Stewart Law
Find us on social media
Posts by Stewart
This super French couple pulled over in the Uzbekistan desert for a chat and with the offer of water.
We found a roadside cafe which wasn’t even on the map! I expect traveller after traveller has blindly driven, cycled or walked straight past because there wasn’t any signage to suggest it was a cafe.
It feels like we’ve hit the stans at a perfect time in terms of weather and temperature. We’ve seen rain twice and we’re mostly comfortable…or comfortable enough on the bike.
We crossed the border to Uzbekistan on Monday 02nd September. We left Beyneu, Kazakhstan very early expecting to battle with the bad roads we’d been warned about by several other cyclists.
The behaviour of young boys does not change, no matter where you are. We met this inquisitive group during our break from the sun on our first day in Kazakhstan.
Since arriving in Kazakhstan we’ve cycled 350 miles (560kms) through predominately desert roads. The first 10 miles were quite an eye-opener. Everything has changed.
Despite the border crossing issue and a 12 night stay in Baku due to sickness I personally loved Azerbaijan.
You can spend a lot of time with other travellers as you wait to cross the Caspian Sea. The wait time for the ferry can very from a few hours to days. We had to wait about 1.5 days then once you board the ferry all you have for entertainment are the people around you.
I now have an update on our ferry trip, which was not our finest hour!! We ended up having to agree to pay a £200 fine EACH if we return to Azerbaijan as we failed to register properly. What a pair of idiots!
After Georgia the roads in Azerbaijan were an absolute treat, you can only imagine our delight so roll into Azerbaijan and discovers it’s pristine black ribbons of perfection!
Well Stew and I are starting to feel like we’re living the real life Groundhog Day! Every day in Baku is pretty much the same. We’re essentially killing time until we get the sweet release of Stew’s hospital results.
We climbed twice to 6000+ feet which was tiring, but it’s always so beautiful at the top of a mountain. In Georgia we enjoyed time in Batumi and longer than we expected in Tbilisi due to sickness.
So Stew and I were joined by our mother’s and my brother, Adam for 3 nights and we explored Istanbul together.
Well it turns out that Baku is a pretty special city to get “stuck” in. With Stew’s stomach not showing much sign of improvement we saw a second medical professional who agreed testing is required.
Finally, here are all of the images from our cycling in Turkey. Turkey was one of our favourite countries to date. Very beautiful, very hospitable and cuisine was so good!
I think a lot of cyclists come to Azerbaijan to go to Baku and that’s kind of it…it feels to me like to others Azerbaijan is just the country to get across the Caspian Sea, but I think it has so much more 😍
Stew and I arrived in Gabele a few days ago, we headed straight to a cafe for dinner. The staff in the cafe didn’t speak any English so I signalled that we wanted food. Namik (pictured) stood up to help us.
This has to be the biggest mystery of the trip so far… As Stew said: “I don’t think people are very good at finding a gap in the market here.”
I can only assume that people in Azerbaijan are used to seeing tourists – and cycle tourists, but even though they see many I believe they greet each person with the same gusto.
This lady was a delight! Encouraged by another cyclist to buy bread from the baker at the bottom of the hill we stopped and picked up a fresh loaf.
We’d been speaking with @adventure.in.tandem for a while on Instagram and when we realised they were travelling west through Azerbaijan we were keen to cross paths! Yesterday was the day and I’d spent most of the morning looking out for a blue tandem 😍
Almost straight away Stew got a puncture 😱 the first one so far! He was happy with the time it took him to change it, around 20 minutes to unload the bike, change the tube, locate the metal, put the tire back on and load the bike again.
Meeting this brilliant bunch was one of the highlights of our day! Meet Ryan Farrugia, Aaron Azzopardi, Jude Sciberras and Daniel Debono. This energetic crew of 3 electricians and an aircraft sprayer are taking part in the Mongol Rally.
This is George! A lovely cyclist who we met yesterday. George was a ray of sunshine in our day – and we had surprising connections to this Romanian cyclist!