Author: lindsay

Check out this forecast, and you’ll see what I mean about melting. Temperatures around 40°C for the next two weeks, no rain, no cloud, nothing. Just hot hot hot. Obviously if you’re reading this some time in the future, that forecast may well be for 3 feet of snow, but trust me right now it’s all heat.

I tried walking around the other morning at 10:00, but it was already too hot to do anything. Instead I headed for the coolness of the Metro, to find one of the many parks around Tashkent. There really is an incredible amount of greenery around this city, probably as much as I have seen in a city anywhere in the world. So I sat next to a fountain, reading a Dostoevsky book I picked up the other day. There are huge armies of women that maintain many of the parks, and I watched some of them at work. To deal with small weeds growing up between the paving stones, they dig them out by hand – but they have about 20 miles of paving stones to deal with. Very slow, but I guess it employs more people, and may be better for the environment than dumping a load of Roundup on the paths.

The reason I’m still here is that although I’ve finally gotten all my visas, I’m still waiting for my spare parts to arrive. With this heat, I wouldn’t be doing much riding anyway, but I would like to get up into the mountains. It ended up taking 5 days to get all my visas together, with varying degrees of ease. Chinese was straightforward – took in passport Monday morning, collected Wednesday morning for $60. Asked for 90 days, but only got 60 – so I think best to ask for longer than you want. Should be able to extend this later though. Kyrgyzstan visa was easy – all done within 30 mins, $55 for one month.

Kazakhstan was more of a hassle though – all the online resources I could find say that NZ passport holders no longer require an LOI. But when I got there they said I needed an invitation, and they were giving the same story to as Japanese couple. I’m sick of the LOI tax, so asked about transit. They’ve given me a 5 day transit visa, luckily valid for one month, not exact fixed dates ala Turkmenistan. No idea how I’m going to cover the distance I need to in 5 days, but I’ll work something out, may even be able to extend the visa a little. We’ll see. Originally I was told to return the next day to pick up my Kazakh visa, but on returning I waited an hour before being told “come back tomorrow.” OK, back again…good thing the Metro here is good…and I get my passport back, $20 for a 5 day transit visa.

And yes, from the above you can see that I am now going to go via Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, a detour from my original plan. I’ll put up another post about this in future, explaining why. Tajikistan can wait, maybe in future I’ll put together a loop involving the Karakorum and Pamir Highways.

Random thoughts on Uzbekistan:

• Could someone please explain the pencilled-on monobrow to me? Women the world over spend thousands carefully shaping their eyebrows, with the monobrow being seen as a cardinal sin – yet here if you can’t grow your own monobrow, you just pencil one on
• Police on the Metro – how do they decide who to stop? After many journeys on the Metro, unmolested, unlike most other tourists, I was stopped for the first time. The difference this time was that I was dressed in some new clothes brought locally – n.b. these are modern clothes that Russians would wear, not Uzbek clothing, and was with a Russian local. But I’m not sure they policeman could read. He looked at my passport, then I had to find the visa for him, then he asked if I’d been there since 2006, as he couldn’t seem to read the dates. Not quite following the Russian, I just said yes, he said “OK, no problem.” I retrieved my passport and went on my way. At least he didn’t ask for money, like the diplomatic police at the Kazakhstan embassy. Apparently the Kazakh police are much smarter, and when they want money, they demand it, and it’s difficult to get out of it. Here it’s easy to plead ignorance.
• Related to the above, it’s been interesting to see just how many people think I’m Russian, and local – people keep asking me for directions. I need to learn how to say “Do I look like a local to you?” in Russian. I could just tell them to F— Off, and then they’ll be sure that I’m Russian.
• Racism. Wow. You would think that with modern communications, international media, etc., locals would be used to seeing people with different coloured skin. But no, any black people walking around (and there are very, very few), will have to deal with people staring, pointing, and saying “nigger, nigger.” Locals (at least the Russian locals) really cannot deal with Africans or Asians. Quite interesting, different to the much more cosmopolitan cities of Western Europe, etc. Not that racism is non-existent there, but it tends to be beneath the surface.

I think I’ve found a local pub that will be showing the rugby today, and at a more convenient time than that for my New Zealand-based readers. It seems to be an expat bar, so I’m expecting high prices, well above what locals could afford, but it will be worth it if I can watch rugby, and flip over occasionally to the yachting – let’s hope things go better there than last time!

Oh dear. Things are all getting a bit bad when you get genuinely excited at seeing a supermarket. I didn’t really need much, but I wanted to go in and push a trolley around gleaming white air-conditioned aisles, marvelling at the ridiculous levels of choice available. I ended up spending $20 (i.e. quite a lot), on some things I didn’t even really need. But it was just a bit too much for me, seeing all those varieties of shower gel. It was more or less a Western supermarket, and most of my readers would not even blink at it, but when you haven’t seen one since Erzurum, quite a few weeks ago, it’s quite a novelty. It’s quite close to where I’m staying, and I think I shall visit again.

