Muscle memory is an amazing thing. My muscles were recalling their memories of the last time I rode this section to Uzbekistan. It’s the section I fear most and I’m on my own this time. They’re refusing to take me to the bike. They’re like reluctant toddlers being taken to the dentist. I have to drag them kicking and screaming into the cool morning light.
It’s a really very beautiful morning. Mother Nature has turned the light to ‘soft’ and it’s draped all over the scrubby little buildings, the dilapidated train carriages, the old and beaten machinery. Heating it up gently for yet another days work.
Go to fuel up. This section is 320 miles with no fuel stations and almost nothing except for a border 80km in. It’s a rough scratch across a desert. It’s the worst road I know anywhere. Full the tank, the auxiliary tank and my fuel container. If I could swallow and regurgitate some fuel I’d do that too.
80km to the border is absolutely perfect. New road. Cool and calm. Easy riding. This border should be open 24/7… but it looks like it’s 7/24. The gate is shut, bolted, and unmanned. Google says this next section of 270 miles is 10 hours. It’s 8:30 already. I can really do without a delay. So we wait.
These borders remind me of refugee camps. All sorts of people seeimigly carrying all their worldly possessions shuffling along in the dirt and dust to cross. Fuck only knows where they’re going. Their will be old cars picking them up on the other side I guess. They’re all funnelled through a tiny gate like sausage meat. People can go through but no vehicles.
One hour. Two hours. Now im starting to get really agitated. Driving in the dark out here is a game of chance. After 3 hours I’m seriously considering ram raiding the gate and just letting the Ktm scream her way through with a manic laugh and a single finger in the air.
But just in time the bolt is drawn back and we’re off. Passport, done. I’m about to leave and an inspector comes to check the luggage. He grabs a guard, tears off a little strip of paper and I’m taken to customs. Another seagull feeding frenzy window. The guard pushes me in at the front and I can feel myself being stabbed in the back by dozens of angry eyes. The guard has accidentally torn my paper in two. But it gets stamped and proceeded anyway. 4 hours after arriving I’m headed for the exit. You have to hand over the piece of paper to show all the processing is complete. That’s ‘piece’ rather than ‘pieces’. He won’t let me leave. He wants me to go back and do it all again. Well that’s a hard NO I’m afraid mate. My patience is well into the red by now. There is a fight going on in my brain where someone is trying to grab the volume button and turn it right up. I just sit there and he gets google translate out.
‘Why did you tear the ticket?’
‘Because I really wanted to waste my life having an altercation with a 10 year old with a gun at a border crossing. I thought it would be a learning experience’.
Eventually he decides it’s all too difficult, and he’s getting daggers from the drivers behind me so he lets me through. Straight into another queue to the Uzbekistan border.
My leathers are so sweaty and so full of dirt that they have become a husk. I can relax all my body and still stand upright in them. I dare not fall asleep though. I might wake up as a skinny 6”4’ butterfly. That would be bad. Though I do fancy a go with a huge proboscis.
Another hour or so and I’m through. This is where humanity ends for the next 200 miles.
Out we go onto the road. This road is just indescribable. It’s totally destroyed. It’s very dangerous and the only sensible way to drive it is like the trucks do. They crawl along at 20mph and use their height to spot every hole then weave through the madness like drunk blindfolded 12 year olds.
Or drive at 50 and hope you skip over to the top of all the nastiness. That seems to be working for a while. It does sound like I’m driving in a car through a riot though. Big bangs and whomps, chains clattering, noises of money leaving my wallet. That’s all working well until I hit a massive yomp and I hear something really bad.
This could be better. I’m 200 miles from anywhere and my panniers have decided to shear some bolts, then collapse onto my auxiliary fuel tank, which has then rubbed on the tyre, which has then bent a mounting and split the tank pissing all the fuel out. That’s what’s known as an unfortunate series of events. Or a complete clusterfuck.
The panniers are now flipping about like a geriatric’s knockers and things have become a bit bent too.
Get the tools out. I carry some spare bolts and straps and I manage to use the big tyre levers to ‘persuade’ the frames into shape. Don’t know about the fuel tank though. That’s going to have to wait.
Now it’s 4:30 and I’m 200 miles out. My muscles are twitching from all the riding on the pegs. I’m not even half way. But I have to slow down.
The next few hours are just purgatory. Pure and utter purgatory. I’M SWEARING AND SWEARING UNTIL MY THROAT IS SORE BUT I STILL SWEAR SOME MORE UNTIL ITS RAW” AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I FUCKING HATE THIS FUCKING BLOODY SHITTY C&@T OF A ROAD”
After about 100 miles of this shit there is a dilapidated shack/Cafe where you can lie down for a while, listen to whale music and put £3000 in a swear jar. I do love these places. In the middle of absolutely nowhere. They really offer nothing except a collection point where humans can just look at each other and get solace that we’re all in it together.
Another few hours, and about 170 miles after leaving the border, the road suddenly turns from zero to 7. My eyes that have become swollen and huge can now shrink and have time off pothole spotting for a while, and the bike can use its forgotten top three gears. Just in time too. The sun held in the sky as long as it possibly could but now it falls over the horizon with a click and we’re into the dark for the last 90 miles.
I don’t want to think about those miles. Scary things going under the wheels. The roads are still really shit in places and the bangs and pings from the wheels confirm they’re still suffering.
The bike says 10 miles fuel. The GPS says 18. I’m crawling along in the dark. Counting down the inches.
I can see the hotel. I’ve been here before. I coast into the car park about 10, the bike feels exactly like I do. It’s totally exhausted. But what a bike that is. Big Respect to The Bitch. That was a day from hell. I’ll have a day off and look at her scars tomorrow. But fuck what a machine that is.
Now. Time for the white stuff. If you’re a fan like me, I can take you to a dairy drugs den in any city I’ve ever been to. I know them all. And this is a good one. They’ve got the hard stuff. 6% cream. Not for girls…
Today’s a down day. Time for licking wounds and listening to muscles shouting I TOLD YOU SO!
Checked The Bitch over and tightened more loose bolts. The windscreen was only as tight as an old blokes teeth too. She seems OK but I suspect she’s just holding her stomach in and pretending she’s still young.
Went to get some fuel. Almost the entire transport network here runs on LPG. Benzine is rare and expensive. I fill up the tank, and my spare fuel can, then go to ‘test’ the auxiliary tank to see if the elves fixed it overnight. Turns out the elves couldn’t get a visa I pissed out fuel over the forecourt.. and the next 5 miles up the road.
Nukus has a bit of a North Korea vibe to me. Streets and streets of identical buildings. Decaying and abandoned parks and attractions. Fuck knows what anyone does here for entertainment.
‘What shall we do this weekend kids? Why don’t we go out and count the leaves on a tree? That would be fun!’
‘Ahh dad, we did that the last 10 weekends in a row’
‘Ahhh.. but this weekend we will pick another tree’
‘Whoop whoop. Let’s go’
Thank your lucky stars that your soul wasn’t selected to inhabit a manifestation here. A couple of days is manageable. Being here for birth, marriage and death is unthinkable.
This place reminds me of North Korea. Streets and streets of identical buildings and identical cars. 99% of the vehicles are white Chevrolets, obviously conducive to cheap LPG conversion.
And the potholes are more common than sexual deviants at the BBC.
Still. I know there is wondrous beauty just beyond the horizon. The yin to this yang.
