally, our plan was to get our bikes through the border using the connections of our Chinese friend, Yuan.  This is looking less like a possibility.  It may still work, but if we get rejected at the Chinese border we would not be able to reenter Kazakhstan without new visas.  This would force us to camp in "no man’s land" between the Kazak and Chinese borders while we get new visas for Kazakhstan and Russia.  Then after all of that time, we would have to bypass China to the north.    

2 The only legal way to ride in China is to buy a Chinese motorcycle from within the country and have it registered there in your name.  It would then be legal to ride across the country and we would have the option to sell them again once we are through.  A brand new Chinese motorcycle can be purchased for roughly $400 USD.  Then we have the question of what to do with our current bikes.  We are fighting with shipping companies to get a descent price to ship our bikes back to Alaska from Almaty, but the quotes we have received are far too expensive.  Selling them in Kazakhstan is possible but I hate to think that I will loose my bike. 

3 If we left right now and didn't sleep for a few days we could probably make it into Mongolia before our Kazak visas expire.  Then we could re-enter Russia and finish our journey to the coast.  None of us really want to do this because China contains some of the most amazing places that we will see on this trip.  Also, this would let down our friend Yuan who is looking forward to this trip as much as we are.

Legally, we have 4 days left in Kazakhstan before we have to have something figured out.  Wish us luck!