We have been on the classic trade route called the silk road for some time now, but it isn’t until recently that we have got the feeling of really traveling on it. The magnificent buildings in the ancient cities of Khiva and Bukhara made me get a feeling of being present in the orient. Marvellous mosques and madrases covered in marble and mosaicwith blue cupolas that glitter in the sunset would make anyone get the feeling of being in ”Alladinland”.

The Silk Road was the old trade route between China and Europe / North Africa and for centuries different sorts of goods was carried along it in caravans. Today the trade along the Silk Road is still going strong, but the means of transportation is no longer camels, but trucks. We see quite a lot of them along the road as we ride on and many of those trucks have come from countries far away. Every day we see trucks from our baltic neighbours (Lativa and Lithuania), Belarus and sometimes even Poland.

I admire those truck drivers who spend long time away from their families driving their trucks day after day on poor roads and across numerous country borders that I believe take a long time to get past. Everytime I see a truck from Latvia I get the feeling that the world isn’t that big at all – it feels like meeting someone from the neigbouring block when visiting a far away place.

Talking about trucks. When we sat and had our breakfast at a Chaichana (tea house) a few days ago, we saw a truck approaching. When it was close we saw that the trailer was carrying a load of a big wooden ship and none of us could understand why anyone would need a big wooden ship in the middle of the Uzbek desert. The owner of the tea house later told us they sometimes transport old ships like that from the Aral sea where it’s not needed anymore, to Tajikistan. One can wonder where in Tajikistan they would have use for old wooden ships? Maybe they use them as firewood….

The landscape between Khiva and Bukhara consists of just another great desert. It isn’t too fun to cycle on such a flat landscape that when the road disappears it is because of the Earth’s curvature and not of any hill. This time the desert wasn’t so flat and there were small hills all the time and I appreciated to not have to see how the road disappeared below the horizon far away in front of us.

The first 70-80 km out of Khiva were more interesting since we rode on a small road in an area where there is water and hence green and populated. We stopped to have water melons before leaving the green area and heading into the desert. Since we still are a loosely connected group we tie a blue scarf along the road when we have stopped somewhere to show the friends who ride more slowly where to look for us.

Eventhough there was greenery both around Khiva and Bukhara we still felt that this road was the section through the desert was the most boring road so far on this journey. The views were not interesting, the heat was intense and the road was mostly good. When the road is bad one has to concentrate on finding an ideal line and not riding into pot holes, but when the road is good one has time to sit and look at the boring landscape. I needed to muster all of my goal orientation capabilities to be able to ride this road, not because it was so hard but because it was so boring.

The weather in the desert is not only hot. One day it was very windy and the crosswind kept blowing sand into our faces and eyes. Eventhough the wind was slightly from behind it was so hard that it was difficult to cycle and when we saw a tea house after having cycled for 50 km we decided to make a long stop to wait for the wind to cease. Three hours later the wind was almost gone but when we prepared to start to cycle it started to rain. It was not a cold rain like back home and it didn’t last very long but we managed to get really wet. An amazing experience in the desert.

Chaikanas (tea houses) are small restaurants where we stop to have a break and get something to eat. We had read that there would be a section of the road of more than 100 km without any tea houses but we didn’t really know exactly where. This led us to always carry a full load of water. If anyone reads this who intend to ride between Khiva and Bukhara I can just tell you that there are tea houses every 20-40 km and there is no need to carry more water than is needed for half a day.

The tea houses are a very simple restaurant where travelers stop to drink tea and eat simple meals. The guests sit on platforms with a low table in the middle and there are platforms both inside the building and outside. It also seems that these tea houses are a popluar place for truckers to spend the night at. A couple of times we have asked if we can sleep at the tea houses and it has never been a problem. The staff just point at a platform where we can sleep. Sometimes other guests who drink vodka a few tables away have disturbed our sleep but for me that has not been a too big trouble.

One afternoon when we arrived to a tea house we saw that they had a yurt in front of it. There were a lot of trees in the area and we saw water hoses on the ground. This led us to ask if we could stay in the yurt, which we could. Normally we don’t have to pay for the accomodation at the tea houses and only pay for the food, but at the yurt we had to pay the equivalent of 40 US Cents each.

Our German friend Simon has been dreaming of staying in a yurt for 15 years and now it was going to become true, and on a very special day for him. The following day was his birthday and he would wake up in a yurt – a perfect birthday present.

Having slept in yurt before I didn’t enjoy it in any particular way. What I enjoyed most with this tea house was the water hose. I went into the little garden beside and used the hose as a shower. It felt wonderful after a day of cycling with temperatures going as far up as 45 in the shade.

Our group is soon going to split and since it was Simon’s birthday we decided to camp in the desert and he invited us to his birthday party consisting of biscuits and two big bottles of beer. Not that we got drunk but it was a nice feeling to sit in the desert watching the clear sky with thousands of stars while having a beer and interesting conversations.

Someone suggested that we should play cards and use the 1000 Som notes as stakes. Everyone laughed at the idea since the 1000 Som has very little value. Wej then suggested that we could use a glass of water as stakes instead but was immediately met with an unison ”no – that is far too expensive….”

Central asia is not known as a region famous for its cuisine and we often have discussions what we dream of eating. A pizza and a beer has been on the wish list for some time and this became a reality by accident… When riding into Bukhara Wej and I took the wrong road but we spotted an Italian restaurant so there was a big advantage in getting lost… 🙂

One of those things we really want to eat is potatoes and one evening here in Bukhara another german cyclist went out to buy some potatoes that he boiled and invited us to share with him. It was wonderful to eat plain potatoes and dip them into salt. I don’t think I have ever dreamt about eating only plain potatoes since during my survival training in the army……

Bukhara is one of the classic cities along the Uzbek part of the Silk Road. We have spent some time just walking around admiring all the old beuatiful buildings. It doesn’t feel as over-renovated as in Khiva and the city feels more lively. One day we went up to the ”Ark” which was the former government palace located on a hill. It is now a museum but only 20 % of the buildings in the 4 hectare palace area is still intact. The remaining 80% is just rubble from when the Bolsheviks bombed the area in the 1920:s.

