Tour of Turkmenistan: race against time
Cycling has never been a story of kilometers for us. We cycle because we want the road to become the journey rather than the destination itself. For us it’s all about being close to people and nature. Basically, feeling what we’re surrounded by. However, we had to make one exception to this philosophy: Turkmenistan. After a very intense journey in Iran, we prepared ourselves for another unique experience: cycling 500 km with a 5-day transit visa through the desert of one of the world’s most isolated and oppressively governed countries.
In contrast to Iran, Turkmenistan wasn’t one of the countries that we absolutely wanted to go to on our way from Belgium to Japan. It consists of 90% desert and hasn’t much to offer to tourists compared to its neighbouring countries. For us, like it is for many other cyclists traveling to the east, it was the shortest way to go from Iran in direction of the Pamir Highway. Despite the fact that we have only been in the country for a few days, our race against time through the desert brought us some good memories.
Difficult and expensive to get transit visa
Getting a Turkmenistan visa is a lottery: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If you win, the country will give you a 5-days transit visa. However, the asked price is much higher than the amount of days spent there: 10$ to enter the lottery, 45$ for the visa itself and 17$ for who-knows-what at the border, making a total of 72$ per person (almost 15$ per day!). Be that as it may, we were incredibly happy to get it, hence avoiding a massive detour through the Caspian Sea.
Our itinerary: straight through the desert
Crossing the border between Iran and Turkmenistan is much more than going from one country to another: it means going from the Middle East to Central Asia.
Fighting against the wind: the power of a peloton
Crossing Turkmenistan by bicycle is tough and would have been even tougher if we hadn’t done it with Tom & Sabine, with whom we’ve been in touch for the past few months and finally met in Mashhad. Cycling as peloton made the impossible possible. We officially became wind experts, knowing exactly where we should place ourselves in the peloton to hide from the vicious wind!
Unbearable heat made us wake up early
On Windy (a wonderful app for cyclists, check it out!), Turkmenistan lies around this time of the year in the red zone: temperatures averaging between forty and fifty degrees during the day. Dries, the data boy among us, counted: in five days, we drank 32 liters of water per person. We covered every inch of skin to avoid turning into lobsters and rode with our magnificent big hats. With the heat being such an unbearable burden, we decided to start cycling earlier & earlier. On day four, we woke up at 4 and were gone by 4:30am, hiding the whole afternoon in a cafe in the middle of… nowhere!
PS: Bonus point to Sabine for being a doctor and most probably saving Manon from dehydration on day 1 (see her face on the picture below!).
Yes, we did it, but we wouldn’t do it again
On the fifth day in the morning, we managed to reach the border and cross into Uzbekistan. After all, we were happy to have successfully completed the crossing in time. At the same time, we also repeated ourselves once more: cycling is about the journey and not about the destination. Therefore, Turkmenistan, you’ll never see us again.
And oh yes, another bonus point goes to Manon for speaking Dutch for 5 days while struggling on her bicycle!
