Cycling Alone from the UK to China: 10,000 km in 90 days

Music by sugadaisy: http://www.youtube.com/@UC8yyVor4BCh4zXtAMdHY8oA

Two corrections/clarifications:

17:19: I was mean about Romania. This was a reflection of my level of stress at the time, but my overall experience with the people was good.

51:07: I said there was nowhere to stop or stay for about 400km. I was being a little dramatic, perhaps. There are one or two petrol stations on this road. There’s nowhere you can book a room or know for sure is actually there when you turn up.

Okay. Hi, I’m here in my flat in South Wales. It is the 1st of June, 2024. Um, I’m recording a quick video. I’m about to set off on a cycle trip. Hopefully, I’m going to make it from here in South Wales to China. Okay, and we’re off. And you can see I’m a little bit unsteady. The bicycle is fairly heavy. It’s actually not so hard to balance at all. It just takes a little bit of getting used to, especially at slow speeds. So I’m just setting off here from Pontipri and on the first day I cycled across to Bristol to stay with my friend. The fastest way to get there is over the road bridge which crosses the river 7 and there’s a separate path for bicycles and mopeds. So this is quite a fun experience. Okay, so this is not particularly exciting footage, but I think if you’re going to attempt a long cycle trip starting from your front door is a pretty good idea because you can get your confidence up a bit and just focus on your fitness. you won’t be struggling with any of the other problems like currency, language, food, or other culture shocks. And parts of the UK are really nice for cycling. I would say we have some of the worst road cycling that I’ve experienced in Europe because our roads can be quite narrow and busy with some good cycle paths, but often there aren’t many good options. In Dova, I was lucky enough to stay with a really lovely couple from the Warmer Showers website or app, which is for connecting cycle tourists. So, you can stay with like-minded people for free. And the next day, it was down to the ferry port. Of course, I had to say hi to the locals. Hello. Taking the ferry with your bicycle is pretty straightforward. Queuing up and boarding can be a little bit stressful, but they do often take cyclists, and it’s usually pretty cheap, actually. You can cycle straight down to the end. Just follow my advice. Okay, great. I prefer this a lot to flying with your bicycle. In the distance, I see a shining light in the sky. I met the maker. When we survive this lovely life, what will begin to make it in when we survive this lovely life. In the distance, I see my mother’s face. In the rear view, I see it ageing. It hurts my heart, tears me apart. But in the end, we get together again. Can we survive this lovely life? I for in the sunshine. I am my daughter. She fills my voice. She wears my smile. Carries on now that I’m gone. But in the end, we’ll get together again. When we survive. We survive. Heat. Heat. Heat. Power. We got to go. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] [Music] I just stopped here for a break in a place called Roseber. Um, Rust Un Lindon. I guess it means rest under the trees. Um I’m just about to go down uh hopefully and join the Rine and then I’ll head south towards Frankfurt today. So in Europe a lot of the time I was following the signposted and mapped Eurovailer routes which are sometimes on dedicated cycle paths and other times they’re on sensible roads and I often tend to follow the rivers too which is usually a good idea because they’re flat. Although at times this area was flooded meaning I had to take some diversions. At one point, this nice German man helped lead me through a particularly tricky diversion. He seemed sort of furious for some reason, but he was actually really helpful. So, I carried on mostly following the Ryan to meet my friend Leonard from For Better Science near Frankfurt. Along the river, there are these little fairies that will take bicycles and maybe one or two cars across the water. This is quite helpful because sometimes the best cycle paths on like one side or the other. Okay, today my Achilles tendon on my right foot started hurting a lot. I have to take it easy and maybe take a rest day tomorrow. little bit stressful because I tend not to like taking too many days rest, but I’m not sure I’ll have much of a choice if it keeps playing up like this. I tried a couple of ibuprofen. Feels a little bit better, but yeah, doesn’t feel good. Okay, so I did take it a little bit easier the next day. I just did 65 km. Here I’m cycling with Leonard. He took me down to the river. And I’ll save you the scuffed audio here. I’m just explaining that there’s something a bit weird with the chain and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what that was. Okay. So, yeah, we’re still just south of um Frankfurt and I’m in the tent here on a campsite aqua camping and it’s raining. This is the first test of my camping endurance really. Um, camping is fun, but it can be pretty stressful and annoying when it’s wet. I’ve had a shower already and I’ve had my food and I’m just enjoying uh beer from the campsite. I discovered the halfbroken chain link and tomorrow there’s a bike shop 12 km from here. So, if I can cycle on that knackered chain link, hopefully I can get there, get the bike fixed and carry on. Well, the chain has come off my bike. It’s just fully snapped and I got about 6 km to the bike shop. So, this was a little bit of a stressful day. Uh, I eventually made it to the bike shop. Had to kind of push and roll my bike there. U, but I couldn’t get my chain fitted there. They weren’t very helpful. And eventually I managed to get to another bike shop where the guy very kindly fitted