Crossing the Kyzylkum Desert

I stayed an extra day in Bukhara, there was only 1 tourist site on my hitlist which I had not seen on my previous visit, I saw that yesterday, and I was more or less on top of the day-to-day jobs I needed to do before setting off, but I had discovered that there was a festival coming up. 

The festival of Nasreddin Afandi combines April Fools day and the celebration of the festivals namesake populist Sufi philosopher, who appears in a lot of witty folklore tales across South, Central and West Asia. Bukhara has a famous statue of him riding a donkey and claim him as their own (though Turkey is more widely considered to be the home of the real life Nasreddin).

It was nice to see mostly locals (in an otherwise very touristy town) enjoying the day with music, dance, drama, costumes, food and general celebration.

Having put off riding for another day, the hard work lay ahead and I could procrastinate no longer. The desert crossings from Bukhara to the Caspian Sea are probably the most challenging sections from here back to the UK. The Kyzlkum desert and Ustyurt Desert crossings are separated only by the group of towns around Khiva-Urgench-Turtkul-Nukus, and a couple of small Kazakh towns, but is otherwise a fortnight of unchanging, harsh, sparsely populated, wilderness cycling, with reports of terrible roads in places.

The road out of Bukhara was not great. Not awful, but certainly not great. That soon changed - 30 or 40kms along the road, the road ceased to exist - it looks like they are planning to upgrade that section, but have only got as far as smashing up the old road, diverting all traffic onto a patch of open desert, and I didn't see any signs of imminent work. The dirt road was only for a few kms and then it was back onto the same uneven, pitted tarmac for most of the rest of the day. Then, a few kms before Gazli, the only group of buildings that can even remotely be described as a town out in the middle of the Kyzylkum, a 2-lane duel carriageway opens out. Whilst not the very best road I've ever ridden, by Central Asian standards, it was pretty fine, particularly for middle-of-nowhere-Central-Asian-Desert standards!

I found a Chaikhana (teahouse) that would let me stay overnight, so avoided having to pitch a desert camp. The following day was more of the same - pretty impressive road through barely inhabited desert, with similar either helpful or at least not too-unhelpful mild crosswinds or even tailwinds. Another Chaikhana - earlier than I'd have liked to have stopped, but the lure of a roof rather than a sand-filled sleeping bag amongst the dunes was too much. I could probably cover the remaining distance in 2 longish days, so I stayed.

In both places the local families were warm and friendly, and the second place in particular were clearly not trying to take advantage of the foreigner stuck in the desert - dinner, bed and breakfast came to the grand total of 21,000 som (less than two pounds) in that one. I happily handed over 25,000 and told them to keep the change!

Just before going to sleep I got up to go to the toilet and my headtorch (there was no light in this room) lit up a large mouse sized creature that looked like a cross between a big black rhinoceros beetle and a scorpion. A single crab-claw clutched around at the front, with a whiplash tail poised at the other end. It was about to climb inside my trainers. Much as I like keeping a photo record of such incidents, my instant reaction was to grab said trainer and clobber the living daylight out of this monster. Needless to say I will be shaking out my trainers every morning from here on.

From there on things went a bit downhill. The next day the wind had changed from a warm moderately helpful one, to a cold Northwesterly - coming in from Siberia and across the Kazakh steppe straight into my face. It was a hard slog that day, and ended in my first desert camp of this leg of my journey, alone in the middle of the Kyzylkum Desert.

I was as close to the Turkmenistan border as this stretch of road gets, and had been warned that patrolling border guards may well pay a visit to my campsite, so I was discrete and found a hollow in a dune well away from the road. The plan worked - at least as far as border guards went, however all manner of insects buzzed and battered around in the space between my inner and outer tents through the night, and in getting far away from the highway, I had camped fairly near to the noisy train line - a section where much of the train traffic goes by night, so people can sleep through the long desert stretch. Next morning, I also had a visit from a local goat herder and his large flock - he was friendly enough though.

Lack of sleep made the going harder and a late start combined with the same headwinds meant I had only covered 25kms by lunchtime. Because yesterdays headwinds had also curtailed the days mileage, I knew I had pretty much zero chances of reaching Khiva now.

Over lunch, I looked at the map, and had to decide between 2 main options. Remain on this highway staying in the desert on what in all likelihood would continue as a well-built modern road, for most of the remaining 130kms, or dive down a tiny little track just up ahead and then onto a series of small roads going through the villages near the Amu Darya river, that marked the start of the Khiva-Urgench-Nukus populated area - 30kms less, but on doubtful roads.

From previous experience, the decision was obvious - go with the good road. However, a spur of the minute decision took hold of me as I reached the junction and I went off my beautiful highway, down this awful dirt track. I think I just wanted to be away from the headwinds just for the short time, that travelling perpendicular to the highway along the track for 5-10kms would give me. After several kms of very rough dirt road, there was a brief section of beautiful tarmac, then some awful pitted bumpy old tarmac, and from then on not great, but not too awful, uneven tarmac. However, something else changed. Maybe something in the lunch I had eaten, maybe the break from the headwind, or maybe this area was just a little lower, down by the river, and therefore sheltered from the worst of the wind. Whatever it was, I found my second wind and managed to cover the last 100km to Khiva before sundown. I had crossed the Kyzylkum, and for the next few days would have a few towns to keep me fed, and interested before the longer crossing of the Ustyurt Desert.