Homeward Bound...

09-Sep-08: Persistent Bugs
Uzbekistan: Samarqand to Bo’ston
137km, 6h 47min ride time

As we head further east towards the mountains that await us in Kyrgyzstan the landscape is changing. Today involved much more climbing than the past couple of weeks have, albeit not much by comparison to the mountains to come or those we left behind in Turkey. What little climbing there was was more than enough for me as I have once again fallen victim to the persistent stomach bug that just keeps doing the rounds of our group.

The interest en-route today were the many roadside vendors. Some selling a variety of watermelons and apples all stacked high and others selling honey packaged in old waterbottles and 2L glass jars, some dark, some light, some creamed and some with the honeycomb added to the jar.

10-Sep-08: Tunnel Vision
Uzbekistan: Bo’ston to Zafar
127km, 6h 09min ride time

Everything, if anything, that happened today was completely overridden by the fact that I was still feeling sick, very sick. The morning went by not too badly as it was cool and the terrain fairly flat, but following lunch I was overwhelmed by nausea and faintness…some would question why I would still keep riding but after having already ridden every bit of the distance to date the motivation to keep riding is very strong…and besides, the alternative of sitting about in dirty clothes in the heat waiting until the last rider has passed through lunch in order to take a ride in the support van is not exactly a prize winning alternative. So I soldiered on and eventually made it.

11-Sep-08: Day of Memory
Uzbekistan/Tajikistan: Zafar to Chugand (Kojan)
79km, 3h 25min ride time, 4h border waiting time

Throughout quieter moments of today we each reflected on the events that make ‘September 11’ such a memorable date. We recounted what we were doing when the events of the day unfolded and once again expressed disbelief that such an event could occur. However, and almost insensitively, life goes on…

After a short 11km ride we arrived at the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, the gates to which were due to open 30 minutes after our arrival at 7.30am, so we sat down and waited. Leaving Uzbekistan involved a series of formalities, including counting our money to ensure we were not smuggling currency out of the country (never mind the fact that they only count what you physically hand to them!) and filling out more useless and duplicate paperwork which will never be looked at again by anyone. Once being official checked out of Uzbekistan we proceeded to the Tajikistan border 200m down the road…and were told it was closed until tomorrow. Of course.

What ensued was a 4 hour wait to be allowed to pass through the border. During this time we were told that the Tajikistan president had passed through the area the previous day and so the border had been closed for security reasons. And now despite the fact that the president was clearly nowhere near us we were still waiting for ‘official’ word to reopen the border. So we did what we are now so practiced at doing…sitting about doing nothing. The guards entertained themselves and to a degree us, by helping themselves to gloves and helmets from our bikes…Manon had quite a battle to get her gloves back off one of the guards who had decided they would be good for holding his rifle.

Finally the official word must have come through as we were allowed to enter the country. The entry process itself was nothing more than someone having pre-collected all our passports and to stamp and hand them back…without ever putting a passport to a face! The customs process involved the laughable process of a ‘Doctor’ signing health certificates vouching for our health…but only on payment of the 3 dollar fee each and without having done an actual health check on any of us!

By the time we were back on our bikes it was 11am and the temperature had soared to a level that we thought we had left behind us in Turkmenistan. We also found ourselves once again in a completely desolate desert landscape which at times gave us the sensation of riding on the surface of the moon. Luckily for us a new road had been laid since last year and after a 20km at a 2% gradient which was frustratingly slow going despite a tailwind, we found ourselves coasting ever so slightly downhill with a tailwind at 55kph. At the 70km mark we regrouped and did a short convoy ride through the city of Chugand to get to our ‘homestay’ accommodation. The convoy was crazy as the driver went too fast and drove us through intersections with no regard to our safety behind him…but somehow we keep making it through unscathed.

The homestay appeared to be still in the late stage of construction with paintwork being completed as we sat about in the central courtyard waiting for our rooming allocations. The ‘house’ was configured so that the indoor areas flanked the 4 sides of a central rectangular courtyard and consisted of a series of rooms in which we could lay out our own mattresses and sleep. There were 2 cold showers and 2 toilets, one which did not flush without a bucket…which for 20 people, many of whom are still sick, didn’t really work overly well. But the place was clean and the family did a great job of preparing dinner which well exceeded our expectations…a roast chicken dinner, including roast potatoes which some of us have not had since leaving home nearly 4 months ago!

