My roomie was up just before 0500 so with plenty of time to spare I took a shower this morning, mostly just to enjoy again the best showering experience of the trip – the water pressure is amazing!
Rider’s meeting took all of three minutes because the instructions for the day are so straight forward
Stage 80 route notes
Another ho-hum hotel breakfast and I was on the road around 0630. It was still relatively cool at just on 20C, but the wind’s already up though it looks like it might be somewhat helpful, at least for the leg of the ride through to lunch where we’re heading south west.
I passed Robert and Michael as we made our way out of town and then caught up with Wim and Nancy. Wim was looking for a leisurely ride out of the city, but Nancy was keen to get going before it got too hot – in the end we split the difference – I went past them, but they stayed with me, and then I slowly increased the pace until just before 10km when we overtook a tractor and trailer and in doing so I pushed the pace up to 35 km/h and we were off, taking 2km turns leading.
A few km later we passed Grant and he joined on the end of our group. At 22km we passed Erwin, Will and Charlie at which point Will and Charlie decided to come with us as well, so we now had a group of six of us taking 2km leads and pushing the pace along as we went.
I tried to take some photos and make a little video of our group – didn’t quite work out as I’d hoped but you get the idea
Into lunch and we’d averaged 32.7 km/h for the non-stop 72km from the hotel – a pretty good morning’s effort, though in the process we broke Charlie! His last lead had been relatively slow and when Wim, and then I, lead the next 4km we ended up dropping him off the back of the group and he came into lunch a few minutes after the rest of us.
Lunch was a little more interesting than it’s been for a while – there was ‘real’ bread, which had been recently sliced and so was still fresh, as well as a whole smoked fish (possibly trout, but it was pretty big if it was) and a collection of other salads including an aubergine salad, carrot salad and a kind of picked radish salad, all of which made a very welcome addition to the regular lunch fare, and then chocolate covered wafer biscuits for lunch-pudding.
By the time we’d done lunching the wind had picked up and swung more to the west – it had initially been mostly from the north (and consequently behind us) which wasn’t great as the road was also swinging firstly to the west, then later to the north west.
Charlie elected not to ride with us in the afternoon so the five of us set off at a more moderate pace into the wind carrying on with our 2km rotation. After 30km we stopped for a pee break before heading even more into the wind to knock off the remaining 22km to camp.
Again the road is intended to be a dual carriage way but only one of them has been completed for much of the distance we covered, however for two quite long stretches there was again the worlds largest cycle path with a complete, but closed carriage way all to ourselves.
The site where we were supposed to be camping now has a new service station built on it, so we’ve moved further down the road to what looks like quite a nice site camped under a row of trees
Shady tree campsite
Unfortunately the trees are clearly frequented by a flock of sheep as the ground is covered in a layer of dust and sheep shit about 5cm deep.
Grant and Will clearing a camping spot
Being one of the first into camp I managed to pick out a spot at the end of the line where there was less shit, and have cleared myself a reasonable spot which at least for now remains shady.
A shady spot for camping
It’s now 1345 and I’m glad to be in camp – it’s well into the 30’s and the wind has really picked up as well so the four riders who are still out on the road will be having a pretty tough time of it.
Batyr (our local support person in Turkmenistan) has offered to get cold drinks brought to us – I’m not entirely sure how, and to be honest don’t really care that much so long as the margin isn’t too high, as a cold beer would go down rather well right now 🙂 We’ll see what comes of it.
For now we’re whiling away the afternoon, staying out of the sun and keeping the fluid intake up so that we’re ready to do it all again tomorrow – we’ve got another two days of similar duration to get us across the bottom of the Karakhan desert and into Ashgabat.
It looks increasingly like we’re going to end up having to back-track some of that ground by bus on the day we leave Ashgabat as the border crossing we’re supposed to use remains closed. The nearest open alternative is to the south of where we are now so early tomorrow we’ll pass the turnoff we’d need to come back to – apparently it’s about a hundred kilometres on each side of the border so riding simply isn’t an option because of our visa restrictions, and we have to go to Ashgabat to get our Iranian visas. The support company in Turkmenistan have tried to find out why the border is closed, and if it might reopen any time soon but apparently they border authority simply hangs up when asked by phone!
Later: Despite my scepticism cold drinks did materialise right on dinner time which was perfect 🙂
Riding data
View from my tent
Sunset from under my tree
It sounds like you’re having fun again especially now there are a few new riders who are riding at your (exhausting-sounding) pace! 🙂
I am indeed, and yes it’s great to have Wim and Nancy join us – they’re both incredibly good riders and great fun to ride with too!