The indecision of an indirect journey
The heat is becoming an issue, a constant and unavoidable theme of the journey. OK I left a few weeks later than planned due to discovering my driver’s licence had expired but only a week into the trip in the capital of Georgia things were getting uncomfortable. It’s not just the riding in it, once off the bike, showered and refreshed, there is very little incentive to go back out into a scorching city to get baked all over again. There was a brief respite in the Caucasian Mountains but even in Russia I found myself sitting out the day waiting for evening before I ventured out. I’m willing get up at dawn for a few hours of fresh sunrise riding but that doesn’t last long.
The Kazakhstan detour was an endurance but, I’m thinking now, it was actually the lesser of two evils. Uzbekistan with its significantly higher temperatures, lower driving standards and worse road conditions does nothing to encourage me to backtrack and see all I missed due to the closed western border. Now all I can consider, all I’m craving, is the coolness of the mountains. To get to the point of the journey, the highlight of the trip – which is to ride the Pamir Highway, it’s been my dream for over 12 years. I had intended to delay that gratification, to rush there would be at the expense of seeing little of what Uzbekistan has to offer. It’s a conundrum but actually a logical decision, because I’m not about to double back only to ride in even higher temperatures.
No trip goes according to plan; it would be dull if it did. The itinerary I left with must be treated like a menu, pick and choose. Some dishes are not available, some sold out, the starter was late, the entrée too hot and today’s special is not what I ordered.
Having chilled in my room for a while I hit the streets of Samarkand. It’s one of those places like Mt. Rushmore for example, where you know what you’re going to see and then there it is.
The architecture is indisputably beautiful but equally to go back to the other cities with supposedly even more extravagance does not stir me.
I wander, I look, I try and feel the thrill but all the time what’s really going on is how far ahead of my schedule I am now, and fighting the urge to bypass more just for the higher altitude relief.
All desires now are for cooler riding, I’m physically and mentally drained by this oppressive heat. I find myself looking at the temperature in all the places I intended visiting but it’s like when you click on an ad on Facebook and then that product keeps coming up in your feed. When one destination is 40° C that figure keeps coming up for every location I want to go, fuck that.
So there I am in a particularly touristy spot, having walked the back walls away from the crowds, I inevitably end up in a more populated spot and I’m approached by a local who calls me ‘brother’. Never a good way to get on my right side, being an only child I find the phrase presumptuous and pretentious, second only to ‘son’ – there was only one man eligible to call me by that term and that right died with him. So this young lad wants to ‘practice his English’ and actually, despite his inappropriate introduction, he’s alright. Although his mate, with my reluctant permission, is filming the entire thing. There is though, I soon discover as we chat, a chemistry, a connection that lends itself to piss taking. It’s hard to give an accurate opinion of his country, I’ve not been here 12 hours yet. But at the forefront of my observations, the first impression was the horrendous driving, he agrees unconditionally and much like immigration admits it’s a national concern with no easy solution. Having cleared that up I ask him what we are actually looking at, he doesn’t know, ‘Which city do you come from’ I ask.
‘This one’ he admits.
‘And you don’t know what this is/was, what it was built for, was it a car park? Listen, I grew up in Colchester, the oldest town in England and I know a fair bit about it, not due to some historical interest but going to school in the town gave me no option but to learn. We had school trips to the castle, had to do brass rubbings of the bloody plaques, and know the dates of the siege, and name of the rulers. How, as a local, can you not know what this is?’
Apparently he studies math and economics.
‘OK, how much did it cost?’
Changing the subject I decide to tell him something else he didn’t know, that this was the evening of the summer solstice. He was aware that days change in length through the year but not that there was a specific day that was the longest. So that passed ten minutes or so, inevitably the subject turned to money, what do I earn? What do I do for a living? How can I afford to come here? Bla bla bla.
After 6 months of travelling India solo back in ’96, with no coffee or, for that matter, chai money left, I got the cheapest flight back to the UK that I could find. I’m pretty sure that in the middle of the night I changed flights in Uzbekistan. I knew nothing of the place, it was all a bit surreal, jet lag delirium, unknow location, race and culture, still wide-eyed from India and simultaneously red-eyed from a night flight. With my last emergency US dollar I went to treat myself to a Coke (they didn’t allow that brand in India), the two lads at the kiosk who had very different complexions and facial features to the one’s I’d been witnessing in India, asked me how I could afford a Coke, told me how little they earned. I really was the clichéd long-haired hippy in flowing rags back then, heavily affected for my life changing experience, man. Anyway that was then, now 30 years later I still avoid such conversations. I write blog posts and readers buy me coffees I don’t even want to begin getting into that.
So I end the videoed chat with my brother with ‘Well, it’s been lovely talking to you but I have to go and stand over there now.’ my favourite quote from Spinal Tap.
I think he learnt more from me than I did from him. And all the time I’m thinking this place is hot beyond comfort, touristy beyond authentic, crowded beyond calmness. I think I should move on. Too hot to ride a bike, such an alien concept for an Englishman to grasp. I’ve got a pannier bulging with a thermal underlayer, heated jacket, RAB fleece jacket, zip in liner and my Expotogg-airbag-heat-retaining-thingy I’ve not worn since I reviewed it. And none of it has been used any more than the sarong I happily ride in for comfort if not protection.
I once had an LDV van and you could never quite turn the heater off, there was always a slight warm draft from under the steering column, but I only ever felt it in the summer, it was never a source of comfort in the winter. Conversely, I’ve worn vented mesh trousers this entire trip, but only once at a 2300m summit in Eastern Turkey when I would have preferred to have retained a bit of body heat did I witness the performance of the perforations.
My subterranean air con room provided me with restful, recharging sleep. So next morning, rejuvenated and with clarity I asked to stay another night, but they were fully booked. Bollocks. So a 750-metre ride to what was actually a far more aesthetic place to stay. I could park my bike within the walled courtyard but being above ground the heat was now omnipresent. The room had only a fan and I showered every half an hour for that 2-minute coolness before the walls radiated their drying technique.
It was excruciating to try and wander the city in such heat. I tried a roof top restaurant for dinner, which was doubly uncomfortable not just due to temperature but the place was full of couples and groups and it made me feel uncomfortably alone dining at my table for one. A horrid and bad decision. The diners weaved between tables for the ultimate sunset selfie and one particular girl, with Instagram filter ‘beauty’ bored the hell out of her date and she vainly ‘influenced’ her followers with pouting poses and provocative pretensions. Fuckin’ awful. Back to my sweat tank, paying up as I’ll be leaving before breakfast. Beat the heat, leave the crowd, ahead of the procession, and feeling I’ve done no justice to Uzbekistan at all. Best, I think, seen from the seat of a train in the spring, not the saddle of a KLR in July. I’m just a few hours from the mountains of Tajikistan and they are calling like the sound of music. I’ve gotta get out of here.
Even if I say so myself, I was quite pleased with last week’s blog, I’d worked on it for 2 weeks and I think it flowed well and captured the feeling. This one too I hope coveys the sensation of frustration, the difficult road decisions and the deciding of direction. However, I feel it’s safe to thank all those who generously ‘bought me a coffee’ last week knowing that this published gratitude will not be seen as a hint and prompt further donations to my living the dream out here on the road. Incidentally getting 12,750 Uzbekistan Som to one US$ the numbers have been as high as the temperature lately. 5000 for a loaf of bread, a quarter of a million for a room, not to buy, but rent for the night. Tajikistan will bring lower numbers in all but altitude.
