Central Asia by Bike: Silk Road Magic & Tough Moments | Olly Hargreaves

This week we have another update from teh road by intrepid adventurer Olly Hargreaves who is making his way from the UK to Thailand. This update takes us specifically to what it's been like cycling through Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, on the route of the Old Silk Road. 

You can follow Olly's travels via his instagram - @sagas.of_olly.hargreaves 

You can also hear his dad Phill's previous two episodes here: Part 1 and Part 2

Check out Old Man Mountain's Ponderosa Panniers

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:25

Hello everyone, Bella Maloy here, host of Seek Travel Ride, and welcome to another midweek mini episode where I keep your fuel stoked and your wonderlust high for bike travel. This week I have got another update from our intrepid adventurer Ollie Hargreaves. Those of you who have been following the show will know that Olly has set off a few months ago from his home in UK, destination Thailand, and has agreed to keep us updated on the progress of his journey. The last update I had for you from Ollie, he was in Tbilisi in Georgia. And this week we're gonna hear about how he went cycling in Central Asia through the countries of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. So you're gonna hear about desert landscapes and you're gonna hear about amazing Silk Road cities and the history and all the challenges that go with navigating your way to all of those places. No one says it better than Ollie himself, so let's hear how he went.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Hey Bella, last time you left me, I just got to Tbilisi. I was fortunate enough that one of my friends was coming over to visit me for a week. So I had a week off the bike exploring the city of Tbilisi and going around seeing all the sites, and we also managed to get a bus down to Armenia, which is really nice to go to Yerevan, so it was really cool to explore a bit of the culture that way. Trying out all this kind of national dishes and really nice wine and all this kind of stuff. So it was a nice little break from the bike, and during the time I managed to sort out my flight to Aktau in Kazakhstan. So I spent a little bit of time after my friend went home and then flew out to Kazakhstan. So landed in Kazakhstan and had a bit of an interesting experience at the border where they kind of were really on it about questioning me about why I was coming and all this kind of stuff, which I didn't expect. Taken to an interrogation room and you know, questioned about all the kind of stuff, but they did end up letting me go. But Kazakhstan as a whole was a really, really nice country, it was really great riding, it was obviously very flat because of the desert and a complete change of scenery to any of the other places that I've been. The only problem was that there was a border crossing from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan that you can't get to. So everyone who wants to enter Uzbekistan has to get the train from Bainu to Nukas, which is a little bit annoying because you miss out on the section. But more annoyingly, all the trains were booked up, so it was a massive nightmare for anyone that was trying to get across, especially all the bike tourers, because it was impossible to get a ticket nearly. Unfortunately, I managed to get it all sorted out at a travel agent, so I managed to sort it, but um that definitely made Kazakhstan a little bit difficult. I was only in Kazakhstan for about six days. Um, I met another cycle tourer whilst I was in Aktau before I set off, and we decided we were going to cycle together. He's from Holland. We got on really well and you know set off, and we did one section which was kind of gravel or dirt road through the desert, not on the actual main road, about 80 kilometers, and it was a real, real tough day in the heat, but was really cool because we got to see all kinds of cool geology and there was fossils in the rocks and all this kind of stuff. But yeah, we made it to the road, and and fortunately there was a cafe right opposite, which was really nice to see, a very welcome site, so yeah. But the rest of Kazakhstan, we we had a tailwind, fortunately, it was really nice, and we actually bumped into a couple of American lads that were cycling who I'd actually met one of before in Turkey for one night that I stayed at a kind of warm showers place. It was really nice to bump into them, and we ended up cycling up to Bainu with them pretty much, staying at the same places at night, and yeah, that was really nice. A lot of good company through the time. The people in Kazakhstan were also really friendly. A lot of people offered to buy us drinks and food and all this kind of stuff. We stayed at some home stays, and most of the restaurants let us stay there as well after we'd eaten, which was really nice, and it also meant that we basically didn't cook anything the whole time we were in Kazakhstan because food was very, very cheap, and we'd go to a restaurant, eat the food there, ask if we could stay, and then spend the nights kind of sleeping on their little area outside or inside, depending on the place. But yeah, Kazakhstan was really nice, a lot of camels, a lot of horses, and a lot of nothingness, really, but made a really nice change from you know all the other bits that we'd seen, and the flat was really, really good because it meant no climbing hills, which we'd done a lot of in Turkey, so that was nice. We managed to get to Bay New in Kazakhstan for the right time to catch the train for the border crossing in Uzbekistan, and the train experience was very interesting. It was about an 11-hour train overnight, fortunately, so the heat