12-Sep-08: What a Joke
Tajikistan/Uzbekistan: Chugand (Kojan) to Qo’Qon (Kokand)
149km, 6h 27min ride time

Today was a joke…a nightmare of organizational blunders and bureaucracy at its worst.

The 90km ride to the border was easy with my feeling better and the occasional tailwind and we covered it in good time of 3.5 hours. But any time gained in the morning was lost as the next 2 hours were wasted by stupid bureaucracy. After leaving Tajikistan in less than 5 minutes we were found ourselves standing in a queue in the sun at the gates of Uzbekistan. Once again we found ourselves battling the locals who don’t understand the concept of queuing and who almost view it as a game to see how many of them they can get to the front of the pack. They pushed in every which way, including jumping barriers, and despite our forming a barricade of bikes to protect our territory we were loosing the battle.

To this point only one person was being processed every half hour and with 24 people in front of us and more entering by the minute our prospects were not looking good. In the end action only occurred when we started shouting louder than the locals at their repeated queue jumping which finally got the attention of a guard who was sympathetic to the situation and proceeded to split the locals away from us. And finally things started moving. The locals got what they wanted which was to pretty much walk straight through and we got what we wanted which was to be processed at last.

Customs was a joke with a scanner which I am sure was not actually attached to anything and more useless paperwork which was written in Russian and no local support to assist us at all. We bumbled our way through with the help of an officer who spoke a little English and most of us seemed to pass through easily enough after having our money counted and recorded and some having their bags searched out of curiosity rather than necessity. Although two customs officers nearly ended in a physical argument over Joan’s nationality as her visa stated ‘Africa’ which was not on their list and despite her repeated attempts to point out that it was ‘South Africa’ they were drawing their own conclusions and clearly not agreeing with each other!

As we all passed through the system individually I was pulled aside by the gate guards as I exited and I knew as soon as I handed my passport over that this was not an official check but one purely out of curiosity and for their own purpose of getting to talk to me and probe me with questions and laugh and talk about me in their own language as I stood there helpless to do much but pretty annoyed as I had already been there for hours. Eventually as Dan rode up behind me the guards gave my passport back and I was allowed to leave feeling a little violated but glad to finally be out of their and furious that there was no local assistance at the border to speed up the process.

Now already 2pm, we still had to ride a further 50km before we reached our destination for the day. Luckily the afternoon was equally good riding and we made good time until reaching the destination town through which we were supposed to have flagging tape showing us which way to go…but it obviously got stolen in places as we ended up at intersections with no way of knowing which way to go. We called our local support…whose phone does not receive or make phone calls but does send text messages, how useful…and were made to feel as though we had missed something rather than something having gone wrong.

Six of us got lost and hired a taxi to lead us to the street address we were given by our tour leader…but that only got us more lost as we were told Tashkent Street when we were actually staying near Tashkent Way. So having exhausted all reasonable options to find our own way there we were eventually in the position to finally say, “okay we are near this landmark and are staying here until you come and find us”. We did an extra 10km and by the time we got in had no energy left to chastise anyone for their lack of assistance throughout the day…and besides, at this stage I have given up giving feedback as it falls on deaf ears anyway.

We were staying in another homestay arrangement, complete with pregnant sheep in a pen under the stairs! The food was ordinary by comparison to last nights homestay but the shower was hot which pushed it up the ranking to some degree.

13-Sep-08: We Have a Winner
Uzbekistan/Kyrgyzstan: Qo’Qon (Kokand) to Osh
180km, 8h 13min ride time

After the past few days we would have been pretty hard pressed to successfully argue that anything could possibly go more badly…but it could and it did. Today takes top prize for lack of organistation and leaves me with no doubt in saying that I have never, and never will again, participate in a more poorly organised ‘organised tour’...it is many things, some of them good, but organised is not one of them!