it properly. This area of Germany is quite industrial, I guess. There’s lots of trains and canals and barges. And I have to say, I really enjoyed all of that. Probably film too much uh other forms of transport apart from cycling. Oh, it’s cold and it’s wet this morning. And I can like feel my Achilles tendon, I don’t know, scraping in it sheath or something on my right leg or ankle. It’s Yeah, kind of painful. I try some broth. Just stopped at this. I don’t know what this is. Some kind of water construction in the forest. I don’t know if the camera can pick it up, but it is just teeming with fish. There are so many fish in there. It’s one of those Google Maps moments where just leads you into the middle of [ __ ] nowhere. Everything’s a cycle path. This is a cycle path. There’s probably a cycle path up there somewhere. Yeah, I don’t [ __ ] know. Just had my first fall. Kind of stopped on a hill. Um, my left foot unexpectedly locked into the clip. Um, I don’t think it’s too bad. It’s bleeding a little bit. I think I’d be less bothered, but it I’m already sort of a bit sore all over, so I don’t want this to be the the straw that breaks the camel’s back. So yeah, after a couple days of getting a bit lost in the forest and falling off and feeling a bit painful, I was able to cycle this really nice stretch along the river Denube, which goes from Germany into Austria. This is a really lovely area for cycle touring. I I recommend this a lot and there’s a lot of cycle tourists along here. There is a really strong tailwind. Um, it’s making today really easy. This is day 15, I think. Well, I’ll save you the rest of that audio. Predictably, uh, stopping to remark on the strength of the wind. Wasn’t a great recording. I made it onto Kremes after a diversion due to a rockfall and I met this nice gentleman there. I’ve completely forgotten his name, but he also cycled from the UK. I’m sure he was over 70 and he made great pace as well. The next day I cycled on to Vienna. I didn’t actually record anything, but I did pass Austria’s failed nuclear power station. This is a sad story. It was constructed but never opened. From Vienna, I cycled for one day with Bernard, who I know from YouTube. This was really great fun. and cycling in Bernard Slipstream. I think I managed my fastest average pace for the whole trip. Okay, so today I’ve just entered uh Slovakia. I cycle this morning with Bernard, who I know from YouTube, um from Vienna uh about maybe halfway to Budapest, mostly on the river. Um quite a tiring day cuz it was quite a long way and I did kind of push myself to keep up with Bird and his light road bike. Um staying in a guest house feel a little bit anxious cuz I spent a bit more money here and um food was surprisingly expensive and just in general you can see a change in um well it’s not like German anymore. Uh there’s a bit more kind of it feels like a rougher area. The next day I crossed over from Slovakia into Hungary and cycled on to Budapest. Unfortunately, here you can see that I’m really struggling even more with camera settings and this won’t be the end of the struggles. So, I made it to Budapest in just about 3 weeks. Here’s a photo of my bicycle there by the river. This isn’t actually the first time I’ve cycled to Budapest. I did this once before in 2015. Um, but from this point on, it’s all uncharted territory for me. Just here in Hungary, there’s a random cannabis plants growing in the edge of the field. Um, definitely smells of weed. It’s not quite ready yet, but I think you’ll probably smoke it. Okay, it’s day 20. Let’s take a moment to shout some of the positives. No longer need ibuprofen. Um, [Music] whatever’s wrong with my Achilles tendon, my right foot seems, you know, okay. I’ve been bitten a lot, but not feeling too bad. And, um, Hungary has longdistance cycle ways. Didn’t know that, but in the south of Hungary, there are these um nice cycleways to cycle on where you’re off the road. And Hungarian drivers, for the most part, are not bad. Um they will pass you wide if there’s plenty of room. There are grasshoppers just everywhere here. Just feel them pinging off my bike. I don’t know if they’re crickets or grasshoppers, but Okay, it’s calmed down a bit now. Just like pinging off my bike and into my knees. Oh gosh. Yuck. Yuck. Yeah, there’s a lot of them. Okay, I’m at um the border near Hungary and Romania. I just fell in the room which in a way which felt kind of unnatural. Both of my toes are now numb, my big toes. So, I think tomorrow will be a much shorter cycle. It’s really hot out. Kind of taking the energy out of me. So, here I am crossing into Romania. Now, keep right, then keep right. And I should warn you, some of the speed on this footage doesn’t seem quite right. Honestly, the cycling became much harder here. The roads were more challenging. There’s more hills, more heat. There was some dogs that might run out in the road or chase you a bit. Some parts were really beautiful, but I would certainly say cycling in this area of Romania leveled up the difficulty for me. This is beautiful. So, there’s a some kind of river patrol going on over there. Um, and there’s a bridge, I believe, down there across to Serbia, which I will be crossing because this road is absolutely insane. Yeah, this road was awful. And if you decide to cycle this area around the border of Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria, I would recommend planning ahead very carefully. Here’s the route that I took. And I have to say, it’s simply unreasonable to try to cycle the Romanian side of the Denube around Osava. Here’s my reaction after crossing into Serbia. Oh my god. Not a [ __ ] lorry in sight. The tour is one point. Beautiful road surface. I’m going to be honest. I think Romania