wasn't too bad, but you know, in the day it gets really, really hot, and the borders were really really strict about any kind of medication or drones, you know, where they went through everyone's bags, and they gave quite a few people a bit of a tough time when they were crossing, which was not really something I expected. I kind of thought the border crossing would be quite chilled, but yeah, it made for an interesting experience. Yeah, we got to Nukas in Uzbekistan to start the Uzbekistan journey. Uzbekistan was possibly one of my favourite countries so far, based more on the company, because we actually ended up meeting a lot of people on the train over that obviously we had the group that we were already cycling through in Kazakhstan, but we met a couple more Brits whilst we were there, and some other lads from five minutes from where we live. Funnily enough, that we I'd been speaking to them online, and when we got to Nookus, they'd got there the night before, and it turned out they were actually in the same hostel and in the room right next to us, and we got talking and hung out quite a bit whilst we're in Nookus for a couple of days and decided we'd all kind of cycled together, which was really nice, and we kind of got on like a house on fire, so it made cycling through Uzbekistan really, really enjoyable, and the other two Brits as well were really nice, so they became this group of five of us that basically cycled the whole length together, um, staying in the same cities at the same time, normally in the same um accommodation as well. Yeah, Uzbekistan was a really, really good country, uh, mainly I say based on uh the company that we had. The sites themselves in Uzbekistan were unlike anything I've ever seen. You have these amazing cities like Kiva, Bakara, and Samakand that have these really, really intricate, detailed kind of mosaic patterns on the buildings, and they're all really bright colours, bright turquoise and blues and stuff that you just don't see anywhere else, and the difference and change so you the rest of the city is all a kind of mud coloured, like really brown and and sandy kind of desert town that you'd think, but then you have these buildings that really stand out, as in bright turquoise, but it's just it's like something kind of out of a fairy tale almost when you see it. It's really, really cool to see. The places that we visited were really special. Another part about Uzbekistan that was really interesting was the history side of things. We went past a sky burial from a group of people that were kind of fire worshippers, and that was really cool to see. You could get up on the top, and uh you had a really great view over the scenery of Uzbekistan because it was right next to the river, so it was really green. And we actually stayed right underneath it, which made for a nice camping spot. But the other the other thing was the cities that we went through, all of them were major players in the Silk Road trading route. So there was loads and loads of caravans to rides, which were actually still open when we went, you know, they're still used today, obviously, for maybe slightly different things than they used to be. But it was really cool to go and see, you know, these places that have been used for trade for so many years, you know, thousands of years. And obviously, there was other all sorts of other historical events that happened in these cities during the great game between Russia and and Britain and all this kind of stuff, which was really cool to see where these events actually took place. The desert section that we cycled through in Uzbekistan was actually a lot more barren than it was in in Kazakhstan. So in Kazakhstan we had a stretch of about 120 kilometres where there was absolutely nothing, like no shops, no service stations or cafes or whatever. But in Uzbekistan, there was actually more shops. And you know, in Kazakhstan you had all these camels and horses and things lying about in the middle of nowhere. Whereas when it was when there was nothing in Uzbekistan, there was literally nothing. There was no animals, there was no people, there were no shops, it was just flat land for miles and miles and miles, which was really weird. But yeah, the actual riding was fairly good. Roads were better than I thought they were going to be. Um not the best, but the main roads were actually fairly easy riding. So yeah, the riding through that country was pretty good. I say the group of five of us kind of cycled all the way from Nukas down to Kiva to Bukhara and then to Samarkand. Um, and Samarkand is the last city where we all kind of parted ways. There's a couple of people going to Kyrgyzstan, a couple of people were Tajikistan, and I decided that I had a couple of weeks before my dad was flying to Tushanbi. So I was gonna head down to Afghanistan. Um so I got a night train down to Termez in order to manage to sort out the visa and all this kind of stuff, and you know, get it done in time so I could enjoy going through Afghanistan and not have to worry about time. So we got there and then I had to sort out the visa, which was a right nightmare because it was running to the consulate and back to the bank and back to the consulate, and I think over the day I had about 12 different taxis taking me to different places so that I could sort this visa out, which was a bit of a faff, but obviously something that was necessary to do. So um that was kind of my last couple of days in Uzbekistan. So, an expectation versus reality for both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. I'd been told by people who'd already done it, including Jamie, um, that it was horrible and they really didn't enjoy it, and if they had the choice, they wouldn't do it