Where do I start…we start the day with a breakfast which although interesting local cuisine was hardly fodder for a group setting out on the longest day of cycling we have had since Paris and for the majority, the longest ride we have done in our life. And so we set out on our bikes, less than satisfied but not in a position to do much about it. We rode a short convoy out of town to the main road and were then on our own to cover the 170km to the Kyrgyzstan border. The 90km to lunch was good riding and with the motivation for the day to be no longer than necessary, we covered it quickly.

Lunch was located in the main street of a town en-route and so we became the fascination of many locals who gathered around to see what the foreigners were doing. I was mobbed by group of young girls practicing their English phrases…‘hello’, ‘what is your name’, ‘how old are you’, ‘am and Uzbek and you?’…and a man who may have been their teacher who kept telling me that he loved me. I have been captured on more mobile phone cameras than I can count and Dan keeps joking that I am now the latest lycra clad porn star of Central Asia. But it is all good fun and makes for the positive moments of a stretch of this trip which has otherwise been less than perfect.

After lunch we head off for the second half of the day which would get us to our penultimate border crossing of the trip. I rode well and was pleased when I reached my first ‘century ride’, being 100 miles (160km), but the happy moment was short lived as within 3km and only 10km from the border I also achieved another first…my first flat tire of the trip! Thankfully I had Dan nearby who had the strength necessary to remove and replace my tire. The first attempt failed as one of the spare tubes I had been carrying since Paris also had a hole in it, but the second attempt succeeded and we were finally set to complete the final few kilometres of the day. As we sat by the side of the road for half an hour repairing my flat everyone else in the group rode past so by the time we got going again we were the last bar 2 to reach the border.

Behind us were Joan, the sweep rider, and Bill who had been having his own mechanical adventures throughout the day. One of his pedals came off as it stripped the thread in the crank arm and could not be reattached…so he innovatively found a place to have it welded on. He tells the story of him riding along on his newly welded pedal as he sensed it was not going to hold and how it snapped off again as he reached the climbing section 50km before the border. As he walked his bike along the road with his pedal in his bag on a mission to find another welder he came across a few guys on sitting by the side of the road. He presented his pedal in one hand and his bike in the other in an attempt to explain his situation. They fell about laughing. He then completed his charades act for a welder and they fell about laughing again…before reaching into the grass behind them and producing a welding mask and torch…they had been there repairing some roadside equipment. Talk about dumb luck.

They went on to reattach his pedal and Bill offered up his water bottle to cool down the weld…forgetting that it contained Gatorade…so as the yellow liquid dribbled out over the pedal the expression on the welders face changed and they fell about laughing again. It is common practice here for the men to pee into a bottle and throw it out the car window…so they thought the yellow liquid was, well, you know. Bill attempted to explain that it was not pee by drinking it but that only had them laughing even more. And so after the makings of a good story and a cup of tea Bill was back on the road to join us in Osh.

And here starts the organisational nightmare. Being such a long day we were all to cross the border as and when we got there and staff-wise, Ben was to cross first and Miles was to cross after the last of the riders. The first of the riders crossed at about 2pm and Bill crossed at about 7pm. So for varying degrees of the time in between the earlier riders were made to sit about waiting in their dirty clothing as Miles was crossing last with the van containing all our luggage. Smart thinking. There was no logical reason that could explain why Miles could not have crossed first and Ben last so that we could have our luggage in order to change clothes after riding 180km!

The hotel we are staying in is located in the worst part of town. It is pretty much a ghetto area and feels unsafe at best. Location wise the hotel is equal worst with the Velotrek in Baku and if not for the cooler nights would equal it as there is no air-conditioning, the room door does not lock and the toilet has no seat. It is hard to believe that we are travelling the silk route, stopping in towns which all have some historical significance, as we are staying so far from anything significant in each place that we may as well not be here at all. Once again on this occasion the hotel could not have been more poorly chosen.