We are now in the ancient silk road city of Khiva in Uzbekistan. From the Aktau to the town of Beyneu in Kazakstan it was 500 km cycling thorugh the desert and from Beyneu to Khiva it has been another 700 km mainly through desert.

We have passed some small town and villages on our way here. Some of them have been in the middle of the desert and with a seriously poor road leading to them and with at least 100 km to the next similar settlement.

In these villages/towns there are activities going on. Kids go to school and adults are busy doing their chores, but the contact with the surrounding world must be minimal and I wonder what they do a Saturday night in for example a little town like Shetpe. There can’t be much entertainment in town and the distance to the next town and the condition of the road makes it difficult to go there. Eventhough I grew up in a small place in Sweden I think I had way better opportunities to interact with people outside my village than the people in these towns and I every time I have visited these small desert towns I get more and more happy that my Mum and Dad didn’t bring me up in a burning hot and sandy town far far far from the rest of the world.

Beyneu was the first decent sized town we came to and even that was a town which felt far from the rest of the world, but it had something that we enjoyed highly – running water. We are so used to get as much water as we please from our taps and maybe it takes a tour through the desert and taking care of the daily hygien with less than a liter to understand how precious water really is.

We spent a day in the not very bustling city of Beyneu by taking care of things needed to be taken care of and that was washing, cleaning bikes, blogging and sleeping. We also visited the local market where we bought a footprint for our tent…. 🙂

Well, it is actually not a real footprint but an oilcloth with a pattern of ladybugs that will provide extra protection from the nasty thorns that could otherwise penetrate the floor of our tent.

From Beyneu it was about 90 km to the Uzbek border. We didn’t intend to cross the border the same day so we started a bit late. The road towards the border is gravel and full of pot holes. Knowing it would be a race once in Uzbekistan we cycled slowly and went in to one of those little desert villages to buy some cold drinks to our lunch. I must say it again – it can’t be fun to grow up in the middle of the desert and the nearest town is a town like Beyneu.

We stopped 6 km short of the border to Uzbekistan. The reason for this was that Uzbekistan has a system where foreign tourists have to register at a hotel at least every third day. It is 430 km from the border to the nearest hotel and therefore our intention was to enter early in the morning and then go as far as we could that day.

We had learned that the border passage was open 24 hours, but when we arrived at 7.30 we found out that it actually was closed for a shift change between 7-9. At around 9.30 we were let in to the border building and could start the customs procedure. When entering Uzbekistan one has to declare all currency, valuable items, vehicles (bicycles), medicines etc. before entering the country. We were six people in the group and it took until noon until we could start cycling.

Once inside Uzbekistan the condition of the road improved significantly. While it was a dirt road on the Kazak side it was a fine asphalt road on the Uzbek side. Sometimes the tarmac was a bit broken but for most of the time it was of good quality.

The road is straight to say the least. During our first day in Uzbekistan we cycled 110 km without making a single turn. It could have been boring but since we had a good tailwind we could cruise across the desert at good speed.

In thai the word for desert is translated as ”sea of sand” and I now I really understand why. The landscape was very flat and when turing around 360 degrees and seing nothing but a sandy horizon line it is not far away to call it ”sea of sand”.

Seing a truck approaching from far away was like seeing a ship. First we saw the top of it and then after a while all of it became visable and then it took a long while until we actually met it.
This vast land of nothingness is hard to understand and I can’t really tell if I like it or not. On the bad road in Kazakstan it was a struggle to move forward and all focus was on finding a line through all the pot holes and cracks, but on the good road in Uzbekistan there was more time to look around. I wouldn’t like to live in this area but I am glad to have been able to visit it. Being in a group of friends also makes it easier, but I think I could also enjoy the solitude if we would travel without our current companions.

During the second day in Uzbekistan we cycled 183 km and that is the longest I have ever cycled with a loaded touring bike. We had to make it reach Nukus in three days and decided to make use the middle day to get some extra kilometers done.

Our group is not really a group but individuals who happen to travel the same route at the same time. We cycle at different speeds and soon after we start biking we are all spread out, but we agree on where to meet around lunch and where to stop. During this long day there was a misunderstanding and half of the group went camping while our New Zealand friend and ourselves continued 2 km past the agreed camp site to a truck stop where we could enjoy a shower, food at the restaurant and sleep for free at the eating platforms outside the restaurant. After 183 km on the road it felt very good to be able to shower properly instead of doing it with 700 ml water.

The following morning we had some 35 km to ride to Kungrad and right outside Kungrad the desert ended. It was not a gradual change, it was rather like a line in the terrain. West of that line sandy desert and east of it greenery. It is the water stolen from the Aral Sea that makes it possible to create green areas in the desert.

When we cycle in these green areas we feel like when cycling in Thailand. It is hot and a lot more humid than in the desert. Apart from the cotton fields there are lots of rice paddies and fields where vegetables are grown. At the roadside people sell water melons from small stalls and the villages are close to each other and there are a lot of people everywhere. But the greenery ends just as quickly as it starts. It is so evident that where there are no irrigation canals, there will simply be a sandy desert.

Arriving at Nukus we checked in at the cheapest hotel in town. It looked good from the outside, but the interior certainly had seen better days. Everything was in desperate need of repair and the 12 dollars per night each of us paid felt like a bit to much for what we got. Personally I would have prefered to stay at place like the truck stop last night, but we had to stay at the hotel to get the registration.