is a [ __ ] mess. I don’t like it. I’m sorry. I have a slow puncture on my back tire. So, I need to get that changed and find a bike shop, I guess, and try and buy a new tire. Um, no, new inner tube. I fixed the um rear tire, but I found a another problem is a pan uh rivet is broken. So, I really need to go to the bike shop now to get in a tube. I need to get spare chain link and I need to get probably a bolt and a washer is enough to fix that. So, I only spent part of the day in Serbia before crossing into Bulgaria. Along the way, I did spot a beautiful Balkans Riverside scene. Hey Last couple of days I’ve been genuinely trying to plan some easier days, but these climbs along the um Neurovo 6 in Bulgaria really taken out me. Um and it’s hot. It’s like 33° right now. Uh yesterday the sun went behind a cloud for the first time and felt like a couple of weeks or something stupid and uh felt like an eclipse. Um, I only plan to go 75 km today, but it is just um, unbelievably hot and hard work climbing up these steep hills and I’ve still got to basically cross Bulgaria, which I think has a mountain range in the middle. So, yeah, tough going these last few days. On day 26, I stayed in this old schoolhouse in Bulgaria. I texted the guy from his number on Google Maps and he sent me the location of the key. It was such a beautiful old building and I had the whole place to myself. Unfortunately, I did get a bit spooked. Something went bump in the night and it was really hard for me to calm down. Next go straight. So, I’m up here in the um I guess this is mountain maybe uh in Bulgaria. It’s kind of mountain range which crosses most of Bulgaria and I knew I was going to have to get over it. I’ve gone for a commute to recommended um cycle way. I mean, it’s a path. I’ve given up cycling. Now I’m just pushing. This is pretty steep. Um, and it’s, you know, not great for grip anyway. So, I’m just pushing up here. And it’s quite a lot shorter than the alternative road route I could have taken. Um, so far I’m happy. This is an area where there are bears. So, I’ve got a podcast on on the loudspeaker on my phone. Uh, weather’s pretty good, actually. It was rained a little bit this morning, but now it’s not too bad. And yeah, this area is really nice. It was very beautiful. So yeah, you can tell I was in a good mood here. I think I recorded, this might be the only bit of footage of me actually cycling. And at the very top of the hill, there was a monument to the partisans. Quite a sad story. Some resistance fighters died in a shootout. I think one of them was 14 or 15. I just took my second tumble of the trip there. Um, luckily I’m wearing these leggings today, which is just a cuz it was raining because it’s it’s steep. my front brakes squealing so much and I’ve been trying not to use the front brakes as much and I picked up a bit too much speed and then I hit this this dirt sort of bank that was very unexpectedly soft and went over the handlebars. I feel okay was bit of a shock but I wasn’t actually going that fast. Just on the way to the border with Turkey today. Last full day of cycling in Bulgaria. So, here I am cycling up to the border with Bulgaria and Turkey. I didn’t film a lot at border areas, especially not interactions with passport officers or anything like that. There are always big signs telling you not to film. Immediately after crossing into Turkey, I noticed an improvement in the quality of the road surface and the width of the roads felt much safer. Turkey definitely comes with its own challenges for cycling, but after the last few days in Bulgaria and Romania, to be honest, this was a big improvement for me and I was really enjoying these first few hours of cycling. truck driver just stopped here in in Turkey. It’s my second day in Turkey. Just gave me cold bottle of water. No no no particular reason. Just uh beeped his horn, stopped, and gave me a cold water. That’s really kind. I’m having a much better time in Turkey. And look, there’s a stalk up there, I think. So I crossed the border into Turkey around this area here. There are a couple of options for crossing Turkey. Uh one idea would be to go through Istanbul and maybe follow this coastal road and area. I think their advantage of doing this might be decent amount of hotels and kind of tourist infrastructure and it’s probably a bit flatter near the coast. the option that I went for. I read that the traffic in Istanbul was pretty bad. Um, and that these areas might be a bit more expensive. So, I went to the coast down here, a small town or or maybe a small city called Techadag. And then I got a ferry which crosses the water here. And then I essentially just cycled through the kind of center of Turkey. Probably a little bit less expensive to do. And I think you can make a bit faster progress to Georgia this direction. So today I’m having a rest day. I haven’t cycled anywhere today. I’m in Taco Dag in Turkey. Um I’m doing a big sort out of my stuff. Trying to see if there’s anything to get rid of. Um I went to the port today. So tomorrow I’m going to get the ferry from Teedag to the other side of I believe it’s called the Bos Bosphorus. Um I’ve been doing some hand washing of clothes in here. It doesn’t really get your clothes completely clean. Um, but it’s basically better than nothing. So, yeah, first rest day in in 30-ish days of cycling. And tomorrow I’ll get the ferry and then carry on into the center of Turkey. Nice country. Just had a big climb up here. That’s the kind of I went to the bulk of the climbing, but there was a big uh push up a large hill. Maybe I’ll show you the elevation profile. So, this was one of the first days I really thought seriously about quitting. It started quite nicely with some lovely scenery and a big