Rough Guide: Making my way through central Asia I visited Kazakhstan 3 times. The country is huge and many of the areas I cycled were dry,  hot deserts.  The western part of the country has very limited development, and is therefore rather expensive.  After taking a cargo boat across the Caspian Sea from Baku, I arrived to small port city with a few ATMs and supermarkets. Hotels were expensive and so was food. I departed the city and pretty much cycled through empty desert all the way to the Uzbekistan border. There were Tea houses every 50 km, but sometimes they would be closed for the day or temporarily out of business. I therefore carried lots of water and cycled long days. Local Kazakhs have a lot of Mongolia blood and look very Asian. No matter how Chinese the Kazakhs look, Mandarin is not understood at all! You will also find that few people understand English.  Being part of the former USSR Russian is the national language,  making vodka the national drink and many other Russian foods very popular throughout the country. Naan bread, Shaslik lamb kebabs, and rice pilaf are the central Asian staples. Kazakhs love to drink and will undoubtedly offer you shots vodka throughout the day. I felt safe camping in the wild and rarely had anyone try to over charge me for things. Be prepared for long dusty days with cool clear evenings, great for star gazing.

Visa: 10 days visa free (US citizen)

Warnings: If arriving by land must register passport with police within 3 days.

Read from the blog below.

 

Hopping a midnight cargo ship for Kazakhstan

August 18, 2014

What a crazy day! After hours of cycling around the busy city I have my official deportation letter as well as a fresh Uzbekistan visa! I was also lucky enough to find a cargo ship traveling across the Caspian sea bound for the Kazakhstani port city of Aktau. I should be there by tomorrow night, and will begin my travels through Central Asia. I have no idea what to expect after leaving Azerbaijan, this is where the journey gets really interesting. Please send some goodwill my way as the long road through Kazakhstan is going to be tough. I will touch base again as soon as I can.  -Julian

The Central Asian Journey Begins

August 21, 2014

The rattle of the anchor echoes through the hallway, and the rumble of engine comes to rest. I am resting in my unbearable hot bunk, and sweat travels from my neck to my back. Again I am overwhelmed with the excitement of a new country, new customs and new friends. The intercom blasts in Russia “Prepare to disembark the vessel, customs agents are coming aboard”. He we go again……………

I have finally made it across the Caspian! The journey took 60 hours on a smelly extremely hot cargo ship filled with Azerbaijani mechanics and Kazakhstani machinists. I am now in Kazakhstan and am preparing for my first night camping in the desert. Kazakhstan is so much different from Azerbaijan and now I officially feel like I am in Asia. The locals look Asia, or maybe its Mongolian either way I am just as interested in them as they are in me. I have to stop myself from trying to speak Chinese!

I should be in Uzbekistan by early next week and will fill in more details soon!

Kazakhstani Desert Nomads

August 29, 2014

It is 45C. A dry hot dusty wind dries your mouth, nose and eyes. You try to swallow and clear your throat but your saliva has long since evaporated. Your teeth crack as there is sand and dust between then, and your body radiates the immense heat absorbed from the sun. It is over a hundred and fifty miles in each direction to the nearest source of water, food or shelter. Your bike is extremely heavy with several days of food and over 15 liters of water. These thoughts are at first comforting but after a few kilometers of pedaling know that in this environment the water will only last you at most 32 hours. You can not over exert yourself, because if you get too hot these is no shade to cool you off, but you must keep pedaling to survive. (An average day in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan)

My journey through Kazakhstan was quite challenging. In the 5 days it took me to pedal to the Uzbekistan border I pedaled through the most difficult terrain I have ever encountered. Immediately upon waking on my first day, I was engulfed with dry hot desert winds, and a sun so strong you feel like you are an ant in a child’s sandbox, seconds away from being torched with a magnifying glass. I have never been so thirsty in all my life, and I have really come to respect water as by far our most precious natural resource. The distance between towns and villages is daunting and can be as much as 200 miles on a dusty potholed road covered in a foot of powdered sand. The average daily temperature is close to 45 C, and there is little more than a concrete pipe to give you respite from the sun. I carry between 15-20 litters of water daily, but I can’t seem to consume enough water, I haven’t pee’d in days. I am haunted by the memory of my brother and I’s pet frog Samson, who we left outside in a small cage with little water during a summer weekend. We returned to find nothing more than a dried carcass.

