Those were the numbers that described the next week and a half of my life. From Kungrad I took off into the Karakalpakstan Desert along the lonely highway where the temperatures would reach over 50C (120F) during the middle of the day. Each day I would pass exactly one building and zero trees, so it was imperative that I plan my route well. I timed my days carefully, heading out by 6am each day, riding until I reached my building (usually a Chaikhana, or tea house), and passing out there until about 5pm, at which point the heat would have started to subside and I would take off again into the desert. I usually rode until 9pm, set up camp wherever I happened to be, and did it all again the next day.
Below: The road looked basically like this and this for 10 days.
Also like this.
And this.
A little variety here and there.
This was by far the biggest hill.
Once there was a sign that indicated there would be a tree 700m ahead. It lied.
Is this a city? A mirage? No, this is an ancient graveyard, one of many seen off in the distance along the way.
Here is one that was just next to the road, so I went to check it out.
The sunsets were always beautiful, and I saw both sun-set and –rise for most of the ten days I was out in the desert.
Camping was great every night. I just rolled off a few hundred meters into the desert. Didn’t matter where or when, because there was nothing around and nobody to bother me!
There was a lot of well-preserved roadkill, and I was getting so bored that I took pictures of a lot of it.
But don’t think that I was without human contact the whole time. This nice Norweigian woman, Meta, and the guy she was hitchhiking with, Timur, offloaded a huge bag of food onto me right here in the middle of nowhere!
And then there was this gentleman, whose name I cannot pronounce, a camel farmer in the middle of the desert! Here are his camels below:
Most days a combination of headwinds and bad roads limited my progress to about 100km, but for a few days in a row I managed to do over 170km! Needless to say, my little patootie was pretty sore by the end. I was also drinking upwards of 10 liters (quarts) of liquids per day. It’s disgusting, but when I would reach a Chaikhana, I would often down a liter of coke in one sitting. I would never sweat but at the end of each day my riding jersey was crusty with salt. The desert was almost completely flat, but it was its own kind of challenge, quite different from the Pamirs or other tough mountain roads. I won’t say that I would voluntarily do this again, but there was something meditative about the solitude and repetitiveness of the whole ordeal. I barely talked to anyone for 10 days, and didn’t really do anything except eat, drink, sleep, and ride.
Below: The road looked basically like this and this for 10 days.
Also like this.
And this.
A little variety here and there.
This was by far the biggest hill.
Once there was a sign that indicated there would be a tree 700m ahead. It lied.
Is this a city? A mirage? No, this is an ancient graveyard, one of many seen off in the distance along the way.
Here is one that was just next to the road, so I went to check it out.
The sunsets were always beautiful, and I saw both sun-set and –rise for most of the ten days I was out in the desert.
Camping was great every night. I just rolled off a few hundred meters into the desert. Didn’t matter where or when, because there was nothing around and nobody to bother me!
There was a lot of well-preserved roadkill, and I was getting so bored that I took pictures of a lot of it.
But don’t think that I was without human contact the whole time. This nice Norweigian woman, Meta, and the guy she was hitchhiking with, Timur, offloaded a huge bag of food onto me right here in the middle of nowhere!
And then there was this gentleman, whose name I cannot pronounce, a camel farmer in the middle of the desert! Here are his camels below:
Most days a combination of headwinds and bad roads limited my progress to about 100km, but for a few days in a row I managed to do over 170km! Needless to say, my little patootie was pretty sore by the end. I was also drinking upwards of 10 liters (quarts) of liquids per day. It’s disgusting, but when I would reach a Chaikhana, I would often down a liter of coke in one sitting. I would never sweat but at the end of each day my riding jersey was crusty with salt. The desert was almost completely flat, but it was its own kind of challenge, quite different from the Pamirs or other tough mountain roads. I won’t say that I would voluntarily do this again, but there was something meditative about the solitude and repetitiveness of the whole ordeal. I barely talked to anyone for 10 days, and didn’t really do anything except eat, drink, sleep, and ride.
