The way East (Caucasus/Central-Asia/Mongolia on a motorcycle)

[tsiklonaut]

This must be on National Geographic!

I have no affiliation with that organisation. I organize everything on my own DIY-style to the last detail and let alone I have near non-existant budget but also poor mans equpment originating from the 80s compared to those latest-and-the-greatest big-buck high-end guys working there. 😛

That is really cool tsiklonaut. Love your images, the black & white is beautiful.

Have done the motorcycle travel here in the States, but not internationally. Glad to hear the vibrations haven't destroyed your camera. An acquaintance turned a Hasselblad into a bag of parts on one of our cross country rides.

Can't wait to see more of your images.

I love seeing the world through your photography Margus. I would love to be able to visit some of these places.
The fact that you are motorcycle touring with not one, but two Pentax 67 bodies, plus lenses, film, and other cameras, makes your impressive work even more impressive!

Margus, thanks for doing this thread. I love your epic trips and have missed your posts the past couple of years.

Looking forward to seeing more photos from this trip!

I picked up the book you published a few years ago, and your 67 travel/landscape work is exceptional 🙂

Nice to see you back on this forum and best of luck on your travels.

A massive bow down from me, thank you guys!

Will definitely post some!

 

[tsiklonaut]

A little known country Moldova greeted us with a very funky road signs. A bit of throwback into a working-class soviet era (infrared film image) I remember from my childhood.

Shrine. They have their own interpretation of the orthodox cross on the tops of Moldovan religious buildings.

 

[tsiklonaut]

Church in Orheiul Vechi.

Moldovan river-scraped Orheiul Vechi landscape in infrared. For many orthodox believers those are very sacred grounds.

 

[kuuan]

oh my, already early on some truly amazing and memorable photos! Your bike trips are mind blowing, more so your camera and film choices. Looking very much forward following this thread, thank you and safe journey!

 

[bjolester]

Thank you for sharing these wonderful images! I will be following this thread closely.

Today I ordered your "From Estonia with Love" photo book. I am looking forward to enjoying your images in print.

 

[Paulbe]

tsiklonaut--great! Good for you and your wife! Such an adventure..and your photos are excellent.
What model motorcycles are those? Must be pretty rugged to go that sort of distance.
Thanks!
Paul

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

Today I ordered your "From Estonia with Love" photo book. I am looking forward to enjoying your images in print.

It's a great book 🙂

 

[Thud]

I can't wait to see your updates everyday. I envy your trips. Please continue to surprise us.

 

[Abbazz]

What model motorcycles are those? Must be pretty rugged to go that sort of distance.l

BMW R1100GS: https://advrider.com/f/threads/from-estonia-with-love-round-the-world.480532/#post-10237932

Cheers!

Abbazz

 

[Erik van Straten]

This is also in Brest, not far from the monumental sculpture in tsiklonauts great pictures above.

Leica M3, Elmar-M 50mm f/2.8, Tmax400, printed on Adox MCC 110.

Erik.

 

[tsiklonaut]

I can't wait to see your updates everyday. I envy your trips. Please continue to surprise us.

oh my, already early on some truly amazing and memorable photos! Your bike trips are mind blowing, more so your camera and film choices. Looking very much forward following this thread, thank you and safe journey!

Cheers guys!

Thank you for sharing these wonderful images! I will be following this thread closely.

Today I ordered your "From Estonia with Love" photo book. I am looking forward to enjoying your images in print.

It's a great book 🙂

Big thank you guys!!! So glad you like the book "From Estonia With Love"!

The book is basically a coffee-table photobook with a great travel narrative added to photos. We went to great lentghts to combine a text book with a photobook, I still can't believe we actually made it work the two together so well after so many trial-and-error work. It's a digital & film photos combined from the Round-the-World expedition stories.

I dream of doing an all-film expedition travel photobook someday with my recent film work, but it looks to me there's very little marked demand for it except for few fanatics. Oh well, time will hopefully tell...

tsiklonaut--great! Good for you and your wife! Such an adventure..and your photos are excellent.
What model motorcycles are those? Must be pretty rugged to go that sort of distance.

BMW R1100GS: https://advrider.com/f/threads/from-estonia-with-love-round-the-world.480532/#post-10237932

As as Abazz said, I ride an old 1998 BMW R1100GS "Gessu" - now over 21 years old iron that looks like crap with 300 000 on odometer it's market value is probably worth less than my Pentax 67 camera but it's priceless for me having been around 90 countries with it on all 6 continents. Despite it's bad looks it works like a swiss watch since I learned to know everythig about this bike.