climb, and I really started to enjoy going uphills more as the trip went on. But later on, I got caught in a thunderstorm, and I really wasn’t sure what to do. I’d left my coat in a hotel in Romania, and hadn’t thought to buy a new one, and I dillydallyed around before finally deciding I better set up my tent to try and keep dry. It’s currently a a thunderstorm. Going to panic pitch my tent. But I was already really wet anyway. Um, but at least I’m not cold anymore. The tent isn’t very well set up. I’m hoping I’ll just sit in here until it the sun comes out again. This is not fun. Um, I should really have a coat, but I left it somewhere. I didn’t buy a new one yet. And yeah. been better prepared for this. After the thunderstorm stopped, I went to a local town and a guy in the shop got to chatting with me and he was absolutely insistent that they would help me. And there weren’t any guest houses in the in the town or village so they let me into a local government building which seemed to be a kind of dormatory and I was able to stay there for a nominal fee that night and I really appreciate the locals in Turkey. I have to say that people there were all extremely generous. I didn’t film any of this. It didn’t feel right to shove a camera in someone’s face when they’re in the middle of doing me a favor. Although I think they probably would have liked to have been in the video. Anyway, back on the road the next day and as you can see, it’s really nice cycling. But there’s one more problem to contend with in Turkey and that is the dogs. And while this group are not so bad, I certainly had some some more scary encounters than this. You know, [Music] Well, there’s the fog on the pond and a whistle in the wind. My grandpa was a fishing man. He got an education bought a plot of land with the fog on the pond and a whistle in the wind. And every dog he had was his best damn friend. They’d be up in the hills with a gun in a grand. Beat the sun out of bed every morning with the fog on the pond and a whistle in the wind. Yeah. The night he died, my dad had a dream. He saw his dad at the pond walking with an Indian. He said, “Hey, Dad.” But they kept walking. And there’s a fog on the pond and a whistle in the wind. There’s a fog on the pond and a whistle. I don’t really know what to say about this part of Turkey, central Turkey. It’s uh it’s pretty monotonous. Nothing really wrong with that. Um, I don’t feel inspired to film much of it, though. So, these public tabs are everywhere in Turkey. It’s a really good place to fill water. I mean, assume they’re safe. Nothing drinking from them all the time. Um the microbiome enrichment Heat. Heat. [Applause] So this part of Turkey was uh really great cycling. There were lots of steep hills and mountain passes. Now this may not look uh so steep, but trust me, Turkish trucks do not drive this slowly unless they really have to. U this kind of terrain made the trucks look like toys and a lot of them were coming from Iran. So I certainly felt very far from home. I think I could cope with the the steep hill and um busy road. The headwind as well is making this pretty tough. [Applause] [Music] rarest of moments here. Flat ground and basically no headwind. Oh, it’s like easy to forget how easy cycling is. There’s three dogs in the road up ahead. See, these are nice or nasty. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Hey, hey, excuse me. [Applause] [Music] I don’t like the way you’re getting in the way of me. Hey. Hey. Come on. Move. Move. Move. just on the way up to the border between um Turkey and Georgia. There’s a fairly quick change here um from what felt pretty close to desert to me uh to a very green space here. Oh, look, there’s a lake here. Um, wow. Yeah, another flat tire. Um, fortunately I do have two spare inner tubes and it’s the front one which is a bit easier. I’ve had a couple on the back recently. Uh, this is the Turkish tire I put on which has taken a flat. I’ll have a look and see if I can find what punctured it. Very picturesque, but I wish there was a proper road. Okay, there’s a tunnel and I don’t think we’re going around this one. As far as I can tell, it’s about 2,000 m long. There’s one car coming behind me, but this road is very quiet. Um, so I’m just going to yolo it. I’ll put the rear light on. I mean, the majorly upsetting thing about tunnels is just the sound. I think it’s very hard to tell where cars are and yeah, how fast they’re coming. So, here’s the border between Georgia. Best not to film too close to these. I think we’re into Georgia. Instantly though, the road looks a little bit more um narrow and poorly defined. But h not quite sure. I’ve been getting up more than I can chew here. Uh but it’s a lot. Again, I’ll I’ll save you the um horrible audio of the wind, but immediately after crossing into joining on the same day, I tried to cycle a decent distance into the um country. Um I chosen a route which went over, I don’t know, a mountain or a hill. Turned out the road was was more of a path. It was very steep and I got caught in really heavy rain. Of course, it’s not raining now. As soon as it starts raining, I I hide my camera away. But after getting stuck in this, I kind of had to take shelter in one of these tiny little chapels on the hill. It’s um very windy and rainy outside and I cled up this mountain and yeah, it’s a bit too much for me. Coming to a tiny little church here. Um I probably just have to go back down and go to a hotel. It’s a cute place though. At least I can be dry for a moment while I figure out what to do. So I only spent two days I think actually cycling in Georgia from the border with Turkey to the capital Tisi. I read a lot of good things about cycle touring in Georgia online, but my experience was