Sunday. Day Four.
Distance: 37 km
Pedaling Time: 1 hr 36 min
Start Time: 8:30 am
Finish Time: 10:25 am
After I fell asleep guy turned off Jean Claude Van Damme, as if we were watching it on my behalf... and turned on some Uzbek soap opera. I was in and out of sleep for awhile so watched part of it. It was in Uzbek or Russian or something else, I'm not sure. But it was also quite plot unheavy, so I could follow easily.
Guy slept in late because he was up watching TV for so long. It was just him and I in the room, and the room had all sorts of paintings on the wall. Not hanging on the wall, painted directly onto it. I've seen this all over Asia. It's really pretty. Guy told me he did it himself, but for some reason I don't think he really understood the question.
Once he finally woke up we ate bread and drank tea and I headed out. It was incredibly flat riding with lots of small villages. So many villages that it was hard to keep track of where I was on my map. I'd pass through them so quickly that it was impossible to know where the villages ended or began. In between villages was always farmland. It was close to Samarkand so there were a lot of people. Walking between villages, waiting for buses, riding bikes.
It must have been the first day of school because I saw a lot of kids dressed in uniforms. The boys wore black pants and white shirts, and the girls wore black and white or blue and white dresses. But not just regular dresses, they looked like french maids. But in a cheesy kind of way. They were all under 10, so it wasn't very hot....too bad there's no college in this next town....
I took a quick break just before getting to Samarkand and ate some dried fruit. There was starting to be a lot more traffic, but these drivers were much better than the Tajik's. The Tajik's were awful. Their whole philosophy is that so long as they don't hit me, then things are fine, so they all drove right next to me. The Uzbek's gave me slightly more room.
I easily found the guesthouse I was looking for because Gunther's yellow truck was parked out front.
I didn't take any pictures because the land was all flat and it went by fast. And this internet place charges by the megabyte or something, and I'm not sure how that works....so I'll post pictures of Samarkand later. Samarkand is fantastic.
And that was the end of my fourth day riding to Samarkand.
And, per Matt's insisitence, I commented on a lot of previous comments.
p.s. the font size for this post is all mahana's fault...(you little whiner....)
9.03.2009
9.02.2009
Part Drei
Sunday. Day Three.
Distance: 91 km
Pedaling Time: 6 hr 3 min
Start Time: 7:30 am
Finish Time: 5:30 pm
I usually sleep really well in my tent. And I prefer sleeping in my tent, so last night was good.
I got the stove going to boil water while I put away my tent and packed everything up. I had met an American girl in Dushanbe who was heading home and she gave me her extra food, which included some brown sugar quaker oatmeal packages. I love that stuff. One of the guys from the previous night watched me cook and eat, but wasn't irritating about it.
I started riding at 7:30 and stopped an hour later to pump some water from an irrigation ditch. Some local guy stopped to watch and irritated the hell out of me. I told him I was from America, which is usually the first question asked and then when he kept asking me things I told him I couldn't speak Tajik or Russian, but he just kept asking me things. It's one thing if he asks questions and makes gestures or includes multiple words, which sometimes help me understand what they're trying to say. But not this guy. He just stared at me and kept saying the same two or three words over and over. It really is possible to have a somewhat decent conversation without a common language, IF the other person is somewhat intelligent, and this guy just wasn't. One or two word questions over and over. Always the same one or two words. "What do you want from me guy? If you're wondering where I'm riding from, start naming places and I'll pick up what you're trying to say. Where am I going? Name a place and point and I'll tell you. Are you wondering where I'm from? Well pay attention, I've told you 3 times. Would I vote for Sarah Palin for anything other than the PTA? Of course not. What then?" It was everything I could do to not punch the guy in the face. He wouldn't shut up.
It took about 20 min to get the water all finished becuase the MSR Hiker Pro can sometimes really be a piece of crap. And by the time I started riding again I was in a bad mood.
Thirty minutes down the road and I saw a store and went in crossing my fingers. I was really craving a Snickers and it was about the only thing besides a huge tailwind or fast downhill that would improve my mood. The store had nothing but crap, and some Snickers. Which helped me a lot. I decided to throw away my helmet here. I never wear it and it's cracked in about 8 places, so wearing it wouldn't do me any good anyway. And I've had this thing hanging on my bike for 6 months. When I threw it away in the guys garbage he pulled it out and thought it was a gift, so he offered me a can of beer. I declined but he insisted. I looked through his cooler and found a bottle of carbonated apple juice instead.
I rode another 45 min and was going through a town when some guys waved me over. I didn't really feel like stopping and talking, but they were sitting by about 450 watermelons and I was pretty confident they would offer me some, so I stopped. Ten seconds after I sat down they pulled out a knife and cut into one. It was delicious. One of the guy's spoke a little english. I showed them my picture album again (you'd think this would get old for me, but it never does. Everyone loves it). I ate half of the watermelon when they insisted I keep going. "It's Ramadan and 10:30 in the morning? If you don't eat it it will go to waste...." Ok, their english wasn't that good, but that's how I understood what they were saying. I ate the whole thing.
Not long after I left the watermelon place I had to pooh. I was riding through a lot of villages though and I would much rather go in the trees behind a rock. But in between the villages is nothing but farmland farmers and people walking back and forth between villages. I held it for quite awhile before finding a good spot near a tree up on a bluff. The tree had some nice grass under it, and I did my business far enough away from it that I sat under the tree for 30 min and ate some dried fruit. I tried drinking that awful carbonated apple juice, but dumped most of it out.
There were a few random climbs that would take me up onto a bluff, but they were never very long. The canyon had opened up into a very broad valley by this point and everything was getting more and more populated and the terrain was getting flatter and flatter. I was in a much better mood, but was still getting sick of all the little kids that wanted to run alongside me. Sometimes they push my bike if I'm going up hill. The first time it was very welcome. But they're never consistent with their pushing, stupid kids, so it's very jerky. I had to keep telling them to stop. So they would run alongside and touch all my stuff. Sometimes they would throw rocks, not at me, but at the ground by me to get my attention. Everyone whistles at me when I ride past and yells and waves and on and on and on for a long time. I would much rather ride in the middle of nowhere. And I realize 99% of these people are just being polite and curiuos, but sometimes it gets old.
