The distance from Osh to the border is 250 km and even if it is uphill most of the time we planned to do it in three days. When we decided to postpone our departure with one day Bartek, our Polish friend whom we have cycled with from time to time since we left Azerbaijan, decided to go as planned with some Chezch cyclists he had met. We decided to meet them either after 180 km in or near the village of Sary Tash or at the border and enter China together.

When the day of departure finally came, we didn’t leave the city until 3 PM. It was a bit late but the road was good and the distance short so we didn’t worry or feel any need to speed up.

In the summer of 2011 we spent a month cycling on the Pamir plateau in Tajikistan. The landscape in the Pamirs resembles a lunar landscape and is very dry, rocky and dusty. Although being located close to the Pamirs, the mountains of southern Kyrgyzstan looks very different. Instead of the moonlike landscape on the Pamir plateau, the Kyrgyz mountains are green and water is never far away.

The road south from Osh towards Sary Tash is actually a part of the famous Pamir Highway, but on the Kyrgyz side of the border. Until only a few years ago the road was in very poor condition with broken asphalt and lots of potholes. Chinese money and labour has now led to a road in perfect condition that is a dream to ride a bike on.

Between Osh and Sary Tash there are two mountain passes. The first is at about 2500 meter and the second is at 3600 but from Sary Tash to the border it is flat almost all the way.

Since we didn’t leave Osh until 3 PM we didn’t manage to get very far the first day. The late start combined with a stunning landscape that made us stop to take photos many many times led to us not getting across the first pass during the first day. We decided to camp just below the start of the climb up to the first pass.

After the pass at 2500 meter we enjoyed a wonderful downhilll ride along a couple of switchbacks. Unfortunately the downhill part took us down 700 meter to a level which was below the altitude we had started at in the morning. Riding downhill is normally fun, but when you know that an even higher pass waits for you later in the day you wish that the downhill ends as quickly as possible.

We didn’t know if there would be villages were we could stop and shop food, but there turned out to be many. Finding water was also never difficult since almost all villages had a tap of running water somewhere along the main road.

When we had a short break to buy some cold drinks at a teahouse during our second day, we saw some cyclists approaching us from the opposite direction. When they got close we saw a familiar face. It was the german cyclist Johannes who we had cycled with for some time in Uzbekistan, but who we split from in Samarkand since he was going to the Pamirs while we headed for the Fergana valley. He was now cycling with two polish cyclists and it was a dear re-union and the brief stop to buy a drink turned out to be a one and a half hour long stop to exchange experiences and tips.

After having crossed the first pass in the morning it was upphill the rest of the day. Our plan was to camp just below the switchbacks that would take us up to the 3600 meter pass before Sary Tash. We were riding without a proper map and when we saw what we thought was the beginning of the steep climb we decided to stop and camp even if it still was a bit too early.

When we woke up in the morning it was only 9 degrees. We were now at 2400 meters altitude and had 1200 meter to climb before arriving in Sary Tash where we planned to have lunch before continuing to the border where we had made an appointment with our friend.

After having climbed the first steep climb just next to our camp site we understood we had made a mistake. We were not camping below the switchbacks – they were still far ahead of us and this meant that we would arrive to Sary Tash in the afternoon rather than around noon as we had planned.

Climbing the switchbacks was hard. The road was good and not too steep but we started to feel the lack of oxygen and had to stop to catch our breath quite often. When we were resting at one of the turns a boy on a donkey appeared as out of nowhere. We exchanged a few words with him and then we continued up the hill. The boy on the donkey followed us closely. Everytime we stopped, he stopped. He rode his donkey between us and started to whistle songs and copy our heavy breathing. It really annoyed us and finally we had to chase him away only to see him again at the top of the mountain pass.

Sary Tash is a little tiny village that sits at the intersection where the road from China joins the road from Tajikistan (Pamir Highway). It is not a town – a village is a more proper word for this community but since it is located at an important junction it has a few homestays/guesthouses.

Very exhausted and hungry after the long climb we rolled into the little village at 2.30 PM on Wednesday instead of 12 as planned. We went to one of the guesthouses to get something to eat before continuing to the border at 4.30 PM.

When we left Sary Tash the wind had picked up and the sky had also got some ugly dark clouds. First we had the wind on our backs but then the road turned and the wind became a strong crosswind. After having cycled 15 km from Sary Tash we got an SMS. We suspected it was from our Polish friend we were going to meet so we quickly stopped to see what he had to say. The message started with the words:

”Bad news guys”….

And the message that followed was that he had got to the border only to find out that it would close the following two days (Thursday-Friday) in addition to the normal weekend closing. It was 17.40 on Wednesday afternoon and 20 minutes left before the border would close for four consecutive days. Our friend did the only reasonable thing to do and went across but we had still 55 km to go and quickly understood that there would be no chance for us to get into China until the border re-opened on Monday morning.
We stopped a truck that came from the border and the driver confirmed that the border would be closed for four days.

It was cold and windy, we had got bad news and to add some spice to the situation it also started to rain. We were too tired to ride back to Sary Tash and decided to camp and ride back the next day. When we had just spotted a perfect camp site and brought our bikes down the steep sides of the road we saw a truck stopping 100 meters ahead of us. The driver jumped out and ran down to the stream to fetch some water close to where we were going to camp. We hurried to him and asked if we could go with him back to Sary Tash. His truck was carrying some construction machine and there was plenty of room for our bikes so we loaded them and our baggage and jumped into the passenger seat. 15 minutes later we were back in Sary Tash – our place of confinement for the coming four days.

