Turkmenistan: Racing against time, kilometers, headwinds, sandstorms,heat and my own head

Have you ever tried sleeping on a frying pan? That's how I felt during most of the nights spend at the desert of Turkmenistan. The sand stays unbelievably hot until 1-2am so that I woke up in every hour sweating even more than during day time. My clothes were  totally soaked and the sweat was dropping down from my body and I felt that I was swimming in my own sweat. I didn't use the outer layer of my tent anymore, but somehow the heat just stayed inside the tent and it made sleeping impossible. During my sleepless nights in Turkmenistan, I remembered my sisters words that just resting is almost as powerful as sleeping. I closed my eyes again and agin somewhere between the sand dunes in the vast desert of Turkmenistan and I tried to convince myself, that it's ok to cycle over 100km a day on the desert heat, being totally exhausted and just "rest" during the night times. Every night, I also came into conclusion that I can also try to hich to the border, in case I cannot make it from Uzbekistan to Iran in 5 days. Why did I need to cycle through Turkmenistan in five days? Because, I got 5 days transit visa for Turkmenistan and the distance from Uzbekistan border to border of Iran is some 540km. So, I kept turning around on my sandy frying pan bed, and hoped to catch some sleep.

Every morning, I was waking up at 4 am to cycle, in order to have one hour on my bike before sunrise and then it gave me few more hours before the temperature was again over 40 ( some days over 50) degrees. Local people told that it was the hottest time of the year in Turkmenistan. I definitely felt it. During the second day of my rally through Turkmenistan, I realized that I will never be able to make it to the border of Iran on time if I don't sleep. So, I decided not to use my tent during the night. I just placed my sleeping mattress on top of my tarp on a sand dunes and wish that the snakes, scorpions and who knows what other animals stayed away from me. This solution was way better. While lying under the stars all by myself on the desert, I remembered why I was doing this/ Gratitude and happiness filled me and I started to sleep well during the night times again.

The road I was cycling through Turkmenistan was flat and sandy. The scenery somewhat monotonous and I could see far to the horizon until the heat riggled the view away. While having hard times being motivated to cycle, I went through all the people I had met coming from Turkmenistan and I was convincing myself that I can do this as well. I might be woman and I might be alone, but If I just push myself little further, I can do this. I was shouting my mantra loud out for silent desert, I was chanting it for camels passing by. I was thinking my friends who told me that I can do this. I was trying to grasp the extra positive energy from every single piece of my thought. I was chanting my mantra at 5 pm when there was still 40km to be done and the sand was in my mouth while I was totally soaked from my own sweat and my legs felt like well cooked spaghetti. I was trying to find the beauty of lonely sand dunes of the desert and flatness of the road. I was telling that the dancing sand on the road combined with the wind is something, in have never seen. I have never seen sand tornados on the desert passing me by and hitting my already dirty face. The road continued far away to the horizon until it riggled away because of the heat. The wind was passing me like a roaring animal, sometimes so laud that I couldn't listen music which normally help me, when I am tired and the road feels too difficult to face alone.

Earlier, I have reached some kind of level of calmness in my mind while I cycle. My mind has been quiet for long periods of time, but Turkmenistan was not only physically hard, but also mentally. My mind didn't give me too many breaks. That kind of a road gave lot of space for thinking. It's impossible not to think something during the long hours on a bike. When there is monotonous view, tired body and overheated head, the mind is starting to fly high and then suddenly make deep-water desperate dives. My thoughts were a lot with my family, old and new friends, past and future. I had lot of time to go through discussions hold before with the people I had met on the road. On my third day my tiers were falling regularly and they got mixing up with my sweat and sunscreen. How did I ended up to this fast lonely desert alone? I stopped on the heat without shade (there was nothing else than sand dunes and few tiny dry plants) to watch videos and pictures of my family and friends. 