I got to Panjikent, Tajikistan around 1:00 and had planned on eating, but didn't feel hungry. I bought a couple of yoghurts and ate them on the sidewalk. There was supposed to be a good bazaar (market) in Panjikent, but I don't ever buy stuff besides food and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't even bother. I wasn't planning on crossing into Uzbekistan today, and I thought the border was another 25 km and didn't feel like riding that much more, so I kind of mozied through town looking for a nice day bed restaraunt where I could order a salad and take a nap. I never saw one and was soon out of town. I didn't have anything else to do, so I just kept riding.
I hit the border in about 15 km. I couldn't believe it. Gunther's yellow truck was parked outside the customs office. He got stuck for about 4 or 5 hours becuase they wanted to charge him more for his truck. He didn't want to pay, so he just waited them out. He didn't get into Uzbekistan until 11 pm, but he never had to pay anything. The border for me was quick and easy and I was soon riding in Uzbekistan.
The road at this point was completely flat with a slight headwind. Not too strong, but enough to make me feel like stopping. I rolled into a small town called Jartepo and saw a restaurant. Some men on a day bed invited me over to eat. They weren't eating, but once I sat down they ordered a bottle of vodka and after asking me about 750 times to drink 'just a little', they gave up and downed the thing in about 5 min, between 3 of them. I don't understand how they are allowed to drink, alcohol of all things, during Ramadan, but they did it.
I got a nice bowl of meat soup and bread and tea. Except this meat was nothing but fat. There was no meat on the bone at all. I ate some of it, but couldn't finish.
There were about 8 men standing around asking me questions. Nobody spoke english, but they were bright and we made progress. Everytime someone new would come up, the new guy would ask me the same exact questions I had answered for everybody else: where are you from? where are you going? where did you ride from? how long is your trip? etc... And it blew my mind that these new guys would walk up and nobody else would just fill them in for me. I know they understood me because they would repeat my answers and then discuss them. "Oh, yeah, he started in Singapore. He started riding in March...." And I can understand 'Singapore' and 'March', so I knew they got me. But the new guy who pulled up always got the info from me.
The english teacher in town showed up and could speak a little english. Not enough to be any kind of english teacher, but that happens a lot here. So when I realized he could speak english and all the other men obviously started telling this teacher to ask me a question, I naturally thought it would be something more in depth than we could cover with my phrasebook. "What are your positions on various political topics?" "What do American's know or understand about Uzbekistan?" "How is the healthcare system in America?" I was expecting anything like this. But the question was "do you like 100 gram fire water?" I don't even understand what the 100 gram part meant.....but that's what they wanted to know.
One of the kinder looking men offered to let me stay at his house for free. So after several pots of tea and a melon I rode behind his car about 1 km to his house. Two other guys came with him and he introduced me to his wife and an old woman and some of his grandkids. Then they told me to get in the car. I didn't understand where we were going. But his wife was staying with my bike at the house and I just couldn't picture her and the old woman understanding how to even open one of my bags, so I got in the car.
We went to some house down the road that was packed with people. It turned out it was a break the Ramadan meal they have every night. It rotates houses and a lot of people show up. There was food set up outside and two rooms set up each which could hold 20 people each. It was weird though because all the food was just snacks. Nuts, grapes, pears, almonds, sliced carrots, sweets, tea, bread and some cakes. There was also this bowl of white stuff that looked like yoghurt, but ended up having the consistency and taste of marshmallow cream. It was fantastic. One guy told me it was the Uzbek national dish, but that doesn't really seem right.
I was completely stuffed, I had just eaten dinner, but they kept saying to me "eating, drinking". Then they brought out meat soup again. I was in pain I was eating so much food. We would regularly stop eating and talking so that someone could chant a prayer. It was really cool that I got to be there. Several people invited me to sleep at their house instead of this other guys, but I declined. It was only men eating in these rooms. It was also only men bringing out more tea and soup.
We eventually left and I went back to this guy's house. I don't know his name, but he has my address because he wants me to help him get a visa to visit America....I think.
We got into the room where I would sleep and all the walls were painted with all sorts of colorful designs. It was a large room with a bed on one end, a table near the bed and a TV in the corner. He asked me if I wanted to watch a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. I said 'most definitely'. It was dubbed, but very poorly. You could hear a split second of english before the russian kicked in. Fortunately, it wasn't very dialogue heavy and was very easy to follow. I only stayed awake for the first 20 min, but "In Hell" is definitely a must see.
Mountains to the north.
A dried river bed I crossed.
Mountains to the south.
The tree I rested under.
A water wheel. I couldn't figure out what was going on with it.
Sheep near the Tajik-Uzbek border.
Tajik bus station.
My first dinner in Jartepo.
The guy I stayed with is second from the left. His brother is to the right and was very drunk, but obviously very funny. His grandaughter and wife are also in the picture. I'm not sure who the guy on the right was. But he was around quite a bit.
The guy's grandaughters.
The guy's brother and an old woman he wanted me to take a picture of.
The breaking the Ramadan snacks.
The room I slept in.
Distance: 91 km
Pedaling Time: 6 hr 3 min
Start Time: 7:30 am
Finish Time: 5:30 pm
I usually sleep really well in my tent. And I prefer sleeping in my tent, so last night was good.
I got the stove going to boil water while I put away my tent and packed everything up. I had met an American girl in Dushanbe who was heading home and she gave me her extra food, which included some brown sugar quaker oatmeal packages. I love that stuff. One of the guys from the previous night watched me cook and eat, but wasn't irritating about it.
I started riding at 7:30 and stopped an hour later to pump some water from an irrigation ditch. Some local guy stopped to watch and irritated the hell out of me. I told him I was from America, which is usually the first question asked and then when he kept asking me things I told him I couldn't speak Tajik or Russian, but he just kept asking me things. It's one thing if he asks questions and makes gestures or includes multiple words, which sometimes help me understand what they're trying to say. But not this guy. He just stared at me and kept saying the same two or three words over and over. It really is possible to have a somewhat decent conversation without a common language, IF the other person is somewhat intelligent, and this guy just wasn't. One or two word questions over and over. Always the same one or two words. "What do you want from me guy? If you're wondering where I'm riding from, start naming places and I'll pick up what you're trying to say. Where am I going? Name a place and point and I'll tell you. Are you wondering where I'm from? Well pay attention, I've told you 3 times. Would I vote for Sarah Palin for anything other than the PTA? Of course not. What then?" It was everything I could do to not punch the guy in the face. He wouldn't shut up.