In front of us was the closed border to China and not far in the other direction was Tajikistan to which we had no visa. Behind us was a high mountain pass that we didn’t want to climb again. We were simply stranded in the tiny little mountain village of Sary Tash that is completely without any modern facilities such as running water or showers. Internet access – just forget about it.

We checked in at one of the guesthouses and there were other tourists who didn’t yet know about the closing of the border and who quickly understood that they were also stranded in a village at the end of the world. Too add to a situation that was far from what we had expected we saw the annoying boy on the donkey we had met on the mountain in front of the guesthouse and soon it became clear to us that he was a member of the family who runs the guesthouse we just checked in at.

Things started to get clear during the evening. It turned out that the border would be closed on Thursday due to the celebration of the end of Ramadan, but we couldn’t understand why it would be closed on Friday too and during the Thursday morning we walked around the village to try to find information. Some people said it would be open and some said it would be closed.

Since many people in the village work at the border we got 3-4 people we met to call to someone at border to get confirmation if it would be open on Friday or not. All those phonecalls resulted in the same information ”border will be closed on Friday and open again on Monday”.

Since we were still not sure if the border would be open on Friday or not we all decided to go out to the intersection early on Friday morning to see if there would be any trucks heading towards China which would indicate that the border was open. The road was completely empty and there was absolutely no traffic and we lost our last hope of being able to get to China before Monday.

We were obviously stranded in this little mountain village so what to do?

Some travellers decided to catch a ride back to Osh while others decided to stay. We were exhausted after the ride over the two mountain passes and thought we could as well enjoy the extra rest days. But without any sort of entertainment in the village there has been nothing to to do other than sleep, write blog posts, sort photos, watch movies on the computer and keep an eye on the road from China.

Late in the Friday afternoon convoys of trucks started coming from the Chinese border. How should we interpret that???? We walked up to a small restaurants where some trucks had stopped and asked and it turned out that the border had been open during the Friday after all. It was now Friday evening and we had blown our chances to get to China until Monday. We had tried to gather and analyse information instead of just taking the chance to go to the border to see with our eyes.

Having missed getting to China on the Wednesday was bad luck, but missing the Friday’s opening was a little bit more annoying, but we didn’t get upset since we had accepted the situation already when we got the first SMS. We had come to terms with our fate that meant that instead of riding to China we could look forward to two more days in Sary Tash that although it has marvellous views over the snow capped 6000 meter peaks of Pamir still is a dead boring little village.

We stayed two days in the first guesthouse, but then decided to change to a cheaper one.

Most travellers who come to Sary Tash only stay for a night and continue the next morning. We will have spent four nights here and we think we will be the new record holders…. 😉

Our plan is now to cycle to the border on Sunday in order to cross into China on Monday morning and arrive the city of Kashgar on Monday afternoon or evening.

This entire episode of our journey between Göteborg and Bangkok resembles the ferry ride across the Caspian Sea which also included long waiting time, no or conflicting information and frustration that in the end led to giving up and just accepting the situation as it is. It could after all have been a lot worse. Just imagine the extreme frustration if the closing of the border for example had occured very close to our last entry date of our chinese visas.

Half a year ago I would have kept myself busy trying to answer questions suchs as ”what if we had started earlier, didn’t stop too long, gone longer the first day” etc.. Now it seems that I instead quickly accept the new situation and conditions. So it is fair to say that all these hardships have at least led to some personal development…. 🙂

The lessons learned is to always try to enjoy things as they are even if this means spending four days in a boring village where the shower is a bucket in the backyard and the toilet is a hole in a dirty wooden floor…. 🙂

Osh is the second biggest town in Kyrgyzstan and the country has decided to become a tourist destination and has taken away all the bureaucratic regulations that its neighbour Uzbekistan still maintains. This has led to a large influx of tourists and in Osh there are lots of nice restaurants and hotels.

We didn’t like the guesthouse we stayed at and since Osh is the midpoint on our trip between Göteborg and Bangkok we decided to celebrate this by stopping a little longer and stay at a better hotel than the guesthouse we checked in at the first night.

This little hotel was very nice. It was very quiet, had a nice lounge area, a lawn, an outside sitting area and wifi internet that was accessable from everywhere within the premises.
We spent the first few days just relaxing and only left the hotel to have dinner with our friends who still stayed at the backpacker guesthouse we stayed at the first night.

One afternoon a french-malaysian couple checked in at our hotel. They had been trecking in the mountains in the south of Kyrgyzstan and would stay one night in Osh before going home. The french guy is a chef and runs two french restaurants and a cooking school in Kuala Lumpur while the wife is a writer for a cooking magazine in Malaysia. Having had only simple food during their two week long trek they wanted some proper food and asked to borrow the hotel’s kitchen and offered us to help in cooking and share their meal.
It was wonderful to see professionals at work and the steak and the kidneys fried with pepper and paprkika tasted wonderful.

The city of Osh doesn’t have very many tourist attractions apart from its bazar. We went there to buy some rope to tie our bikes on a truck when entering China (it is forbidden to cycle through the noman’s land and we will need to get on a truck).

In the bazar it is possible to find almost everything, even cycle parts…… But they are not of the latest standard and this is why many touring cyclists prefer to use old components of older standards instead of the newest which can’t be find in places like this.