Nukus has one attraction and that is Igor Savitsky’s art museum. Savitsky was an artist from Moscow who settled down in Nukus and started to collect avant garde art from all corners of the Soviet union. The Kremlin knew about this, but since it was so far off from everything they let him do it and now his museum is the place to visit if one wants to see the art from artists who didn’t follow the communist art style.

It took us two days to cycle from Nukus to the ancient silk road town of Khiva where we are right now. Khiva’s old city is just wonderful and not until we arrived here did we really get the feeling that we are traveling along the classic silk road. Take a look at the post Wej just made (in thai) and you will see some pictures of the old town in Khiva.

Tomorrow we will set out for the four day ride to Bukhara which is the next classic town on the silk road.

Ready to go
It took a lot longer time to land in Aktau then we had imagined. When we finally were in port we were all ordered to get inside the ship. Border control police and customs officers came on board and checked the passports of the crew. A few hours later we were allowed to leave the ferry escorted by a police officer. We were led to an arrival hall and told to fill out some documents and line up for the regular inspection of our passports.

Since Wej and I were going to switch our passports here it was more exiting than the usual border passage. I went before Wej and showed the officer my other passport (not the one I used to exit Azerbaijan). It went well and I got my entry stamp and took a few steps forward and was stopped by a customs officer. He wanted to see me passport and asked me if I carried any narcotics or weapons and asked me to open one of my panniers. When he had taken a brief look through he told me to empty my pockets and then he found the passport I used to exit Azerbaijan. He was confused about me having two passports and took both of them back to the border control police.

I cursed myself for keeping it at such a foolish place as my pocket, but I needed to have it easily available if there would be any questions about why I didn’t have any exit stamp from Azerbaijan. Wej was standing behind me in the line and I told her to quickly hide her other passport.

One of the russians in the National Geographic photo team who were on the ship with us spoke excellent english and I asked him and the russian speaking german to come over to assist. They told the officer that it is very common in western countries to have two passports and explained that it was necessary if wanting to visit both arab countries and Israel.

After a while the border police officer came with my passports and said it was alright but that I shouldn’t show to anyone that I have two passports. Well – I actually didn’t show anyone, it was the customs officer who asked to see what I had in my pockets. What should I have done if I had hidden it in my sleeping bag and he had asked to see my sleeping bag?
The passport problem is anyway gone now since the next passport switch will be at the Thai border and then we are on our home turf and can explain in the right language if there should be any questions.

In many of the former soviet republics of central asia the demand for foreigners to register at the migration police is still in use. Since we were going to be in Kazakstan for more than 5 days we had to go and register. It took us about 3 hours to get a little extra stamp at our arrival cards.

After having registered it was time to go and buy some supplies for the coming five days ride through the desert. We found a well stocked supermarket and we all bought lots of pasta and canned fish, meat as well as nutella and jam. Only high carbohydrate stuff….

After getting our supplies we had a short discussion outside the supermarket which way to go from Aktau towards the town of Shetpe. There are two routes, one to the north and one to the south and after weighing for and against we decided to opt for the southern route.

Landscape
This part of Kazakstan is very flat and dry. I thought it should be a steppe but it turned out to be more of a desert. The ground is sandy or consists of hard burnt and cracked dirt with very little vegetation. The plants that grow are not higher than 20 cm and some of them have nasty thorns that are able to penetrate the floor in our tent. To avoid that we try to put our tent on bald areas and if there are any thorny little bushes we simply pull them up to make room for our tent. We also put our foam mattresses under the tent floor for extra protection.

We have seen small scorpions living in the cracks on the ground and we are very careful when moving around and we have got a habit of turning shoes upside down and shake clothes before putting them on.

Apart from the scorpions we have seen lots of small desert rats that run quickly from one hole to the other. I don’t know what these little animals eat, but I bet the snake one of our friends saw feed on those rats.

Camels and dromedaries are a common sight both in the desert and in the villages and towns. Some of them seem to have a marking indicating that they have an owner, while other seem to move around completely as they like. They walk on the road, beside the road and cars need to honk their horns to get them to move out of the way. Yesterday we saw a dromedary eating from the tree outside the hotel here in central Beyneu so they are just as common sight here as a pigeon in the park back home.

What we didn’t expect to see in the desert was horses. Large groups of up to 30 animals roam around in the areas where there is a little grass. I haven’t seen any markings on them and I don’t know if they are wild or have any owner. A camel must be of much more use in this kind of environment than a horse and maybe the horses are kept just for their meet.

Weather
The desert is hot. Actually it is extremely hot with temperatures going above 40 degrees. With no trees there is very little shade to find and our strategy has been to wake up at 5 AM and start cycling at 6.15 and continue until the heat is unbearable. Then we take a break somewhere where there is shade and continue to cycle for 2-3 more hours before looking for somewhere to camp.

The second night in the desert we camped just below a small mountain ridge. We saw heavy clouds on the horizon and they came closer. When it was time to go to bed it actually started to rain. Not a heavy rain, but still a rain. When we woke up at 5 AM in the morning it was very windy and it had started to rain again so we decided to sleep one more hour before starting to cycle. At 9 AM the sky was clear and the sun was shining and it was hard to believe that the weather had been so nasty only 3 hours earlier.

When riding in the desert we need to protect ourselves from the merciless sunshine. I pull down my cap and use a buff to cover my neck and ears.

When dressed like this it is easy to start to think about how it was when we were caught in the blizzard in Hungary some three months ago.

