Central Asia Epilogue

Posted on by bryanmkevan

I left an abrupt ending to my last post. I guess the trip kind of ended abruptly, so the last post fit that mould. The last few days felt just as abbreviated. ‘Now you’re on a bus, now you’re running around Ulanbaataar, now you’re home.’ There wasn’t some glorious ‘last night looking over the steppe and pondering the experiences of this trip’. After a few weeks back in the States, I’ve had some time to reflect on this voyage and so I’m going to write a post reflecting on my time in Central Asia. Also, now that I’m back on a computer with a decent screen to edit photos on, I am going through my photos for ones that I may have missed along the way. I thought I’d share a few of my favorites and some of those that didn’t make the posts for whatever reason.

It’s the epilogue!

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Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Usharal, Kazakhstan

Posted on by bryanmkevan

Well, the boring connecty parts of this trip have turned out to be… pretty boring and connecty. This is a short post covering a little more than half of the distance from Bishkek to my entry to China at Tacheng. This stretch is about 1100km long, and has proved to be unexpectedly hilly and pretty hot. And thus, in comparison to the previous 1100km+ of riding, it was kind of monotonous. The scenery isn’t great (except for later after Taldykorgon), just endless steppe with tall mountains looming in the distance. The one fortunate thing about this stretch were the amount of services and (until Taldykorgan) the condition of the road. Kazakhstan is much wealthier than Kyrgyzstan, and this means that the average road condition is better, and the average town has more to offer. It’s probably the most developed area I’ve been in since Azerbaijan. Oil will do that to a country.

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Bishkek

Continue reading Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Usharal, Kazakhstan

Osh to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

Posted on by bryanmkevan

I spent almost a week in Osh, to the clear confusion of my hotel owners. Where does he go all day? Why doesn’t he eat our breakfast or have tea with us? The answer to the first was that I was usually wandering the aisles of Osh’s grocery stores reveling in the availability of things like cold drinks and yogurt. The answer to the second was that the breakfast was much better at my mom’s swankier hotel. I was also, as would turn out to be more common than I would have liked along this stretch, sick. It wasn’t the beans. It might have been the Nutella. But the third and final culprit, discovered two days out of Osh, was the peanut butter I’d bought in Dushanbe. I would end up throwing away any food (not very much left, mind you) I’d bought before Osh.

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Pamir Highway Part 3: Murghab to Osh, Kyrgyzstan

Posted on by bryanmkevan

It’s somewhat demoralizing to wake up at 3,600m and see nothing out your hotel window but a whiteout. Especially when there’s no heating, and the next time you’ll have electricity (but no heat, mind you) is 7:30pm that night. That was my first morning in Murghab, Tajikistan. Murghab is a sort of depressing town with a good (for the area) hotel and a few shops selling the standard unhealthy Pamir fare. Juice, carbohydrates, candy, bread, etc. The market in town is just a collection of numbered shipping containers with various goods. The main point here being not to expect much from Murghab in this season. At the Pamir Hotel, the generator runs from 7:30pm to 11pm, so it’s only during this time that you can take a hot shower and charge electronics. I spent a rest day in Murghab, partly because I woke up after the first night with a few inches of snow on the ground. It melted very quickly, but the sight out my window upon waking up had already pushed me decisively into rest day territory.

Continue reading Pamir Highway Part 3: Murghab to Osh, Kyrgyzstan