We also spent some time to do a thorough maintanence of our bikes. We took off chains, cassettes and chainrings and cleaned them carefully. Our clothes also liked to get a proper wash in a washing machine instead of the rinse in a sink somewhere they lately have got used to….

Kyrgyzstan doesn’t require us to have visas and without feeling any pressure from the visa clock we decided to postpone our departure from Osh with one day because we simply felt we wanted to stay longer. Instead of leaving on Sunday we would leave on Monday but that wouldn’t cause any problem. It was a three day ride to the chinese border and our new plan was to enter the country on Thursday. The border is closed during weekends but our plan to arrive to the border on a Thursday would give us plenty of backup time in case something would slow us down.

Day 92 Olmaliq – mountains east of Angren
It is a late Sunday evening and I am sitting in the garden in our little B&B in Osh, the second largest city in Kyrgizstan. Today has been a nice day with some clouds and cool temperatures (still above 30 though). This evening we enjoy a cool breeze that makes the leaves of the trees in the garden tremble and in the afternoon we even enjoyed a light summer rain. Tomorrow is our cycling day and we hope this kind of nice and cool weather will keep us company on our journey up to the Kyrgiz mountains.

So how did we get here?

Uzbekistan is a country we only planned to visit for a few days but since we couldn’t go through Iran due to the presidential elections we had to re-route and take the ferry across the Caspian Sea and then cycle across Uzbekistan from the very west to the very east. It turned out to be 2068 km and Uzbekistan is the country that we have cycled most kilometers in so far and it has been an interesting experience I will later write a separate article about.

Uzbekistan has large deserts but after we left Samarkand we were in densely populated areas. We traveled through the cotton areas around Yangiyer and Gulistan and passed Olmalia which is a town of heavy and dirty industry.

Just as in the former Soviet union Uzbekistan still requires foreign tourists to register every 3 days and this is an issue that lessens the joy of traveling in this wonderful country. When we left Samarkand I was tired after pressing hard for almost four consequtive weeks and I needed a rest, but since our Uzbek visa was running out we couldn’t afford to stop for any more days and had to press on in order to get out in time.

I was tired and exhausted in Olmaliq and to be honest I was a bit worried about my ability to continue according to our plan. When we left Olmaliq I immediately felt that my legs were not up to the task of riding long distances. There was no pain or muscle ache in my legs but I felt they were stiff and powerless so we could only progress slowly.

The Fergana valley is a small but important part of Uzbekistan and there is only one road leading to it across a high mountain pass. As soon as we got out of Olmaliq city and onto the highway towards the Fergana valley the intensity of the traffic grew significantly. I was not in the mood for anything and just kept pedalling behind Wej to make the kilometers pass as smooth as possible.

It was not very far to the town of Angren, only some 55 km from Olmaliq but whithout power in my legs it felt like it would be closer to the moon. Some 10 km before the town a car pulled up beside us and the guys inside wanted to chat. I was extremely exhausted and were not in the mood for talking so I went to the side and let Wej take care of the talking. We didn’t stop but Wej managed to have a conversation as we cycled beside the car and it ended with the guy in the passenger seat handing over a handful of peaches. After the car left we stopped and ate those God sent peaches. The strenght we got from those sweet fruits only lasted a few kilometers and when I saw a bus stop I just had to stop and get a rest. After sleepting on the narrow seat of that bus stop for about 45 minutes I felt I had got my strenght back and we could ride into Angren without problem.

40 km beyond Angren there is a massive climb up to 2200 meters and our aim was to find somewhere to stay that was not far from the start of the climb. But how to do that when completely out of power?

We were hungry when we cycled into town but we didn’t stop at the very first eatery. When we finally stopped for lunch we chose a place where we could both eat and enjoy an afternoon nap. The restaurant had no menu and we opted for the simple solution and ordered something we knew – a ”lagman” which is a traditional noodle soup.

We have had Lagman many times before and they are neither good or bad. It is a simple noodle soup with meat, noodles and vegetables. But at this place we got something different. The noodles were not served as a soup but more like a spagetti dish with only a little liquid at the bottom of the plate. We also got a little side dish with a brown-red paste that we didn’t know what it was but we put it on the noodles and……… wow…….. 🙂

That paste was a chilli paste and it was very spicy and did lift the experience of the lagman to a new dimension. With that side dish of chilli the lagman actually turned out to be very similar to ”khao soi” which is a traditional dish in northern Thailand. The lagman-khao soi lunch brought our spirits back and Wej enjoyed it so much that she even ordered a second plate. Wej also carefully noted what that chilipaste dish is called in Uzbek in order to be able to order it again later on.

We were heading towards the Fergana valley which is a politically sensitive are that has seen heavy and deadly military crackdown on riots that have caused Sweden and most other western countries to issue warnings against unnecessary travel in the valley. However, travelers we meet keep telling us that people in the Fergana valley are even more hospitable than in the rest of the country so we continued towards it with high expectations.

Between us and our high expectations of the Fergana valley stood a tall mountain range. We didn’t want to climb it the same day but we wanted to get as close to the start of the climb as possible. Due to the political unrest the single road to the Fergana valley passes two military check points where we as foreigners had to register. It was not any big issue and the soldiers where very friendly and since it was already late they invited us to pitch our tent on the little lawn in front of their office. We thanked them for their kind offer but told them we had to go and eat at the restaurant a kilometer down the road and then maybe come back.

We have been to similar situations before and we know what to expect. Once the soldiers are off duty they will start to drink and ask to try our bikes which is something we never let anyone do. Riding fully loaded bike is difficult and it is easy to fall and break some parts that we will have troubles to find replacements for.

