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Jim makes a tough day of biking look effortless

Mark climbing a very tough hill

Luba is always positive, no matter how bad the conditions

After the trek in Zaamin National Park, and a night of sleep, the plan was to head out of the park on our bikes. This involved a significant ride downhill, then some ups and downs, then a tough 7 kilometer climb, and finally a 40 kilometer descent from the mountains.

There were a few snags. First, the weather forecast was miserable. The temperature was barely above freezing, and it was actually snowing the night before our ride. The roads were also pretty treacherous. And then there was the matter of that 7 km climb. We all sort of assumed that once morning came, we’d ditch the ride, especially since all of us came to Uzbekistan expecting hot weather everywhere, and nobody had clothes for cold and snow.

But when we got up in the morning the weather had mostly cleared. It was cold — just above freezing — but it was sunny and beautiful. Of the fourteen of us, ten decided we were going to try the ride. It was beautiful riding, though the roads were pretty hellish. Wearing a couple layers, and working pretty hard, the temperature wasn’t bad — except for some pretty cold fingers.

Jim and Rebecca get ready to bike in the cold

Once we began the very tough long climb, it started to get a little colder, and by the time we reached the summit we were wiped out and freezing. This caused a few of us (including me) to decide again the 40 km descent. It was just too cold, and the roads looked just plain scary for riding steeply downhill. So more of us got in the bus, while Jim and six others started downhill. The weather got worse. The roads got worse. There were mean dogs. Becky took a tumble on her bike (but wasn’t hurt). Suffice it to say, by the halfway point of the descent, the remaining riders were climbing into the bus with their teeth chattering. And we all began a 3-hour ride to Samarkand, where we’d get a day off to recover and explore.

Samarkand is the stuff of legends. It is the quintessential Silk Road town. Ancient in origin, it was conquered by Alexander the Great in 329 BC and decimated by Ghengis Khan in 1220. In 1370, Tamerlane made it the capital of his Timurid Empire, stretching from Constantinople across Central Asia into India and China. Today it is leafy, lovely city with an incredible legacy of tile-covered Islamic architecture. It was a joy to explore this beautiful place — and to heal from a rough day of biking. And it deserves lots of pics, as you will see.

The Registan in Samarkand is a stunning group of three medressas — religious schools — the first of which was completed in 1420

Mark, Rebecca, and Jim touring the Registan

A dazzling ceiling inside one of the medresses of the Registan

Timur (known in the West as Tamurlane) watches over his empire

The stunning Gur-e-Amir Mausoleum is Tamurlane’s final resting place

The ceiling of the mausoleum

Mark and Chee take a break outside the mausoleum

In the courtyard outside the mausoleum, a few Central Asian tourists started to try out their English on Jim, and before we knew it he was surrounded by people wanting their pictures taken with him

Shah-i-Zinda is an incredible avenue of mausoleums loaded with tilework from the 14th and 15th centuries

The Registan looks amazing during an evening light show

More of the light show

Mark on the very dry and dusty road to the Asmansay Yurt Camp

We started Day 5 of the bike trip with a tour of Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. Normally Mark and I would avoid an organized tour of a city at all costs but there was really no way to avoid this one; the group left the hotel in the morning, toured the city, and then headed west – still on the bus – the city of Jizzakh. Thus were we trapped.

In the scheme of things it wasn’t so bad and parts of it were even good. We saw some monuments, went to the big market in town, toured a beautiful mosque complex, and had a great lunch of local food. Given more time I’m sure I would have found parts of Tashkent to like but with a whirlwind tour like that you just get a little flavor. After that it was a long drive over pretty awful roads to Jizzakh.

Part of a complex of Islamic mosques, schools, and museums in Tashkent

From there it was another transfer – we neither biked into or out of Jizzakh, it was just a convenient stop – out to the start of the ride. By now we were some 150 miles southwest of Tashkent and the terrain was completely different. This was essentially dessert, just dry rolling hills, with the ride entirely on dirt lanes. I missed the beauty of the mountains but this area had it’s own charms. And while I prefer riding on paved roads I learned there are lots of people who prefer this sort of mountain biking. So everyone gets some of what they like on this tour.

Biking to the yurt camp

We ended the ride at a yurt camp – sorry, no pictures – a lodge with maybe a dozen traditional round “tents” with beds. It was extremely remote and I was pretty happy with that. At night, though, the wind came up pretty strong and was just lashing the canvas on the outside of the yurt making a noise that was almost impossible to sleep through. And then to add insult to injury when we got up in the morning they had lost electricity which meant not only no lights in the yurt for packing, but no running water, which was powered by pumps. Not a great morning.

Then it was a l-o-n-g bus ride to Zaamin National Park, where we were supposed to hike instead of bike. When I say long, well, it was supposed to be a three-hour transfer which, on those roads, would have been bad enough. In fact it took us nearly five hours to get to the park. And when we got there it had snowed recently and there was a light drizzle falling making any trails muddy and slippery.

Most of us made the hike anyway, though Mark wisely stayed back; he’d have hated the slippery downhills and his knee would have rebelled. For those who went … hmmm … it was a good hike. Too fogged in to have great views and too cold to really enjoy. But I love mountain air and I don’t get a lot of that in Manhattan so despite the cold and the wet and the mud it was OK.

Cold and wet with plenty of mud, but it was still a beautiful hike

Tomorrow we’re off to the ancient city of Samarkand but it’s not clear how much biking we’re going to get in. Right now it’s actually snowing here and none of us brought the clothes you would need to survive biking in that kind of weather. Fortunately we’re all being pretty flexible so I guess we’ll play it by ear.

One of the first stops on our tour of Tashkent was the local market. I had Mark & Rebecca pose just to show off how spacious and clean it was, in contrast to many other markets we’ve seen.

There are always scores of displays like this

And this

Islamic architecture in Tashkent

Mark in front of a mosque. Because we were wearing shorts we couldn’t go in – which wasn’t the worst tragedy we’ve experienced

At another mosque they provided robes so men with shorts could enter. I thought Mark could have passed for the Grim Reaper…

Our tour of Tashkent included a ride on the local subway. My experience is that the Soviets – who built this subway – always did a good job of designing the stations. This is a LOT nicer than anything we see in NYC!

Tony & Sharon posing in front of some of the art in another subway stop

Plov is the national dish of Uzbekistan, so before leaving Tashkent we had plov at the Central Asian Plov Center. There were probably eight or 10 big vats like this with guys – always guys – making their own variation of plov.

This is what I ended up with and I thought it was spectacular

Dinner in Jizzakh included these new friends of Mark

Our new friend Rachel on the road to the yurt camp

There was a lot of this on the route

Cute kids on the route! Our experience so far is that locals – adults and kids alike – are much more reticent than most places we have biked. Not these boys though – they were eager to interact, run along with our bikes, and have their picture taken.

We had a camp fire under a full moon at the yurt camp, serenaded by this local guitarist

Mark and some of our fellow riders

And finally, near the start of our hike in Zaamin National Park. And yes, that’s fresh snow even though it’s already May.