After arriving at Aktau, the port city in Kazakhstan, I suddenly started having diarrhea, at first I figured it was my body, too scared to attempt cycling through Central Asia, trying to get me to give up, but it continued for close to a week. After a few days I debated taking antibiotics, I have a whole arsenal of intestinal chemotherapy, but every time I consume them they make me so weak that I can barely cycle for several days after a normal dose. Between being weak and having diarrhea I chose the latter and frequented all sorts of absolutely disgusting outhouses! However as foul and disgusting as they are, it sure beats digging a hole squatting in the hot desert sun!

There is something very unique about the Central Asia environment, the land between the Caspian sea and Central Uzbekistan (my current location) is completely devoid of life. In the evening, when the sun finally goes away for a few hours, it is absolutely silent. Scorpions prowl the evening sands and eat the moths that are attracted to my cooking stove and headlamp. I have never know such affectionate creatures as they like to cuddle and sleep next to me under my tent. Each morning I pack my tent only to find several underneath. In the morning lizards and geckos come to eat the flies that have gathered to drink my toothpaste water, and ants carry away my littered bread crumbs. In 2008 I visited the Chinese Central Asian province of Xinjiang during August, and I clearly remember the difficultly in handling the dry heat even when traveling around in an air-conditioned automobile! It is easy to get in a bad mood, and keeping a positive attitude is the key to survival here. You can not freak out about the heat or not having enough water! Otherwise you might as well hitch hike or take a bus because you will never make it! You can’t change your surroundings but you can always can change the way you look and relate to them.

Occasionally I encounter wild camels (who can survive for a minimum of 15 days without water). They wander about the desert in the hot in sun, and often wake me at dawn trying to eat my tent or panniers. The word for tree in Russian “Derev’ya” is almost as useless in Kazakhstan as the word for snow in Arabic, “Thalj” they don’t exist! Shade can be found when you are passed on the dusty road by a large semi truck, or inside a cement drain pipe, other than that there is no choice but to handle the heat. Pedaling at night is always an option but the roads are very busy as soon as the sun goes down. It seems that most vehicles out here are not equipped with air conditioning making the day time too hot for a commute.

Kazakhstani’s are extremely friendly and seem to be very curious of my travels. There are few that venture out into the desert herding sheep with nothing more than a bottle of water and vodka. These are known as the “Kochevnik poustynya” Desert Nomads. These nomads make me feel like baby as I pedal past with a bike loaded with 15 liters water. Life is definitely possible out here, but very difficult. I talked with a domestic tourist in the city of Beyneu and he told me that the USSR used to send criminals to these parts of Kazakhstan as the temperatures can be as hot as 50C in the summer and -50 C in the winter. Locals don their own form of the Arab kefiye, and often make masks out of old tee shirts to protect their faces from the sun. At first it was a bit scary coming across these locals in masks because they also often wear sunglasses making them look a lot like the scarecrow in Batman, but they are usually yelling hello and jumping up and down trying to grab your attention.

I know that the heat will eventually die down, but right now life if really difficult on the road. On one occasion a trucker gave me a half-drunken bottle of Fanta, rather than discarding this precious sugary liquid I boiled it and cooked oatmeal in it. Pretty disgusting but it’s food. I entered Uzbekistan 2 days ago and have only passed 2 villages, a part of me wants to take it easy and rest all the time, the other part wants to haul ass and get out of this desert hell. Days are torn between the two. My mind is strong and I continue on….