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It was in the beginning of May when we flew with Pegasus Airlines from Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan, via Istanbul, to Düsseldorf in Germany. It didn't take very long for us to make the decision to give traveling by private car another chance. Central Asia is the prefect region for this, and we said several times to each other that it would be fantastic to travel by jeep in this region. The area is spectacular, but many of the regions are difficult to visit by public transport. While being in Kyrgyzstan, we made some preparations for a jeep tour in Tajikistan, but concluded quickly that it was going to be a very expensive tour if we wanted to see some of the areas that are a little bit further away from the Pamir Highway. That was the first moment that we said to each other that it would be great to travel in the region by private car. And when we met a French couple with their Land Cruiser and great stories in Bishkek, we knew it for sure. We are going to give it another try.

When we arrived back in the Netherlands, the first thing we did was to take out our Toyota Land Cruiser from the garage at Edwin's parents' place. We parked it their more than a year ago when we decided to travel with the backpack again, after our first car experience in south-eastern Europe. Now we rollback the decision. The backpacks are going to the closet, and the car will be our new means of transport for the time being. We didn't have to do a lot on the car, because we did all necessary preparations before we left last time. There were some small reparations to make. We invested in a new exhaust pipe because the old one was showing some form of decay. We also replaced two seals at the driving shaft (axe) because they were leaking a little bit. And finally, we replaced the four shock absorbers because they weren't functioning well anymore.