I had many hours of motivational talks with myself when my energy levels were low and motivation even lower. I find it amusing, how it's possible to trick yourself with self talks. When my legs felt heavy, stiff and out of energy and there was "only" 40km to go, there was 100 reasons to stop in every few kilometer either to fix my uncomfortable scarf, drink, have a dihorrea or just stop and be exhausted. Is this the dream I wanted? Then I always came into the conclusion, that this way I am not moving forward in any ways, not in kilometer wise neither personally, so let's just cycle the last 40km and call it a day. Maybe my mood will change, maybe I get more energy, let's just continue little more. It's anyways only 50km, it's not 100 anymore. So, I put my feet back in the pedals and continued. Yes, there is headwind, yes the sand is flying straight on my face and mouth, yes the Tarmac is bad, but actually I have never seen or experienced anything like this before and let's see how far can I go. During my self talks, I was wondering how big illusions they are. No matter, if I speak positive or negative things to myself, it's all created by myself. So most likely most of it is just illusion. On this state my mind normally calmed down and gave me little break.

The camels and other animals ( such as some spotted cat animal, desert mangusts, some small fox-kind of a things), are the highlights of the day, they always made me smile. I am not sure if the camels are wild, but on the desert middle of nowhere, where they stay, there is no human settlements, the nearest small village is 80km away to both directions. The camels are also afraid of people, I tried to go near to them to take a picture but they made scary noises and run away. So, I decided not to bother them when I see them, just to admire them. I wish I was a camel too, then I didn't need to carry up to 10L of water all the time and my bike would be a lot lighter. I would also be a lot better with the heat of the desert. But I suppose I am not a camel.

Here comes my normal day routine: I already mentioned that I normally woke up at 4am to have my breakfast porridge and coffee and started to cycle around 5am. I tried to cycle 80-90km before the midday to have a long sleep over the afternoon. On this road from Farap to Sarahs there is cafes in every 40km (some stretches the distance is 80km of nothingness). I plan my day in advance so that during afternoon, I stop for one of the cafes to escape the heat and sun. The owners of the cafes, they  always let me to sleep over the afternoon in their cafe. One of the cafe owners brought me mattress and even a pillow, so I had wonderful 4 hours of sleep. Sometimes another cyclist came from another direction into the same cafe, normally totally soaked from sweat and exhaustion. All of them, like me before, buy one liter of juice, drink it in two minutes and then buy another cold drink. To see these men (why all the cyclist are men or couples?), it makes me to wonder how crazy people are doing this. All equally exhausted, counting kilometers, sweating their asses off. Around 5pm the sun was not so strong anymore and the temperature was only 40 degrees, so for me it was good time to do another 30-40km. Before sunset, I looked for my sand dune, took some of the panniers off, carried them and then somehow fought my bike over the deep sand to my hidden home for that night. Cook dinner and have a rest on a "frying pan" dunes.

Turkmenistan was under Soviet Union until 1991 and after, it used to have bizzarr dictatorship (president called Saparmyrat Niyazov) similar to North Korea. The new president is having slightly less control than the old one. I had no clue what to except when I arrived to Turkmenistan, but people appeared to be very gentle and hospitable. From all the countries that I have visited, in Turkmenistan the cars were most likely to take me into consideration and they gave me lot of space. While i was trying to avoid driving in to potholes on a Tarmac, the cars waited so patiently behind me and waved hellos when they finally passed by.

Men didnt talk to me too much. I felt relaxed to cycle alone, there was no sexism, no uncomfortable stares and no whisteling. Men even seemed to avoid me, which I actually liked a lot and appreciated. I felt like I was on a holiday from attention of men. I met couple cyclists going to other direction and they were both men. It's amazing how the behavior of local men changed and all of the sudden the men came to talk to the boys. Once again, I was left out of the conversation. How lovely is to be invisible. Yet, women were talking to me a lot and they wondered how I can be alone on the road. I was having a sore throat, coughing a lot and my voice was fading out while having conversations, therefore the ladies often gave me interesting pills, while writing this I have collection of 30 different pills and I have no clue what they are. I tried them all though, but none of them really worked.

