Desert Cycling In Uzbekistan

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.

Uzbekistan does pose its challenges, it brings us both to the end of our tether and we’re only 4 days in!

I imagine solo cycling would be enough to break a person.

When you’re not cycling along bumpy roads you’ve got the relentless winds to contend with. Sometimes it’s a glorious tailwind like yesterday which helped us to do 116 miles (185kms). Longest distance on the trip so far and I got an overall PB over 40kms! Thanks Uzbek!

That being said, even the tail winds are frustrating. As soon as you stop you feel the wind pick up and it’s unbelievably strong.

A couple days ago we stopped in the desert to cook, as soon as we stopped and got everything out the wind picked up. It was so strong everything was blowing over. Stew’s bike fell as a lorry passed and the handle bar tape split. Carrier bags were flying out of our bags into the desert, I chased after some bare foot and stepped in spiky desert plants which I then had to remove from my poor foot!

I opened my pannier to find the crappy roads had bust a jar of jam which was EVERYWHERE. The sticky residue all over my hands and our kit.

We then cooked, struggled to get a flame and the eating experience was an overall pain with us sitting on whatever we could to stop the wind taking it.

We were both at the end of our tether.

I can’t imagine how challenging it would be to handle that solo. You can keep each other chilled as a couple and share the load. Solo you have no one to share the frustrations with, no partner to hold onto this while you do that. I take my hats off to you solo cyclists, especially those who actually made it through Uzbekistan!

After all the above we pitched our tent in the wind which was a challenge. It took both of us to get the tent up and once we finally settled down for the night we woke up to rain!! I closed the outer tent, but I was too late and by morning we had a puddle in the tent porch. @ Uzbekistan