fairly hard work. It was windy, it was raining a lot, and I prefer the roads in Turkey. We’re finally coming down this big hill in Georgia. Very tired and fed up. There was such a strong crosswind earlier. Yeah, tough couple of days. Okay, so having made it into this area here, there’s a couple of ideas for continuing the trip onto China. Uh, one option might be to go through Iran. For a British tourist in 2024, this is not really the right idea. People are being arbitrarily arrested in Iran. Even quite recently, a couple of motorcyclists were detained. But I have heard really good things about cycling in Iran. So that is a shame. Uh another idea might have been to go through uh Russia and up to Kazakhstan this way. I didn’t really think this was possible in 2024, although I did meet someone who who did do this the same year that I went. So was possible, although I don’t think it was particularly sensible to travel um in Russia, especially with the war in Ukraine. And around that time, this area of Russia suffered a major terrorist attack. So I think a little bit too risky for me. If you look on YouTube, a lot of people have done a route where they continue from Georgia into Azaba and then that you can take a boat or a ferry across to Kazakhstan or maybe Turk Manistan. This was the route that I had planned when I left. Unfortunately, in in 2024, Aabaijan’s borders were closed to all uh tourist or foot traffic or car traffic. Only trucks um could cross this area. The only option would be to take a flight from Tlisi to to Baku and then I suppose I could have gotten the boat from there. To be honest, this felt a little bit pointless given that you can fly directly from Tlisi to Acttoww and and that’s what I chose to do in the end. So realistically of course I would have loved to have completed the whole thing without flying at the time. It just wasn’t practical for me and I don’t I don’t regret the choices I made. I think these were fairly sensible decision to to take this short flight. It’s a pretty small distance in the context of the overall distance traveled. But maybe one day I can do it again and um go through Russia or perhaps even Iran. So the flight was pretty straightforward, although I did go through a fairly panicked 48 hours or so into trying to get my bicycle repaired. I think at this point I needed to have the back sprocket replaced because the teeth were really worn down so much the gears were slipping. I also got new brake pads and at least one new tire. And I had to find a cardboard box to pack my bike into. This was actually a real struggle. And I met a guy at the airport who’d been through the same scramble. Eventually, I found a bike shop that was just selling cardboard boxes. On landing at the airport in Acttow, I was kind of accosted by taxi drivers who wanted to drive me to town. But obviously, I really wanted to cycle, and this was really the only tricky experience I had with locals. Eventually, I managed to assemble my bike and cycle to town where I was able to stay with my friend and his cat. Don’t know how the hell this happened. Jane is just like tied in a knot. Um, I’ve just had the the smart idea that what I need to do is take the pedal off and I should be able to untangle it from there. How the hell does this happen? So, cycling in Kazakhstan is where things became incredibly challenging. There are some really sparse areas where you’re going to cycle a long distance, maybe more than 100 km between shops and anywhere to stay. Sometimes there’s just literally no shade, no trees, no benches, nothing. The temperature was going like way above 35, sometimes up to 40° centigrade. And unfortunately, I have to admit, I really messed up the camera settings all over the place here. I can try and rescue some of the footage so you can kind of see what’s going on. But you’ll notice the colors and the saturation just look awful. In some ways, this kind of hazed out footage, it captures my memories quite well. The brightness and the heat were really overpowering, and it was quite an experience for me to see camels just wandering in the road. This environment is obviously really alien to me. I had to stop and have some cola. Um, and I’m going to put some music on cuz I’m just sleepy to be honest. It’s just um yeah, very big and empty out here and it’s was hard to stay awake while cycling in this. Okay, so this is where I’m going to try and stay tonight. Um, it’s an old abandoned. It might have been like a shop of some sort. It won’t be too obvious that I’m here, but road’s pretty close. I just walk out on the road now. And that’s um what it looks like from the outside. Today’s been very difficult. It got way too hot. I kind of panicked and bought too much cola and not enough water. And I think I’ve got about as far as I wanted to go, but I was hoping to find a better camping spot. This looks all right. Yeah. Need to rethink to be honest cuz it the heat really took it out of me today and I ran out of money and nowhere except Well, the shop I went to didn’t accept card. It just turned into a bit of a palava. I think I have enough water to get me where I need to go tomorrow, but you know, I don’t have enough food or anything and this this will be a hard few days. Well, tomorrow will be hard and then hopefully I’ll recover and rejig and rethink a little bit. I’m going to save you the audio again here. This stretch between Acttow in Bayu turned out to be really hard. I underestimated how difficult this would be. It’s about 500 km and I aim to do it in 3 days. The first day was okay. The next day I did struggle and on the last day into Bayu, well, it started pretty well. These guys stopped while they saw me putting on sunblock in the shade of a road sign and they gave me some