blizzard blossoms

I didn’t expect Uzbekistan to be beautiful. Or hospitable. Twice wrong of course. On the Samarkand road we spent two days in apple blossom sunshine; two nights in homes and gardens being lavished vodka and plov. For ten miles we hung on to a great cotton-boll truck like little fish on whales. On the third day the temperature plummeted 25 degrees and trudging through freezing blizzard we all four worried a little about the high Pamirs next month. In the morning I could see cherry blossom hueing through snow like a haiku. By evening the mudguarded bicycles’ slush-capture was seizing wheels solid at every red light, so we stopped stopping and I felt my lifelong mudguard scepticism vindicated. We survived two bottles toasted through with wellwishers at our dinner restaurant, suffered only one pile-up, left only one behind in the snow and by night somehow converged at the same hostel for quince jam and wafers.

Samarkand’s registan is enchanted by the whiteout. The hostel staff are the kindest I’ve met. Four bicycles in the courtyard drip icicles under an occasional whump of snow off the roof. A convincing gas fire glows the dining room and a holiday of Swedish linguists and French diplomatic interns chat dinner. Last night I finally slept. There’s constant planning talk in our little peloton; visas, borders, high passes and low temperatures. I listen and largely abstain, conscious of decisions made months ago slowly panning out and feeling some inertia about committing to the next few months. In Bukhara I got distance vertigo listening to a hitchhiker’s three years on Asian roads... All three of my companions plan the difficult mountain road through Tajikistan but visas and visiting friends commit each to slightly different dates. I’m largely free to choose when and where with whom. The borders are tangled, their crossings unreliable and the passes still sheathed in ice. After the Tajik visa you need a further permit and in the worst case a week’s emergency food, so this afternoon I need to muster clarity; get my head around newly photocopied maps, and get decisive. I’m excited for fitting my enormous mountain tires (they fold). For now I procrastinate chipping ice from my drivechain; quince jam, wafers…

Certain certainties:

I’ll leave Uzbekistan by the end of March.

Tajikistan and its Pamir Highway come next.

Kyrgzstan after that. 

The China question looms ever larger.


This is Tieme

This is Laurens

Bukhara

Tieme, Laurens

Samarkand