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What was most enjoyable was the pure novelty in our surroundings. For the first time we saw hundreds of camels wandering the steppe. Camels are very cool, thoughtful and peaceful animals. Their curious looks as you cycle by are particularly endearing. On our first night in the desert we camped near some wild horses. Other than that we saw a couple scorpions that would hide under our bags at night, dead snakes (no live ones thank goodness), a dead fox, and several desert rodents that looked like chipmunks but with the bushy part only at the end of their tails. We had heard from endless people about the deadly black widow spider (about which the BBC did a story on a few years ago for their camel-killing qualities), but didn’t, thankfully, see any. At a police checkpoint some very friendly policemen gave us a good charades impression of the dangerous wolves we would meet that night. One of them took Blaise’s arm and pretended to bite it rabidly, as a wolf would. This is not the first time on our journey that we had been warned off camping because of wolves (recalling the family we had tried to camp with near Samsun, in Turkey). We shrugged it off and remained more afraid of the black widows than of wolves.

But the most pleasant part about this stretch and what I was most looking forward to, were the evenings, with skies full of starts and temperatures cool enough to sleep well. Apart from the first night, which remained above 30, probably because we were a good 80m below sea level, nights were lovely and cool and we would spend most of the day looking forward to 9:30pm, when we could rest comfortably and enjoy the beauty of the night skies.

It certainly wasn’t a walk in the park though, and it was a long way off the ease of cycling down the Danube cycle path. For the majority of the distance, the road was utter crap and we had a choice between a pounding arse massage and falling over in deep sand or gravel. The sand and gravel made for incredibly hard work to move forward without falling over, straining us physically, and the incessant corrugation caused by horizontal rows of gravel over the road resulting from the large trucks using the road made really uncomfortable and slow going, testing us mentally.

There is a great nothingness in steppe: 5 villages in over 900k, the odd unfriendly overpriced chayxana with a poor selection of food. This meant that for the first time we had to carry a lot of food and water – over 40L between us (with Tom carrying over 30 extra kg) – as we never know exactly where the next town would be. Our maps proved untrustworthy when towns on the map didn’t exist in reality, and when we determined that our GPS tracker put us in at a point 50km from where the map had marked the road! Moreover, the locals would tell us all sorts of different opinions on how far the next shop or chayhana would be: at Jasliq one person told us 20km and many others told us 200km! Good thing we listened to the majority because the shop in 20km was definitely a figment of her imagination. And so we loaded up the bikes with 30kilo extra on Tom’s bike and 15kilo extra on Blaise’s, a big step change compared to the loads we had been carrying previously, putting the bikes under some serious strain! We did meet some friendly truck drivers and a bunch of young Spanish guys doing the Mongol rally that gave us water and snacks, but it wouldn’t have been a good idea to rely on people’s generosity, especially for the stretch after Beyneu where traffic was minimal.

The temperatures met our expectations and the days were seriously hot, well over 40C, with one day hitting 47C in the shade at lunchtime. This meant that the water we were carrying would quickly get very hot, and we dealt with this by putting some tea leaves in our bottles and brewing some tea while on the road. Warm tea tastes much better than warm water with dirty plastic bottle taste! The vast emptiness of the steppe meant there was no shade anywhere, and the only markers breaking the horizon were electricity pylons flanking the road into the distance, so finding shade was a challenge. Before Beyneu we managed to find a chayxana and a big culvert under the road to spend the four hours over lunch hiding from the sun. The culvert had evidently been used by camels for the same purpose as it was filled with camel poo, but beggars can’t be choosers and so we laid down our tarp and enjoyed a lovely nap with the sweet aroma. Other than those lucky finds, we had to set up our own shade using a tarp and the bikes. Our first attempts were only moderately successful, but we had perfected the structure by the last stretch from Jasliq to Qonghirat and were able to enjoy nice naps in the shade despite the 47C temperature readings.

Because of the incredible daytime heat, we had to adopt a completely different rhythm: long lunch breaks and very very early starts. We would rise with the sun between 5 and 6 and cycle late into the evening, finally going to bed around 11 (sometimes later). Little sleep at night and long days on tough roads meant that those lunchtime naps were essential, or we just wouldn’t get enough sleep.