Meetings in the desert
Eventhough it is a remote road there is some traffic on it. A lot of the traffic seems to be trucks going in both directions. The condition of the road surface very often made the trucks go very slowly and sometimes we cycled faster than they drive. One thing we noted was that the truck traffic was more intense during night time than during the day. I don’t know why it is like this and I think it is a real challange to navigate a truck on that really bad road during night time.

The truck drivers have been our friends on the road and we have had a couple of interesting meetings that are worth mentioning.

On day 3 we made a little detour from the road to ride into a village to buy more water and when we exited the town it was already time to start to look for somewhere to stay. When we came back to the main road we found a ”chaichana” (tea house) that also was a hotel. I went in to ask if we could stay there but the place was so lousy so we prefered to stay in our tents.

Truck drivers seem to like the tea houses and outside this one there were two large trucks from the American defense contractor Halliburton and a trailer with a RIB-boat with two large Evinrude engines. We must admit that we were confused about why someone would want such a boat in the middle of a desert.

We saw the Hallibruton trucks a couple of more times and one time they parked outside another tea house where we were resting and waiting for our two friends who cycled behind us. The drivers started to ask the usual questions where we come from and where we were going. We had no common language and after 20 minutes of talking we thought that they would give up. Then they started to order vodka and got a bit drunk and very pushy. When our two friends arrived after an hour we felt relieved and thought that they could take care of the drivers for a while.

Just like us our friends were asked where they come from and when the truckers heard that he is German the truckers got mad and accused our friend for nazism and made gestures refering to Hitler. It developed into a situation when one of the drivers threw a bottle at our German friend and we decided to back off and go camping somewhere out of sight from the tea house.
The following day we saw the Halliburton trucks a couple of times as they drove past us. We overtook them again when they had parked at a tea house and it seemed that these two truckers don’t go any further each day than we do on our bikes. I wonder what their bosses at Halliburton thinks about that.

On our the 4th day we were riding through a part of the road that was under re-construction. It was exceptionally dusty and we often had to wade through knee high piles of dust that was just as soft as powder. The sun was very hot and we were completely dusty when two trucks stopped in front of us and asked what we were doing.

The drivers were turkish and told us they were on their way back from Bishkek to Istanbul. We told them we had been to Turkey and enjoyed it. Being turkish, the drivers asked if we needed anything like food or water and asked if we wanted some tea. I pointed towards the sun and said that I would prefer a cold coke and then one of the drivers ran back to his car and came back with a bottle of ice cold lemonade. Wonderful – and it reminded us once again of the hospitality we received in Turkey.

One night when we had set up our camp and shared what was left in a 0.2 liter bottle of vodka, our german friend said that he was sure that all the passing truck drivers had some vodka. He got up on his bike and rode towards the big road a couple of hundred meters away. After a while he came back followed by two large trucks that stopped just beside our camp. The drivers came from Dagestan in Russia and being close to the Caucasian mountain range they were wine drinkers. We spent some 15-20 minutes together and then they handed over a 5 liter bottle of home made red wine.

The wine tasted good, but since it was biking time at 6 AM the following morning I thought one single glass would be enough. Some of our friends had some more wine and I bet it can’t have been fun to bike through the desert with a hammering hangover.

Challanges
The lack of water became evident as soon as we entered the desert. We know where there are villages and tea houses where we can buy water but we still need to carry a lot and it makes the bikes heavy. The most water I have carried so far is 11 liters and that makes it hard when the road becomes sandy. The water also becomes more and more expensive the further into the desert we travel and our spendings on water makes up a large part of our expenses for the last few days.

We need water to drink and cook food, but we also need to maintain some level of personal hygien. I allow myself somewhere between 0.5 to 1 liter of water for the daily shower. I wouldn’t say that it makes me clean like a baby, but it is enough to stay healthy.

Being together with six other people on very flat area with absolutely no trees and a clear view of 360 degrees means that one can’t be shy. If one wants to be without sight when going to the bathroom to shower or do other things, one will have to walk very very far. Shyness is not for the ones traveling together across the flat desert.

Arriving in Beyneu
There around some 30.000 people living in Beyneu so it is not a very large town at all. There are small shops along the main streets and there is a bazar. The town is located at a railway junction and the highway from Uzbekistan to Russia passes through as well as a number of pipelines. There seem to be a fair amount of professionals who come here to work with maintaining this infrastructure which means there are a few hotels in town. We decided long ago that we wanted to stay at one of the better ones and after almost a week in the hot and dusty desert with less than a liter of water for the daily hygien, it was great to be able to take a shower. Not only we needed a shower though, we washed all our clothes in the shower and cleaned the drive trains of the bikes as well.

Now we are prepared for the next section of this ride through the desert and we dont’t expect to be able to get online until Sunday when we expect to arrive in Nukus in Uzbekistan.

Toothpaste
In the grocery store next to the hotel they do sell Sensodyne toothpaste. We thought it could be a good idea to pick up some, but since that would add extra weight to our luggage and we still have toothpaste left, we decided to not buy here. I don’t know why I write this, but I think some of you might want to know…

The unreliable sailing times of the ferry from Baku to Aktau in Kazakstan led us to book our beds at the hostel for one night at the time. This would sooner or later lead to problems since new guests kept coming all the time.

We don’t know if it was to get rid of us or if it was of pure concern, but the lady who runs the hostel kept calling the ferry company several times each day to check if there would be any ferry. On Thursday morning she said it might be one on Friday, but when Friday came it turned out that there wasn’t going to be any departure that day. We asked if we could stay one more night at the hostel and although a bit problematic, the owner managed to let us stay by squeezing in some newcomers in her own apartment.

With all our visas ready we spent a few hours visiting the Swedish honorary consul in Baku who is a friend of a friend back home. It was great to sit down and talk in Swedish to someone else but ourselves. The consul invited us for a midsummer night dinner the following day.