It took about 20 min to get the water all finished becuase the MSR Hiker Pro can sometimes really be a piece of crap. And by the time I started riding again I was in a bad mood.
Thirty minutes down the road and I saw a store and went in crossing my fingers. I was really craving a Snickers and it was about the only thing besides a huge tailwind or fast downhill that would improve my mood. The store had nothing but crap, and some Snickers. Which helped me a lot. I decided to throw away my helmet here. I never wear it and it's cracked in about 8 places, so wearing it wouldn't do me any good anyway. And I've had this thing hanging on my bike for 6 months. When I threw it away in the guys garbage he pulled it out and thought it was a gift, so he offered me a can of beer. I declined but he insisted. I looked through his cooler and found a bottle of carbonated apple juice instead.
I rode another 45 min and was going through a town when some guys waved me over. I didn't really feel like stopping and talking, but they were sitting by about 450 watermelons and I was pretty confident they would offer me some, so I stopped. Ten seconds after I sat down they pulled out a knife and cut into one. It was delicious. One of the guy's spoke a little english. I showed them my picture album again (you'd think this would get old for me, but it never does. Everyone loves it). I ate half of the watermelon when they insisted I keep going. "It's Ramadan and 10:30 in the morning? If you don't eat it it will go to waste...." Ok, their english wasn't that good, but that's how I understood what they were saying. I ate the whole thing.
Not long after I left the watermelon place I had to pooh. I was riding through a lot of villages though and I would much rather go in the trees behind a rock. But in between the villages is nothing but farmland farmers and people walking back and forth between villages. I held it for quite awhile before finding a good spot near a tree up on a bluff. The tree had some nice grass under it, and I did my business far enough away from it that I sat under the tree for 30 min and ate some dried fruit. I tried drinking that awful carbonated apple juice, but dumped most of it out.
There were a few random climbs that would take me up onto a bluff, but they were never very long. The canyon had opened up into a very broad valley by this point and everything was getting more and more populated and the terrain was getting flatter and flatter. I was in a much better mood, but was still getting sick of all the little kids that wanted to run alongside me. Sometimes they push my bike if I'm going up hill. The first time it was very welcome. But they're never consistent with their pushing, stupid kids, so it's very jerky. I had to keep telling them to stop. So they would run alongside and touch all my stuff. Sometimes they would throw rocks, not at me, but at the ground by me to get my attention. Everyone whistles at me when I ride past and yells and waves and on and on and on for a long time. I would much rather ride in the middle of nowhere. And I realize 99% of these people are just being polite and curiuos, but sometimes it gets old.
I got to Panjikent, Tajikistan around 1:00 and had planned on eating, but didn't feel hungry. I bought a couple of yoghurts and ate them on the sidewalk. There was supposed to be a good bazaar (market) in Panjikent, but I don't ever buy stuff besides food and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't even bother. I wasn't planning on crossing into Uzbekistan today, and I thought the border was another 25 km and didn't feel like riding that much more, so I kind of mozied through town looking for a nice day bed restaraunt where I could order a salad and take a nap. I never saw one and was soon out of town. I didn't have anything else to do, so I just kept riding.
I hit the border in about 15 km. I couldn't believe it. Gunther's yellow truck was parked outside the customs office. He got stuck for about 4 or 5 hours becuase they wanted to charge him more for his truck. He didn't want to pay, so he just waited them out. He didn't get into Uzbekistan until 11 pm, but he never had to pay anything. The border for me was quick and easy and I was soon riding in Uzbekistan.
The road at this point was completely flat with a slight headwind. Not too strong, but enough to make me feel like stopping. I rolled into a small town called Jartepo and saw a restaurant. Some men on a day bed invited me over to eat. They weren't eating, but once I sat down they ordered a bottle of vodka and after asking me about 750 times to drink 'just a little', they gave up and downed the thing in about 5 min, between 3 of them. I don't understand how they are allowed to drink, alcohol of all things, during Ramadan, but they did it.
I got a nice bowl of meat soup and bread and tea. Except this meat was nothing but fat. There was no meat on the bone at all. I ate some of it, but couldn't finish.
There were about 8 men standing around asking me questions. Nobody spoke english, but they were bright and we made progress. Everytime someone new would come up, the new guy would ask me the same exact questions I had answered for everybody else: where are you from? where are you going? where did you ride from? how long is your trip? etc... And it blew my mind that these new guys would walk up and nobody else would just fill them in for me. I know they understood me because they would repeat my answers and then discuss them. "Oh, yeah, he started in Singapore. He started riding in March...." And I can understand 'Singapore' and 'March', so I knew they got me. But the new guy who pulled up always got the info from me.
The english teacher in town showed up and could speak a little english. Not enough to be any kind of english teacher, but that happens a lot here. So when I realized he could speak english and all the other men obviously started telling this teacher to ask me a question, I naturally thought it would be something more in depth than we could cover with my phrasebook. "What are your positions on various political topics?" "What do American's know or understand about Uzbekistan?" "How is the healthcare system in America?" I was expecting anything like this. But the question was "do you like 100 gram fire water?" I don't even understand what the 100 gram part meant.....but that's what they wanted to know.
One of the kinder looking men offered to let me stay at his house for free. So after several pots of tea and a melon I rode behind his car about 1 km to his house. Two other guys came with him and he introduced me to his wife and an old woman and some of his grandkids. Then they told me to get in the car. I didn't understand where we were going. But his wife was staying with my bike at the house and I just couldn't picture her and the old woman understanding how to even open one of my bags, so I got in the car.
We went to some house down the road that was packed with people. It turned out it was a break the Ramadan meal they have every night. It rotates houses and a lot of people show up. There was food set up outside and two rooms set up each which could hold 20 people each. It was weird though because all the food was just snacks. Nuts, grapes, pears, almonds, sliced carrots, sweets, tea, bread and some cakes. There was also this bowl of white stuff that looked like yoghurt, but ended up having the consistency and taste of marshmallow cream. It was fantastic. One guy told me it was the Uzbek national dish, but that doesn't really seem right.
I was completely stuffed, I had just eaten dinner, but they kept saying to me "eating, drinking". Then they brought out meat soup again. I was in pain I was eating so much food. We would regularly stop eating and talking so that someone could chant a prayer. It was really cool that I got to be there. Several people invited me to sleep at their house instead of this other guys, but I declined. It was only men eating in these rooms. It was also only men bringing out more tea and soup.
