a2b – Crotos in Turkmenistan, Part 2

If the first days in Turkmenistan were hot the later days, shown by the temperatures recorded on JL’s blog and his comments, were even hotter. Mountainous, hilly or even bumpy terrain is a thing of the past, at least for now. Instead the riders are faced with heat, sand and thirst. To combat the problems the tour sets off as early in the morning as possible, covers as much distance as possible and at midday finds a suitable teahouse where they can eat, drink and rest during the worst of the day. On reaching Mary, the modern replacement for Merw, they join actual route of the old Silk Road at last.

On the 29^th April he heads off route to visit the ruins of Merw. There he find an extensive area of ruins explored on a 10km guided cycle tour.

Pressing on from Merw the next obstacle was a 180 km. stretch of desert. This took two days to cross and involved a lot of guesswork, many water bottles [and good luck] moving from one supply point to another.

One phenomenon of Turkmenistan is the exchange rate; for US$50 you become a millionaire and have more notes to carry than will fit into a wallet. The answer is to stuff the saddlebag or pannier with them.

Lent’s main problem and complaint is the food, which is not prepared particularly well and usually in very unhygienic conditions and on the last day manages to give himself a stomach ache so he has no regrets when reaching the border.

When getting to the Uzbek border after Turkmenabat, it is saying good bye to a weird country, plastered with gilded statues of nation-builder president [i]Niyazov, his Ruhnama quotations on all roadsides (of course I couldn’t read them but their display did nothing to raise my interest in the Turkmen language) oversized images of his successor, backward technology, rapidly devaluating already nearly worthless money coming in huge bundles and hopefully to excessive heat and poor food… “

Links to related posts can be found on the Crotos BaltiCCycle page.