My wife rides a Suzuki DRZ 400 S "Tirts" from 2007, it recently had an engine overhaul at 80 000 mark (in comparison my BMW still has an original engine at 310 000 at odo with compression as on a new bike). But it's a great nimble offroad bike for a beginner.

Any bike (or vehicle) is capable going to unbelievable distance if there's a right skilled (mindful) person on it.

This is also in Brest, not far from the monumental sculpture in tsiklonauts great pictures above.

Leica M3, Elmar-M 50mm f/2, Tmax400, printed on Adox MCC 110.

Simply beautiful print from Brest, Erik!

 

[tsiklonaut]

Old Orhei.

Ancient cross in Moldova.

 

[Out to Lunch]

Out to Lunch, on Flickr. An Orthodox monk living in the cave monastery in Orhei Vechi, Moldova. May 2010. Epson R-D1 -
CV Nokton 1.1/50.

 

[Karlovak]

Greetings from Estonia!
I enjoy your works.

60 rolls for around the world or the Asian part you're about to do?

 

[tsiklonaut]

Out to Lunch, on Flickr. An Orthodox monk living in the cave monastery in Orhei Vechi, Moldova. May 2010. Epson R-D1 -
CV Nokton 1.1/50.

Very nice portrait with a very cool camera & lens!

Greetings from Estonia!
I enjoy your works.

60 rolls for around the world or the Asian part you're about to do?

Tänan!

If you read carefully, RTW expedition is already done (I used more than 300 rolls I roughly guess), this batch is for the completion-of-the-map route to east marked on the map above (aside the previously done route that covers most of the World). There's a published (photo-travel-)book "From Estonia With Love" about the main part of the expedition as mentioned in this thread post.

Cheers

 

[tsiklonaut]

Father with his Moldovan church in background. Turned out he had served in my tiny country of Estonia during the Soviet occupation years,
when any religion was an underground movement since any religion was banned.







Moldovan capital Chisinau is rather a pleasant place.

 

[tsiklonaut]

Hotel Cosmos. What was called a "futurism" in the past is now called a "retro".

Lots of Soviet era futurism is Moldovan capital.

 

[Karlovak]

Tänan!

If you read carefully, RTW expedition is already done (I used more than 300 rolls I roughly guess), this batch is for the completion-of-the-map route to east marked on the map above (aside the previously done route that covers most of the World). There's a published (photo-travel-)book "From Estonia With Love" about the main part of the expedition as mentioned in this thread post.

Cheers

Sorry for the confusion. I understood that you've completed the main expedition. It remained vague though, if you've already completed the Eastern part, since you talked in the past tense about things to come. So I presumed you hadn't completed the Asian part yet. Sadly I haven't seen that book on the shelves around the country, albeit rather kitsch local photo books get promoted a lot.

 

[tsiklonaut]

What most of the world doesn't know about Moldova is what happens beneath the ground. They have the biggest & longest wine cellars in the World. Period.

12-14C all year round make it an ideal place to let the wine lager. Here's the Cricova wine cellars.

Designed to drive around with a truck to manage the barrels. Cricova cellar.

However in Milestii Mici there's a more robust cellar, but they hold the Guiness World Record of 200 kilometers (or 120 miles) of wine cellars! It's vast.

It goes like a labyrinth and you easily get lost, thankfully there's always wine available to acompany you!

The bottle storage spaces are called "casas", many of them privately reserved. I saw one reserved for Angela Merkel (chancellor of Germany),
Ilham Aliyev (president of Azerbaijan) among many others, lots of famous names get their wine from Milestii Mici.

A 200 kilometers of cellar fits a staggering amounts of wine indeed. Designed to be drived around with a truck, it's the only way to manage such a vast wine cellar.

 

[tsiklonaut]

Sorry for the confusion. I understood that you've completed the main expedition. It remained vague though, if you've already completed the Eastern part, since you talked in the past tense about things to come. So I presumed you hadn't completed the Asian part yet. Sadly I haven't seen that book on the shelves around the country, albeit rather kitsch local photo books get promoted a lot.

Both accounts are true in a sense, I've completed both RTW and East circle, but the latter I haven't really "published" publically in terms of film material I took (hence the past tense for both).

Actually it's not strictly photo book since it covers expedition documentary and took us around 4 years to make it (3 years of expedition-style travelling to get there so around 7 years actually together). But I guess the hard work paid off - we had the Estonian version of the book published before English and it won the the best book of the year in it's category by a large marin to our surprise (despite there's unbelievably many travel books published every year) so thanks to this "self promotion" via news and top prize it it is nearly sold out by now. The English one is a fresher one and should be available.