again, which made me kind of think obviously, oh, it's it's gonna be really hard, it's really not gonna be enjoyable. Um, people said that there was all sorts of distances between water stops. People said, you know, you have to go 200 kilometres with no water and no food, you have to carry, you know, three or four days worth of food and water with you, which just didn't end up being the case. Um, through Kazakhstan, there was at least one stop off every single day. The longest period of time or distance that we had to do was about 120 kilometres where there wasn't anything, but that is very doable on a bike and when you're getting up early and and stuff, because we were getting up at you know with the sunrise, so about five o'clock in the morning. So, you know, it's very doable to do a big distance in the desert because if you if you wait around any earlier or later in the morning, you end up boiling before you can actually get up. Yeah, people made it seem like it was really, really tough riding and the roads were really bad, which wasn't really the case. There was a few bad roads in Uzbekistan because of like when we were going into the cities and it split off from the main road and it was really potholy, and they were quite bad roads, but nothing in comparison to what some people had made it sound like, which took me a bit by surprise because people really kind of blew it out of proportion. Like I had a really good time going through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and that was probably also to do with the company that I had, but people definitely made it seem harder than it was, and you know, I really enjoyed the fact that it was a brand new kind of change of scenery from all the other bits that we'd done. It was like nowhere else that we'd already cycled, so yeah, it was really enjoyable, which, as I say, people kind of made it sound like it was a really unenjoyable part of the trip. So I was quite glad. Another thing about Uzbekistan as well was we did receive some really nice hospitality whilst we were there. We got to a kebab shop and it was the only thing that was open for food. And this guy kind of said, Oh, like if you want any water, let us know. And we went in and ordered some food, and when we got up to pay, he basically refused and said, like, on Google translated, like, guests don't pay type thing, which was really nice. But we got given a lot of water on the roads. People would drive by and and give us cold bottles of water, which was really nice. And on the second to last night before getting to Samarkan, me and the two other lads from Stockport, we'd actually split off from the other guys because they were feeling ill, so they'd stayed. And we basically got invited in by this guy who, whilst we were looking for a campsite, we'd asked him if it was okay to camp across the road, and he basically said, Oh, come into our house. And they gave us loads of food, and he invited his friends over, and we kind of had a bit of a laugh, and then yeah, let us sleep in his house, which was really, really nice experience. So, yeah, the hospitality in Uzbekistan was really good.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Thank you so much, Olli. Wow, what an update that has been. And I must say, I'm a little bit surprised. Not surprised about how you describe the cities of the old Silk Road there in in Uzbekistan, or even the extreme hospitality that you've been shown, because as the host of a show that's interviewed many bike travellers, I've heard only great things about the hospitality of people in Central Asia. What I'm surprised about is just how much you loved riding through the desert landscapes there in Uzbekistan. And I nearly wonder if you could possibly be, Ollie, the first bike traveller who's told me that they really, really enjoyed that section. What that tells me, listeners, is that bike travel is different for every single one of us, and someone else's perception and reality will not be our own. I've learned this from interviewing other bike travellers before, specifically couples, where people who have ridden the exact same section of route on the exact same day, stopped at the same place for lunch, pitched their tents and packed up their tents, etc., all in the same places. Have different memories of how they felt on that day. Now, often it isn't so much about the landscapes, but our own mood of the day and our emotions and our energy levels. Someone could have a amazing day because they are feeling inform and great, and someone else that they're riding with is having a terrible time because maybe they have food poisoning, or maybe they're a woman and they've just got their period and their energy levels are really down, or something like that. But for me, what's impressive here is Ollie, we're not talking about a perception of just one day of travelling in an area. We're talking about the flat desert landscapes of Uzbekistan. And that hasn't changed. Like that goes on for hundreds of kilometres, and yet you really, really thrived and loved it. An element of that is what you did hint at, which was that it was such a stark change from the landscapes that you were cycling in previously, and you really welcomed that change as well. I wonder whether maybe you didn't get hit with as many h bits of horrendous headwind as others have done. Maybe the weather was slightly different, I don't know. It could even just be the interactions that you had at different times with locals stopping along the way, giving you water and stuff like that. But either way, I am super stoked to hear that the energy remained high and that you came away with an overall great impression of an area where I know a lot of bike travellers just look forward to getting through the