During our stay in Baku I have serviced our bikes and Wej’s back tyre isn’t in the best condition so I moved it to the front wheel instead where it will wear out more slowly. We can’t count on finding any good bike stores in central asia so our plan was to buy a spare tyre in Baku to carry just in case of the unlikely event that some of our tyres blow up, are cut by sharp rocks or simply worn out.

Since Wej’s tyre was in a worse condition than we had expected we went to a bike store to buy not only a spare tyre, but also a completely new tyre for Wej. At the bike shop we met Magsud who has a summer job in the store and is a serious MTB rider. Magsud speaks very good English and we got his phone number in case we needed any help.

When the Friday evening came we were still waiting at the hostel but on Saturday morning the hostel owner told us there would be a ship later that day. She also had a new group of visitors coming in so she almost chased us away.

We were really confused because the hostel owner seemed to have a good contact at the ferry terminal, but her English wasn’t good enough to pass the details in the information on to us. We sent a message to Magsud who dropped by on his way to work and he translated all the information so that we could make a fact based decision.

The information we got was that the ferry would indeed leave that day (Saturday) and she had reserved tickets for us and that we should be at the port at 8 PM on Satuday evening. The hostel was by now soon full of new guests and we all packed our bikes and cycled to a nearby park where we decided to have a common picnic lunch and then spend the afternoon by just hanging around.

There will be a big army parade on June 26th and the Bulevar street (beach road) and the road leading into the port was closed for rehearsals. Earlier during the day someone in the group had tried to ride to the ferry terminal to check the status but had been turned away by soldiers.

When it was time to leave for the port we were afraid that the army would turn us away so we called Magsud who once again came by and rode with us to the terminal. He did an excellent job in telling the soldiers that they had to let us through and when we rode by all the army vehicles parked for the coming parade it felt like an invasion was under preparation. There were hundreds of tanks, rocket launchers and troop transport vehicles parked in straight lines.

Once we arrived at the port around 7 PM on Satuday we found there was nothing. The ticket office was empty and the ferry was not in port. A group of German motorcyclists were already waiting there and they told us (one of them spoke excellent russian) that the lady who sells the ticket would come at 10 PM and that we would be able to board at midnight.

The ferry between Baku and Aqtau is not a regular passanger ferry, but a ship that transports train carriages across the Caspian Sea. It sails when there is enough cargo and when the weather conditions permit.

We all got very excited when the ferry finally arrived in the Saturday evening but there lady in the ticket office was still absent. We spent our time waiting in an old shed and we had two 2.5 liter bottles of beer to share so the time passed easily 😉 Around midnight we learned that the lady selling tickets would come early in the morning instead. Rumours said that we could board the ferry before and pay straight to the captain afterwards, but we decided to spend the night at the shed.

7 cyclists, 5 motorcyclists and a lone french backpacker spread out their sleeping matresses on the ground and fell asleep only bothered by mosquitos and the squeeking sound of railway cars being pushed on and off the nearby ferry.

We woke up around 6.30 on Sunday morning and packed our equipment and had some bread with jam for breakfast. At 8.30 we went to the ticket office to buy our tickets. Finding the port and the ticket office and then buying the ticket is rather complicated and I have read numerous journals on the web about travelers running into all sorts of problems and that the lady selling the tickets is a witch.

For us it was very smooth. The german motorcycle rider who spoke fluent russian helped us and the lady at the ticket office is certainly not a witch. She was actually very nice and smiled and joked all the time.

With tickets in our hands and our bikes loaded we were ready to board the ferry, but again nothing happened. We spent a few more hours waiting at the shed that now started to feel like our home.

Sometime around noon on Sunday we were waved to the customs and immigration booth. Once again nothing happened and we had to wait another hour before being called inside to get our travel documents checked.

At 2 PM on Sunday we could finally roll over the gangway and park our bikes among the railway cars. The ferry only takes 12 passengers and we were 15 in total which caused some problems. We were told to wait in the passenger’s mess and we all quickly fell asleep. Being onboad the ferry didn’t mean that we were getting any closer to Kazakstan though. It took another 3 hours before the ship finally set sail and left the Baku’s port at about 5 PM on Sunday afternoon.

We spent the good part of the Saturday day sitting and waiting in the park and then 22 hours by waiting at the shed and in the ferry before we really departed Baku.

The ferry company has two ships on this route, one old and one that is newly built. We are on the old ship (Agdan) and we are surprised that the ship isn’t in as bad condition as we had expected. The only drawback is that there has been a misunderstanding about our reservation and there wasn’t beds for all of us (bunk beds). A crew mate was ordered by the captain to give up his cabin for Wej and me and our friends slept on their own matresses in the passenger’s mess.

The main income for Azerbaijan comes from oil export and after leaving the port in Baku we sailed passed hundreds of oilrigs before we enjoyed a lovely sunset at sea followed by a bright fullmoon.

We felt just like we were on a cruise and the only thing we lacked was some entertainment onboard but I guess the crew isn’t prepared to set up any shows for only 15 passangers who are now only thinking about the coming ride through the desert….

On Monday afternoon we could see land on the Kazak shore of the Caspian Sea and we all hoped we would be able to get off the ship and cycle into town to buy some supplies for the coming days. Then the captain dropped the anchor……. 🙁 Soon after we were informed that there were no available space for our ship in the docks and we had to wait until perhaps 10 PM on Monday evening. Arriving to a new country and city that late is not very pleasant and we asked if we could stay onboard until Tuesday morning. The captain said he would try to see if it would be possible to arrive later and after an hour or two we got the message we would arrive early Tuesday morning instead.

