Final days on the Silk Road; Chinese construction, leeches and newly weds

At 1am we were woken by loud shouting from drunk shepherds on horseback.

I couldn’t get back to sleep and poked my head out of the tent.

The brown hills were illuminated by a silver crescent moon hanging low in the sky. I contemplated the fact that we were nearing the end of our journey and it felt strange. For weeks the terrain ahead had seemed neverending, the final destination a notion we couldn’t comprehend with so much ground yet to cover. Life beyond the bike trip was almost upon us and it somehow felt too soon.

For breakfast we ate the last of our semolina with honey - we hoped that day we’d reach a store.

Departing our ridge line campsite we began a careening descent, mountain bike-style, down the lumpy dirt road.

We filled up at a trickle of a stream, almost too shallow to flow into our bottles but when I dug a channel in the sand some wriggling creatures emerged.

Leeches.

There was no choice but to drink the leechey water as we began a hot, slow ascent to the pass.

On legs that had climbed thousands of metres in the preceding days it was a strenuous and unrelenting few kilometres.

The pass arrived and was followed by a steep downhill, I skidded through the ruts with clenched brakes while Jack took a more fearless approach and ended up hurled over the handlebars.

A snake rippled across the road.

We ate lunch on boulders in the only shade, provided by gnarled apricot trees.

Out of a tiny Larda tumbled many drunk men. One asked Jack: “Is that your wife? Do you have any cigarettes?”

They then posed for a photo with him before continuing on their way.

Where the narrow dirt road ended was a barracks built from shipping containers with Chinese characters printed across them.

The vastly wide and smooth new highway was bliss under our tyres, but it felt surreal; where did it lead? A massive feat of engineering bordering on wild, empty country inhabited only by handfuls of farmers.

We biked past clusters of workers whose faces looked Chinese or Filipino, none Kyrgyz.

Kids called out to us from the top of a crumbly-looking cliff.

Now out of drinking water we pedalled hard with the wind at our backs, counting down the kilometres to the village of Aral that held the promise of refreshments.

At a simple shop we filled up on chocolate-coated animal biscuits, apples and a 1L bottle of coke.

Our camping app showed a site on a hill above the village and we hauled our bikes up to the flat plateau.

The surrounding view was magnificent, autumn leaves in gold and yellow and the river a monstrous blue torrent snaking through the otherwise dry valley.

But the ground was covered in sharp plants. No way could we camp there without puncturing our sleeping mats.

As I wearily searched the windswept hill for a patch of smoother ground, Jack began talking to a young couple who’d parked up in their car.

They had open, friendly faces and wide smiles, and the girl spoke English well, inviting us for tea at their house.

Tired and hungry, and with no idea how far their home was, I grumpily suggested to Jack we needed to set up camp and start cooking before dark.

But the couple were insistent, adding that we could camp in their garden.

Eventually I relented and we followed their beaten up car down the road, through an avenue of willows and up a steep driveway.

There stood a cluster of family members, delighted at our arrival, and moving forward to clasp our hands in welcome.

Then the young couple revealed they’d been married for just one week.

They had invited us, dirty strangers, to their intimate post-wedding gathering for family and close friends.

We were led to a basin to wash our hands and remove our shoes before entering the house.

“We can’t take our shoes off,” I muttered to Jack.

We hadn’t washed in five days of riding in the hot sun and dust and there was no doubt we stunk.

We protested, trying to explain we needed to change and/or wash, but our hosts were having none of it.

Reluctantly we took our shoes off and winced as the matriarch picked them up to place them inside.

We were led down the hall of what I now understood to be the groom’s grandmother’s home, into the last room.

To the family’s delight and amusement I yelped in surprise - laid before us was a FEAST! Piles of fried bread, fruit, jam, biscuits, sweets and noodles.

We were invited to sit and our plates were piled with homemade potato salad, stir fried vegetables and mutton and our cups refilled and refilled with chai. Then shots of top shelf Kyrgyz vodka were poured so we could drink with the father of the groom, who announced he was the only vodka drinker in the household.