vast expanses of a lot of nothingness in between those amazing Silk Road cities. Can I just say also something that I really want to experience myself is those Silk Road cities. I have seen so many amazing bike travel photos of people standing in front of those beautiful turquoise mosaic buildings. And I just feel the sense of history would be immense around those areas there and also around the caravan saraies that you were talking about visiting along the way too. I just would love to picture myself being there. And listeners, I don't know whether there are some of you that also do the same. Those border crossings that you went through sounded pretty intense though. And the feeling of being interrogated in a room, I always get a bit nervous, and I've mentioned this on a few episodes. I get nervous listeners just going through normal customs. I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to worry about. I don't have sharp objects in me when I go through an airport scanner, but my anxiety still gets increased. And Ollie, I cannot imagine what it would have been like for you to be interrogated across the border. And then when you had the border crossing where you thought everything was going to go really easy and smoothly, but there was actually a little bit more of a process to cross, I'm sure that the anxiety levels that you had were possibly a little bit increased there as well. I think something else that has also been amazing and awesome to hear about from your journey, not just in this episode but in previous updates, has been your ability to connect with people on the road at different times. And whether it's meeting up with other bike travellers just traversing through the same section together, or the randomness of meeting people who live just what five minutes away from you where you live in the UK, that is insane. Fast friendships can often form with bike travellers on the road, and it sounds like you are going to be probably coming away from this huge adventure with a vast array of new fast friendships forged on the road, pedaling circles on your way across continents. How awesome is that? Now, listeners, Olly's update left us there as he had finished his time in Uzbekistan, and I can share that Olli did, as he mentioned, get his visa for Afghanistan. I will have a complete update from Olly covering that country itself. And I can also further update you to say that in real time, Olli and his legend of a dad, Phil, if you haven't heard Phil's two episodes of his travels from over 40 years ago, please give them a listen. But they have both crossed the Pamir Highway. So we have some interesting updates to come. Keep your eyes peeled and follow the social links in the show notes to discover more about them. Now, if you are tuning into these midweek episodes and thinking, hey, I wouldn't mind being featured midweek and sharing a bit about my own bike adventures, then by all means get in touch with me. The best way to reach me is on Instagram, send me a direct message there. Our account is at SeekTravel Ride, all one word. Or more conventionally, you can simply send me an email. Email address is podcast at seek travelride.com. Get in touch with me, let me know about you and your bike adventures, and let's see if I can get you featured midweek. Okay, listeners, now it's time for me to do my favorite part of these midweek episodes, and that is to say a big heartfelt thank you to you, my super fans, who have been so awesome and bought me some coffees. Now, this week I am shouting out Yet Ya Antonetti. You not only bought me coffees, but you have become a monthly supporter of the podcast. That's right, listeners, on buymeacoffee.com, you can choose to support the sh podcast every month. And that is exactly what Yet Ya Ant Yunetti has done. And their message is hello from Ottawa, Canada. We love listening to you. In fact, we've just toured across Canada in our camp of van and back, and you were a regular. All the best. Oh, and we've also cycled across India, top to bottom of Sri Lanka, top to bottom of New Zealand, South Africa, etc. And we refuse e-bikes at the age of 70 plus. Wow, listeners, first of all, yet you're anti Nettie, you are true Deadset legends, and thank you so much for coming on board as monthly supporters of the podcast. It really means a lot to me. And I can't tell you how excited I was when I received this message, listeners, knowing that virtually I myself have managed to go all the way across Canada and back in a camper van with these two legends and I've kept you company there. I wonder which guest episodes you were listening to along the way. A fair few of them by the sounds of it. And I also wonder whether they've inspired ideas for future adventures as well as perhaps give you memories from those epic ones that you were mentioning there. It almost sounds like I actually need to say, Hey, get in touch with me again, and let's see if I can get you on the show, because it sounds like you've had some diverse journeys. Let's say India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, South Africa all amazing countries, all different, all different terrain, different cultures as well. And I'd love to hear how you have found them on your own adventures. But regardless, once again, thank you for coming on board and supporting the podcast on a monthly level. It means the world to me. And listeners, if you would like to do as yet your Aunt Yanetti has done and support the show, simply head to buymeacoffee.com forward slash seek travel ride. Buy me a coffee, but more importantly, let me know what is it that you love about the podcast and where is your next bike adventure going to take you. And until the next episode, I'm Bella Malloy. Thanks for listening.