I am now in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, a city of two million people, with wide tree-lined streets, all feeling very modern, even with a metro system. After being down in Samarkand, I was back to feeling very good on the bike – I was going to take 3 days to here, but in spite of a headwind I made 145km on the first day out, and then the wind was gone yesterday, so I set a new personal best, racking up 195km to get to Tashkent. 25-30km longer than I’ve ever covered in one day. I considered riding around for another 5km, to make 200km, but I’m not that much of a dork. A 200km day can wait until China.

For those cyclists coming this way, and wondering about the road from Samarkand to Tashkent, where it crosses through Kazakhstan, just follow the M39. Shortly before the border is a police checkpoint, and some blocks across the M39. The police will tell you to turn down the road towards Gulistan, then go north from there. My map shows that road as very small, but it’s a brand new 35km dual carriageway to Gulistan. From there the road is a bit rough for the next 50km or so, before improving for the last part to Tashkent. The detour adds around 50km to the trip. Damn Stalin and his gerrymandering.

So I was struggling with a headwind, when I saw two cyclists sitting by the road. Two nice Swiss guys, who I stopped at chatted to for a couple of hours. They had given up after 10km, and were sitting under the trees, smoking, drinking vodka, and reading. A pleasant couple of hours, and a nice diversion from what could have been a tough day. Could have been tough, but then later that day I grabbed the back of the truck for a haul up the hill, then as I rolled down the other side, “Wherever I May Roam” came on the MP3 player, the scenery was fantastic, and all was good with the world. Thought of all my friends, probably sitting at work staring at the clock, waiting for 5:00 so they could go to the pub – and I knew I was right where I wanted to be.

But it is not without challenges – I was waiting for a kebab last night, when there was a delay as the guy making the kebabs had to stop to wrap a fresh strip of bandage around his colleague’s thumb, which was spurting blood. Even more blood started coming through the bandage, as he went back to work making kebabs. No washing of hands or anything. I looked around, thought about it a bit (this is a sign of how far I’ve come, I needed to think about it), and walked away. Found an amazingly clean Turkish fast food restaurant, two dinners for around $5. And didn’t get sick, so that’s good – the stomach seems settled right now.

I’ll be here for a few days, sorting out Chinese, Kyrgyz and Kazakh visas. I may also get some bicycle spares delivered to here, which might take a few more days. But it seems a nice enough place to kill some time, wandering around those aisles with my trolley…what? You have a choice of toothpaste? And more than two sorts of noodles?…all this decision-making will tax my brain a bit.

Grrrr. I’m starting to get a bit annoyed with this now – had either a relapse (or a fresh dose from something dodgy eaten at the bazaar) of the stomach problems I had last week, and ended up spending another day in bed. This means I didn’t leave Samarkand today as planned, but it doesn’t matter, as I’ll still get there by Sunday, and the embassies aren’t open until Monday.

Besides, the place I am staying at is fantastic – cheapish, clean enough, includes decent breakfast, and dinner for an extra $1. Best part is the shady courtyard, perfect for sitting and relaxing during the late afternoon, when it’s just too hot to go and do anything else. Bahodir’s B&B; is the name – must be in the Lonely Planet, as there’s a bunch of other traveller-types there. It’s been very strange to have decent conversations, not in pidgin English. Good up to date information from people coming the other direction too. But a bit odd, since it’s probably more tourists than I’ve seen since Istanbul.

People say that Samarkand is not all that interesting, and that you should spend more time in Bukhara. Probably Bukhara is worthy or more attention, but there’s still more than enough to do here to keep you occupied for several days, especially moving at my slow pace. Lord Curzon called The Registan “The most noble public square in the world,” and he’s possibly right – although Esfahan does come close. However I do have to note that the sound and light show is exceedingly boring. Still, if you don’t sit on the seats it costs nothing, and is only a couple of minutes walk from where we were staying. But we still ended up leaving early. Apparently it kept going for ages after we left, switching to a Russian version.

Two days of riding from Bukhara to Samarkand was livened up by riding with Robert, a Belgian cyclist on his way to Beijing. His Russian frankly embarrassed me, but it did make it easier for us to ask to sleep at a chaikhana (tea house) for a few hours after lunch, and then later for another chaikhana to find us a shed to sleep in out the back. This got me to thinking – imagine going to a cafe in Auckland, having lunch, and then asking if you could sleep on the tables for a few hours afterwards. If you weren’t laughed out of the place, you would be thrown out. Yet here that’s absolutely no problem at all. Even when we wanted to stop the night, they could have just told us to go to the hotel next door, but finding a free place to stay proved no problem. Even got free tea and fresh apricots.

Going to muck around a bit this afternoon, get some fresh supplies, perhaps pick up a broad-brimmed hat, do a little bike maintenance, then relax in the courtyard. Heading to Tashkent tomorrow, think it will take me three days, unless the wind is majorly in my favour. Apparently there is a bit of a climb, but nothing major. The wind has been a bit problematic recently though, tending to swing about during the day, often seeming to match the turn the road has taken. Temperatures are still high, but bearable. Plenty of mid-afternoon rest required though – the midday sun is for mad dogs and Englishmen.