In the swings and roundabouts of this trip, today was an awesome day – oh so much better than yesterday…!
Stage 53 and over the next pass
The first couple of km were downhill but then we began the main climb for the day – thankfully we were doing it early while it was still cool.
Not such great stats…
But when you consider that it was all on gravel and I climbed just over 1000 vertical metres in the process (for an average grade of over 5%) it was actually damn good going…!
Today the descent was also much better than it had been yesterday and though rough in places it was possible to keep up a decent speed. Grant and I leap-frogged each other over the course of the morning – I’m quicker uphill, he’s quicker downhill, so the mix of terrain saw us together and apart as the morning progressed.
We also moved back out of the mountains and into more agricultural terrain again.
Assorted crops, including sunflowers on the hillside
From lunch we had the worst 4km of gravel into the next village where we stopped for ice cream before continuing on, including a decent descent (on smooth pavement) into a river valley before climbing back up the other side.
At 73km we were supposed to get back onto gravel but bless the Chinese they’ve been building a new road here too! With a mix of new asphalt, or super-compacted gravel ready for paving, and an average of 2% downhill, despite the head wind I was ripping along at around 40km/h for the next 20km!
I’d been looking forward to getting to the 93km mark where the pavement returned but with the new road we were on the ‘old’ Russian pavement which had seemed such a desirable thing was suddenly somewhat less desirable! None-the-less I was able to maintain almost the same pace for the remainder of the ride into Jalal-Abad.
Originally we’d been going to be camping tonight but for reasons which still aren’t entirely clear we’ve ended up in homestays – though the one I’m in isn’t actually anyones current home, more like an Air b’n’b style apartment, but it has hot and cold running water, and a flushing toilet so it’s all good!
Tomorrow’s day seven for this stretch, and with pavement and a hotel at the end I’m hoping for a quick day 🙂
Riding data
View from my tent
The Soviet-era apartment block we stayed in