We survived on mostly nutritioneous but repetitive meals. Our fresh produce – aubergines, tomatoes and peppers – would only stay fresh for a couple days after the two stock-up points, and so most of the time we ate pasta, rice and cracked wheat with either powdered milk (making for great rice puddings!) or canned veggies and fish. We cooked three times a day for the first time on the trip and that in itself was tiring. Just before setting off into the desert, we also tried something quite foreign to us: fermented (camel’s) milk. It’s like yoghurt with sparkling water and it’s actually not tooo bad, so long as you can drink it cold.

One of the best parts about the steppe was that we could camp anywhere. There was no shelter of course, but with nobody around and completely flat land stretching into the horizon the choice was ours. Tom constructed the perfect desert tent out of our mosquito net and groundsheet, protecting us from bugs both dangerous and annoying, but still enabling us to stare up at the stars as we went to sleep and allowing the light breezes which often came with the darkness to flow through our beautiful makeshift shelter. We slept really well.

But probably the hardest bit about the steppe was not the heat, or the roads, or the animals or even the lack of water and food. The two hardest bits were battling the consistent head- and crosswinds, and battling the boredom that resulted from the absolute absence of anything for nearly 1000km. The key to desert cycling is to rely on the wind. As soon as it is with you, just go for it and see how far you get. Even if it’s hot out, temperatures are bearable on the bike because windf blowing in your face – the problem is really that you need to constantly drink and it is more efficient to wait until temperatures are cooler so that you don’t deplete your water resources too quickly. However, if you can cycle with the wind, you end up using less energy and water if you’re not endlessly struggling against a headwind, no matter the temperatures.

Battling the boredom was more difficult. During the stretch from Beyneu to Qonghirat, there were literally only two villages, neither of which were actually on the road, for 420k. The landscape was just totally flat and the road completely straight. It’s like cycling from London to Newcastle on a straight road in over 40C with nothing around….

We resorted to driving games and ipod audiobooks and counting kilometre markers but the endless nothing and the uncertainty of when we would finally reach something was definitely the most difficult part of the journey.

Where does your mind drift when on the bike? Thoughts of fresh fruit, cold drinks, cool ocean swims. But mostly cold drinks. Our price sensitivity for cold, sugary drinks went way down and we would buy frozen colas and fantas whenever we could, no matter what the price. On the way from Qarakalpakstan to Jasliq, a stretch of 135km with absolutely nothing in between, we finished it in one day with the sole intention of getting to the chayhana at Jasliq for a cold drink and a watermelon. Also, a lot of Cayhanas keep their soft drinks in the freezer so that you can get a half frozen drink – divine!

And of course we think of wonderful, cool showers and the opportunity to escape the heat with a quick jump in the ocean. We have never felt quite that dirty – 11 days with only one shower (which coincided beautifully with Blaise’s birthday) and lots of wind that covers your body with a film of fine sand and dirt. Add to that the layer of dried salt from the sweat that would dry so quickly in the heat and it is little wonder that we would spent our afternoons under the tarp or in the chayhanas as live fly magnets, an annoyance which made napping even more difficult.

Finally, on the 11^th day, we descended into Qonghirat, a town which marked the end of the steppe and which lay in the Amu-Darya river basin. It was an instant change from flat, sandy, dry steppe to lush, green and humid agricultural lands. Almost at once it looked like southeast Asia. And why? Because over the past 40 years the river has of course been diverted into an extensive irrigation system which gives life to the crops in this and other parts of the land, at the great expense of the retreating and now toxic Aral Sea. But despite the environmental disaster that this is for the people of Qarakalpakstan, who have lost their fishing industry and are dealing with the latent effects of Anthrax testing on the Aral Sea islands that are now connected to the steppe, we have one reason to be thankful for this irrigation: we are finally in the land of cheap watermelons, peaches and grapes!

In the end, we made it and we are really pleased. It was definitely not always great to be doing it, but it is certainly great to have done it, especially since this is a stretch that most people skip either by taking a train or a plane!

Having reached Kazakhstan, we finally feel like we have really made it far: camels roam the empty steppe and people look like Chinese and sometimes Korean. (Then again, motorbikers on ferry said they once did UK to Kazakhstan in 4 days – a bit depressing saying it’s taken us months!) And being reminded by the locals at every chance that camping on the steppe will bring us into contact with very venomous animals such as scorpions and deadly black widow spiders that kill humans in 5 seconds makes us feel very far from the safety and ease of Europe.