When people ask to try our bikes we politely decline, but how to do decline when a guy carrying a Kalshnikov asks??? Besides this it was still to early to camp so we decided to proceed further and some 15 kilometers later we found a tea house that was clinging on the rock next to the river. We ordered some food and asked if we could stay for the night and just like everywhere else in Uzbekistan the answer was yes. After having a bath in the river below the restaurant we quickly fell asleep on the same platform as where we had eaten our dinner.

Day 93 Mountain pass – Kokhand
Today was a mountain stage and the climb started only 8 km after we left the restaurant where we had slept the previous night. The weather was pleasant and although it was warm it was far from the intense heat below the mountains.

We still were suffering from the previous days of hard riding and thus we climbed very slowly in order to preserve our strengths. There are tea houses and vendors selling drinks all the way and we stopped at a few of them to rest and drink.

There are lots of military posts along the way up to the mountains and all of them had clear signs telling that photographing was forbidden. As mentioned earlier – we avoid playing with guys carrying Kalashnikovs – so there are very few photos from this part of the trip.

The road we were traveling on is the only road that connects the Fergana valley to the rest of the country and thus there is a lot of the traffic there and one thing was sure and that was the we were the ones who moved up most slowly that day. Endless number of trucks overtook us.

One car that overtook us stopped in front of us and wanted to talk. It turned out to be a Malaysian family on a ”half-around-the-world-trip” who now were heading to China. We have previously met European car tourists, but now when we are half ways they seem to be coming from the other direction too. It was great fun to meet someone from a neighbouring country, talk for a while and exchange experiences.

At the top of the climb there are two tunnels that saved us a few more hundred meters of climbing. In front of the first tunnel there were soldiers checking our passports and in the other end there were another soldier, but he didn’t bother to check them.

The top of the pass was just between the two tunnels and once outside the second our time as the slowest vehicles on the road was up. Cruising at +50 km/h we flew past the long row of heavy trucks that had to descent down the mountain using their lowest gears. It is not who is quickest up that counts….. it is quickest up AND down…. 😉

After 50 km of not needing to pedal the road finally evened out. The heat was back and two hours before entering Kokhand we experienced a sensational strong heat. The road was newly made and still completely black and we felt a strong heat radiating from below, just like when sitting too close to a fire. Since we were still rolling downhill at high speed it was only uncomfortable, but if we would have been riding the other directions it would have been completely impossible to pass that section since it felt like the road below us was burning.

Day 94 Kokhand – south of Andijon
It is 170 km from Kokhand to Osh and that could be doable in a day, but not if also crossing a central asian border so we decided to cycle to somewhere beyond Andijon in order to be close to the border.

We had checked in to Hotel Kokhand in order to get our last registration slip. When asking for it before going to bed they said thay we would get it in the morning which we accepted if they could it to us at 7 o’clock which they promised. The next morning the very same guy asked us if we had got our registration slips……

The stamp was locked in the hotel’s office safe and he didn’t have the key. He told the manager would come and open it in 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute and so on. The manager came at 7.50 and opened the safe so that we could get our slips stamped. We cursed this soviet style hotel since we now had lost one hour of cycling which on a flat road like the one crossing the Fergana valley means loosing 25 km or one more hour in the striking afternoon heat.

We managed to do 85 km before the heat struck and we had to seek refuge at a tea house beside the road where we stayed for two and a half hours.

After having left the tea house and cycled through a village we saw a van coming up beside us. The guy in the passanger seat asked if we wanted icecream and showed two icecreams. First we thought they were icecream vendors, but when we stopped they just gave us the icecreams, said good luck and turned around and drove back to the village. Amazing hospitality in an area that is supposed to be dangerous….

Andijon is a big city and it usually takes long time to cycle in and out of big cities so we decided to go around it to find a tea house where we could sleep. Half an hour before sunset we stopped outside one and soon we were surrounded by people and one old man stepped forward and started to talk slowly in English. He asked were we were going to stay and when we replied we didn’t know he suggested we stay at the tea house (our tactic worked once again).

The old man followed us into the tea house and we sat down to talk. He was accompanied by a young boy that turned out to be his 12 year old grandson. The boy spoke basic but good English and since he wanted to practice his English he talked a lot. The old man told us he was 75 years old, used to be an radio engineer and lived 300 meters from the tea house. The man and the boy joined us when we had our dinner and told us they would come back the next morning.

We had hoped we could sleep on one of the outdoor eating platforms, but the manager then offered us to sleep in one of the private dining rooms. He thought it would be too cold outside, but sleeping in the dining room turned out to be like sleeping in a sauna…. The hospitality shown to us is amazing – it is like being back in Turkey again.

Day 95 Andijon – Osh
Knowing that we only had 40 km to Osh we didn’t even set our alarm clock, but we woke up at 6.30 anyway. When we got out of our room the staff was busy preparing the food and we enjoyed watching the chefs as they prepared the various dishes to be offered that day. They tried to explain what they did but once again the language barrier made it difficult for us to understand.

We decided to have spicy khao soi-looking lagman for breakfast and when as we were finishing our meal the old man and the boy came back and offered us to come over to their house to have coffee. It is always interesting to be invited to people’s houses and we had plenty of time so we accepted the invitation.