We eventually left and I went back to this guy's house. I don't know his name, but he has my address because he wants me to help him get a visa to visit America....I think.
We got into the room where I would sleep and all the walls were painted with all sorts of colorful designs. It was a large room with a bed on one end, a table near the bed and a TV in the corner. He asked me if I wanted to watch a Jean Claude Van Damme movie. I said 'most definitely'. It was dubbed, but very poorly. You could hear a split second of english before the russian kicked in. Fortunately, it wasn't very dialogue heavy and was very easy to follow. I only stayed awake for the first 20 min, but "In Hell" is definitely a must see.
Mountains to the north.
A dried river bed I crossed.
Mountains to the south.
The tree I rested under.
A water wheel. I couldn't figure out what was going on with it.
Sheep near the Tajik-Uzbek border.
Tajik bus station.
My first dinner in Jartepo.
The guy I stayed with is second from the left. His brother is to the right and was very drunk, but obviously very funny. His grandaughter and wife are also in the picture. I'm not sure who the guy on the right was. But he was around quite a bit.
The guy's grandaughters.
The guy's brother and an old woman he wanted me to take a picture of.
The breaking the Ramadan snacks.
The room I slept in.
9.01.2009
Part Zwei
Saturday. Day Two.
Distance: 90 km
Pedaling Time: 6 hr 50 min
Start Time: 6:50 am
Finish Time: 6:25 pm
The worker guys woke me up at 5:45 am so we could eat bread and drink tea. They went to work and I loaded my bike and started riding.
It was only another 1.5 km to to the tunnel. I put on a jacket because I heard it was cold. I put on my headlamp and headed in. I wish I could say I was super cool and made it through this tunnel of death, but it wasn't a big deal at all. It was 5 km long and there was water in it and there was water pouring in from the ceiling, but there were a few workers in there, so there were some lights set up and it was closed to traffic, so I only passed work trucks. Either it was vastly different when other people went in, or they over exaggerated it, or they're all sissies. It wasn't a big deal at all.
The road on the other side of the tunnel was fantastic and fast and all downhill. I coasted for 30 min and went nearly 25 km.
I pulled into a small town around 9 am and saw Gunther parked in the parking lot. Gunther is a German who has built this huge yellow RV/truck and is driving through Central Asia to get the kinks out of his truck before he starts a 3 year trip through China next year. I met him a few weeks ago near Khorog, then we met again in Dushanbe. He left Dushanbe about 3 hours after I did, but when he got to the junction he turned right and went up and over the pass, so we didn't see each other that day. I knocked on his door and he joined me for breakfast which was soup, again, with bread and tea. Gunther asked for an omelette, but the lady was out of eggs, so he gave her 6 and ordered one for me. We each got 3 fried eggs....
The road was following a river again but this time I was riding with the current, so it tended downhill. A headwind picked up so the downhill did nothing for me. It was really pretty scenery, mostly a deserty looking canyon with red sandstone cliffs all over.
I started really craving juice around 12:00. I stopped at a few shops but didn't find any. I tried going to a restaurant, but it's Ramadan right now which means Muslims don't eat during the day for the whole month. Restaurants are usually open, and there are still plenty of Tajik's eating for whatever reason, but I couldn't find an open restaurant in this town. I did eventually find a shop and got some mixed fruit juice and sat down on a concrete wall and ate some more of my nuts and drank my juice. About 6 kids watched me do all of this. I ripped a hole in my nut sack and pistachio's were going everywhere. Some kid went and brought me a new sack, but it must have carried dead fish very recently because it stank, so I declined and he threw the sack into the street.
At this point the road turned not so good. Again, it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone made it out to be (I meet a lot of cyclists and motorcyclists and they all have different stories of the steepness of hills and the conditions of the roads). It was slightly infuriating in that all of the uphills were smooth pavement and the downs were all washboard asphalt, so I had to go slow.
The road pulled up and away from the river and was in a much broader canyon. I turned a corner and saw Gunther parked on the side of the road talking to a couple of German cyclists. I stopped and chatted for a bit and then we all headed on the road again. It was funny that Gunther is driving a truck and I kept catching him. He just takes a lot of pictures and talks to every foreigner he meets.
I stopped for dinner around 4. I was starving because all I had eaten were nuts. All that I could find was more meat soup and bread and tea. She did bring me out a salad, which is tomatoes and onions, and two pears.
I rode another 20 min and filled up my water from an irrigation ditch.
Around 6 pm I started getting ready to be done. Camping was going to be hard because if there was a flat spot of ground, then it was farmed. I got on the edge of a town and found a small road going off to the side, I took it and found a nice camp spot in a small walled orchard. I found a woman and tried asking if I could camp there, but she wasn't any help. I found two more women and one of them kind of told me it would be ok. So I just sat by my bike and waited for someone to walk by who looked like they could give me permission. 2 minutes later and a couple of guys in their late 20's and early 30's came and said I could camp there. They helped me pitch my tent. One of the guys brought me a bowl of rice and a bowl of really sour yoghurt. I showed them my picture album and we 'talked' for about 45 min, then they politely left when they saw I was ready to sleep.
Bobby Jon wearing my helmet.
Anzob Tunnel.
Inside the tunnel.
Gunther's truck. And some small child carrying a hub cap.
I see all sorts of weird signs on the road.
The President of Tajikistan.
Two men, probably Chinese, working on electrical wires.
The canyon with a turquoise river.
The German cyclists.
The guy on the left gave me dinner. The guy in the middle gave me tomatoes and the guy on the right just hung out in his pajama's.
Distance: 90 km
Pedaling Time: 6 hr 50 min
Start Time: 6:50 am
Finish Time: 6:25 pm
The worker guys woke me up at 5:45 am so we could eat bread and drink tea. They went to work and I loaded my bike and started riding.
It was only another 1.5 km to to the tunnel. I put on a jacket because I heard it was cold. I put on my headlamp and headed in. I wish I could say I was super cool and made it through this tunnel of death, but it wasn't a big deal at all. It was 5 km long and there was water in it and there was water pouring in from the ceiling, but there were a few workers in there, so there were some lights set up and it was closed to traffic, so I only passed work trucks. Either it was vastly different when other people went in, or they over exaggerated it, or they're all sissies. It wasn't a big deal at all.
The road on the other side of the tunnel was fantastic and fast and all downhill. I coasted for 30 min and went nearly 25 km.