From left: Father of the groom, mother of the groom, grandmother of the groom, myself, Gulzat, Jack and Azamat

We were quietly mortified at being so stinky and disheveled, but if our hosts could smell us they did not show it.

The groom patted his grandmother’s shoulder and told me she had ten children. I gaped a loud “WOW!” and the matriarch slapped my leg and roared with toothless laughter.

We watched the bride bow to her husband’s aunties and cousins as they arrived and draped her with silk shawls, planting kisses on her cheeks.

It was such a special glimpse of Kyrgyz family life and tradition, and an invitation with such seredipitous timing for our empty bellies and worn-out legs.

The following day we cycled half-heartedly along the highway, irked by the exhaust of trucks and frequency of traffic, yearning for the quiet roads back in the mountains.

We arrived at what maps.me said was a guesthouse with a terrace and Wifi. A family welcomed us in but there was no terrace, certainly no Wifi and the guest room appeared to be the parents’ room, who moved into another small room with their four children to accomodate us.

After a week sweating into the same dusty clothes, I’d been looking forward to a shower and I motioned washing to the mother, feeling it was futile given the house had no running water. But she nodded eagerly, “da, da” (yes, yes) and ten minutes later I was joyously showering in a modest tent next to a stream, with a large bucket of hot water warmed on the stove. It felt like the best shower I’d ever had.

We reached the gargantuan salty lake, Issykul, and opted to take a taxi to Bishkek. Ending the trip in polluted air and feverish traffic would leave a bitter taste, we wanted to remember the peaceful back roads where horses and donkeys were our only company.

How many men does it take to cram two Surlys into the boot of a sedan?

En route we stopped at Burana tower, the solitary remnant of the destroyed 9th century city of Balasagun. The city was once considered the centre of the world, but over time was overrun by Mongol troops then ravaged by earthquakes.

The minaret and some carved stone grave markers are all that remain of a once flourishing place that welcomed thousands of Silk Road caravans. It felt like a fitting place to end our journey - a ghost of the past slowly being rediscovered by curious travellers wishing to unravel the mysteries of the ancient empires that time has buried.

After just under two months, with 2427km cycled, I felt sad at the prospect of no longer waking up to another long day on the road.

My aim to rediscover the value of the journey was fulfilled. I found the beauty of the places I rode through to be matched only by the warm-heartedness of the people living in them. The kinship we felt with those who cooked for us in their mud brick homes, who filled our bags with figs, who offered soft beds in guesthouses and who picked us herbs in alpine meadows is how I’ll remember the people of Central Asia.

In the discomfort I learnt how hard I can push myself, and in the rhythmn and routine of biking and camping I found the simplicity I yearned for.

To experience the Silk Road from a bike is to understand the hardiness of the ancient travellers; lungs straining in the thin air, nose worn smooth and red by the wind. It’s the same visceral experience of the passing landscape; sand in your eyes, inhaling the milky smell of a scrambling goat herd.

The vulnerability you feel while camped in an inhospitable wilderness, the knowledge that there’s no escape but to keep going, and the trust that your body can carry you, all of this brings about a thrill that makes the pain worthwhile.

Thank you for reading. I’ve been blown away by the engagement and interest this blog has provoked. It’s been a pleasure to share the people, places and perception-altering journey with you.

Finally, I’d like to extend my gratitude to the following brands for their support:

Goal Zero for providing me with solar panels and power bank which kept my head torch, Garmin, iPhone, Kindle and GoPro charged for the sometimes-long stretches between electricity.

Grayl for the water purifier which kept us safe from bugs, heavy metals and chemicals except for the time we relinquished good judgment and our purifier, drank from a village tap and caught giardia. If that’s not an endorsement I don’t know what is. I’m delighted to hear the new model is bigger, I’ll be taking that next time.

Torpedo 7 for the Garmin that tracked our kilometres and elevation gain to satisfy my obsessive need for stats and the MSR tent which was perfect for bike touring: light, easy to pitch… just don’t take it anywhere where a sand storm is likely.