The house was actually two houses with a lovely garden with grapevines and fruit trees in between. We had coffee, bread, biscuits and I got some home made wine as a second breakfast. It was clear that both the old man and his grandson enjoyed to practice English and after a while the boy’s sister joined in and she was also good at English. It seems that this family is really focused on learning foreign languages.

After spending about 1.5 hours at the family’s house we finally left for the border. Since it is forbidden to bring out the local currency we had to stop at a shop close to the border to buy whatever they had that we might need. We ended up with coke, icecream, a new soap, some socks and a pen.

At the border it was extremely crowded and there was a long que to even get into the border area. We didn’t line up among the people, but went in the line for trucks and rode up to the front of the line. A soldier saw us and let us through into the border control area without having to wait in that long line.

There were many more lines to wait in. First line was to the customs to declare all our valuable belongings and foreign currencies. We saw a french backpacker couple in the front of the line and when an official took them aside, we quickly jumped the que and joined them.

Next que was to have our baggage X-rayed. We only x-rayed our handlebar bag since the bikes and the bikes wouldn’t fit thew x-ray machine and would have to be inspected manually.

After declaring the foreign currencies and getting our bags x-rayed it was time to line up in the long line for passport inspection. An official saw us and the french couple and came and told us to join him. He then put us at the front of the line and we got our passports stamped without even being asked to provide any of those registration slips we have worked so hard to get.

We were then released to go to Kyrgiz side of the border. Kyrgizstan has decided to become a country for tourists and got rid of all ridiculous visa requirements. We simply showed our passports to the official and 1 minute later we were through.

We spent about one hour at the Uzbek side of the border and one minute on the Kyrgiz side. If we had waited in all those lines it would definately have taken a full day to pass and we felt a bit guilty as we past the people that had been waiting for hours. It didn’t feel fair, but we didn’t oppose being treated as VIP:s.

It is only 7 km from the border into downtown Osh and we went to a guesthouse where backpackers usually stay. At the guesthouse we once again met the polish and german cyclists we have been cycling with before and we went out to have dinner together with them.

Unfortunately it was extremely hot in the guesthouse so the following morning we decided to move to a better place with airconditioning.

Day 89  Samarkand-Jizzakh 99 km
Day 90 Jizzakh-Yengiyer 128 km
Day 91 Yangiyer-Olmaliz 132 km

Day 89 (Samarkand – Jizzakh)
Finally it was time to leave Samarkand. At the hostel there were now 11 cyclists and three had left the day before. Most of them are heading towards the Pamirs while some have just arrived from that area and are going towards Iran. We have been to the Pamirs before so we have decided since long ago to exit Uzbekistan through the Fergana valley.

We have now travelled together for more than a month. Not that we have been together all the time because we have split from time to time, but we have had these friends around us for some time now and it feels a bit sad to part.

Saying goodbye took a long time and instead of starting at 7.00 we weren’t on the road until 10.30. It was a strong headwind all day and we tried to cycle extra slowly to not run out of energy before arriving at the town of Jizzakh. Fortunately the temperature had dropped a few degrees and it was now possible to ride in the afternoon without suffering from the heat.

The landscape after Samarkand is much more interesting than in the western part of the country. Green surroundings and everywhere we could see people working on the fields. It seems that the endless flatland is replaced by a landscape of small hills. Finally there is something nice to look at as we pedal through.

When we thought that Jizzakh would be only 10-15 km away we saw from a distance how the road was going over a big steep hill. We were certainly not in the mood for any steep climbs but once we got to the start of that climb we saw a road sign telling that Jizzakh is to the left into the valley and Toshkent straight ahead over the hill. I can’t remember when I was this lucky last time… 😉

Jizzakh is a bigger town than we had thought. Some swiss cyclists at the guesthouse in Samarkand had told us about a hotel near the railway station that is not only cheap but also able to register foreign tourists. The problem was that we couldn’t find the hotel and when we saw a sign for another hotel we decided to try our luck there instead.

The hotel was located in a small side street with lots of commerce going on. The barber shops were open late and there were small restaurants and mini markets. Bread vendors sat next to each other selling exactly the same kind of bread. Do they compete or do they work together, or is it simply so that their breads taste differently? Our taste buds are not enough developed to detect any difference.

The side road was only 100 meter long but both of us got a feeling of being on a busy side street in Bangkok or any other Thai city during a late evening. The fact that people look more asian enhanced that feeling too.

The hotel is a local business hotel with a standard that is higher than anything we have experienced for a very long time. It is a normal hotel room, it is very clean, has a nice bed, TV, fridge and a nice bathroom. We are not used to this standard anymore and got extra happy when we bumped into such a hotel by accident.

I can’t remember when I watched TV last time. Our hotel room had hundreds of channels but only 2-3 in English. The story of Edward Snowden was told and re-told again and again. Maybe not having access to TV is a good thing – I doubt I will become more enlighted by listeneing 5 times in one hour to the same interview with Snowden’s lawyer telling he has brough some books and clothes to his client

 

Day 90 (Jizzakh – Yangiyer)
We didn’t want to leave our cosy and clean hotel room, but sometimes there is no mercy to be on a cycle tour. The visa clock for Uzbekistan is ticking and we must move on. Overstaying the visa validity in Uzbekistan is a really stupid thing to do since the fines are huge.

There was no wind in the morning and it was cooler than the days when we cycled to Samarkand.

On the way out of town we passed a very big market with roads leading through it. Some of these roads through the market had sections where minibuses stop to pick up passangers and once again it felt like we were already in Thailand.