I pulled into a small town around 9 am and saw Gunther parked in the parking lot. Gunther is a German who has built this huge yellow RV/truck and is driving through Central Asia to get the kinks out of his truck before he starts a 3 year trip through China next year. I met him a few weeks ago near Khorog, then we met again in Dushanbe. He left Dushanbe about 3 hours after I did, but when he got to the junction he turned right and went up and over the pass, so we didn't see each other that day. I knocked on his door and he joined me for breakfast which was soup, again, with bread and tea. Gunther asked for an omelette, but the lady was out of eggs, so he gave her 6 and ordered one for me. We each got 3 fried eggs....
The road was following a river again but this time I was riding with the current, so it tended downhill. A headwind picked up so the downhill did nothing for me. It was really pretty scenery, mostly a deserty looking canyon with red sandstone cliffs all over.
I started really craving juice around 12:00. I stopped at a few shops but didn't find any. I tried going to a restaurant, but it's Ramadan right now which means Muslims don't eat during the day for the whole month. Restaurants are usually open, and there are still plenty of Tajik's eating for whatever reason, but I couldn't find an open restaurant in this town. I did eventually find a shop and got some mixed fruit juice and sat down on a concrete wall and ate some more of my nuts and drank my juice. About 6 kids watched me do all of this. I ripped a hole in my nut sack and pistachio's were going everywhere. Some kid went and brought me a new sack, but it must have carried dead fish very recently because it stank, so I declined and he threw the sack into the street.
At this point the road turned not so good. Again, it wasn't nearly as bad as everyone made it out to be (I meet a lot of cyclists and motorcyclists and they all have different stories of the steepness of hills and the conditions of the roads). It was slightly infuriating in that all of the uphills were smooth pavement and the downs were all washboard asphalt, so I had to go slow.
The road pulled up and away from the river and was in a much broader canyon. I turned a corner and saw Gunther parked on the side of the road talking to a couple of German cyclists. I stopped and chatted for a bit and then we all headed on the road again. It was funny that Gunther is driving a truck and I kept catching him. He just takes a lot of pictures and talks to every foreigner he meets.
I stopped for dinner around 4. I was starving because all I had eaten were nuts. All that I could find was more meat soup and bread and tea. She did bring me out a salad, which is tomatoes and onions, and two pears.
I rode another 20 min and filled up my water from an irrigation ditch.
Around 6 pm I started getting ready to be done. Camping was going to be hard because if there was a flat spot of ground, then it was farmed. I got on the edge of a town and found a small road going off to the side, I took it and found a nice camp spot in a small walled orchard. I found a woman and tried asking if I could camp there, but she wasn't any help. I found two more women and one of them kind of told me it would be ok. So I just sat by my bike and waited for someone to walk by who looked like they could give me permission. 2 minutes later and a couple of guys in their late 20's and early 30's came and said I could camp there. They helped me pitch my tent. One of the guys brought me a bowl of rice and a bowl of really sour yoghurt. I showed them my picture album and we 'talked' for about 45 min, then they politely left when they saw I was ready to sleep.
Bobby Jon wearing my helmet.
Anzob Tunnel.
Inside the tunnel.
Gunther's truck. And some small child carrying a hub cap.
I see all sorts of weird signs on the road.
The President of Tajikistan.
Two men, probably Chinese, working on electrical wires.
The canyon with a turquoise river.
The German cyclists.
The guy on the left gave me dinner. The guy in the middle gave me tomatoes and the guy on the right just hung out in his pajama's.
Part Einz
I just realized that probably 73% of the 11 people who read this blog have never cycle toured. So I've decided to give a very detailed, potentially boring description of the four days it took me to ride my bicycle from Dushanbe, Tajikistan to Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Friday. Day One.
Distance: 74 km
Pedaling Time: 5 hr 44 min (my bike computer clock only ticks when I'm pedaling, so this does not include breaks)
Start Time: 9:45 am
Finish Time: 5:45 pm (I consider start time as when my bike is loaded and I start pedaling, finish time is once I have my sleeping situation figured out).
I loaded up my bike and waited for one of my German friends to meet me in front of the hotel so we could go get breakfast. Another German friend met us at the cafe and I ordered the English breakfast. It had a couple of fried eggs, bacon (the first bacon I've had in a long time), fried mushrooms, fried tomatos, orange juice and a croissant filled with something delicious and sweet. I ordered a second croissant because it was good.
At 9 am I rode over to the Kazakhstan Embassy to pick up my passport with the last of the visa's I need for awhile (the other countries I'm entering issue a visa on arrival), then I headed to a grocery store to buy some snickers and water. Most of the bottled water in Tajikistan is carbonated and is awful. But I luckily found the non-carbonated awful bottled water.
I was riding north out of Dushanbe by 9:45. The road was good, there was some traffic but I had a decently sized shoulder. I climbed all day. I was following a river and it was flowing the opposite direction as I, so the climbing was gentle for the first few hours, but it tended uphill. The weather was nice, it wasn't too hot, but there had been a sandstorm in some distant desert that kicked up a lot of dust into the air and it made everything look hazy. A local told me that it was from the Afghans cleaning their rugs....
After an hour of riding I stopped on the side of the road under a tree and ate a snickers and some pistachio nuts, then I started riding again. I was riding through what was the outskirts of Dushanbe, so there were small villages every 5 or 10 km. Sometimes they would have small stores or people sitting on the street selling stuff, but none of it was good, so I never stopped. The people were slightly curious and waved but not too much to be irritating.
Another hour later I came to a small village and stopped at a restaurant. They sometimes have tables and chairs but Tajik's mostly eat on really large day beds that sit about 10 to 15 people in a circle. There is no table, they lay out a cloth and place the food on it. I got some kind of meat and potato soup, bread and an RC Cola. I don't even know what RC Cola is, but it was all they had. Butchers in this part of the world must receive absolutely no training. There is no such thing as a 'cut' of meat, they just chop it up and sell it. So the 'meat' in the soup is always a lot more bone and cartilage and fat than meat. The locals are excellent at finishing it all and setting down clean bones. I don't particularly care for cartilage (I can stomach the fat, but don't like it) so it's a messier process for me. My beard gets really greasy....I don't think I'll wear it much longer.