Down by the Kassa, where we had heard that the dreaded ‘Ticket Witch’ can sometimes refuse to sell tickets even when the ferry is empty, we met a helpful Georgian called Vano who really helped us to deal with her and successfully secured us four tickets for the handsome price of $130 each! They also charged us $15 each for the bikes, which infuriated Vano, who had argued with her that we were ‘poor students, who must cycle many more thousands of kilometres with little money’ without our prompting him! Vano had been in the equivalent of the Georgian special forces and was particularly keen on the athletic aspects of our adventure, and took it upon himself to try to work out the best deal possible, always saying that if we were in Georgia, there is no way they would make students pay to bring aboard bicycles! Ah the neighbourly rivalry at work once again…the only thing is that after a few weeks in Azerbaijan, we could see his point about the Azeris and money.

Once on the boat, it was really pleasant. We found the refrigerator room, where they kept the vegetables for the expensive meals they served, but which was actually a separate dining room with air conditioning. We made our own meals on the top deck with Greg and Humphrey and slept really well on the first night with the porthole open and the sound of the sea and light sway of the ship. We had our own private toilet and shower in our cabin, both of which (to our great surprise) worked brilliantly! The crossing took about 19 hours, but we ended up being stuck on the boat for an extra day because there was no space to dock. No problem, more time spent on the top deck and in the refrigerator reading, playing coin rugby and snoozing. All in all it was really pleasant, especially because the ferry had so few passengers, leaving loads of space to relax.

When we finally docked there was surprisingly no rush to do anything – not to unload the cargo and certainly no rush to get the passengers off and through customs! There was a long wait in customs with some half-hearted searches of our bags (a good thing, since we had so much food that the Kazakh customs guy had previously said we woul not be able to bring). Finally, with a robotic „Welcome to Kazakhstan!“ we were in, the trials of visas and ferry negotiations over, and the road to China open ahead of us.

Are luck was in, and we managed to get all our visas (Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik and Chinese) back to back and will head down to the port tonight to wait for the ferry. It seems the best way of actually finding out when the boat leaves, so hopefully somebody nice will let us camp down there. Once we are on the boat, it’s free passage to China!

]]> http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/visas-are-in/feed/ 2 happypedalers http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/waiting-for-visas-tom-blaise/ http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/waiting-for-visas-tom-blaise/#comments Tue, 14 Jul 2009 13:09:03 +0000 happypedalers http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/?p=373 ]]>

We’ve had the longest break yet while waiting for Visas in Baku and having been in this city for a week it’s definitely time to leave Baku and Azerbaidjan. I haven’t done so little since being a student and in fact, not even then. On the outset Baku is a lovely place: The old town is restored with beautiful sandstone houses with wooden patios overlooking the streets, there are plenty of shady trees and it has got a seaside walk along the Caspian shore. People are fashionable and many of the girls are beautiful, appearing cosmopolitan in their dress and mannerisms. Men appear to be polite, always standing up for women on public transport.

But we have tried to get to know Baku a bit better over the past week and we have found that under the surface there is not much to it. People are not as modern as they dress, subscribing to traditional roles for men and women both in marriage and society, and men do not seem to have so much respect for women, judging by the rampant use of prostitutes which scare most reputable women from going out at night, and the rumors that most men seem to think it is fine to continue to cheat well after marriage.

So we decided to do some day trips outside of Baku to see what the region had to offer. We went and saw the mud volcanos (baby volcanoes) at Qobustan – very entertaining as the bubbling mud sounded like farting, the Fire Temple at Sarixan and natural flaming gas vents at the Fire Mountain – impressive to see fire naturally coming out of the mountain. We cycled around the peninsula in pursuit of something the guidebook had called ‘fascinatingly ugly’, and actually found it everywhere in the wasteland of nodding donkeys, oil spills and sewage on the Abseron peninsula.

Fire Temple at Atesgah, originally built around a natural gas vent which fuelled an 'eternal flame'

Abseron wasteland

We took a day trip to swim in the Caspian, on the north side of the peninsula where the water was supposed to be super clean and clear. It might have been – BEFORE the 20,000 visitors per day showed up. About 90% of these visitors appeared to be men and we saw some interesting parades of speedo-clad men and even some Borat sand wrestling. Also very entertaining, but not a beach I would rush back to, especially since there was the pervasive faint smell of sh!t and we couldn’t quite locate the toilet.