Our target for the day was the town of Gullistan. Outside town the road split and we could take either way to but we didn’t know which to choose. Asking people only gave us very different answers until we met someone who argued that we should take the road towards Tashkent because it was of better quality and also shorter. We decided to follow that advice.

The road was indeed good and we kept going at high speed. After 55 km we saw a big sign telling that we should go right at the next intersection. It felt a bit too early to turn, but if the signs say that is the way, then why hesitate?

Soon we were on bumpy gravel roads and my built in compass made me feel that it was all wrong. We stopped and asked people and got more and more different answers and we felt really confused. Not that we don’t believe the locals – they all know the road to Gulistan, but the language barrier made it problematic to communicate.

We then met met a man could explain in a clear and simple way how to get back to the road we should have been on (we had turned off the highway too early). He even drew a detailed map how to get there and finally we felt sure about the way. However, that man’s advices wasn’t worth much if we didn’t follow them and just at the junction after a canal where he told us to go straight, we turned right…. 🙁

We have done many tours by bicycle  and shouldn’t fall into such easy traps. The rule is to always aske two different persons for direction and if the indicate the same then go that way. If the indicate different ways, then ask more people.

The guy who made the map told us to go straight, then when at the intersection we asked another one, who clearly got confused by the question and first told us to go straight, but then changed his mind to turn right. So now we had two different opinions and the rule is then to ask more people, but we didn’t and ended up in the wrong town and loosing 40-50 km.

Fortunately some cyclists at the guesthouse in Samarkand had told us about this town and that there was a hotel there so we knew there would be somewhere we could stay. We saw a car parked at the side of the highway about one kilometer outside town and we thought it could be a good idea to stop and ask for directions to the hotel. When getting closer to the car we saw a women sitting in the backseat facing backwards and below her the head of a man who had his face forward. Something was obviously going on in that car that we didn’t want to interrupt and we decided to continue and ask someone else instead.

One kilometer down the road road goes up on a ramp to a bridge across the railway. We saw another car parked below that ramp but it was difficult to get to so we decided to ask someone else. When we were on that ramp we it was once again obvious what was going on in that other car too.

Secret activities in two cars within a kilometer from each other – this must be a sign of something. Either it was dirty business going on in those cars or the youngsters in that little town have nowhere to be alone with their girl/boyfriends.

When we finally arrived in the hotel we were told we can stay for free and the only thing we had to pay for was the food in the restaurant. We were very careful when we studied the prices in the meny but it turned out to be normal prices that we would have payed anywhere.

Day 91 (Yangiyer – Olmaliq)
The hotel only had four rooms and no breakfast was included and knowing we would be in the bigger town of Gulistan within 90 minutes we only ate a couple of sandwiches in the room before leaving.

We never went into the center of Gulistan and only passed it on the big highway leading to Tashkent. There were lots of small stalls selling water, soft drinks and bread but we decided to stop at one just after the town. The one we found looked different from the others. It had a single table with a plate with boiled eggs for the guests to eat and so we decided to stop at that little pretty place. We are traveling through tea land now but this place had coffee where you could select if you wanted sugar and milk instead of the disgusting 3in1 instant coffee that are usually served. Plenty of fresh pirogs made it to be the complete roadside breakfast to be had in this country.

The people running the place were very nice too. I think they were ethnic russians and spoke only uzbek and russian, but we managed to have some fun while we enjoyed our breakfast. A neighbour to the lady running the place dropped by and got engaged in the conversation and told us he had been posted to south Poland during his army service many decades ago. When we left, the shopkeepers daughter offered us some free icecream which we really enjoyed since it already had started to get hot.

The road was very good and we moved forward at a steady pace of 25 km/h which is good with our heavy bikes. While cruising at high speed we discussed when we had a flat tyre last time. That was a stupid thing to do because at the next intersection I heard a ”pffft” sound and I had got another flat. A new rule is to never talk about flat tyres…..

After fixing my flat tyre we turned east from the main road leading to Tashkent. We were afraid it would be of poor quality, but it turned out to be very good and we could keep on going at good speed passing endless cotton fields.

It is melon season now and we enjoy one or two stops a water melon vendor each day. They usually put their melons in a big pile and sit and wait for customers in the shade.
We drink a lot during a day and eating water melons is a welcome change to drinking warm water from our bottles. Since we sweat a lot (our shirt gets white stripes of salt on the back each day) both of us has got an increased taste for salt. We both miss the salt and dried chilli mix that is included when buying fresh fruit from vendors in Thailand.

We stopped one more time to eat some bread and buy some water at another roadside vendor selling ”ayran” which we learned to enjoy in Turkey. Ayran is a mix of youghurt and water with added salt. Three ladies were selling home made ayran beside the road just next to a huge pipe pouring out water into a canal. It was a good place to make money since many of the people who stopped to fetch water or just wash their faces also bought some ayran.

In the late afternoon we approached the city of Olmaliq. A week ago I didn’t know that there was a city with this name, but before leaving Samarkand I googled the town and knew it was a city relying on heavy industry. Already far from town we saw big piles of slag and tall chimneys from which grey smoke was billowing up to the sky. It didn’t look healthy and when we rode past the piles of slag we could see that the factory was very old and worn I thought it all resembled the factory portraied in the Deer Hunter movie.

As mentioned before we do feel a bit exhausted and we have decided to opt for the simple and convenient way of doing things which means staying at hotels. The good thing with this is also that we get the opportunity to collect the stupid registration slips.

