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Always look on the bright side of life…

I’ve been thinking about the positive aspects of what’s happened, and here’s some of the things I’ve come up with:

  • The loss of all the photos means that there won’t be a slide-show at the end. Dad was worried he was going to have to sit through a long, boring slideshow.
  • Dropping weight – all cyclists are always trying to reduce the weight they are carrying, and I’ve dropped 2-3kg at a stroke!
  • New version of the Ortlieb barbag is now out – the mesh pocket on the front of the old one wasn’t quite right, and I see that has now been changed
  • I’m sure there’s a few others I can come up with too…

Things are starting to get sorted out now though. Passport application has been sent away to London, will be interesting to see if it comes through OK. Not having a proper witness is a problem. The British Honorary Consulate here signed it, and put his official stamp on it – hopefully it works out OK, and it doesn’t get delayed.

Have also done shopping for an MP3 player and a camera. Unfortunately electronics here are quite a lot more expensive than China, and I’ll be in China soon…but I have to get a camera for the next few weeks in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The camera I got was more than twice as expensive as what Amazon has listed. Maybe towards the end of my time in China I’ll upgrade to the latest Canon model that I want. Had to settle for a Nikon Coolpix L11 here, the only other options were Sony, and I don’t want MemoryStick stuff – I want something that uses SD flash, as it can mix and match with my MP3 player. Plus a later camera will probably also use it, and I can re-use the cards.

I think I’ve almost done with my shopping now, so will probably stay in Bishkek one more day, then head off on a loop around Issyk-Kul for a couple of weeks. Hopefully I won’t get lost – maps are easy enough to get, but no-one sells compasses! Or so I thought…then I was wandering around the souvenir shops, and I am now the proud owner of an ex-Soviet Army compass with wrist strap. Combination souvenir and functional item. No chance of getting a GPS here. I also bought a Russian harmonica, for those quiet nights around the campsite. Sounds a bit funny, but that could just be me.

So things are working out, and I’ll be OK. Will order a new barbag from the UK, hopefully that will be here by the time I get back to Bishkek. Must take better care of it in future though.

Thanks for the messages of support – it is much appreciated.

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Dude, Where’s My Bag?

“Umm, Heather, where’s my bag?”

Look around under the chair, behind the computer, around the Internet cafe, where is it? I can’t see my barbag, and as I look around more, and still don’t see it, things seem to slow down, in that car-crash way. What if I left it at the restaurant? Run out the door, back down the road to the restaurant, but they’re closed. Back to the Internet cafe, no it’s not here

Well, what was in it? My passport, a few hundred dollars, my GPS, my camera with ALL my photos since London, my travel journal from Turkmenistan to here, a credit and a debit card and my MP3 player. So only the most important stuff to me, that’s why it was in the barbag, rather than at the hotel. Bugger

There was a small chance I had left it at the restaurant, but checking back the next day, they hadn’t seen it. They were nice people there, with an honest feel to them, and I believe that they would have given it back if I had left it there.

That left only the Internet cafe – someone must have taken it from under my chair. It’s easy enough to get engrossed in what you’re doing, or possibly it was when I was talking to Heather. The following day, when trying to get some assistance from them to put up a sign offering a reward for return of the documents/memory cards, they were appallingly rude, and I suspect them of being in collusion with whoever took it – it was possibly dragged back into a back room, based on where I was sitting.

The nearest NZ embassy is in Moscow. There is not even a British embassy or consulate in Kyrgyzstan. What to do? On my way back to the restaurant, I saw a couple of other touring cyclists, so stopped to talk to them (bike touring works like that). After a bit of a chat, it turned out the cafe we were at was run by the honoray British consul. So I had a chat to him, and he’s a nice guy, and offered good advice. I’ve spoken to Barbara at the NZ embassy in Moscow, and she’s told me to apply for a new passport through London. Apparently that will take around two weeks. But no-one within 5,000km has known me for more than five years! No worries, the consul will help out with the referee stuff. He can also help out with providing an address for receiving goods.

And things could be worse – I’ve got money in a few locations, and I still have an HSBC debit card – so it’s not like I’m starving on the street. I have money, access to more money, and most of my stuff, especially the bike! I could get emergency travel documents, but they would only really let me go straight home, and where’s the fun in that? I probably wouldn’t be able to get the necessary visas without a full passport.

So the plan is to apply for a new passport tomorrow, do a bit more shopping getting replacement items, like a camera, compass, etc., then I’ll head off to the Issyk-Kul area for a couple of weeks. I’ll then come back via here, hopefully pick up my new passport and credit card, plus a new barbag. Or that’s the plan anyway.

One problem will be visas – I had Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Chinese visas in that passport, and I’ll need to get them again. Could be a bit of a pain, but it’s really just a matter of time and money – and I have both. Could all be worse, at least I wasn’t physically harmed.

All a bit of a shame, as the ride up from Osh to Bishkek was one of the best rides of my life – especially the last few days, riding up over 3,000m passes, across the jailoo, yurts and horses everywhere, just fantastic. And then a drop of 2,500m in one afternoon on good roads – it was about as good as it can get. But shit happens, and life goes on, and I just need to deal with that. Things will be alright, and I’m calm about it.

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Rolling again!

New day, new city, new country. After far too much resting up in Uzbekistan (10 riding days out of 29 in the country!), I am back on the road again, and am now in Osh, Kyrgyzstan. I set off from Tashkent last week, spending three days riding to Qo’qon, before getting a taxi back to Tashkent. My stuff had turned up, so I collected that, watched the rugby, stayed in the best bed I’ve slept in for months (flashpackers visiting Tashkent, check out the Poytaht Hotel), then got a taxi back to Qo’qon the next day.

