Yet Another Cycling Forum

General Category => Rides and Touring => Ride Reports => Topic started by: Karla on 02 October, 2018, 01:37:35 pm

Title: Cyclestan: A loop around Central Asia
Post by: Karla on 02 October, 2018, 01:37:35 pm
Cyclestan: a journal on crazyguyonabike.com (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/cyclestan)

I'm finally writing up my Central Asian tour from last year.  Not having a job and just having to ride my bike (https://lostbyway.com) helps with that sort of thing, not least because my boss doesn't glower at me if I choose to spend the day writing a travel blog about riding my bike rather than actually riding it.

If you want to know the outline of my route, I flew to the Uzbek capital Tashkent, crossed the Fergana valley into Kyrgyzstan and then hit the Tien Shan mountain range.  I eventually made it to the high altitude lake of Song Kul after several days of isolation and washboard surfaces, before descending gratefully to civilization and back home via Kazakhstan. 

So far the write-up has made it as far as the Kyrgyz border: in Uzbekistan I've discovered that the desert is hot, the bread and tea are both excellent, it is possible to blag a night in someone's garage without a word of common language, and gun-toting border guards just want selfies with you.  Next stop I'll tour the mountains of Kyrgyzstan ... as long as the dodgy Halal 'pork' in my stomach doesn't kill me first.

Until then, here are some images from the Uzbek section to whet your appetite.
 Here's the link to the journal again too.  G'wan, click it! (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/cyclestan).


(https://i.imgur.com/ITCguAp.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/M9t3hnG.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/kb7VuvF.jpg)

(https://i.imgur.com/O7KVVJC.jpg)
Title: Re: Cyclestan: A loop around Central Asia
Post by: hbunnet on 02 October, 2018, 07:00:10 pm
This is great, thanks for posting it.
Title: Re: Cyclestan: A loop around Central Asia
Post by: Karla on 02 April, 2019, 12:32:48 pm
Six months later and it's finished - the final words penned while I'm back in Uzbekistan once again. 

(https://i.ibb.co/rcZpbkn/OI000499-3.jpg)

You can find it here (https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/cyclestan) as always.  TLDR: Central Asia's rather good.

Title: Re: Cyclestan: A loop around Central Asia
Post by: Karla on 29 April, 2019, 08:32:22 am
For anyone who's interested, here's my writeup of  the next time I visited Central Asia (https://lostbyway.com/central-asia).