Steve's Cycling Blog

Things weren’t great overnight on the stomach front and I wasn’t feeling too flash when I woke up, but decided to eat breakfast anyway to try and replenish some of what’s been burnt over the last 48 hours. We average about 4,500 – 5,500 calories per day burnt cycling in addition to the 2,000ish you need a day just for ‘surviving’ so with 48 of no net input that’s quite a deficit to make up.

Eating didn’t make me feel any worse, which I considered a bonus but I hung out at the hotel for a couple of hours to see what was going to happen – seemed not much, so later in the morning Ivan, Michael and I wandered down to check out the market. Turns out it’s much the same as any other central asian market, just significantly better structured and organised.

Back at the hotel I got one blog post uploaded, along with a bunch of photos for others, before the three of us headed out to grab some lunch and with the intention of doing some sightseeing.

Unfortunately lunch didn’t sit well and I had to make a fairly speedy return to the hotel (there’s no such thing as a public toilet in this part of the world) so sightseeing got put on hold in favour of napping and trips to the loo.

A coupe of recently joined riders Mike and Fred are leaving us again today so they were hosting drinks at 1800 so I spent some time bidding them farewell before.

About the only really good thing that’s happened today is that Will’s very kindly leant me a Garmin which he’s not using so that I’m going to be able to navigate for the remainder of the tour. I’m going to try and sort out a police report (with Rustam’s help) in the coming days in the hope that I can claim it on my travel insurance (I’m not terribly hopeful) once I’m home, but having Will’s solves my immediate need.

I’ve skipped dinner and am actually beginning to feel relatively ok so am going to get (another) early night and hope like hell that I wake up feeling better as this is all getting somewhat tedious!