When passing the factory we saw no sign of where the city center is and we stopped a worker walking towards the bus stop to ask for directions into town. He made a very precise description and we started to pedal the remaining 4 km to the center. After a kilometer we came to yet another old and very worn industrial building with the fancy name of ”locomotive deposi” on it. We guess it was a train depot and the little monument outside was just as colorful that the rest of the building was not….

The city was bigger than we thought and we stopped at a large intersection to ask for directions to the hotel which was just behind the next corner. I went in and found a very charming lady who certainly hadn’t understood that the soviet union had ceased to exist. She didn’t know how to smile, she almost yelled at me and she only rose from her chair to go and slap the feet of a teenager who wasn’t sitting properly in the sofas. Besides the customer friendly appeal it was also ridicously expensive so I showed her a bit of the basics in a market economy by simply walking away. She had the supply of rooms, but the demand was gone. A little bit more customer oriented behaviour would have led to some cash in the register….

Wej was waiting outside and next to the reception there was a large dining room and loud music came from it. We glanced into the room and could see old ladies having dinner while young girls in traditional dresses had a dance show to the rock’n roll version of the traditional russian song ”Ochie Chornie” (Black Eyes) which I am sure you all know when you hear it.

We met people outside the hotel who told us there were a much nicer hotel in the other end of the city center. They made a simple map of how to go there and off we went. At an intersection we stopped to ask a young man for further directions and the first thing he did was to ask if I was a spy. I sincerely hope he was ironic but unfortunately he didn’t look lite that.

When we were wating for green light at another intersection another young man walked up to us and started to talk to us in very good English. It turned out that he just got his degree from Tashkent university where he had majored in Enlish. Now he is eager to go and study for a masters degree and he is eying at Korea or Malaysia. I hope he succeds because Uzbekistan needs more people like him.

Finally we made it to the hotel that turned out to be more expensive than we had been told. It was too late to go for the plan B which was to go out of town and find a tea house where we could camp. There was no option than to accept, pay and check in.

When cycling to the hotel we passed a place selling döner kebap and still on the bikes we decided to have our dinner there. Later when we left the hotel to walk there we found a schaslyk (barbecue) restaurant only 100 meter from the hotel. It was more of a local pub than a restaurant and it was very busy since it was a Friday night. Russian and western music was played inside and the guests were talking loudly not only because of the volume of the music but also of the volume of beer they had consumed.

We decided to sit at one of the tables on the outside and the servant was busy running in and out all the time. The owner was tending to the schaslyk grill on the pavement and when a fist fight started some 15-20 meters away he quickly told all able men to go and separate the fighters.

Sitting in this local pub, seeing all these men from the factory enjoying their Friday night made me once again think Pennsylvanian town portrayed in the Deer Hunter – maybe it has a sister town in Uzbekistan.

We arrived to Samarkand late last Friday with the intention to stay two or three days. The first day was planned to be a pure rest day while the others were planned for sightseeing. However, things did not turn out the way we planned to and we have spent most of the time here resting at the guesthouse which we now are just about to leave (Wednesday morning).

So what has happened?

Uzbekistan has a size and shape very similar to Sweden. We will travel across from the very west end to the very east end which is almost exactly 2000 km. We have a 30 days visa and that is enough to travel 2000 km at a convenient speed and also have timeto stop and visit cities. However, the requirement to register at least every third day at a hotel licensed to host foreign tourists has forced us to press really hard through some empty desert sections without any hotels and it is fair to say that the ride from the port in Kazakstan to here has been tough. The road has been long and very often of bad quality, the weather has been hot or extremely hot and the time pressure added to this has finally taken its toll.

When we got here we were exhausted. As I mentioned in a previous post the ususal rest day ache in my thighs got a lot worse in Bukhara and we were forced to take an extra rest day there. Here in Samarkand realitiy has in some way caught up with us and we have been sleeping most of the time. We planned to leave already yesterday, but in the morning my stomach was a bit upset and prevented us from leaving. It was just a short and not serious ordeal and it got better already around noon, but then I was too sleepy and powerless that I couldn’t even think of start pedalling again. To make things worse I managed to bump into the sharp corner of the bed in our room and now I have a bruise on my thigh that matches the colours of the ancient cupolas.

We knew we have pressed hard and we expected reactions like these but they came a little bit too early. Kyrgizstan doesn’t require us to have a visa when entering the country and there are no obligations to register every few days. Our plan has therefore always been to stop for up to a week in Osh in Kyrgizstan to just rest, but we simply didn’t make it there and had to rest here instead. We are not the only ones who have run into these kind of problems. At the time of writing there are 11 cyclists at the hostel and three more left yesterday night so the cyclists are in majority and all are to a varying degree exhausted for the same reasons as us.

All this means that we did a lot less of sightseeing than we had planned to. We haven’t entered many places, but just walking around in this amazing city can be enough. The architecture and all the old buildings are just magnificent. Please enjoy some of the photos below.

Our plan was to have to stay in Bukhara for two days for rest and sightseeing. On the afternoon before departure Wej and I went out for a walk and I once again suffered from a very peculiar muscle pain in my tighs. It is a pain that I started to feel about four months ago, only during rest days and only when walking really slowly. The strange thing is that it is an instant pain in both legs simultaneously and first time I can recall it happening was during the week we visited Sweden (april).

It has only happened during restdays and only when walking slowly. First time it happened I stopped to do some stretching and then it went away. This feeling has then re-occured during restdays all the way, but it has only been a short pain and I have never suffered from it while cycling.