As we all sat tired and dirty on the porch of the hotel we noted that fact that we are in the midst of a building site…just as a truck turns up and delivers a truckload of bricks right into the driveway of the hotel. About an hour later Miles tries to drive the truck in and gets it jammed between a pile of bricks and a pile of 20m long steel reinforcing rods. The latter impossible to move by hand and so it was all hands on deck shifting bricks so that the van could make the 60 point turn required to get it unstuck. After which we all ferried the baggage 50m from the truck to the hotel.

It is now 8.30pm on a Saturday night. All the money changers are closed and now having clean clothing we are finally in the position to eat dinner, but have no money to do so. Somehow after acknowledging they needed to do something about it, the staff managed to get us about $10 in local currency each and pointed us in the direction of the nearest restaurants. All of which were closed by this time of night. Tired and annoyed to the max we bought food at a supermarket and went back to our room thoroughly flabbergasted at how poorly organised the logistics of the day had been.

14-Sep-08: Making Do
Kyrgyzstan: Osh – Rest Day

Not surprisingly we were woken early this morning by construction noise outside our window. And not surprisingly the hotel has no laundry service. So our mission for this morning was to find some means of washing 5 days worth of filthy cycling clothing. Whilst walking around trying to follow some cryptic directions we had been given to a nearby laundry service we were stopped by a local who ‘asked’ if we needed help. For the following 20 minutes we followed him through a myriad of backstreets and seemingly across town…the whole time in an awkward silence as he spoke no English.

Eventually he guided us through a busy roadside market to the door of a dry cleaner and just disappeared without a word. The dry cleaner was an old man who was pleased to have foreigners as customers and despite his original offer we managed to convey that we needed our laundry back today as we were leaving tomorrow. We returned later in the day to clean laundry and a bill of $12 for two huge loads…I almost feel guilty for things being so cheap!

As per my interim post, we did try to find internet but it was terribly slow and had no ability to upload anything via USB and so in the end fairly useless for our needs, but we did try!

15-Sep-08: Heading Up
Kyrgyzstan: Osh to Gulcha
103km, 6h 26min ride time

We set out this morning on the first of 6 riding days which will take us to the highest altitude on the trip and potentially the coldest temperatures. The expected distance today was 106km, which compared with the past week was a nicer number to see…it helps with the mental battle, although we knew that the distances are shorter for a reason…climbing.

The route started climbing almost immediately and continued to do so for 65km through the Farghana valley which offered up the first really beautiful scenery that we have seen in a long time and once again reminded me why I chose to partake in a trip of this kind. The road was almost perfect up until the 60km mark with mostly new road surface interrupted by the occasional section of rough substrate. We shared the road with herds of cow and horses and flocks of sheep as they were being mustered to new pastures…lower pastures for the coming winter we presume.

At 60km the road turned bad with a steeper climb lasting 4km combined with roads of loose gravel and sand which made the climbing slower going. The bad surface continued for 15km, making the subsequent downhill painful on the hands and at times quite difficult to control the bike, albeit quite enjoyable…the latter more so for those of us with flat bars and tires with good tread than those battling with drop bars and slick tires. Over 15km, we descended the 1000m which we had climbed in the first 65km and continued on to finish the day riding alongside the valley river. We camped by the river guarded by mountain ranges on either side.

16-Sep-08: Mountaineering
Kyrgyzstan: Gulcha to Sary-Tash
84km, 7h 27min ride time

We knew today was going to be a day of climbing but until it was over none of us would have guessed that we would be riding the terrain we covered. The weather started out quite cold at about 13 degrees and we all head off with our bike bags packed with our wet weather winter gear in preparedness for the worst conditions…like sleet, wind and snow, all of which were endured on last year’s trip.

The day warmed up quite significantly and reached the early 30s despite our ascent. By lunchtime at 50km we had ascended 800m and after lunch were to ascend a further 1000m…little did we know that it would be in the space of 20km and on roads which could barely fit the definition of such. The surface progressed from rough gravel and potholed tarmac to a fine dust filled with rocks. We climbed a series of seemingly never ending switchbacks, about 12, to reach the summit.