On my second last day in Turkmenistan, I cycled 148km because I heard that the last 100km of the road to the Iranian border was in terrible condition and the border of Turkmenistan closes around 16 pm. That day the road was going through tiny settlements, which were normally 20-30km from one another. That day Turkmenistan people were just incredible friendly and I was happy to be out of the long lonely desert stretch.  I got 7 invitations for the chai, 3 breads, 5 bags of biscuits, bottle of Coca Cola (cold!), one melon, one huge watermelon (10kg when the local shop owner was weighting it), vegetables, 15L of cold water, 3 ice creams and some candies, three times car stopped to ask if I need a lift and 2 people invited me to stay at their houses. These all came from different people in different situations. The huge watermelon arrived, when I was sleeping under a tree after 100km and a random man woke me up, placed the huge watermelon next to me, put his thumb up smiled, said "strong woman alone, good" and left. That day cycling felt easier than any other day in Turkmenistan, just because people were just so kind to a pink stranger who was passing by their land.

When I entered to the border of Turkmenistan, the young army boys took my bicycle from me, and pushed it to the customs for me. Woman brought me tea and the officers told me that I look very tired. I felt like crying, because I was tired, dirty, stinky, sweating and actually somebody realized it. Yet, I was proud of my bicycle that it took me through Turkmenistan without bigger problems and I was proud of myself that I made it through all the hard times. I felt happy, strong and amazed of myself how it's possible to go trough such a challenging environment and challenging times with yourself and come out maybe more tired but stronger than ever before. I was not asked for any money to exit the country (neither to enter to country) , I didn't need to fill up papers, I didn't even have right papers with me and it was not a problem. No one wanted to check my bags or my camera. I was sad to leave Turkmenistan because people seemed to be so friendly but I didn't have time to get to know them.

While cycling on the no man land into Iran, I was exited. Iran has been one of my dreams for long time. I had heard so many good things about its people and their hospitality, but also that it can be challenge to ride there as a solo female.. 

Song of today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NucJk8TxyRg&spfreload=5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_-3di1yx0

Wakhan Valley

After I got better from the virus that had made my stomach sick for a last few days, we were finally setting off to Wakhan valley. One of the flip sides of cycling solo is being alone while being sick. I cannot describe the feeling when Jenny, Louis and Amanda told me that they will wait for me, until I get better. How much nicer it is to be sick when there are people who care about you and feed you with medicine and tea. 

Wakhan valley is a famous valley in between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. There is many many routes on Pamir mountains but Wakhan valley is maybe the best known alternative to m41, at least among cyclists. The road splits from m41 and becomes dirt road leading to Wakhan valley. On our first day, our bikes were heavier than usually, because we were carrying water for one and half day. That night we stopped on a beautiful salty high altitude lake to make a camp for the night. I am normally making my own food and this night my English friends had bad luck boiling their rice on the salty water. All the lakes on Pamirs are salty, and the salt can be seen on the surface of the earth as well, this is due to the desertification of the high altitude plateau.

Our first night was extremely windy and during the night my tent collapsed even though I had pitched it up well and carried heavy stones to hold the tent ropes down. I got very confused in the middle of the night when the tent was all on my face flapping and trying to fly away. I managed to scroll out of my two sleeping bags and a plastic bike bag-solution and builded up the tent again. The air was cold and my down jacket-fleece clothes let the cold wind to go straight in. After fighting with my tent, I managed to pitch it again. To build a tent in themiddle of the night with crazy wind while everything is covered with frost, is not my favorite thing to do. Yet, while looking up into the sky, the stars are just stunning and while watching the bright Milky Way, I was happy to have a reason to get out of my tent to witness the beauty of that night. Once the tent was up again, I was happy to jump into my sleeping bag-plastic bag bed and heat up my cold fingers and hide from the bitter wind.

