From April to July this year, I undertook an adventure motorcycle expedition through South and Central Asia.  With one friend, we flew our bikes from Australia to Nepal, collected them from Kathmandu airport and commenced the challenge.  We rode west through Nepal in the foothills of the Himalaya, staying north of the lowlands to beat the heat and stay off the main highways.  There was no shortage of twisty hilly back roads and plenty of roadworks to keep things dusty and challenging.
Once over the border with India, we aimed north and headed to Ladakh.  This was platinum riding.  Hardly anyone about, wild roads, high passes, snow, lakes, mountains, you name it.  We chilled out in Leh for a few days after tackling the Zanskar Valley and a series of high passes that were either snow or mud covered.  Before heading south we tackled the Umling La, supposedly the highest navigable road in the world at 5883 metres.
Tensions with Pakistan, saw that border closed so after a quick visit to the Taj, we flew our bikes over the trouble to Uzbekistan, then started an anti clockwise loop of the ‘stans’.    Samarkand and Bukhara are nice but touristy but the fun kicked off again when we entered Tajikistan.  We crossed the country 3 times to capture the best of it.  Firstly via the Pamir Highway (an optimistic term given the potholes that are big enough to swallow a tank!), we then travelled south from the far eastern extremity of the country to drop down to the Wakhan corridor on the border with Afghanistan.  Heading west past Zorkhul Lake, an enormous expanse of water, we followed the in the footsteps of the Great Game participants along the Panj River which separates the two countries.  Then north to Khorogh and back across the country heading north east through the Bartang Valley.  This was the technical riding crux of the trip, as the river that scores this gorge for hundreds of kilometres was in full torrent and our challenge was to push through sections of flooded track and other areas that were buried by landslides.  It was remote and rugged dirt riding with plenty of sand, mud, rocks and water.  Most excellent fun.
Finally emerging near the China border, we turned north and crossed into Kyrgyzstan where the challenge was to stay alive given the homicidal tendancies of the drivers there.  They made India look like a church parade.  But survive we did and the adventure concluded in Osh, 3 months and 12000 kilometres later.
The bikes we used were second hand Suzuki DR650s; absolutely the bees knees for this sort of trip.  Powerful, reliable and very easy to work on.  We prepped them carefully to avoid potential issues, but in 12000 kms, we had one flat tyre and a broken clutch cable.  Awesome.