At the top of the summit it was 10 degrees and who knows how much colder with the wind chill…the descent was absolutely freezing as we were chased by storm clouds down into the town of Sary-Tash. As we rode into town it felt completely deserted, like a ghost town, particularly with the dark skies threatening and the strong wind blowing…in fairness, who in their right mind would be out in that weather! Much to our relief we arrived at camp to find we did not need to put our tents up as we were staying in a Ger camp with a breathtaking view of snow covered mountains in the distance.

17-Sep-08: Bone Shattering
Kyrgyzstan: Sary-Tash to Chinese Border
58km, 5h 37min ride time

This morning started at about 4am with the local dogs taking each other on over the task of rampaging through our garbage and distributing it all over the ger camp grounds! Even inside the ger it was cold. I spent a restless night uncomfortably cold in my sleeping bag but too cold and tired to get up and put more clothing on. To prove our conviction that it was cold there was frost on the windscreen of the vehicles.

It was 2 degrees when we started out and we all had on our winter woolies accordingly. The day was to be a short one but one of very rough roads…I wondered how the roads could get any worse than we had yesterday…but the day proved that they could and they did. We rode on a surface which could not rightly call itself a road other than it being used by traffic to get from a to b. It was more like a river of sand and stone and riding through it was bone shattering…like holding onto the horns of a bull.

To compensate for the bad road the scenery was spectacular and we paused often to admire it whilst rest our aching hands and arms. We were flanked by mountain ranges, the snowy covered northern face of one to our right and the rocky southern face of the other to our left. The temperature rose during the day but there was an icy wind blowing in from the snowy mountains which kept us well chilled.

Beyond the final police checkpoint before leaving Kyrgyzstan and entering China the road turned to beautiful new tarmac…a sight for sore eyes and a blessing on sore hands and bums! Camp was in the valley between the mountain ranges with a view of the snow covered mountains. After a cold night in the Ger I am not optimistic for my chances of warmth in a tent tonight, our final night before crossing into China for the home stretch!

18-Sep-08: Finally!!!
Kyrgyzstan/China!: Chinese Border to Ulugqat
68km, 3h 36min ride time

As I had suspected, sleeping in my tent in the cold did not work all that well and I slept fitfully and cold once again. The process of packing up and eating breakfast left my hands and feet so painfully cold I could not use them and was convinced I was on the verge of frostbite!

We were all excited and a little apprehensive at the day for us to cross into China finally having arrived. We were on the road by 7.45am and arrived at the Kyrgyzstan border at 8.30am. The border did not open until 9am and so we waited…and waited…we eventually made our way into the processing hall and we were given a medical check, in which we were asked if we were feeling well, duh, yes of course! As we waited to be stamped out of the country there was a power outage which brought things to a grinding halt for about 30 minutes. We were finally processed to leave the country by 11am…only 2.5 hours, not bad.

In the follow few kilometres of ‘no mans land’ we passed through another Kygyzstan checkpoint without trouble and arrived at the first of the Chinese checkpoints…which had closed barely 5 minutes before we got there…and there was no room for negotiation. The customs officer who had accompanied our new vans into no mans land said ‘here we are master, you wait ‘till 4 o’clock’…so as we sat under the ‘welcome to china’ sign we were under no doubt that we had arrived!

Luckily 4 o’clock was Beijing time and so it was ‘only’ a wait of 2.5 hours while the guards had lunch. In the time that we sat there under guard a further 2 tour groups arrived, by foot, and were grouped similarly to wait…although without our interpreter to assist them I imagine the whole process would have been more than a little bemusing for them. The guards separated the groups and would not let us talk to one another…it is anyone’s guess as to why! Eventually, we were all herded 200m back behind the ‘official line’ (where we were allowed to talk) and the boom gate closed in front of us, before a bus load of guards returned 10 minutes later to an apparently orderly checkpoint! The guards were all wearing strange 3D looking sunglasses, which we assume were some means of detecting fake passports? And they checked our luggage as we passed through looking for maps, books and cameras…the latter which they checked for photos of the checkpoint…luckily they did not check mobile phones!