Some fun on the way out riding up the Qamchik pass. Took me a fair while to get to the top, then when I got there I was stopped by 4 Army guys. They started hassling me about photos – apparently you’re not supposed to take photos anywhere on the whole pass. I thought it was just around the checkpoints and tunnels. I’d taken a photo looking back down, and they found that on my camera. So what do they do? Take another photo of me with the camera of course! One soldier wanted to buy the camera, and was getting a bit annoyed when I wouldn’t sell at any price, until someone else told him to back off, and I was sent on my way. The tunnels are no big deal to ride through there, the longer one – 1100m – is reasonably lit. Then rolled downhill until I found a nice abandoned building to sleep in. Too close to the road, a bit noisy though.

Interesting trip back in the car. Two railway workers were sharing the car, and after a round of introductions, passing around the photos and phrasebooks, we stopped at one of the roadside stalls. I thought for water, but no…shortly three cups were fashioned by cutting the bottoms off some 1L PET bottles, and beer was handed around. 8:25 in the morning, I’d had no breakfast, here have a cup of beer. Hmmm…at least the driver wasn’t drinking, probably just as well considering the excessive speeds on the way to Tashkent.

Bit of a miscommunication with someone else, and ended up needing to get a last-minute place in Tashkent. Stayed in the most upmarket place I’ve stayed in for a long time. The previous three nights I’d slept in a ditch, an abandoned building, and a flea-pit with cockroaches included at no extra cost. So when I slid into those clean smooth white high thread-count sheets, under cool air-conditioned air – I went out like a light, slept for 10 hours. The best breakfast of the tour was included the next day, and I made the most of it, eating maybe 5 courses. The Central Asian Youth Chess Championships was on at the time, with many of the contestants also staying there – I’m glad to see that miserable attempts at facial hair are common across 16 year old boys all around the world!

Back to Qo’qon to pick up the bike the next day, this time travelling with a mother and daughter. On finding out I was of a similar age to the daughter, and single, the mother got that glint in her eye – but not to be I’m afraid, gold teeth just don’t cut it for me. Later that night I stopped at a chaikhana to eat, and in hope of a place to stay. Fantastic place, and I met the whole family. Everyone came over for a chat, the boys, mum, dad, the cooks, everybody. Again, on finding out I was single, I was offered the choice of the girls to marry. Unfortunately they were just a little young – perhaps 16, not my scene. They offered me a place to sleep before I even asked – I was given a traditional Uzbek table, with an enclosure around it, and a water channel running below it. Very cool. So to any cyclists out there, the chaikhana on the left at the end of the woods after Boz, a little after the 322 kilometer marker on the road to Andijan, that’s the place to go.

That left me with around 75km to the border this morning, all fairly uneventful. For some reason the Uzbek customs officer didn’t like me though, and X-rayed all my panniers, and wanted to count all my $US. I had declared exactly what I had, but for some reason he wanted to count it. Had to get it out of various stashes around the place. A pain, and I can’t think for the life of me why they would want to count my money when I’m leaving the country. Oh and for any other travellers wondering, there were no questions about hotel registration slips. Just as well, since mine obviously don’t all add up.

Kyrgyzstan customs were very pleasant though, just short wait to write down my details, stamp my passport, and say “Welcome to Kyrgyzstan.” That’s more like the sort of treatment visitors should be getting. Looking forward to far fewer police around too…

A day or two here in Osh, then I may be offline for a couple of weeks, depending on how quickly I head up to Bishkek. No real hurry there.

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Melting in Tashkent

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!

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Go north, young man

This was how the conversation was going with Alex, a Hungarian I met in Bukhara. And so I am going north, via Kazakhstan to China, rather than via Tajikistan. I will miss out Kashgar, but I will see Urumqi.

“I’m 56 years old. I’m no longer scared of anything. I’ve seen enough. Death? No, I’m not scared of that. War, murder, hate, I’ve seen enough of it all. I look into your eyes and I don’t think you’re scared of anything either”

Now this is somewhat disturbing to me. It could be that I’m well on my way to developing the Thousand Yard Stare. If I can find an Internet Cafe that will let me upload some photos, I’ll try and upload the picture I took when I came out of the desert in Turkmenistan, after covering far too much distance without a break.

But different people seem to see different things in my eyes, or so they tell me. I’ve had people say they know I will make it home OK, they “can see it in my eyes.” I’ve also had women describe them as “magnetic.” Hmmm, all a bit much.

But enough of that, for Alex was a very interesting man. We had a long, wide-ranging geopolitical discussion, covering many topics. He currently lives in Almaty, and he strongly recommended that I visit Almaty (“Go north, young man”). I had been thinking for a while that I didn’t feel like going through Tajikistan, and I had recently met three other cyclists all going via Almaty. So I decided, why not? One of the nice things about what I’m doing is being able to change my plans, to take a 1,000km detour if I feel like it.

So I’m going to spend quite a bit more time in Kyrgyzstan, making my way from Osh to Bishkek, and then looping around Issyk-Kul. Hopefully the bit higher elevation will lower the temperatures a little, and from what I’ve seen, it should be all grass-covered valleys, washing in melted-glacier streams, and sleeping in felt yurts with nomad families. Or something like that. I hear there’s also some good bars in Bishkek too…

When I loop back to Bishkek, I’ll go up to Almaty, and then across to Korgas on the Chinese border. North of the Tien Shan range, and along to Urumqi, before coming south a little to rejoin my original planned route east. Of course, things could always change again, but probably not too much for the next month – visas are a pain.

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And there’s a SUPERMARKET!

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.