Rest of the night my home stayed still and the next morning we woke up only when the sun was shining staright to the tents and started to warm us up. We were hitting another over 4000m pass and the road up to the pass was in small parts so sandy that we had to push our bikes to move forward. I was still weak from the virus, therefore I found this pass one of the hardest ones so far. No matter how hard the pass was, or how difficult the surface of the road was, the views are rewarding and always when watching the silent huge mountains around us, I felt the luckiest person to be able to be there. The downhill towards Wakhan valley was facing the majestic Hindu Kush mountain region in Afghanistan. The road was quite bad dirt road and I was afraid that my bike will fall apart, but she was doing a great job.

We were flying down until we met the river in between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. The road was like a washboardy sandy beach. This combined with the killer flying-sand headwind and suddenly our cycling mood dropped from happy downhill riding to hellish cycle as hard as possible downhill and move only 3km on hour forward mood. After 6 km and two hours, we were all pretty tired and not even the views made our day much better. Will we ever reach Langar? The turning point came when we saw long camel caravan on Afghanistan side of the river. We stopped watching how men wearing turbans, riding donkeys passed by with heavy loaded camels. Where they were coming from and where they were going to?

We continued another hour until we found river crossing the dry area. We stopped to fill up our empty bottles for camping and realized that there were men holding on a rope crossing the river from Afghanistan to Tajikistan. When we looked around we found out that there were punch of guys walking on a mountains with pinaculors, obviously looking that nobody was coming. These suspiciously behaving guys asked us to join them for a tea, but we decided to continue in case we would end up into trouble with the drug dealers. This is the border between Tajikistan and Afghanistan, where most of opium is starting it's way towards Europe. The army (as most of the officers in central Asia ) are corrupted and they are big part of the business.

The road continued as gravel road all the way to Langar. In some point cycling on a bad dirt road becomes normal when the lower speed of cycling is accepted. Some parts the road was quite good and some times in horrible condition. Obviously the deep sandy parts were the most challenging for my bike and on those bits of the road I hoped for wider tires. The beauty of this part of the world is incredibly rough and barren. We were facing the snow peaked mountain range all the time and the landscape still managed to change in every valley. My favorite parts were the steep and high roads on a sides of the canyons and the isolated mountain valleys near the passes. I also realized, what means adrenaline boost from challenging roads.

The arrival to a village called Langar was another remarkable experience to me. As I have mentioned, the Pamir highway is high dry and deserted plateau, where not so many plants or animals survive. The spring time is good (even though little cold) time to cycle Pamirs, because the valleys are "flowering". I had enjoyed the dry areas for the last 3 weeks, but when we arrived to Langar I can understand how it feels to arrive to an oasis. Everything was so green. And suddenly there was such a big variation of the green colors. And the smells! For the first time I was able to smell roses from the side of the street. For the first time in my life, everything smelled so GREEN and lush. The local people were waving and welcoming us to Langar, I have never seen so beautiful smiles. The rough beauty and solitude of the mountains were exchanged to beauty of lush green oasis town called Langar and beauty of humanity and human settlements. We had finally arrived to Wakhan valley. We were happy that we made it back to the civilization in one piece (expect poets panniers, which got destroyed because of the pumpy roads).  We stayed in a cute homestay and the owner took us to the shop and we bought a kilo of cherries and chocolate and had a food party.

It's easy to get used to the existing surroundings very fast, even if they feel like a paradise in the beginning. That happened to me with Wakhan valley. The villages are beautiful and people are friendly, but the scenery is little monotonous. The road follows the river and the green oasis like villages are frequently popping up. The population of Afghanistan side of the river consists huge amount of Tajik people, because of the difficulties that Tajikistan has been facing during the early years of its independence. The border between Afghanistan and Tajikistan is open at the moment, but many Pamiri families have relatives on the otherside of the river and they have difficulties to meet them. While cycling and camping next to the border, i was able to compare the infrastructure on these two bordering countries. The road on Tajikistan side was in good enough condition that trucks were able to ride on it, but on Afganistan side the road stopped several times due to landslide or just dead end. How would it feel to have a home on the other side of the river and watch all the bikers passing by on Tajikistan side. Sometimes, I was asked what's my name and I was shouting my name to people and greetings were changed.