water, some sweets, and quite by surprise, they insisted I take some local currency, which was so kind. And to be honest, it was needed. Unfortunately, as the day went on, the temperature really overpowered me. And well, I’ll let myself explain what happened next. Okay. So, um earlier this afternoon, uh my water got really hot and I ended up throwing up um and just really nearly I don’t know. Yeah, it was really quite unpleasant and scary. I think the temperature peaked at about 38°, but for a long time the sun didn’t um go in. Yeah. Embarrassingly, I flagged down a lift um about 30 km from here to get to the hotel and left my bike there. Um I’m very tempted to stop now and I think carefully about what to do. Perhaps I need to just cycle in the morning. Um now I’m thinking about getting a taxi out there to recover my bicycle. I think I should probably do that. I was tempted just to leave it there and and get out, but having recovered a bit. Um I’m I’m thinking about um maybe carrying on. But yeah, I mean it’s not good to rely on the kindness of strangers. Um and that was a very scary situation. Maybe my bike’s already gone. So my bicycle wasn’t gone. Yeah. I took a lift from around here somewhere um to Bayu. It was maybe 30 kilometers or so and I recovered in the hotel the rest of that afternoon. And then just in the evening when it had cooled down a bit and I was feeling better, I took a taxi back to where I’d left my bicycle. I think I can probably find exactly where I did leave it. It’s somewhere on this corner here. Not here. Um maybe a little closer. Let’s try there. There we go. This is the building where I I I basically lay in this building. There’s no roof. um throwing up the hot water that I was drinking. Um but yeah, I came back in the evening, grabbed my bicycle and cycled it back to to to Bay. So even though I did take a lift in this area, I did complete it by bicycle eventually after the disaster a few days ago. I didn’t nearly give up, but I set off again this morning um after a rest day. Lots of water. I got the frame bags. The frame bottles are full. Full 5 L tank. I got more bottles in each of the bag as well. Um, so a lot of water. I set off really early. Okay, let’s start with Burkiststan. Um, so far pretty similar to Kaz Kazakhstan. Border guards of Isbekistan seem nice. There’s I guess what you can call a dust devil off on the left. Okay, so this is Beckistan. Uh the silk road is just over on my left. Um it’s not silky smooth. So after Bayu, this is another sparsely populated area without much in the way of shade or shops. And whatever is marked by Google isn’t always that reliable. It’s about another 500 km to Nucus, which is the next big town, but there are some smaller settlements a bit closer. There’s certainly traffic along this road, but getting through here on a bicycle is not easy. I had a couple of nights camping on the side of the road. Fortunately, there’s a new road which was under construction. It was mostly closed to traffic, but the workers were happy for me to cycle on it. Unfortunately, I started to struggle with punctures along this way. Okay, so it’s the morning after camping. The tire is flat again. Um, thought about trying to find the puncture with some water, but I’d rather not use the water. And I’m going to change the inner tube, then I’ll be down to my last inner tube. I mean, I’ll have none spare. Well, I haven’t even gone 10 km and the uh spare inner tube is just gone flat. So, situation now is I need to patch the inner tube. Um, to do that, I’m going to have to use some water, cut open a bottle, um, find where the bubbles come out. It’s just started raining obviously. So unlucky uh this uh basically yeah still in the Beakistan desert and I’m now fortunate enough to be rained on. I’m probably not going to use the rain coat. I think it’ll be okay. But it’s pretty gray. Yeah, I think this must be the best time to cycle uh this part of the Silk Road or whatever it’s called. Not only is this new road under construction um really nice, it’s completely traffic free. Basically, only one or two cars are on it. Seems like if you can climb the obstacles and get on the road, they don’t mind you being here. Um but there was a gate back there and they just let me through. So, it’s like a almost like a cycle path. We have one car here, but basically empty. It’s raining outside and it’s very windy. It’s early in the morning at the moment. Hopefully it’ll improve. Um, it was raining a lot heavier earlier. Now it’s light again. This is pretty exhausting. And by the way, I don’t want to give the wrong impression about Usbekistsan. Obviously, I’m showing some of the more remote parts here, but in the builtup areas, like around here, I stayed in some very nice hotels and went out to eat at lovely restaurants like this one, too. And of course, there were so many people who wanted to give me stuff for free as well. These guys just wouldn’t let me leave without eating some watermelon with them. So after this builtup area between Nucus and OgenCH, there’s one more tricky bit um in Asbekiststan, at least for me, and that’s the distance between OgenCH and Bukara, which again goes into basically the desert area. And there really isn’t uh anywhere to stay or stop for about 400 km. Um, I’ve been gambling on this patched up inner tube and it didn’t work out well for me. Yeah, the back tire’s gone flat again and I’ve got no spare tube. The only sensible thing I think is to swap the the the front tube onto the back cuz it’s never been punctured and then patch the the back one and put on the front and hope it holds. Um, today has gone really badly. Um I am trying to cycle to I don’t remember the name exactly back something. Anyway, it’s about 400 km through the desert and