Tom and Humphrey, braving the Caspian

...along with 20,000 other people

Borat style wrestling on the beach

But most of the time we have spent being bums at our hostel, cooking and watching pirate dvds that we purchased at the Chinese store around the corner. Staying at the hostel is like being back in Mavin street in Durham, and we’ve enjoyed the company of two other cyclists who are waiting for visas and the ferry and will be tackling the desert with us, Greg and Humphrey.

Attempting to find some Baku nightlife with Greg and Humphrey

We arrived back from a wander yesterday afternoon to be told ‘Su – YOK’…’no water’. No water? Hm. Was there a break in the main? Of course we couldn’t ask these questions with the language barrier, so we went out to find some supper just accepting that we wouldn’t have a shower and maybe wouldn’t be able to flush until the morning.

Woke up this morning. No water. ProbLEM, as the Turks would say, since no water means no cooking, no shower and most importantly, no toilet. In fact, the entire old city and its environs had been cut off from water. Or at least the residents had – don’t worry, at least the fountains were still running and the hoses running endlessly pretending to water the grass! How could the center of a capital city be entirely cut off from water for over 24 hours, while they are still able to water the lawns and keep the fountains running? The excuse was that they are connecting the lines of the metro, but why this required a 2-day drought and moreover why they decided to do this in the middle of the summer beats me. Another embarrassment for the Azeri public administration.

But the way people treat water here is also very strange. They live in the middle of the desert – actually, they live in the middle of a barren, polluted, over-exploited wasteland that is the Abseron peninsula – yet they happily leave taps and hoses running for no purpose. There seems to be no concept of conservation here. A testament to the bubble that is Baku – I think many people from this city have trouble thinking beyond its boundaries, and so despite the extreme heat they forget the geography that surrounds them, thinking only of the watered and manicured lawns that pepper the city.

Plan A (solid red): Cross through Iran and Turkmenistan to reach Uzbekistan (visa already obtained) and then take the Pamir Highway through Tajikistan to Kyrgystan and then China.

Plan B (dotted red): We have been waiting since the beginning of June for Iranian visas and are unsure whether we will be issued visas at all given the current political situation. We are also closely watching to make sure that it is still a good idea to take that route. If, by the time we get to Baku, we do not have the Iranian visa, we will change our route and get a visa to Turkmenistan, crossing the Caspain by ferry to Turkmenbashi, and joining our optimal route in eastern Turkmenistan.

Plan C (dotted orange): Two separate groups of travellers this week (June 23^rd) have told us that the visa we would have applied for, the Transit visa, is currently not being offered by Turkmenistan (with issued visas even being voided) because they are trying to combat swine flu. This seems an unusual move to take, particularly for a Muslim country surrounded by other Muslim countries, but Turkmenistan is perhaps an unusual country for many other reasons. We hope to find out! If this visa proves to be impossible to obtain, we will opt for the Kazakh visa and catch the ferry to Kazakhstan (for make benefit cultural learnings of HappyPedalers), taking a train from there into Uzbekistan. The only problem with this option is that we hear the boats go between Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan at most once a week and according to no specific timetable, so we could end up being stranded in Baku/Azerbaijan for up to two weeks waiting for visas and ferries. Fingers crossed that doesn’t happen!

]]> http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/plan-c-it-is/feed/ 1 happypedalers Route through Central Asia http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/cycling-in-azerbaijan-blaise/ http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/2009/07/06/cycling-in-azerbaijan-blaise/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:24:30 +0000 happypedalers http://happypedalers.wordpress.com/?p=362 ]]>

A few things will stick out in my mind about cycling in Azerbaijan. First, the road along the base of the Caucausus mountains is really beautiful, green and shaded and affording fantastic views up into the mountains. It is entirely different from what we expected of the Azerbaijan landscape, partly because we had originally intended to go on the main central road to Baku, which might have been more steppe-like and much less visually interesting. Instead, we saw massive walnut and hazelnut forests, which turned into large grass fields where we could see cowboys on their horses herding the cows from pasture to pasture (and often across the road). We found fantastic camp spots in the forests and would stop for tea breaks at little cafes where the tables would be dotted in the woods, a phenomenon so far unique to Azerbaijan.

