Sunrise over the lake, where I woke up in Panjakent After Panjakent, it started to get steep. I climbed 60 miles, as the road began to offer me extra steep grades as I rode into the mountains. So far, this was the most stunning ride of the tour, visually. The cliffs rose up over the river valley as I got deeper into the mountains, the temperature was also not so incredibly hot in the middle of the day. A man in traditional clothes who was painting a fence I stopped at a village to eat some somsa and found a place on the side of the road in the shade to take a nap. It probably wasn’t the most appropriate place, as I woke 20 minutes later to a bunch of little kids admiring my bike and staring at me. All testing out their “Hello” like broken records all vying for a reaction. I was a bit groggy, and also a bit annoyed. They couldn’t say anything else and none of them spoke Russian. I put on some sunscreen and kept riding. Climbing higher into the mountains along the Zarafshon riv...
This was a day to just grind out the miles, persevere and endure the heat. I woke up at the crack of dawn, thinking I would get out before everyone was awake. To my surprise, the whole family was up to have breakfast together at 4:30 and see me off. The early morning heat was already close to 90 degrees. I also had a bit of extra mileage to go, since I hadn’t gotten as far the previous day. 85 miles would be a challenge. Riding into the Jizzax precinct I managed to push and cruise along and get to about 65 miles before the searing heat cut me off. I was miles from anywhere and pulled into a gas station. There were no services at the station, just a couple of pumps, but no store. While I was studying the map and figuring out where I could spend the afternoon in some shade, the gas station owner came out from behind a gate with a couple of his children. One of Oybek’s children as I rode into the gas station. He dropped a piece of paper he was holding to admire my b...
I took off from Samarqand, a little sad to leave such a magical city, but my final leg of the trip was waiting for me. I had a relatively short ride today, only 40 miles. On the way, I passed the first bike tourer I had seen this entire trip, he had ridden from his hometown in China and was also headed to Dushanbe - we rode a few minutes together, but he was much slower than me and also spoke almost no English, so we said goodbye. First bike tourer I ran into the entire trip I rode on to the Tajikistan border. Although I would rate this border quite low on the sketchiness scale - it also scored rather low on thoroughness. Man riding close to the border wearing a traditional Uzbek/Tajik hat The Uzbek side of the border was typical - my passport and visa were scrutinized, checked several times and I got my stamp. I walked over to the Tajik side and passed several windows, some had people in them but waved me through, others were closed. I couldn’t...
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