A man sitting on the day bed across from me, with his two teenage children and his wife, offered me some of his fruit. The exterior looks like cantaloupe except it's shaped like a football and twice the size of a football and the fruit is white. It's delicious. After I ate I just layed there in the shade for a half hour or so before going on.
I was still riding alongside the river and the road started getting a bit steepier. I came to a clean river crossing and used my filter to fill up my water bottles. Four small children silently watched the whole time.
After I filled up the water I came to a fork in the road. To the right was Anzob Pass, which is 3300 something meters. The road is really rocky and I was only at 1700 meters. To the left is the Anzob Tunnel which is at 2600 meters and has asphalt leading up to it. The problem is that the tunnel is only about 2 or 3 years old, but it's leaking like crazy. The road inside is supposed to be filled with water and water pours out like rain all over the place. I'd heard horror stories of motorcyclists getting into thigh deep water, bicyclists cracking their frames from falling into potholes, not being able to see, blah blah blah. Once the tunnel was built they quit maintaining the road up the pass, so it's supposed to be awful, and is about 30 km longer than going through the tunnel. The tunnel was closed to traffic, and I didn't feel like riding up a dirt road with a ton of traffic, so I went left and decided I would just take it slow through the tunnel.
There was a guard at the junction, and the road is closed to traffic, but I just rode through and acted like I knew what I was doing and he just waved at me.
The road climbed steeply the rest of the day. I think I climbed for 2 hours, taking breaks every 30 min or so. I was in my lowest gear the whole time and I sometimes wished I could have gone lower. I never listen to my ipod when I ride. Even when I go running back home I prefer to listed to the river or the birds or for bears or whatever. But this road had only worker traffic and it was steep, so I listened to music while I rode. I think it was Kanye West. I had originally wanted to get through the tunnel on this day, but I was getting tired and I wasn't sure how much further it was or how easy it would be to camp on the other side, so when I saw a work camp I pulled in and asked if I could pitch my tent.
The Chinese are the ones repairing the road and the tunnel. The Chinese were also building the road in Pakistan, but these Chinese looked significantly healthier and happier. In Pakistan they looked like they all wanted to die.
The camp was a typical Chinese building and housed both Tajik and Chinese workers. They don't have much to do with each other, because of a language and cultural barriers, and I stayed with the Tajiks. The Tajiks were uber paranoid about me watching my stuff. They kept trying to tell me that the Chinese would steal everything. Which is kind of too bad because for as weird as the Chinese are, when I was there I just never felt threatened or that anyone would steal stuff.
I was about to set up my tent, then they offered me a bunk in one of their rooms. They then fed me some 'meat' soup and bread. There was a 10 year old boy named Bobby John (at least that's how I understood it....) that followed me around the whole time. I thought he was going to drive me nuts, but he was a nice kid.
I took a shower and then we all hung out in the kitchen for awhile. Nobody spoke english, but I have a phrase book and a few of the men were intelligent so we had some conversation. In one of the packages my mom sent she included a small photo album of my life in America. A picture of the house I lived in, the car I drove, me rock climbing in Thailand, climbing mountains in Alaska, my dog and pictures of my family. The Tajik's are always only interested in the family pictures. They could care less how cool the rock is that I'm climbing or how big the mountains are that are in the pictures, they're just interested in how old my siblings are and what they all look like. They absolutely love the pictures of family.
We all went to sleep around 8:30.
These women worked at the hotel.
These women worked at the hotel also and insisted on me taking their picture. The one on the left did my laundry and has a rocking uni-brow.
One of the new smalled tunnels under construction. I took a break in the shade of one and ate a lot more pistachios. I tore my thumbnail opening one up.
Climbing up to the pass.
This cat was eating a dead bird in the dining area of the work camp.
Bobby Jon took a picture of me.
So I took a picture of Bobby Jon.
The Tajik's I shared a room with. They were convinced the Chinese would steal my bike, so the pulled the mattress off the top bunk and put my bike on it.....
Friday. Day One.
Distance: 74 km
Pedaling Time: 5 hr 44 min (my bike computer clock only ticks when I'm pedaling, so this does not include breaks)
Start Time: 9:45 am
Finish Time: 5:45 pm (I consider start time as when my bike is loaded and I start pedaling, finish time is once I have my sleeping situation figured out).
I loaded up my bike and waited for one of my German friends to meet me in front of the hotel so we could go get breakfast. Another German friend met us at the cafe and I ordered the English breakfast. It had a couple of fried eggs, bacon (the first bacon I've had in a long time), fried mushrooms, fried tomatos, orange juice and a croissant filled with something delicious and sweet. I ordered a second croissant because it was good.
At 9 am I rode over to the Kazakhstan Embassy to pick up my passport with the last of the visa's I need for awhile (the other countries I'm entering issue a visa on arrival), then I headed to a grocery store to buy some snickers and water. Most of the bottled water in Tajikistan is carbonated and is awful. But I luckily found the non-carbonated awful bottled water.
I was riding north out of Dushanbe by 9:45. The road was good, there was some traffic but I had a decently sized shoulder. I climbed all day. I was following a river and it was flowing the opposite direction as I, so the climbing was gentle for the first few hours, but it tended uphill. The weather was nice, it wasn't too hot, but there had been a sandstorm in some distant desert that kicked up a lot of dust into the air and it made everything look hazy. A local told me that it was from the Afghans cleaning their rugs....
After an hour of riding I stopped on the side of the road under a tree and ate a snickers and some pistachio nuts, then I started riding again. I was riding through what was the outskirts of Dushanbe, so there were small villages every 5 or 10 km. Sometimes they would have small stores or people sitting on the street selling stuff, but none of it was good, so I never stopped. The people were slightly curious and waved but not too much to be irritating.
Another hour later I came to a small village and stopped at a restaurant. They sometimes have tables and chairs but Tajik's mostly eat on really large day beds that sit about 10 to 15 people in a circle. There is no table, they lay out a cloth and place the food on it. I got some kind of meat and potato soup, bread and an RC Cola. I don't even know what RC Cola is, but it was all they had. Butchers in this part of the world must receive absolutely no training. There is no such thing as a 'cut' of meat, they just chop it up and sell it. So the 'meat' in the soup is always a lot more bone and cartilage and fat than meat. The locals are excellent at finishing it all and setting down clean bones. I don't particularly care for cartilage (I can stomach the fat, but don't like it) so it's a messier process for me. My beard gets really greasy....I don't think I'll wear it much longer.