We then made our way on the actual border where despite being made to ferry all of our luggage through individually, was quite efficient. Annoyingly, the border guards ignored their own rules on photography and kept taking photos of us as we unloaded the van and passed through customs. At 6.00pm local time we finally crossed onto Chinese soil…still with 50km to ride. We were rushed through a lunch of stale bread and peanut butter and on our way by 6.30pm.

The ride was spectacular on rolling hills through magnificent mountain ranges made somewhat magical by it being dusk…although I did not like being under such pressure to arrive…dinner was booked for 8pm. By 7pm, it was obvious that we would not be arriving by 8pm…we finally got in at about 8.45pm. Camp had been relocated to the front landing of the ‘restaurant’ we were having dinner in…the small town equivalent of a strip shopping complex. The area was bustling with excited kids, mangy dogs, bulls and the odd donkey and was adjacent to a putrid gutter into which everything was dumped and so smelt disgusting. But we were in…finally in China…after all the visa dramas and worry we are finally in and now officially on the home stretch.

19-Sep-08: Heading Down
China: Ulugqat to Bush Camp
115km, 5h 00min ride time

We woke at our restaurant camp to the sounds of dogs, cows and donkeys. Despite the sun still being on Kyrgyzstan time, the country is officially on Beijing time, making sunrise at 9am! Now that we have descended a little the temperature is a bit milder and we started out in 10 degrees rather than 2, which makes all the difference to the sensation in hands and feet!

It was so quiet that we felt as though we owned the road as we rolled our way through magnificent mountains which had the ages of time painted on their rocky face. After 50km the mountains parted as we descended into a wide open valley with mountains getting further and further away. The descent was fantastic and led us onto flat roads with a tailwind which allowed us to easily cover 120km in less time than even the shortest of the most recent days.

The afternoon sun still has some bite and holds reminder of Turkmenistan, which we hope will fade as winter approaches. We camped in the middle of nowhere by the highway and adjusted to our new schedule of dinner at 8pm and sunset at 10pm. Every police car that drove by dropped in to check us out, as did a few locals!

20-Sep-08: Freewheeling
China: Bush Camp to Kashgar
72km, 2h 06min ride time

The ride today took a backseat with it taking a tick over 2 hours to cover the 72km into Kashgar as it was 98% downhill. Arriving early has turned today into an unofficial rest day and we spent the afternoon wandering around the city and getting the necessities, like laundry, out of the way. The city is a bustling place much larger than any we have seen for some time and is a return to civilisation with ready access to all services, including internet, yay!

We wandered out for dinner and after much hunting finally chose a place which seemed busy and smelt good. No sooner had we uttered a word of English the waitress freaked out and would not play our game of ‘we’ll have what she is having’ or ‘what do you think is best’…luckily a local who spoke English came to our rescue and helped us to order some dinner. The result was a soup full of seaweed and all manner of fungi and a flaming hot dish of lamb which had us blowing our noses and breaking into profuse sweating! Not a raging success but an experience nonetheless!

21-Sep-08: Catching Up
China: Kashgar – Rest Day

This morning I rose slowly after a restless night of sleep…I blame the spicy food…and ate a breakfast of bread, bread, jam and more bread and noodles if you could stomach them for breakfast. I then joined a small group of riders for a visit to the famous ‘Kashgar Sunday Market’…it was a bit quiet as we had arrived early in the day, but offered an endless supply of souvenir style wares, nuts, lollies, silks, wool fabrics, leather shoes, belts, knives and in another area which we did not get to, all manner of livestock including camels, donkeys, sheep and cows etc.

I returned to deal with routine bike issues and some not so routine which required me to ride across town to the bike shop and sit and wait for an hour only to have the mechanic dismantle pieces of my bike and tell me pessimistically that my bike was a ‘bad bike’…after convincing him to reassemble my bad bike in any case I rode back to the hotel with a new $12 shimano bottom bracket in hand just in case…the TDA mechanic assures me that I will not die but will have a noisy ride until the next rest day where he will get the tools required to remove and replace the bottom bracket if necessary. Otherwise I have spent the afternoon gorging on internet time and finally bringing my blog reasonably up to date…with this massive diary entry and some new photos!