Category — Uzbekistan

daily distance: 118km
total distance: 9684km
riding time: 6h

The day was pretty unventful … it was a day of covering distance after finishing up some business in Tashkent. I needed - for the umpteenth time - new headphones and with all other things taken care of, I left Tashkent rather late. It was hot and it was going to go uphill. Not a pretty outlook with how I felt. The two days of rest I had got weren’t enough and the only reason to leave was to cover some distance, get to the Fergana Valley and then staying put / not biking for a few days.

I asked for a place to pitch the tent, really wanting to be sleeping there tonight, but was again invited by a family who are staying their datscha for 7 months of the year, the remaining time living in a house about 15 km from here. It was all extremely basic, but it was also very homely. Would I want to live there permanently? Probably not …

After hitting the turnoff, the wind got behind me … I was heading left here.

This is a little window into the world of that day …

This sign reminded me of the first big bike tour I did some years ago … heading down the West Coast from Canada to Mexico. Some more recent pictures of a small part of this trip are here.

What a day of rest it was - NOT. I had been told by the Chinese embassy that I should have a flight ticket to China in order to apply for my visa here in Tashkent. And that I also couldn’t apply if I was on a bike … that I would have to do this in Bishkek/Kyrgyzstan. I have no plans to go there really. After hearing how to get a visa here anyway, I am setting out to do what I need to do. This includes, among other things, a hotel reservation in China for some days. Markus tries to do this, but all the internet cafes do not support a secure line and so I am drawing a blank here. All the while the Chinese embassy was about to close and had they told me the right information yesterday, I could have taken care of this before. Darn.

Eventually I get to a place which lets me use my own USB key with a new browser on it and soon enough I am all sorted. I scream back to the embassy with a female cab driver wearing a hijab (bit of anomaly here - both that is) only to find out that the embassy sees it fit to close an hour early. What a bunch of … there will be another day for this.

For lunch I met up with Ravshan, a great person whom I had the good fortune to meet some years ago. He works as a translator and is hands down the best I ever saw. It was great to see him again after such a long time and we headed for lunch in a restaurant with his family. Then, rumble, rumble … a good size earthquake hit Tashkent just as we had sat down to eat. Nothing happened and the boogeying wasn’t as much as you may think. From what I hear, it was a 6+ on the Richter scale and there were no reports of any casualties or damage.

Later on that day I met up with Dinara, another good friend from a previous seminar here in Uzbekistan and who happens to get married in about a week from now (they are doing as she puts it a “democratic wedding” and will kill me for putting this into the blog I know). She is also gracious enough to invite me to her wedding and I happily accepted, meaning that I will be coming back to Tashkent (which I have to do anyway for visa reasons).

Great day, great people … what more could you want? A visa maybe …

The idea was to get the first of a few visas today. The Tajik visa was apparently ready to be picked up and so I made my way to a German organization through which this was to run with the help of a friend. Everything was a green light - sort of. The driver came back and said that the Tajik embassy will only put the visa in next week. They are all ready alright, but the actual pasting in will only happen next week. Yay to the embassy here.

That being not-out-of-the-way, I hung around a few internet cafes to finally get moving on updating the website

It was an otherwise uneventful day, which was good for me. I met up with a friend of Islam’s who is also a biker and finally with Islam who invited me to his home where I met his family and his kids. They were a wild bunch, but a lot of fun to be with.

No pictures today … head over to the flickr site though for lots of pics from previous days.

daily distance: 111km
total distance: 9567km
riding time: 5-6h

I had nothing much in mind but to get myself to Tashkent. It was a bit of a longish ride headwise and I just wanted to get it over with and get a couple of days of rest in. And nothing much happened during the biking part of the day. Got in, made it, done. The area was not particularly interesting, undulating terrain for the most part.

Once in the city, Islam had things set up for me. I was met by Abdiammon and a friend of his at the statue of Amir Timur in the center of the city as Islam was busy himself.

From there, we proceeded to the apartment of his sister who hasn’t yet moved in and so I have the place to myself for the time I am here.

After some relaxing, we set out to do some bazaar-hopping and then finally met up with Islam.

Funny thing, you never met someone, but you already have so much to thank this person for. Islam studied in my hometown, we have common friends and so it happens that he organized a great deal of things for me here in Tashkent. We met up over dinner with another friend of his (with whose family I stayed in Jizzax), had a great time chatting about his time in Gengenbach and about common friends and acquaintances. As is often the case these days, the topic of Georgia also came up - all of us wondering how differently the perceptions are in Russia and Europe/US over the issue. All of them remarked that the news they seen on BBC/CNN differ so widely from the Russian news that they don’t know what reality is about.

On a more thought-provoking note, meet the deportation bus. Yes, your eyes are fine. I was walking towards the bus when Abidammon gently moved me away from it. I looked at him kind of quizzically and he said it is a deportation bus. My look changed to a big question mark and he explained that the government moves certain people out of the city for the celebration of independence day. This is me being a lawyer maybe, but they are allowed to be in the city generally, they work, they pay taxes and all that fun stuff, but when other people celebrate, they are forced to leave the city for their hometowns.

Plunked down my head for some much-needed rest after a great dinner.

daily distance: 131km
total distance: 9456km
riding time: 7h

Guzal’s father drove all the way to the end of town to see me off after a delightful breakfast with the family. A very moving goodbye was followed by rather uneventful riding through agricultural land on mostly terrible roads. 

There is a bit of a required detour that I am needing to take. Instead of making a bee-line for Tashkent, I am taking a big detour as Uzbekistan and and Kazakhstan can’t seem to agree on some kind of transit system through this tiny bit of Kazakh land over which the main highway runs. The whole thing is nothing but silly politics … just one of the features of traveling I suppose.

The rest of the day was more running along the same highway and trying to make as many miles as possible towards Tashkent.