Wej and I went for a walk in the old town before leaving Bukhara and then it happened again. The pain was more intense and wouldn’t go away. When I woke up the following morning my legs were all stiff and I worried it would be hard to cycle. When in the saddle I immediately started to feel the pain that I had only felt when walking slowly. We tried to cycle a few kilometers, but then I decided to return and rest one more day.

Back at the guesthouse I contacted friends back home who are doctor and physiotherapist. They both thought it was some sort of over exhaustion and told me to rest and maybe eat som anti imflammatory medicine. I did that and the following morning I felt good and we could start our ride towards Samarkand. This meant that we were one day behind schedule.

Although we only saw one sign showing the way to Samarkand it wasn’t hard at all to find the way out of Bukhara. The area around the city is very green and there are villages and towns all the way. Wej and I decided to stop after two hours of cycling to have a cup of coffe and some kefir at a restaurant. We were offered bread too, but we are by now so sick of the bread here that we didn’t want any.

After a 2-3 hours we saw our german friend Simon enjoying a short break in the shade of a tree outside a little shop. Our group had split in Bukhara, but since we were all going in the same direction it was very plausible we would meet again. We rode together for a while and then split again when Wej and I stopped for some reason I can’t remember.

After 60 km the greenery ended abruptly and was replaced by desert. The road made a sharp turn and we got a strong headwind straight into our faces. It was the start of a tough part of the day, but soon we got some relief.

A few kilometers into the desert we were overtaken by a Landrover with lots of stickers, jerrycans on the roof and other signs of being a ”round-the-world-car”. We have seen cars like this many times, but this one stopped 100 meters in front of us. The car was driven by a french couple on the way to Australia and then maybe south america.

They gave us lots of cold water from their fridge and they were very curious about our trip. Being cyclists themselves they suggested that we should come and visit them in their village in the Pyrenees some time. They even said that we were welcome to use their house even if they still were traveling. What a marvelous offer – we will definately try to go and visit them some time, but then with our roadbikes instead of the heavy bikes we now ride.

We lost sight of Simon just before the desert but after fighting for two hours in the dry headwind we found him taking a break at a cafe / hotel at Navois airport. We were also very exhausted, the headwind was strong and it was terribly hot so we decided to take a break there too. After one and a half hour the headwind ceased and we could go on cycling.

Simon and we decided to continue together and in order to make it to Samarkand the day after we needed to make at least 30 more kilometers. With a good road and without any wind we quickly got to the city of Navoi. Since the area is densely populated we didn’t have any big hopes of finding any good spot to camp so we hoped we would find some tea house somewhere.

After passing through Navoi we found a TIR-park which is effectively a truck stop. We went in to ask if we could stay there and of course we were welcome. They served us tea and offered us to shower. Simon found a bench outside where he could sleep while Wej and I paid 5 dollars to sleep in a room.

At the TIR-park we met an Uzbek truck driver who drives his truck between Uzbekistan and Poland and Germany. He told us it takes 6 days to drive to Poland and 7 to Berlin and then the same time back home again. I don’t envy him driving on poor roads and passing many time consuming borders.

We usually go to bed rather early to be able to wake up at 5 AM and there were not many trucks at the TIR-park when we went to bed, but there were lots of them when we woke up. Many of the trucks are obviously bought second hand from Germany since they have logos from German companies. They don’t look old and worn out as one could suspect, instead they look to be in good condition.

A lot of the trucks at this TIR-park and the ones we meet along the road are Volvo and Scania trucks. Every time I see a Volvo truck I think that maybe that specific truck was produced at the factory back in Göteborg. When seeing all those Swedish made trucks it is easy to understand why these two companies have such a major importance for the Swedish industry. Land locked countries have difficulties developing an export based economy and Uzbekistan is one of the two double land locked countries in the world (the other one is Lichtenstein) so it must be very complicated to set up an export industry here.

It was a little more than 150 km from the TIR-park we stayed to the center of Samarkand so we woke up at 5 AM the following morning in order to get as far as possible before the midday heat. There was hardly any wind at all and the road was good so we made good progress during the early hours. The wind picked up around 10 AM and it started to get hot and at noon we had only cycled 80 km when we decided to take a short cut.

It was maybe a shortcut, but the quality of the road was so poor that it was impossible to ride at normal speed. We soon understood that we would bike 30-50 km at slow speed through nothingness and when we at came to a hill top with green trees we decided to stop. This little hill was like an oasis and somewhere there was a well because water was flowing from a pipe into a ditch. We decided to stop on the hill and bought a melon from a roadside vendor.

It was interesting to observe the well. Bypassers stopped to fill water bottles. Overheated trucks stopped and their drivers fetched waters with buckets and threw it onto their engines to cool them down. A couple of times tank trucks came to fill their huge tanks and transport the water somewhere else. They simply drove under the pipe and let all the water flow into the tank and anyone who wanted water while they were filling had to open a valve at the rear of the truck and fill the bottles from the truck instead of from the pipe.

The heat turned into a more bearable temperature in the late afternoon and we started to bike the remaining 65 km into Samarkand. Beyond our oasis hill the road got even worse and there were endless hills. I started to suspect that unless the road got better we would never be able to get to Samarkand that day.

Fortunately the road got better and the headwind ceased too, so we managed to reach Samarkand just before darkness. It was a long hard day, but just as in the wellknown Swedish song we reached to Samarkand that day.