When we were loading our bikes on early Tueday morning to be ready to disembark, we got new information telling that there harbour workers had a shift change and that we would have to wait 2-3 more hours before being able to leave the ship and go to thorugh customs which they say will take around 3 hours.

We arrived at the port in Baku on Saturday afternoon and will be cleared to start cycling in the early afternoon on Tuesday. For the time being we have been onboard this ship for 44 hours and we expect it to be 46 in total. That’s a lot of time to sail 450 km across the Caspian Sea…. Next time we should maybe cycle around it instead…. 😉

The good thing in all this is that we didn’t have to pay for the second night onboard and the extra dinner and breakfast that we would be served. The ticket prices was 110 USD and if we count the two nights of accomodation, two breakfast, lunches and dinners served, then it is not a bad price at all, but I would be happy to pay another 10-20 USD to get working toilets. They all stopped working in the Monday evening and I will spare you the description of look and the smell of the bathrooms 🙂

The very long wait for the ferry and the 46 hour long ferry ride itself has been interesting. In our western societies time is money and we are not used to wait for something to happen sometime which could be this afternoon or three days later. We want exact dates and times and feel unproductive and get restless and upset when there is no reliable information available about when things can be expected to happen.

I have during my trips to other far away countries often found that people seem to be able to not get restless when they wait for something to happen. Things will happen when they happen and maybe we stressed westerners who always want to be productive have something to learn. At least for us the experience with the ferry across the Caspian Sea has been a good lesson of how life is for many people around the world and I think we all have learned quite a lot from it this part of the adventure.

We submitted our visa applications at the Kazak embassy when it opened on this Tuesday morning. The officer told us our visas would be ready by Friday which was one day later than we had hoped. The good news was that he didn’t keep our passports during the time.

The following day (wednesday) the three cyclists we got to know in Tbilisi came to our hostel. We met Bartek (Poland) first time at the guesthouse in Batumi and first time we met Simon (New Zealand) was at the gas station outside Gori when Wej’s knee problem had got worse. They were riding with Marko from Slovenia who we met when he rested in the shade of a tree outside Bojormi. They had cycled together from Tbilisi to Baku at high speed to be able to apply for some central asian visas before the weekend.

We followed them to the Uzbek embassy to see where it was located. They all had letter of invitations (LOI) for Uzbekistan and would get visas on the spot. Our LOI wasn’t ready yet and we were afraid our friends would get their visas quickly and sail away with the next ship and leaving us to cross the Kazak and Uzbek deserts on our own,

Sine they had gone too late to the embassy the consul told them to come back to pick up their passports the following day when the embassy’s consular department actually was closed. When we all returned to the hostel we had got our own LOI e-mailed to us two days quicker than promised. The owner of the hostel told us there would be a ferry sailing to Kazakstan on Friday and this message was great but even if we now had our LOI:s we still had to get the visas.

The Uzbek embassy was going to be closed the following day (Thursday) but since our friends had made an appointment to pick up their passports we joined them to get inside. Once we were there the consul wasn’t too happy of seeing more visitors outside opening hours, but he was kind enough to grant us our visas on the spot too.

With our Uzbek visas stamped into our passports we hurried to the Kazak embassy. It was only Thursday and the passports wouldn’t be ready until Friday, but we took a chance. The consul immediately recognized our faces and said ”I told you to come on Friday, but I will check if your visas are ready”. We waited patiently outside his office and when we heard the sound from his printer the hope of being able to sail on the same ferry as our friends grew.

Our passports had now visas for Kazakstan, Uzbekistan and China and I felt just as relieved as after having a tough test a university. It was party time…..

In the Friday morning we got the news that there wouldn’t be a ferry to Kazakstan that day after all. We are 7 cyclists at our hostel who want to get across the Caspian and we discussed what to do. Some of us were under more time constraints with their Azeri visas soon expiring and the thought of flying across the Caspian once again returned.

When I write this it is Saturday afternoon and we have got information that a ferry is on its way into harbour and that we should be at the ticket booth at 8 PM. We hope that the ferry will sail some time during the night and arrive in Aktau on the Kazak side of the Caspian Sea during Sunday or early Monday.

From Aktau we expect some rough riding through the dessert to the town of Beyneu. It is 400 km through the dessert. Our plan is then to take one rest day in Beyneu before continuing on an even more horrible road to the Uzbek border.

Uzbekistan requires travelers to register every 72 hours. The registration is done by checking in to a hotel where foreigners are allowed to stay. From the border to the nearest point of registration it is 370 km of pure desert so we are looking forward to some interesting days of cycling.

The last few hours up to the border to Azerbaijan was slightly uphill and the heat was intense. We spent our last coins in the Georgian currency Lari by buying 4 pieces of chewing gum at a shop 50 meters from the border.

A georgian border guard asked for our passports, flipped through my passport several times and asked if I had another passport too. I do have a second passport but that was already delivered to Baku and I couldn’t understand the reason for his question.

After another minute of careful inspection of my passport the officer asked ”when and where did you enter Georgia?”

I replied ”June 20, at the border south of Batumi”. The officer then told me there was no entry stamp in my passport. He flipped through the pages once again and then he looked closely at the azerbaijan visa sticker and told me that it looked like the azeri consul must have put the visa sticker right on top of my entry stamp to Georgia. He mumbled something about ”stupid consul” and told me it wasn’t my problem, took my passport and went to check my entry date in his computer system before givingin me my exit stamp.

Georgia is a country I have started to like. They have made big progress when it comes to moving the society away from the old soviet heritage. One thing I learned during my stay was that just like elsewhere in the former soviet union corruption was rampant in Georgia. In 2005 the government took the drastic decision to fire 95% of the police force and start over with new officers who got a salary increase of several hundred percent. I bet there were lots of influential people who were not so satisfied with this but now Georgia’s police force is ranked as being on western european level when it comes to corruption.