I thought I was well prepared but I didn’t bring a spare inner tube. I thought well you know the patch has lasted very well and I’ve got loads of patches left. Uh I’ve used all of the patches and it’s still leaking. Um, I’ve spent a best part of the afternoon just patching the inner tube. I’ve used all of the glue as well and I’m really in the middle of nowhere. The only sort of saving grace and reason that I haven’t called it already is that I have just realized there are two patches and some more liquid rubber um in the repair kit for my um air bed thing, my my blowup mattress. So, I can probably use those on the tire and I’m just going to try and see how far I can get tomorrow. So, I probably made it about halfway between Aench and Bukara and I was around about here where I filmed that pretty miserable video. The next morning, I managed to get the tire kind of patched up and I was able to go about 5 or 10 km at a time between pumping it up. But, a guy in a small truck offered me a lift and I thought it was sensible to accept it because if the tire had worn out again, I would have had to uh accept the lift anyway. was kind of inevitable, I think. So, I spent a day or two in Bkara, seeing some of the tourist sites and um having some some nice food and I stayed in a really nice hotel there as well. This is a lovely um city. I I just really recommend visiting this area of Asbbeckistan. Um so, after getting the bike patched up and and sort of being ready to get going again, I had a difficult choice to make. Tomorrow I’m going to start cycling again. And I can’t quite decide if I’m going to cycle back to where I was picked up in the middle of the desert and then turn around so I can cycle the whole way. Um or maybe just carry cycling on forward. It’s a bit of a difficult choice. It is going to be uh 40° again tomorrow. In the end, I turned back and I cycled 189 km in one day back to the pickup spot, turned around and then started cycling back to Bukara. I really wanted to know that I tried to cycle every section that I could and actually the cycle out there wasn’t so bad. I camped at the side of the road, but the next day going back to Bukara was probably one of the worst days I had and I still don’t really know if it was worth it. It’s basically impossible to cycle. It’s um incredibly hot up on the road and I’ve come into a storm drain underneath the road and it’s shady under here and it’s just about bearable. I’ll have to recover here for a bit. Um, this has gotten just insanely hot and um, it’s there’s so much uh, headwind. I just can’t cycle. I have to walk. You know, this is crazy. Uh, I’m hoping there’s somewhere to stop for a drink a little further on, but I’m going to need to recover down here for a while. So, it seems like I basically became fed up with filming after this catastrophe. And there’s not much footage as I cycled back past Bukara and onto Samakand, which is another really amazing city on the Silk Road. It’s around here. I took another day or two to see some of the tourist sites and get my bike fixed. Again, this was a repair to the front rack. It didn’t actually last very long. In the end, I managed to fix it in place with cable ties, and I put most of the weight on the back of my bicycle. And by now, my rear pan was also fixed on with cable ties. These are really handy things to carry. So from here a lot of people choose to cycle on to Tajjikhstan or Kyrgystan and there’s a really famous road called the Paneer Highway. I chose a slightly different route. I went back into Kazakhstan and followed this relatively flat area up to the border with China at Zaren. So from Samakand I had a few more days in Assekiststan to cycle up to the border. So here I am cycling up towards a border crossing that was marked on the map. I wanted to try and avoid going too near to Tash Kent because of the traffic. Unfortunately, this was not a border crossing for uh international tourists. Um and I had to turn around and head towards Tash Kent. Anyway, one thing I haven’t mentioned and and I should say is that the women in Asbekiststan dress wonderfully. Um, lots of colorful clothes. It looks really nice. A lot of people in Askiststan as well have fully gold teeth, which is quite unexpected, but I guess it must be symbol of wealth or something. So yeah, I made it back into Kazakhstan and pretty much the first thing that happened, I stopped at a petrol station to grab some snacks and drinks and the owner just insisted I take it for free because I’m a tourist. It’s really so kind and unnecessary, but that’s what people are like in Kazakhstan. Heat up here. [Music] So I’m currently um in Kazakhstan maybe about 380 kilometers from Al Mate. Um, I’ve pitched my tent at the side of the road and it’s been raining all night. It’s worth mentioning that the tent is very good and I’m completely dry inside, but I want to wait a minute and hopefully it will stop raining. Uh this is last night’s camping spot. Uh it’s now a little bit cold. Everything is is bit damp, but it’s forecast to be nice weather today. I don’t know if I can read the sign from here on the camera, but it’s, you know, just less than 300 km to Al Mati. Um I think I’m going to try and do that in a couple of days. Um, so I think it’s camping again tonight, which should be three nights camping on the trot. I can’t say I’m looking forward to it. Um, but I’m up and it’s not raining. Uh, so yeah, let’s pack up the tent and get to it. Okay, I’m not far from Almati Almati. Um, but I’m not feeling very well. My tummy is unwell. So, I’ve stopped a bit earlier than I normally will. And I’m going to rest and um do the rest tomorrow, which isn’t too far. I think about 130 so kilometers. It’s quite a nice area here. Hopefully, I’m not bothering anyone