View from the road in Azerbaijan

The scenery also changed quite quickly through the country from the humid forests in the west, to the more alpine forests near Qabala and Ismailly, to the more barren grasslands near Shamakhi, and then very suddently to desert-like steppe, with evidence of water and life all but vanished. Given that you cross all of this in 4-6 days (depending on your speed as a cyclist), this makes cycling in the country really interesting as the scenery changes every day.

Forested mountains in the west

Steppe in the east - how did the trees disappear so quickly?

The second major impression of cycling here is the contrasts. People are either super friendly, like the restaurant workers who let us camp behind their hotel just outside Shamakhi and then had breakfast ready for us in the morning before we left, or the taxi driver who escorted us through Baku when we arrived lost, without a proper map and unaided by any street signs (as usual) in the fast-encroaching darkness on Monday night. When his efforts to explain in Russian where to go were lost on us, he put on his hazard lights and led us through the city until we reached the old town. But then there are others who, when we stop to break for water and are clearly parched and drenched with sweat from the heat of the sun, say nothing but ‘Skolka’ – ‘how much does the bike cost’? As everybody who travels here acknowledges, Azeris are at once hospitable, but often guarded and suspicious (a legacy of Soviet rule), and this is by far the most materialistic nation we have been in since we began this trip.

Third, the honking and terrible driving. Unlike Turkey where honks came from friendly drivers just adding some encouragement or waving hello or truck drivers showing off their multitoned horns, or even Georgia, where it was sometimes a hello and sometimes just a warning that they are passing, the honking in Azerbaijan has been very unpleasant at times. Drivers here, who are notoriously terrible, don’t just give a couple short beeps as they pass, but often hold their horns for seconds as they pass, an agressive, angry sort of honk which seems to say ‘get off my road’ rather than ‘hello’ or ‘keep going’. One driver passing the other way was so busy holding his horn at us that he forgot to steer, accidentally (we hope) steering his car across the road and almost into us! When we finally arrived in Baku, we learned that drivers don’t give way for anyone or anything, particularly cyclists on their right who are heading straight when they want to make a right turn. I was cut off twice, of course once with an incredibly horn, and I got so angry after 8 hours on the bike that I turned and shouted at him. I’m sure it had no effect but to let out some of my steam, and he’ll continue to run over cyclists at will in his brand new black mercedes as long as he pleases.

But finally, and most of all, the awful, AWFUL roads. Our final two days to Baku were very tough. Heading out of Qabala, we hit endless hills, reaching heights several times a day that surpassed the mountain ‘pass’ through Georgia. Finally, just after Shamakhi, the hills abated, but the roads, which to that point had been acceptable but far from good, simply disintegrated. For nearly 100km before Baku roadworks broke up the road, where they were attempting to fix the potholed stretches of dirt, rocks, and gravel that they somehow managed to call a highway. But despite the evidence of work having started, we could not see any work actually being done, nor determine any method to the restoration of this highway, with trucks appearing to senselessly move dirt and perfectly good stretches of completed road (all but finished except for a big ditch maybe halfway down the stretch) not being finished for cars to use in the meantime. Add to the conditions an incredible crosswind coming from the north (our left) and we repeatedly found ourselves covered in dirt and dust blown over from passing trucks, sucked in as trucks passed and blocked the winds, and then pushed back out onto the soft sand and gravel where our bikes would lose their tread. I fell over once, and I am not quite sure how I managed to stay on two wheels the rest of the time.

'Highway' to Baku

But the biggest impression that the road condition left on me was not of the difficulties of the passage to Baku, but instead a sense of embarrassment for the Azeri people. This main highway coming into Baku is a national disgrace, particularly when contrasted with the numerous marble statues and granite parks that have been erected all along this road in every town larger than Qax, dedicated to their former leader, Heyder Aliyev. Compare the fact that we saw ONE road sign indicating distance to Baku over 400km and often would be left at roundabouts having to ask which way to the capital because roadsigns were nonexistent, yet the government can afford to put up large billboards all along this road with Heyder Aliyev’s picture and various quotes.

So, cycling in Azerbaijan has really been a mix for me of both really positive and really negative impressions, but on balance, despite the roads and the drivers I am really happy to have cycled through it – the contrasts have kept us constantly on our toes and overall it has been very interesting, though I can’t say I would visit the country again soon.