Steve's Cycling Blog

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Today was always going to be a bit slow because of the convoy, but in the end it was even more frustrating than I’d expected it to be – so much so that I’m actually writing this the next day because I couldn’t face it yesterday…!

Coming down to the edge of the lake, rather than camping closer to the nearest town as originally planned, had added just over 15km to the day, and though the slowest of our riders had all departed by taxi to Almaty last night I was still going to get to the convoy point about an hour quicker than the slowest rider still with us.

The day did get off to a good start though – the wind overnight had dried my tent and Mark had decided on scrambled eggs for breakfast. Thanks to the enterprising nature of a local woman we also had some delicious savoury donut-like ‘bread’ stuffed with onion and potato – she’d found out somehow that we were camped where we were and sent her sons to see if we’d like any – an order for 50 of them must have made it worth her while!

Out on the road and the usual group of front riders set off together to track back to the highway. Despite my intention to rider slower than usual today I soon got away from the group, particularly on the descent to cross the dam at the head of the lake and the subsequent climb back up the other side.

Once we were passing through the town it became clear why we weren’t camping there it’s definitely looking a whole lot worse for wear having clearly been a manufacturing centre of some kind in the past most of the factories are derelict and decaying.

Out the other side and we were back on the new highway – once again so new that one of the carriageways isn’t yet open to vehicles so I had the world’s widest cycle path all to myself.

The 48.5km instruction had seemed a little odd given that we were going to be on the highway anyway, and when I got there I discovered that it was supposed to say “L off Hwy”, which was a pretty weird half-built exit. I managed to find my way onto the right road – essentially we were moving 3km west onto a more-or-less parallel, but quieter, road – and was at the lunch spot a short while later.

I’d decided that I was going to spend most of the waiting time at the lunch stop since it was periodically trying to rain and nobody knew anything about the convoy meeting point and what was there in the way of shelter. About 15min after I arrived Paul and Erwin came in, which seemed a little odd at the time since usually Ivan, Grant and Jackie would have come in before them.

While I was eating lunch a group of soldiers stopped by to ask what we were doing and one of them wanted to have a ride on my bike (he was even going to hand over his passport as security if I wanted him to!)

Hitchhiking is a real thing in Kazakhstan – one simply stands on the side of the road and holds out ones hand to passing vehicles, many of which will stop. We saw this in action as Mark and Jordan (two of the crew) needed to go into the Uzbek embassy to sort out visas so Regina was going with them.

Within five minutes of standing at the edge of the highway three vehicles had stopped, the third of which – a late model merc – was heading in the right direction so the three of them piled in the back seat and off it roared. Apparently there’s an expectation that you’ll pay something for your journey, but not particularly much.

After I’d been at lunch for about an hour nobody else had shown up, which seemed pretty odd, when we saw a rider approaching. Initially we couldn’t work out how it was – why became apparent when they got closer and it turned out to be Jacob, the crew member who was supposed to be riding sweep and should therefore have been behind everyone else – so where was everyone else…??

While this was being pondered Luke got a call from Regina to say that she was back on the main highway (which we were supposed to have left at 48.5km) and they had just passed a large group of cyclists – she thought about nine – still on the ‘wrong’ road. That would explain why they at least weren’t at the lunch stop.

Paul, Erwin and I decided it was time for action, so Paul googled the address of the hotel, and I found that in my Garmin and set it as the destination. We told Luke we were going to ride to the convoy meeting point and if there was nobody there we’d continue to the hotel on our own, and set off somewhat annoyed that we’d bothered to sit there for the last hour while everyone else was now clearly significantly closer to Almaty than we were!

About 5km later we spotted another group of riders at a coke stop having their own lunch – they’d missed the 48.5km turn, but had called Andreas who had given them directions to get them off the highway and across to the road we were on. Grant and Jackie joined on the back of our group of three and the five of us continued on towards the convoy meeting point, all quietly hoping there’d be nobody there and we could just continue into the hotel following the route on my Garmin.

Although this was supposed to be a safer route it was actually much busier with three lanes of traffic trying to fit into a two lane road, so the 20km along there with four people following me was a pretty crazy ride trying to make sure that we didn’t get run off the road, or run over!

Unfortunately Will was there at the convoy point and flagged us down. With the five of us there, plus the three other riders we’d seen at the coke stop there were now 13 riders accounted for, so both vans were now out checking the highway trying to locate the others. A short time later Rhys also arrived at the convoy point – from the opposite direction – having been located by Andreas and directed to us.

Quite some time later Will got a message to say that the remainder of the missing riders were now all at the hotel, and that both vans were on their way to us to form the convoy into town. Unfortunately the traffic was slow and it took a further 45 min before they were both there. At this point we’d been waiting almost two hours (in addition to ore than an hour I’d spent waiting at the lunch stop) and still had about an hour to ride into the hotel!

Finally the convoy set off, and that was also pretty frustrating as well. For a convoy to work well the slower riders need to be at the front so that the lead vehicle doesn’t go too fast, and so that the group stays together, without gaps for cars to try to push through. Unfortunately because everyone was fed up with waiting things didn’t work out like that, and although there was one crew member in the group they weren’t taking an active role in trying to sort things out!

We eventually made it through town and into the hotel – in all I spent about equal time riding and waiting – and consequently it took me more than twice as long to get in as it should have, since left to my own devices I’d have been going quite a bit quicker than I was much of the time.

Checked into the hotel, showered, shaved, laundry in and I was somewhat more composed an hour later when I emerged from the hotel and set off to play on the metro and go and get a couple of bike parts I needed.

The metro’s only got one line and nine stations, but it’s all really new and the stations are a real work of art, each with their own unique style.

Back from my adventure I stopped in at the supermarket and picked up a couple of beers which I sat on a park bench outside the hotel and drank in the shade of the trees. Over the course of the time I was sitting there a number of other riders drifted by, and Bruno arrived with ‘additional supplies’ so for a while there we had an impromptu party outside the hotel.

There was an actual party planned for the evening with departing sectional riders having organised some drinks and nibbles in a room at the hotel. Michael and I decided that dinner first was a good idea so popped across to an Italian restaurant for pasta and pizza before returning to the hotel for drinkies.

Despite having two rest days ahead of us, by 9pm the party was well and truly over and we’d all headed off to bed!

Riding data

View from my tent