Niall's Travel Blog

Central Asia, here I come!

Well my friends, another adventure is about to start and I am finding it hard to accept what I am about to do (or at least what I have told everyone I am going to do!). At 9am French time tomorrow, I take off from the Promenade in Nice and intend to cycle to Kyrgyzstan. Quite a few people have told me I'm crazy and as the time approaches I'm starting to think they're right!

To the left, you will see my trusty steed. Loaded to the hilt with spare bike parts, tools, camping gear, cooking gear and one or two pieces of clothing we will be ready to tackle the 8000 kilometres I reckon it will take us to do the journey over four months. The route and even the mode of transport itself evolved over a period of time. I finished University last year and have a year of travelling before starting a job in London in September 2007. I had a fantastic trip to Africa, some of which is below although my blogging during that time was less than diligent, for four months followed by two months in Nice improving my French and generally enjoying the Mediterranean weather and lifestyle. The plan was then to fly into Russia and take public transport around the Central Asian countries Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan over about three months.

When I came back from Africa, I thought of doing a cycle trip around Ireland but found out that after 6 years of taking up space in the garage my mother had sold my bicycle! As I was looking at new ones I thought to myself, why not get a really good one and fly it to Russia for the Central Asia trip? With this in mind I found my beautiful companion in London and flew her to Nice for some training.

About a month and a half ago, while searching for flights to Russia, I was looking over the map of the world and I thought to myself, why not just cycle there? Some quick time and distance calculations later and I had more or less made up my mind, intending to traverse Italy, Eastern Europe and Ukraine to make it into Russia.

However, there was to be one more twist to the tale. With a month to go I was starting to get quite worried about visas. Not only was Russia's bureaucracy and border closures with other countries an annoyance, the other factor was that I was not passing through any capital city with Central Asian embassies. Almost to the point of leaving Nice to take up full-time Visa applying in London, I had another look at the world map and decided to reroute. The country that saved my trip? Our good friends in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This has obviously added to friends' and family's concern but by all accounts, and by personal experience, Iranians are a fantastically friendly people and have a fascinating culture that I am looking forward to experiencing firsthand. The other highlight of the trip I am looking forward to is the Pamir Highway (http://pamirs.org/) in Tajikistan - a mountain roadway about 4000 metres above sea level crossing some spectacular glacial passes (such as below) and with some of the best mountain trekking in the world.


It is with great excitement that I take off on this trip tomorrow. I hope you will enjoy the blog and photos. I don't have a clue what's going to happen, what I'm going to see, who I'm going to meet or even when I'm coming back but then it wouldn't be an adventure otherwise!

posted by Niall at 2:29 p.m.