Our Cycling Route Through Kazahkstan

Our cycling route through Kazahkstan

The map above shows the route we cycled through Kazahkstan. We entered Kazahkstan on the Caspian Sea ferry from Azabaijan and exited into Uzbekistan, on their western border.

We first entered Kazakhstan at Kuryk Port after crossing the Caspian Sea from Azerbaijan. This seems like a bizarre place to build a ferry complex as it’s in the absolute middle of nowhere. The port itself is actually quite well equipped. It had a decent lobby area with a small restaurant, cash machines, ticket office and just outside of that there was a simple hotel.

Once you exit the port you won’t find much for the next few hundred miles other than the occasional convenience store. It’s very hot, very dry and very empty in this part of Kazakhstan. You need to make sure you carrying plenty of food and plenty of water as you can never be sure when you’ll next reach somewhere to resupply.

One our way to Uzbekistan the only towns that had any significant infrastructure were Shetpe and Beyneu. There were a few road side cafes/restaurants between but they are not frequent and there isn’t much else.

With the exception of the road between Beyneu and the Uzbek border the roads were in decently good condition in this part of Kazakhstan, the surface isn’t great but it’s good enough to be able to travel. The road to the border was in appalling conditions but it was under construction so should be in good condition eventually.

After passing through Uzbekistan we returned to Kazakhstan as we made our way up to China. This part of Kazakhstan is much easier than the first part. It’s still quite empty between the towns and cities but the gap between them is smaller. There are also occasionally smaller villages were you might find convenience stores and cafes.

As in much of the “stans” area you have a very limited choice of roads that you can takes between point A and point B. We ended up spending quite a bit of time riding on the A-2 which looked like it was a motorway, however we didn’t really have any choice.

Thankfully the traffic was very light here, as it is in most of the “stans” but the big and straight roads did mean that the traffic was generally travelling very fast. The road surface was primarily concrete which isn’t the most comfortable to ride on but it was at least in good condition.

We briefly entered Kyrgyzstan before returning back into Kazakhstan for the third time. The road surface was much worse than Kazakhstan but it wasn’t a big issue for us as we only spent a couple of days here. We quite enjoyed our brief stay in Bishkek was its worth stopping by if it’s on route.

We also spent a couple of days in Almaty, which felt like an odd place to suddenly stumble across what is a surprisingly westernised city. As you might expect the roads in the city are quite busy but it’s worth the visit if you in need of some home comfort.

If you'd like to take a closer look at our route or use it for your plans you can download the .kml file using the button below. For PC users you can view this file type in "Google Earth Pro", available here: google.com/earth/versions/, for Android users we recommend maps.me and for iPhone users we also recommend maps.me.

Daily Cycling Activity

Below is a breakdown of our daily cycling activity, you can see our exact route and final destination each day using the map at the top of the page. The first section shows our activity from the Caspian Sea to the Uzbekistan border.