A man sitting on the day bed across from me, with his two teenage children and his wife, offered me some of his fruit. The exterior looks like cantaloupe except it's shaped like a football and twice the size of a football and the fruit is white. It's delicious. After I ate I just layed there in the shade for a half hour or so before going on.
I was still riding alongside the river and the road started getting a bit steepier. I came to a clean river crossing and used my filter to fill up my water bottles. Four small children silently watched the whole time.
After I filled up the water I came to a fork in the road. To the right was Anzob Pass, which is 3300 something meters. The road is really rocky and I was only at 1700 meters. To the left is the Anzob Tunnel which is at 2600 meters and has asphalt leading up to it. The problem is that the tunnel is only about 2 or 3 years old, but it's leaking like crazy. The road inside is supposed to be filled with water and water pours out like rain all over the place. I'd heard horror stories of motorcyclists getting into thigh deep water, bicyclists cracking their frames from falling into potholes, not being able to see, blah blah blah. Once the tunnel was built they quit maintaining the road up the pass, so it's supposed to be awful, and is about 30 km longer than going through the tunnel. The tunnel was closed to traffic, and I didn't feel like riding up a dirt road with a ton of traffic, so I went left and decided I would just take it slow through the tunnel.
There was a guard at the junction, and the road is closed to traffic, but I just rode through and acted like I knew what I was doing and he just waved at me.
The road climbed steeply the rest of the day. I think I climbed for 2 hours, taking breaks every 30 min or so. I was in my lowest gear the whole time and I sometimes wished I could have gone lower. I never listen to my ipod when I ride. Even when I go running back home I prefer to listed to the river or the birds or for bears or whatever. But this road had only worker traffic and it was steep, so I listened to music while I rode. I think it was Kanye West. I had originally wanted to get through the tunnel on this day, but I was getting tired and I wasn't sure how much further it was or how easy it would be to camp on the other side, so when I saw a work camp I pulled in and asked if I could pitch my tent.
The Chinese are the ones repairing the road and the tunnel. The Chinese were also building the road in Pakistan, but these Chinese looked significantly healthier and happier. In Pakistan they looked like they all wanted to die.
The camp was a typical Chinese building and housed both Tajik and Chinese workers. They don't have much to do with each other, because of a language and cultural barriers, and I stayed with the Tajiks. The Tajiks were uber paranoid about me watching my stuff. They kept trying to tell me that the Chinese would steal everything. Which is kind of too bad because for as weird as the Chinese are, when I was there I just never felt threatened or that anyone would steal stuff.
I was about to set up my tent, then they offered me a bunk in one of their rooms. They then fed me some 'meat' soup and bread. There was a 10 year old boy named Bobby John (at least that's how I understood it....) that followed me around the whole time. I thought he was going to drive me nuts, but he was a nice kid.
I took a shower and then we all hung out in the kitchen for awhile. Nobody spoke english, but I have a phrase book and a few of the men were intelligent so we had some conversation. In one of the packages my mom sent she included a small photo album of my life in America. A picture of the house I lived in, the car I drove, me rock climbing in Thailand, climbing mountains in Alaska, my dog and pictures of my family. The Tajik's are always only interested in the family pictures. They could care less how cool the rock is that I'm climbing or how big the mountains are that are in the pictures, they're just interested in how old my siblings are and what they all look like. They absolutely love the pictures of family.
We all went to sleep around 8:30.
These women worked at the hotel.
These women worked at the hotel also and insisted on me taking their picture. The one on the left did my laundry and has a rocking uni-brow.
One of the new smalled tunnels under construction. I took a break in the shade of one and ate a lot more pistachios. I tore my thumbnail opening one up.
Climbing up to the pass.
This cat was eating a dead bird in the dining area of the work camp.
Bobby Jon took a picture of me.
So I took a picture of Bobby Jon.
The Tajik's I shared a room with. They were convinced the Chinese would steal my bike, so the pulled the mattress off the top bunk and put my bike on it.....
8.25.2009
Shokdora Valley
Because my original plan was thwarted due to a hole in my tire, once I got a new one I decided to do a 4 day loop from Khorog, back to Khorog. Half of the loop was part of my original plan and it looked nice on a map so I did it.
The valley I rode up was about 150 km long with several villages near the bottom of the valley (I rode from bottom to top, crossed a pass and then took another valley back down to Khorog). The villagers seemed more reserved and I was only offered tea one time near the end of the valley, but I didn't care. I had been stuck in Khorog with diarrhea for 2 days so I was anxious to be on the road (as a side note, I hung out with a Spaniard and two Germans this morning and it's interesting how fast and how frequently the conversation turns to diarreah when you're traveling in this part of the world. Everyone deals with it quite regularly....). The road quickly gave way to gravel but wasn't too bad.
I was nowhere near the Afghan border, so there were Tajik villages on both sides of the river.
There were a handful of narrow canyons I got to ride through. The road hugged the side of the river on these portions, and was meticulously cut into the sides of the cliffs.
At the top of the valley everything opened up. The valley gradually got wider and wider before splitting off into smaller canyons that went up and out of the valley. I was now only seeing villages every 20 km or so. I quit looking for shops in these small towns because they all sell the same worthless crap. Their snacks are non-existent or not edible. So I didn't even bother. 
Peak Engels and Karl Marx Peak started showing themselves near the end of my second day. Engels is on the left. I just met some Slovaks who tried climbing it a week ago. It's supposedly very technical and they got shut out.
I camped by a river near the valley that goes to the base of Peak Engels. It was one of the prettiest places I've ever camped (I feel like I keep saying that....).
The valley I rode up was about 150 km long with several villages near the bottom of the valley (I rode from bottom to top, crossed a pass and then took another valley back down to Khorog). The villagers seemed more reserved and I was only offered tea one time near the end of the valley, but I didn't care. I had been stuck in Khorog with diarrhea for 2 days so I was anxious to be on the road (as a side note, I hung out with a Spaniard and two Germans this morning and it's interesting how fast and how frequently the conversation turns to diarreah when you're traveling in this part of the world. Everyone deals with it quite regularly....). The road quickly gave way to gravel but wasn't too bad.
I was nowhere near the Afghan border, so there were Tajik villages on both sides of the river.
There were a handful of narrow canyons I got to ride through. The road hugged the side of the river on these portions, and was meticulously cut into the sides of the cliffs.
