Day 2 - Venice / Italy

World Record Run: Shanghai to Venice (August 19th to August 24th)

Day 5. (Part 2) From Turkey to the very finish in Venice

25.08.2017
Venice/Italy

All night on end we drove across Turkey: an absolutely stunning four-lane highway goes through the entire country. Everything would have been wonderful, but the traffic grew more and more intense as we approached Ankara and Istanbul. In about 200 kilometers from the “city by the Bosphorus”, we stuck in a huge jam and virtually lost 45 minutes.

Day 3. Fast to the West

22.08.2017
Tehran/Iran

A night dash to the Uzbekistan border was not easy, but we coped with it. The drivers drove in shifts, and by joint effort we have travelled probably the most unpleasant part of the road with pits, heavy opposing traffic, night drive and a rigid timetable. And again we managed to get to the border with Turkmenistan earlier than we expected.

Day 1. Two days – one China

20.08.2017
Hami/China

After leaving German consulate yesterday we have now made good progress. Its more then 3500 km in 31 hours. It is about 1800 km to the China/Kirgizian boarder left. And we must cross the board just next morning. It means that we are good in time. Team and Tiguan works like a big organism.

Day 0. We started!

19.08.2017
Shanghai/China

We are now at the starting point. The representatives of the German Consulate will witness the start time and fill it in the official form. The car is refueled, washed and prepared for the upcoming six days of record-breaking long distance tour.

Scout Tour: From Venice to Shanghai (July 24th to August 19th)

Day 26 Last Preparations

17.08.2017
Shanghai/China

It's only hours left before our world-record-setting journey begins. After another careful consideration of the route and analysis of all possible troubles, we decided to start one day earlier, namely on August 19. So this is our last entry added during the "inspection trip", as the World Record journey along the Silk Road from Shanghai to Venice awaits us. The start is set at 7 a.m.

Day 25 – Shanghai Which I Love

16.08.2017
Shanghai/China

As usual, we didn’t have much time to sleep. For sure, we will have to wake up even earlier before the record trip. However, having arrived at 4 a.m., we still needed rest. But it was out of the question as we were in Shanghai and there were only two or three days left to plunder the city in the 24/7 mode!

Day 24 – Hello, Shanghai!

15.08.2017
Shanghai/China

Our plan for the day was to get up early and have a really long ride. As simple as that. There were 1,300 km to go to Shanghai, but the next morning we had to be energetic and cheerful at the end point of our inspection tour and the starting point of the world record – in Shanghai.

Day 23 – Highway to Xian

14.08.2017
Xian / China

Not wasting time on sleep and rest, we set off at night to cover almost 1,800 km to the former Chinese capital Xian. A night highway means speed. And we will certainly need it to cover such distance. After having a little rest at the road side in the middle of the night, we immediately set off in the morning. No planned stops and tourist activities – never look back.

Day 22 - Sandy Sunday 

13.08.2017
Dunhuang/China

Sunday is good for the rest, but not for our team. We decided to find some interesting places in Dunhuang, but first we were surprised to meet with guys from Volkswagen Shanghay in our hotel, who had a special event there. They wished good luck to us.

Day 21 - Through the desert

12.08.2017
Dunhuang/China

We had a four hours night stop in Kurle and after breakfast we continued our driving to the deep of China. The Gobi desert had been waiting for us and prepared a stormy wind. It was really complicated to drive fully loaded car through the 45 meters per second side wind.

Day 19 - Wild wild west

10.08.2017
Kashgar/China

While our Volkswagen Tiguan was being inspected at the Chinese-Kirghiz border, we had some time to take a breath and look around in the western capital of China – Kashgar. And first of all we certainly decided to visit the local market. To our surprise, there was nothing amazing there in comparison with the recently visited markets in other countries.

Day 18 - Hello, China!

09.08.2017
Kashgar/China

The task seemed quite simple, especially because we were not far away from the borderline between Kirghizia and China yesterday at dusk. It seemed to us that it would not take long to reach it and relax, but adventures started at night: we first had to soil our wheels passing by the landslide, and after a couple of kilometers we faced a really off-road section.

Day 17 - To the mountains!

