I never thought I would be so excited about new tires, haha! We hunted throughout Bulgaria and Turkey for tires and the estimated ship times were 3-4 months for the tires we needed, that did not work for us. We quickly realized that finding the right tires was more complex than we expected. We have been in contact with Ural, the maker of our bike, throughout this trip on social media and via email about parts, photos, and more. One of our contacts at the company mentioned that they would put us in contact with Sergey at the Ural factory in Kazakhstan and he was able to help us, phew! We wired Sergey money and he shipped us the exact tires we needed so they were waiting for us when we arrived in Atyrau, Kazakhstan. What a relief!!

We found a local tire shop to help us put the tires on since new tires are very firm and tight and hard to put on without a machine. The shop owner changed our 4 tires and charged us about $11. This would usually cost over $100 in the USA or Europe. He said that he wanted to give us a discount and wished us the best on our “quest”. We asked if we could pay more and he insisted on the discount he was giving us and did not want us to pay more. He gave is a pomegranate drink afterwards too, he was extremely kind and generous.