10/9/2019 0 Comments Real men ride donkeysWe came to Central Asia with a picture in our heads of ferocious warriors on horses marauding across the open steppes. After all, this is where hordes of people moved across the steppes in waves of mass migration that deeply affected history all the way to Europe. These are the lands from where conquerors like Genghis Khan and Tamerlane built some of the biggest empires in history, a fact that local people are still very proud of today.
It took us only a couple of days to realise that we had to adjust our view, just slightly. You almost never see horses, while there are donkeys everywhere. They use them for everything from taking children to school to bringing crops to the market to carrying wooden beams for construction. At first sight it might look less cool, but in Central Asia today real men don't ride horses but donkeys.
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10/9/2019 0 Comments Playing PopeWhen we are biking we always wave hello to other cyclists - locals and travellers alike. We also wave to all the people who say hi to us. We wave back to all the children, who often come running to the side of the road very enthusiastically. We wave at motorbikers on long overland trips like us. We wave at trucks honking their horns even if it's right in our ears (the noise regulations are pretty much non-existent here so the honking is pretty brutal). We wave at the police putting their sirens on just to welcome us. And most importantly, we wave at angry and disgruntled looking men, utterly confused by what we are doing, just for the fun of it. So basically half of the day on our bikes we spend waving at everybody. We realise that when we are back home we really are going to have to stop this ridiculous pope like behaviour.
As we mentioned before when we were passing through the deserts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan it was hot. Really hot. As in so hot that we didn't really want to put ourselves through the displeasure and potential bodily harm of exposure to 40°+ heat all day. Nonetheless, we couldn't do this trip without at least trying it, so we did a few days here and there. This was how an average 'cycling through the desert in extreme heat' day went:
5h: wake-up with/ before the sun. Pack up our sleeping bags (we didn't bother with tents in this heat) and roll onto the bikes. Load up the water for the day - we often got through 8 litres each! 7h: breakfast time, picnicking along the side of the road. 11h: second breakfast time, usually in roadside cafe with a coffee, finally. 12h: find a shady, cool place to hide for the hottest part of the day. This ranged from restaurants with air-co, to under bridges and at our most desperate under small trees with constantly shifting shade. Finding a place to shelter was the most important logistical point of every day, and required a bit of forward planning not to get stuck in the desert somewhere. 16:30/17h: finally the heat would start to fade a little bit so we could venture out again. Second part of the day begins. 20h: start the search for somewhere to sleep for the night. Luckily we were always invited by people to roll out our sleeping bags in their gardens or on their porches. 22h: sleep. 10/9/2019 0 Comments Training for the PamirWe've met people who cycled all the way from Kuryk on the coast of the Caspian Sea to Samarkand, almost 2.000 km mostly through the desert. The stories they tell are horrible. The temperatures were up to 50°C. There were stretches of more than 150km where there's no shade, no water, no restaurants or cafes, no gas stations,... no nothing. People who did it told stories of how they got delirious and really feared that they would not make it.
We admire those guys, but we happily said no to that. Instead we did what most cyclists do and took the train for the two longest stretches from Aktau to Nukus and from Khiva to Bukhara. When we saw the landscape passing by we could only be happy with what we called our "training" for the Pamir mountains 10/9/2019 0 Comments Cotton fieldsWe were not very keen on visiting the cotton fields. After all they are the culprits of the dissemination of the Aral Sea. But it only took us a couple hours to change our minds.
First of all the vegetation on the irrigated lands is a welcome change from the dessert. It's often a very sharp contrast. There is nothing except sand and some scrubs, until an irrigation channel starts and almost instantly it brings an abundance of life. Uzbekistan is probably the best place to see what the presence of water can do to a landscape. Second, the cotton fields proved to be an amazing place full of people ever so friendly. They offered us a million chai's and more food than we could ever eat. At each stop a small crowd gathered around, curious to find out more about us. We were joined by local cyclists, invited by people to stay and constantly asked to stop for pictures. Something we will remember too is how the irrigation channels are full of children swimming and enthusiastically shouting "Ghello" when you pass by. When we left the cotton fields behind we felt like we experienced some of the best days of trip. |
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