08.08.2017
Osh/Uzbekistan

Waking up at five in the morning and going further without thinking twice is usual for traveling, isn’t it? It turned out that we had spent the night almost in the mountains. Having driven just a few tens of kilometers on the morning, but already busy road from Tashkent to Andijan, we moved beyond the mountain pass, with the Uzbek plain and the border lying ahead of us.

Day 16 - In Uzbek Capital

07.08.2017
Tashkent/Uzbekistan

It took us the whole night to cover the way from Samarkand to Tashkent. The distance is just 305 km, so it looked like our destination is just four or five hours away. Why so long? The thing is that, we spent the previous day driving, working, meeting people in Samarkand and decided to set to Tashkent only at night.

Day 15 - We explore Bukhara and Samarkand

06.08.2017
Samarkand/Uzbekistan

After a night at the hotel, we went for a short walk around Bukhara in the morning. This city is known as one of the oldest in Central Asia, and its history dates back more than 2,500 years. Archaeologists say that the “cultural layer” in Bukhara is over 20 meters – the depth at which the remains of houses, crockery, jewelry and tools of labor have been found.

Day 14 - Saying goodbye to Turkmenistan and leaving for Uzbekistan

05.08.2017
Bukhara/Uzbekistan

We left Turkmenistan today. We were going to make a 750+ km long trip from Ashgabat to Bukhara passing through Tejen, Mary and Turkmenabat, where we were to actually cross the border between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. In other words, we had to cross the Karakum desert by road. Our GPS estimated this route to take 10 hours.

Day 10 / 11 - Across the Iran

02.08.2017
Mashhad/Iran

The tenth day (1st of August) of our trip we were staying in hotel in northern Teheran, taking rest and making some preparations before our departure to the Mashhad city in the East of Iran. Next day we left our hotel early in the morning and drove up to the nearest gas station and ... got into a traffic jam! There were a lot of cars, waiting for refueling, so we had to wait too.

Day 9 - We arrived in Tehran

31.07.2017
Tehran/Iran

After our overnight stay in Qazvin we moved on to Tehran. Notably, we slept in the car – the Volkswagen Tiguan was our motorhome once again. It can accommodate three persons: two sleep in a reclining position on the front seats, and one on their side on the rear bench. Of course, you would rather stretch yourself out and straighten your legs.

Day 8 - In the vicinity of Tabriz

30.07.2017
Qazvin/Iran

We stayed at a hotel overnight and all our team together with our guides Kamran and Sharif discussed plans for the following day. In the morning we headed for Tehran. We took photos and made videos on our way. Tabriz and other towns we drove through impressed us with their cleanliness and tidy appearance.

Day 6 - Across the Turkey

28.07.2017
Erzurum/Turkey

We were driving all the night, since we left Istanbul yesterday. The turkish highway D-100, which crosses all the country from Istanbul to Iran boarder has 2 lanes in each direction and a very good asphalt pavement, so there is no problem to keep a good speed and not to have any problems with intensive traffic.

Day 5 - From Europe to Asia

27.07.2017
Istanbul/Turkey

We greeted dawn on the Turkish border. It is the most crowded checkpoint so far, but it’s quite amazing how swiftly the line proceeds with so many cars wishing to get from Bulgaria to Turkey. Turkey met us with an unbelievable dawn. We haven’t seen anything like this before: the ascending sun painted the sky soft pink.

Day 3 - Port of Venice

25.07.2017
Venice/Italy

This day is one of the most important in our Tiguan – Silkroad journey. Rainer Zietlow’s team set out for Shanghai on their Volkswagen Tiguan 150 h.p. TSI from the Port of Venice at 12 o’clock sharp (CET). Representatives of the Port, the City Council, the German Consulate in Venice, the city’s consul as well as sponsors attended the opening ceremony.

Day 2 - Volkswagen Dealership

24.07.2017
Venice/Italy

It was such an eventful day. In the morning we went to De Bona, a Volkswagen dealership near Venice. The company’s specialists performed a complete maintenance of our car for tomorrow’s race. They checked the suspension and wheel alignment, diagnosed the electronics and changed the motor oil.

Day 1 - Arrival in Venice

23.07.2017
Venice/Italy

Today the participants of the new “Tiguan-Silkroad” project met at the airport of Venice. After the meeting we made several photos of our team and the car - the Volkswagen Tiguan TSI 150 h.p - which we’ll drive during our trip. We also made several photos with a representative of Magna who came to see our start.