Our entry into the country was late in the afternoon and we stopped in the first city to get some cash before continuing out of town to find somewhere to pitch our tent. We found lots of potential camp sites but they all had some drawbacks, but during a fast speed down a hill Wej dropped one of her water bottles and when we stopped to pick it up we saw a great camp site just some 50 meters beside the road.

We love eating good food but we let professionals take us on culinary excursions in the local cuisine. When we cook ourselves we stick to some simple basic food and today was the third day in a row when we ate spagetti with a sauce consisting of tomato paste, onion and fried salami. Good taste, but it starts to be boring by now.

In the morning we found out that we had camped in a field where cattle graze and as we were preparing our morning coffee we saw one, two, three and many many more cows coming walking through the gate into the field where we had stayed. Behind the long row of cattle was a guy on a horse – a true cowboy. He closed the gate behind the cows and came over to talk to us. As usual the language barrier was too great to overcome, but this was a cowboy of the 21 century. He soon pulled out a smartphone of his pocket and we could communicate via his google translate app…..

The cowboy told us to drop by his house further down the road and have a cup of tea and then left us. Half an hour later when we were cycling along the road we heard the sound of a galloping horse behind is. It was the cowboy who was anxious we would miss his house and had hurried to catch up with us.

The cowboy lived with his grandmother and brother’s family in a small house. his grandmother was a colorful and decisive old women who countiously shouted out orders to the people around her. The cowboy just nodded and smiled to us as a sign of not taking her seriously.

Just like in Turkey they served their guests tea but here they but some leaves of mint in the tea glass to make it mint tea.

After having some tea we continued our ride along the valley with the snow capped mountains of the great Caucasus on our left. The landscape was very green and we very often found ourselves riding through alleys with large trees on both sides.

It was a hot day and in the afternoon the heat was so intense it was almost impossible to cycle. We decided to take a rest at the first possible place that could offer us shade and something cold to drink. Three large trucks parked beside the road made us hope for a cafe or restaurant but when we got close we found three truck drivers preparing lunch in the shade between their trucks. They were driving in a caravan from Turkey to Baku and since they were turkish it didn’t even take half a minute until we were invited to share their lunch of fried fish, fresh salad, Trabzon bread, cold water and turkish tea. These guys showed that the turkish hospitality is extended beyond the borders of Turkey…. 🙂

During the late afternoon the heat was so intense that I developed a rash on the inside of my thighs and needed to get a proper shower and not only a wash with my water bottle. Lucky us to find that AZ Petrol in the next town runs its own motel. It was a bit expensive but it had AIRCONDITION 🙂 Dear readers and followers – not so many months ago we sought indoor shelter to stay warm, now we go indoors to enjoy AC….. 🙂

We rode through Georgia with an simple map we got second hand from a Thai touring cyclists we met in Batumi and it worked fine. When we entered Azerbaijan we didn’t even have a simple map – we had none and just follewed the road signs.

While we still were on the Georgian side of the border we could see mountains growing bigger and bigger as we got closer and once inside Azerbaijan we rode parallell to the mountains. The first few days the landscape was very green and there were forests everywhere and cattle were grazing on the grassy fields. We highly enjoyed this kind of landscape but 1,5 days before entering Baku the landscape changed dramatically.

After a giant climb to Gabala city it was time to find somewhere to sleep and we ended up at a little local bakery just outside the town. We asked the owners if we could camp in their garden and they didn’t only allow us to stay there. They also provided us with fresh bread.

On our fourth day in Azerbaijan the landscape changed from very green to a brown, dry semi dessert. The shade was gone and the heat got even worse. Our plan was to get to the city of Samaxi where we would try to camp. We knew there would have to get across a valley with a steep downhill followed by just as steep uphill section. It wasn’t hard to ride down, but the climb out of the valley was the steepest so far on our journey. It was in fact so steep that we almost had to push the bikes. We rode at 3-4 km/h and often stopped to rest.

In Samaxi we soon found another AZ Petrol station and we stopped to wash ourselves at their restroom. When the owner asked where we were going to stay we quickly asked if he knew where we could camp. He pointed to a lawn just across the street. Since our plan was to start riding at 5 AM we thought we could as well just sit and sleep at a hidden corner at the gas station. After having had dinner at the gas station’s cafe the owner suggested we could sleep in the prayer room of the gas station. We parked our bikes inside the prayer room and then fell asleep on the thick carpets.

There is not much to say about the ride into Baku. It was 120 km across a dry semi dessert and I found the views rather boring. We stopped in a few small towns to have a cold drink and on top of one of the hills there was a large stall selling melons. We stopped there to buy one, but was offered one for free 🙂

Riding into Baku was rather uncomplicated. The city only has 2-3 million people and we followed the signs into the centre and then used our map from the guide book to get to the hostel in the old town that we had planned to stay at.

Georgia isn’t a very big country and when we arrived in the country on May 20 we only planned to stay for about two weeks before continuing to Azerbaijan. Then two things happened that would slow us down. First Wej fell and hurt her knee and then we discovered we had made a mistake when providing information to the travel agency that would make the letter of invitation to Uzbekistan. All this made us have to wait and all the waiting have been frustrating.

We have been in good company though and met plenty of other cyclists from many countries. I knew of 12 other cyclist being in town at about the same time. It felt like Tbilisi was the gathering point for the cycle caravan going to traverse the silk road.

Wej and I were in no rush since there was a delay with the letter of invitation to Uzbekistan and we postponed our departure from Tbilisi one day at the time since her knee wouldn’t stop aching. When we finally left Tbilisi last Tuesday (11 June) our aim was to make a soft start and only ride for a few hours. It was raining the day before we left and when we finally got into our saddles the sky seemed to promise rain sooner rather than later.

