I was going to call it ‘Istanbul to India’, it had a nice ring to it when it struck me as just another alliteration ride in the style much favoured these days, at least for UK travellers – ‘Tunbridge Wells to Tokyo’ and so on. Besides that, I had ridden from Lhasa to Laos two years ago. Once I plotted the route on Google I could see it was a Silk Road route. I was interested in the old Haj routes, probably more than the earlier silk traders’ roads, and plan to go through the famous Islamic sites of Samarkand, Bukhara, Meshed and Merv. I’ll be very pleased indeed if I can find an intact caravanserai along the way. These were overnight stops for pilgrims en route to Mecca and the most common style would be open-walled rooms facing onto a courtyard where animals could be stabled and food cooked under shelter. I don’t expect to find much; I imagine it’s like people going to the USA to look for the old Route 66, but the point is the search, and no doubt the discoveries are partly to do with the imagination, fuelled by books, childhood stories and so on. So much of the past in Central Asia has been damaged by earthquakes, particularly in Iran, but a good ruin sometimes feeds the imagination more than a grotty reconstruction ever can.
All these countries except India and China will be new to me, and Xinjiang in China’s far west has only recently had the full-on smothering treatment from China. I think the indigenous Uighur population is now in the minority in Kashgar, if not in the whole of Xinjiang.
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I shall meet my friend Michael in Antalya in southern Turkey and begin riding along the Mediterranean coast to Syria. We want to spend several weeks there exploring the classic sites- Aleppo, Palmyra, Krak de Chevaliers and so on. From there I will head back to Turkey to travel through the Kurdish southeast to enter Iran, perhaps going via the Azeri city of Tabriz and then by bus to Tehran. I have to do the visa shuffle there for at least two Central Asia visas and will take buses to Shiraz and Esfehan while I wait. I will take a bus out of Tehran but want to ride enough of northeastern Iran to see a couple of caravanserais marked on my maps and rejoin the route at Meshed. Then comes the dash through Turkmenistan (it’s very hot in the Karakum desert, and perhaps not that interesting save for the city of Merv, but the transit visas are very short too) to Uzbekistan. I don’t plan to see much of the country beyond the two greats of Bukhara and Samarkand unless I have time, as I will head on to Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan to get a permit to travel along the Pamir Highway, the first high altitude region. After the Pamir Highway, the route passes into Kyrgyzstan briefly but turns east to cross into Xinjiang over the little used Irkeshtam pass. Kashgar is a rest and refuelling point, then I hope to still be in the saddle and head south to the Pakistan border. For five years or so, no one has been allowed to cycle between Taxkurgan and the Kunjerab pass which marks the border point. The route passes too close to Afghanistan’s panhandle Wakhan valley for the Chinese authorities’ comfort. But from the Kunjerab pass, the ride down the Karakorum Highway begins. Robb tells me that if I take the detour to Chitral at Gilgit, I will avoid the infamous stone-throwing kids in Baluchistan! After enjoying a bit of air conditioning and hot showers in Islamabad, I head east to Lahore and the Indian border and then Amritsar. Where I go after that depends on how much time I have. If it’s not too late, I’ll try to head up to Ladakh, perhaps taking a bus to Srinagar to save time. Ladakh would be a fine climax indeed and another culture to experience before heading back to lowland India. I’m inclined to ride east towards Nepal until I run out of time, then taking a bus or train to Delhi to fly home.
I am using Trailblazer’s excellent Silk Roads planning guide as preparation. It’s the only guide that covers the territory I want (with the exception of Tajikistan) all the way through to Pakistan, with very little of the countries I won’t be travelling through. Strong on history and cultural interest with just the basic information such as embassy addresses and a few accommodation and transport options.