Farawayistan

21st – 27th June 2026

As I watched the Caucasus mountains become the Caspian Sea and then the desert from up above it felt very odd not to be travelling slowly, and suddenly transported to Farawayistan (although naturally given that I’m a Lang I prefer the Swedish translation of Långbortistan). Despite very little sleep, one slightly dodgy stomach and just shy of 100kg luggage, the day somehow went rather smoothly, and our bikes were soon almost correctly put back together. With the stress of flying behind us we could finally relax, which of course meant exhaustion soon hit. However something about being faraway relieved our mental weariness and we started to feel excited to explore somewhere that felt completely different.

The next day it became very clear we weren’t going anywhere. We had breakfast and Ben went straight back to bed. Our flight had caused us to lose an hour and gain multiple degrees, and a day to acclimatize, and restock on fuel for us and our gas stove was needed. We wandered the streets of Tashkent and even in almost constant shade of the trees it was unbearably hot, and we weren’t entirely sure how the next couple of days to Samarkand would pan out.

Despite Ben’s strong hints that we should get the train, we set off by bike the next day. By the time we’d faffed around with our derailleurs which we’d definitely put back together incorrectly it was about 10am – so not exactly an early start to avoid the heat. After a week off cycling, a self service and reassembly of our bikes, cycling felt odd and it was a while before I could accept that the increased bounciness was the result of wider tyres and the regular squeaking was from cicadas rather than something critical on my bike.

The online accounts of the roads in Uzbekistan are less than flattering. After we’d navigated some interesting driving techniques in the centre, our route out of Tashkent was fairly pleasant – residential streets with courtyard houses, which became fields before turning back to houses. Then we joined the highway. Whilst the roads were paved by some description or other, the hard shoulder, which was the safest place for us to reside, was not. The roads were buckled and bunched up at the edges, and so cycling took up a lot more care and attention than we were used to. At one point someone had attempted to make the smashed asphalt more drivable by glazing it with a thin layer of bitumen. I recognized the technique from when I’ve failed to disguise a badly cracked cake with icing – it was almost worse than if they had done nothing at all. The road surface felt sticky in the heat which also had the effect of disabling any rational parts of our brains and we couldn’t make the most basic of decisions.

After camping at a surprisingly peaceful spot mere metres from the Kazakhstan border, we awoke to a cooling breeze which could have perhaps more accurately be called a headwind (although by that stage I’d have accepted any kind of wind, even that of Ben’s making, as long as it had the desired cooling affect). After two days cycling in the heat our legs were covered in a thick black paste: a combination of sweat, dirt and sunscreen. A shower was needed. Ever mindful of our notional budget I suggested we give a hostel a go. And this wasn’t any hostel – it was a university hostel. We were greeted by a lecturer in tourism and two of his students. He explained that the hostel was like a laboratory for the students to get practical experience of tourism, which I guess made us their experiment. The students were very sweet and clearly more than a little nervous, but it soon became apparent that the university was lacking a degree in house keeping; things aren’t good when you find yourself reminiscing about digging a hole in the ground when using the facilities.

The following day was uphill in the heat and so we attempted our earliest start yet which required alarms every 5 minutes for half an hour until we finally got out of bed at 4.30. We were on our bikes before 6, but despite this the city felt very awake and already surprisingly hot. The climb wasn’t at all as bad as we had been anticipating, and after conquering the strong winds at the summit we continued downhill to the outskirts of Samarqand where the traffic became more erratic and unpredictable. This stretch was accompanied by Ben’s rear derailleur starting to play up; it was unable to spring back on its own accord when he tried to shift gears leaving his chain rather baggy and we had to stop a couple of times in awkward locations so he could manually push it back. It was a relief when our route took us off the highway and started winding through a residential area, but this was soon disrupted. We were going downhill when my pedal hit a bump in the concrete and catapulted me sideways. The left side of my body hit the concrete hard and my bum fell neatly into a gutter. I spent the final few kilometres looking and smelling like I’d wet myself.

We spent two nights in Samarqand exploring elaborate mosques and mausoleums which featured a Kaleidoscope of geometric glazed tiles and intricate wall paintings, the colours of which mirrored that of the desert and the sky perfectly. The colour palette was punctured by vibrant patterned twin sets worn by almost every woman and which wouldn’t be out of place in Bristol. They seem to do public realm very well in Uzbekistan, and we walked between sites on traffic free tree-lined boulevards with gorgeous planting and through close knit residential streets which made walking as pleasant as it could be in the heat.

There’s always a more to do on a day off cycling than we have time for and this was no exception. After some lunch we had a rest from the sun to attempt to get the blog up to date. It wasn’t until about 5pm that Ben remembered about his derailleur, which was pretty essential to have in good functioning order up in the mountains, which is where we were headed. We hoped it needed a good clean – but it soon transpired that if that was indeed the case it was a better clean than we were able to give it with a handful of wet wipes.

There aren’t a huge number of bike shops in Central Asia. Between us and Dushanbe, the next city, was 300km and one huge mountain pass, the highest of the trip to date. We decided to forgo our early start and brave the heat in search of a bike shop before we left Samarqand. The shop we finally settled on had a customer base which seemed to consist of two core demographics: five-year-olds and elderly gentlemen with wrickety, but very stylish, single speed bikes. There was no hope of getting replacement components here, but luckily it seems that meant the mechanic had become very resourceful at fixing the ones already on the bike. After a rather anxiety inducing 20 minutes or so where the mechanic kept requesting tools from us to dismantle the derailleur, it was back together and working as it should be.

From Samarqand the roads continued to be as unpleasant as they had on previous days; I enjoyed exploring the cities and history of Uzbekistan but I couldn’t wait to see the back of cycling there, and progress to the next stage of the trip which would take us even more faraway and out of our comfort zones as we headed to the Pamirs. When we finally arrived at the border to Tajikistan it looked distinctly closed. The approach was lined with drivers picnicking in the shade of their very stationary lorries, and unlike any other border we have passed so far the gates were closed. A little unsure we approached them, and were beckoned through by a guard.