We wanted to celebrate Amanda's and Louise's birthday at the baba Fatima's hotsprings. We did make our way there and had a small swim. Unfortunately, men and women has turns to enter to the hotsprings. The men's turn starts at 4pm and continues to 11pm. Women are allowed to go after 11pm IF the men are ready. Coming from Finland, one of the most gender equal country in the world, I am having hard times here in Central Asia accepting the roles of women and men. Men are allowed to do everything first and it seems that often women's role is to sweep the dust and take care of children. It's not the first time that I am spending time in a countries like this, but after spending 5months on the road in countries where I often feel pressed down, I find myself calling for the rights of the women.

I shared the road with Louis, Amanda, Jenny and Piet until Khorog and from there I continued my way to Dushanbe alone. After spending time in a group and being able to share all the hard parts and good parts, I was wondering how silent it can be while being alone. Alone it's impossible to share the moments with other cyclists, but at the same time the beauty of local people opens up in a different way. How nice is it to have a chat with friends during a lunch break? Yet, the local people approache me more when I am alone and I did have more than enough company for every time I stopped. On my second night I was insisted to stay with the local family, who fed me, washed my clothes, gave a place to sleep, gave me soap (!) and next day food to take away. The kindness,care and love that the local people give while they look into my eyes is the strength of my trip. This evening I was surrounded by 5 local women who never left from my side until I went to sleep. When I am cycling alone, I need to be part of strangers family for a while. I need all the love and the feeling of being part of something even for one night. This is the difference to cycle in a group. The need of the companion of local people is minimized and the attention that I am able to give to local people, while being surrounded by other cyclists, is smaller.

The last mountain pass in Tajikistan (3250m) was a big challenge for me. I have been struggling with stomach problems for the last few weeks and the worst day of the dihorrea happend to be the same day as my last climbing day out of Wakhan valley. The road was steep, within 30km I cycled over 2000m up to the pass, on a bad gravel road, sun hitting my back for the whole day long. The frequent squatting stops combined with challenging climb squeezed all the energy out of me. It took the whole day to make my way to the top of the pass. Beforehand, I had thought that when I reach the pass, I would just Enjoy the views and celebrate the last big pass with a snak and write down some words. In the reality, once I reached it, I just started to cry and thought that I will not cycle never ever anymore in my life and the only thing I want to do is to see my grandmother. I missed everything comfortable, I missed people and there I was squatting again with my shaking legs all alone. I hadn't been able to eat for long time, because all the food was giving just burning in my stomach and coming out in less than 20 minutes.

I put my jacket on, because it was cold and started to roll down and slowly I started to sink into the scenery and once again it made me breathless. After some meters the smile and gratitude was returning and I realized that the struggle while climbing was just part of the journey and the hardest part is now over and I made it over the pass. Anymore, I wouldn't change my location to anywhere else in the world (I could still transport my granny here though). I found beautiful camping spot 7km after the pass, forced myself to eat little dinner and went to have well deserved rest.

When the body is physically exhausted, I normally sleep like a brick. Not that night. I struggled with my stomach during the night time, I had decided to hitch to Dushanbe to get medicine. The next morning, the views were way too beautiful to skip the cycling. The grandmas in one of the small village healed me partly with some strange drinks and yougurt. Later, I met super lovely couple Hilda and Bernt, whom I cycled with to Dushanbe. We also met again Michael and his dad and once we reached Dushanbe we treated ourself with Lebanese food.

The adventures on pamir highway are over for now. I met Tom the samurai in Dushanbe and he helped me to fix my bike (bless this kind hearted man)which had gotten little damage (this time devalleiur) during the rough roads of Pamirs. I would have never though that I would meet so many cyclists to share the road and stories with. The Pamirs would have not been the same experience without these people. I am taking medicine for my stomach and it hopefully gets better soon. Next, I am having race against time first in Uzbekistan (I only got 7days Visa ) and then through Turkmenistanin (5 days transit Visa). The mountains will be changed to desert and the freezing nights will be changed to frying pan heat of 48-50 degrees.