At the outskirts of Tbilisi we caught up with another cyclist. It was a man in his late 50:s who had lots of plastic bags hanging from his bike. We exchanged a few words as we rode past him, but when we later stopped he caught up with us and came over to talk to us. He didn’t know any english but spoke german, italian, russian and spanish. He tolds us he was on his way to Sighnagi which happened to be our target too.

The road out of Tbilisi was slowly taking us uphill and we cycled very slowly and stopped often so Wej could do stretching and massage her knee. It all went quite well but after about one hour her knee started to ache again. This made us seriously concerned and we decided to take a break to rest somewhere. At about the same time the colour of the sky changed from grey to black and we knew heavy rain was on its way and turned into a gas station to rest and wait for the rain.

After spending about one hour at the gas station we decided to continue and try to find somewhere to camp, but only 5-600 meters after the gas station we found a little hotel. Our plan was to camp but the aching knee had put us in low spirits and we decided to stay there. The owner thought his hotel was a nice one and bragged about the night club, but we were not so convinced that it was a good hotel since the bathroom stank and had almost no water pressure.

We could clearly hear the loud music from the night club during the late hours, but when we walked past we could see there were no guests there….

The next morning Wej complained that the pain in her knee hadn’t gone away and this worried both of us seriously. She did stretching, massaged the knee and did what she could to relieve the pain. We spent several hours in the morning discussing what to do and we ended up in a common decision to return to Tbilisi and have a doctor look at the knee.

This decision was not easy to make and I think we both were anxious about the consequences this would have for the rest of our journey. It was already noon when we finally got the bikes loaded and when we were about to cross the road and roll back to Tbilisi Wej said that we could try to bike a couple of kilometers first before we turned around. There was a long but not so steep uphill immediately after the hotel and when we had climbed it Wej said that she didn’t feel anything in her knee and we decided to continue a little more.

It appeared that the pain was gone and that she only from time to time could feel a little sting in the knee. We rode extra slowly and often stopped to rest and this strategy seemed to work. Wej’s knee was back in business again 🙂

In the late afternoon Johannes – a german cyclist we had met in Tbilisi – caught up with us. We rode the rest of the day together and all of a sudden we once again caught up with the vagabond collecting empty bottels along the road. The vagabond told us there were cherry trees a couple of hundred meters ahead and we all stopped there to eat cherries picked straight from the tree.

We decided to stop early and pitched our tent beside Johannes in an orchard with unknown fruit trees.

The following morning my rear wheel was flat. I think I had parked on something sharp. Normally this shouldn’t cause the tyre to get flat, but maybe my tyres were in worse condition than I thought when we set out on this tour. It makes me a bit concerned since it is hard to find high quality tyres in these countries.

We are now in Azerbaijan at a gas station with internet connection in Gabala city some 220 km from Baku where we estimate to arrive on Monday afternoon.
Wej’s knee works fine, the heat is intense and the scenery is stunning.
More news will be posted in a few days.

We have had the idea of cycling from Göteborg to Bangkok for at least three years and during these years we have read blogs and books about cross continental cycle touring. The ideas went from dreams to something highly plausible about two years ago and the decision to go was made about one year ago.

The last year we have carefully planned everything from choice of route to what equipment to bring. The route has been changed a few times and we have exchanged a lot of our old equipment in order to make our luggage lighter and less bulky. We knew what lay ahead of us and nobody could say that we did not know what we were heading into.

We have flown across the euro-asian continent so many times that we have lost count and with a minimum of hassle and effort you will board an aircraft in Copenhagen in the night and arrive in Bangkok the following morning. This smoothness is all gone when traveling overland and everyone who has ever tried has run into the visa hassles of central asia.

All this was known to us and we made our best to make a good plan for visa applications. We knew we would have to wait for the visa process somewhere so we tried to make it coincide with longer stops in cities we wanted to visit anyway.

What we didn’t plan was to make mistakes…… 😉

When applying for a Uzbek visa a letter of invitation (LOI) is needed and travel agents recognized by the Uzbek government can issue such documents. Already in April we contacted one company and they carefully informed us what we needed to do in order for them to be able to issue a LOI. When the LOI never came I checked our e-mail correspondance I found out we hadn’t sent in all required documents. We had forgotten to mail them the letter proving our employment and the clock hadn’t started to tick yet, but it does as of today….

Getting a LOI takes 10 working days and we can’t apply for the Uzbek visa until we have received the LOI which probably will be on Friday June 21. The Uzbek visa will then be ready around June 28.

We still haven’t applied for our visas for Kazakhstan, but we will do that in Baku. Rumours say it is a straight forward process that takes 4 days since there is no requirement of letter of invitation. Our initial plan was to arrive in Baku today and start the visa process for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. It will take around 7-9 working days to get both visas and then we would try to get on the unreliable ferry connection across the Caspian Sea.

I got very upset when I understood that my negligence to provide all required documents will delay us with one week, but this mistake also provided us with an opportunity for Wej to let her knee rest properly. If everything would have been according to plan there would be a risk that we had pressed forward too early.

We planned 10 days (Monday-Wednesday) for the visa process and then budgeted 7 days to get onto the ferry. Now we will have to spend the 7 days waiting for the ferry to wait for the LOI instead and to make up for the time lost we will try to find a flight that will take us across the Caspian Sea.

It is very frustrating to have to wait for nothing, but we are in good company of a lot of other travelers and cyclist who are stuck in the same situation.

So there is not much to tell more than that we are stuck in Tbilisi….

Meanwhile, please enjoy some photos of Tbilisi.