and no one bothers me when I pitch my tent. Another under construction road, which is uh pretty good. All the traffic’s forced onto the left. It’s on the way into Alati. Okay, this is the large battery ran out yesterday. I’ve been running the solar panel to charge the phone and try and keep the battery topped up. It’s not brilliant, but it does seem to just about have enough power at the moment to keep the phone in business. So, just on the way into Alata here, and even though some of the footage I’ve shown with fast cars and trucks on the highway might seem quite terrifying, the worst part for me was always cycling in cities. This is the most stressful bit. I took a day or two in Almati to grab some bits for the bike. This seems like quite a nice city really. I didn’t have much time to explore. There was some amusing things here. In the local shopping center, they had a children’s area called Lego Stan, which included a mockup of Amsterdam with a toy shop in the red light district. Also, I bought some Sigma Laga here with Comic Sands font. And after this, I was ready for the last big cycle up to the border crossing of China. It’s a lovely road out of Al Mati towards the Chinese border. The way I said that, you’d think the border was an hour or two away, but it’s still 300 km from Al Mati to Zar Kent. And I was struggling with an upset tummy still. I made some kind of silly choices here, skipping past some shops I should have stopped at and not buying food and water when I really needed to. At one point, ended up basically sleeping a big chunk of the day underneath a road bridge because I felt really nauseious. These were my last two nights camping. And despite the struggle, I think it is a fond memory now. So yeah, here’s a photo I took uh just after crossing the border. Again, it’s not sensible to film near border crossings, especially not in China. After crossing the border, I was quickly moved on from the immediate vicinity by curious policemen. I’m sure you can see that the quality of the roads was immediately far better in China, but there were some familiar obstacles. Heat. Heat. [Applause] [Applause] [Music] So, here I’m in China on the second day of cycling. And in China, there’s a lot more recent construction. And there are some nice cycle paths here. I even visited an ancient city under construction. And even though I think most people know that Shinjang is a sensitive area, should we say, there are tourist stations with nice toilets, signs in English, Korean, Japanese. So, in some ways, tourism seems to be encouraged. But I ended up having some tricky interactions with the police here. And I want to be clear that the individual policemen were perfectly nice. Uh, one policeman took me out to dinner for questioning, but I was sent back a long way at one point to a checkpoint where some policemen went through my camera to delete photos. Here are some forbidden photos. By the way, I also took some matching ones on my phone, and they didn’t ask to go through my phone, which makes me think that they were more going through the motions, which are required by the chain of command. Obviously, they saw my phone, and they must know that it can take photos. I’ve joked a few times that they probably thought I was a spy or even worse, a journalist. And in the end, I only cycled a few hundred kilometers after crossing the border to China. To be honest, I think I’d had enough. I made it my goal to cross into China at least. And I did make it to China. I accomplished that. If the conditions were good, I would have liked to have cycled all the way to Beijing. But with the pressure from the police to register and report and kind of plan where I was going and this upcoming section where I spoke to a guy in a hostel who was going the other way and he said I probably wouldn’t be able to go on the highway anyway. I decided to leave my bike and take the long-distance bus and then a 36-hour train onto Shien and then to Beijing. To be honest, as I crossed this desolate area in North China on the train, I just can’t say I was desperate to be out there on two wheels. The food on the train was really nice and despite the concerns of the conductor, I was enjoying a few beers as well. So, my last uh day of cycling was a tour of Beijing on a rented bike. And I got to see some other tourist sites in China before flying home. All in all, I cycled about 10,000 km, and I must have spent something like around £5,000 on the whole thing, including flights. But it could have been done for much, much less because I stayed in hotels whenever I could really. I’ve met some cycle tourists who make it a point of pride to spend as little money as possible and camp outside every night. And this can be a really great budget way to see parts of the world. I understand that, especially for young people. But I think at the end of the day, some of these areas are still quite poor. And one of the best things you can do is actually spend money there. And I want to conclude the video by just saying thanks to all the lovely people, especially in Turkey, Beckistan, and Kazakhstan, who stopped to chat or help me out. Most of the time I couldn’t understand anything, but people were incredibly kind. Several times I was basically bullied into taking food and drink for free. Cycle touring is a little bit of a self-indulgent way to travel. So, I honestly appreciate everyone who humored me, especially the two gentlemen who gave me a lift when I was struggling. The lady who looked after my box of money and passport after I left it at her roadside cafe, even though she did scold me when I came back for it. And and also thanks to all the truck drivers who hooted encouragement and wave like maniacs. It was always very funny and motivating.