At the top of the valley everything opened up. The valley gradually got wider and wider before splitting off into smaller canyons that went up and out of the valley. I was now only seeing villages every 20 km or so. I quit looking for shops in these small towns because they all sell the same worthless crap. Their snacks are non-existent or not edible. So I didn't even bother.I had my first wreck of this trip coming out of one of these villages. They are always perched on the top of an alluvial plane, so it's a climb to get to the village, and then a descent to get out. Halfway up the climb into a village my stomach started screaming at me to find a rock and let everything out. But I was in the middle of town and there were people and buildings everywhere. When I got to the descent I just rode as fast as I could. There was a huge puddle spanning the width of the road and I couldn't tell how deep it was so I tried going around. I hit the muddy berm at not a good angle and my bike instantly fell out from under me. Somehow I jumped clear and only had to put my left hand down to catch myself, then I ran it out. I thought I handled it quite cooly, but the laughing 5 year old quickly changed my mind. I got back on my bike and found that rock, and not a moment too soon.....
Peak Engels and Karl Marx Peak started showing themselves near the end of my second day. Engels is on the left. I just met some Slovaks who tried climbing it a week ago. It's supposedly very technical and they got shut out.
I camped by a river near the valley that goes to the base of Peak Engels. It was one of the prettiest places I've ever camped (I feel like I keep saying that....).It was at this campsite when my toilet paper nearly ran out. My stomach was still all over the place, and I had at least another day before I could buy anymore. I rationed my toilet paper quite heavily from this point on. One wipe then into the river to finish the job. The next day when there wasn't a river nearby I would put two pieces of used paper together, sticky side in, and get 3 wipes with 2 pieces (this was not all fun. The pieces I was using were incredibly small....).
Cooking pasta at my campsite.
I camped in the green strip of grass near the bottom of this photo. I had actually gotten to this campsite around 2 pm. I usually ride until sometime between 5 and 7. I wasn't feeling too great, so I took a 2 hour nap in the grass, then decided to stay the night. And I was glad I did. 
The next morning (day 3) I had to climb up and over a pass to link up with the main Pamir Highway, which would take me back to Khorog. The road was rough and it took about 2.5 hours to get to the top. Engels and Karl Marx were looking at me from behind the whole way.
The pass was fantastic. It was a broad valley with small hills close by and then larger mountains in the distance. There were a few shepherd huts and a small dark blue lake. I love these high passes where there are no trees and you can see forever. There were no clouds in the sky and the weather was fantastic. It's silly to think about now, but I was hopelessly giddy the whole time. I couldn't stop smiling or laughing to myself that I got to be up in this place. There was a slight tailwind and the road was sloped slightly downhill, so I just coasted through the whole thing stopping every 2 minutes to take pictures.
The descent from the pass was tough. Steep and rocky and long. It took 45 min to do 4 kilometers of downhill. When I finally crossed the river and got onto the paved Pamir Highway, there was a small boy hanging out on the bridge with his dog. I half expected him to congratulate me for descending the road of death, but he didn't care. It was oddly unceremonous hitting asphalt. It felt fantastic, but Spencer and Breckan weren't there to relish it with me....I'm used to finishing tough sections and then heaving a sigh of relief and getting smiles from those to suckers....The Pamir highway is in the back of this photo, but I was headed the other way so I didn't have to make that climb.
The Pamir Highway back to Khorog was all paved and mostly downhill. It took a day and a half but the people in this valley were much friendly than the previous one.
I ate lunch with this family. Their home was beautifully painted with blue and brown and white. I really liked it. The girl is a Chemistry teacher at the university in Khorog, the boy is studying in Dushanbe (the nations capital), and the father is a climatologist. While I ate the boy rode my bike in circles in the courtyard over and over and over. He wrecked it twice.
Cooking pasta at my campsite.
I camped in the green strip of grass near the bottom of this photo. I had actually gotten to this campsite around 2 pm. I usually ride until sometime between 5 and 7. I wasn't feeling too great, so I took a 2 hour nap in the grass, then decided to stay the night. And I was glad I did.The nights got cold, just below freezing.
The next morning (day 3) I had to climb up and over a pass to link up with the main Pamir Highway, which would take me back to Khorog. The road was rough and it took about 2.5 hours to get to the top. Engels and Karl Marx were looking at me from behind the whole way.
The pass was fantastic. It was a broad valley with small hills close by and then larger mountains in the distance. There were a few shepherd huts and a small dark blue lake. I love these high passes where there are no trees and you can see forever. There were no clouds in the sky and the weather was fantastic. It's silly to think about now, but I was hopelessly giddy the whole time. I couldn't stop smiling or laughing to myself that I got to be up in this place. There was a slight tailwind and the road was sloped slightly downhill, so I just coasted through the whole thing stopping every 2 minutes to take pictures.
The descent from the pass was tough. Steep and rocky and long. It took 45 min to do 4 kilometers of downhill. When I finally crossed the river and got onto the paved Pamir Highway, there was a small boy hanging out on the bridge with his dog. I half expected him to congratulate me for descending the road of death, but he didn't care. It was oddly unceremonous hitting asphalt. It felt fantastic, but Spencer and Breckan weren't there to relish it with me....I'm used to finishing tough sections and then heaving a sigh of relief and getting smiles from those to suckers....The Pamir highway is in the back of this photo, but I was headed the other way so I didn't have to make that climb.
The Pamir Highway back to Khorog was all paved and mostly downhill. It took a day and a half but the people in this valley were much friendly than the previous one.
I ate lunch with this family. Their home was beautifully painted with blue and brown and white. I really liked it. The girl is a Chemistry teacher at the university in Khorog, the boy is studying in Dushanbe (the nations capital), and the father is a climatologist. While I ate the boy rode my bike in circles in the courtyard over and over and over. He wrecked it twice.Tajikistan has been incredible in so many ways. The people are very hospitable, the food has been surprisingly not bad, and the mountains were just fantastic.
I've met over 20 cyclists in the past 2 weeks. They're everywhere. It's small when you're cycling. I was riding my bike down the main road in Dushanbe yesterday when I heard my name called and saw 5 people sitting at an outdoor restaurant looking at me. I had met all of them at different places weeks before. They're all cyclists and we meet up regularly to eat or go to museums. Most of us are waiting on spare bike parts or visa's or whatever. It's real fun. An American girl going home gave me one of her tires becuase my front one isn't looking too pretty. Thank you Kara.
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