12th October 2006

Looking forward to China

I wasn't able to finish my last update very well as my brain stops functioning after midnight, so there will be a bit of overlap here :)

I had an amzing time in Shymkent with the Crossroads team there. They made me feel very welcome and showed me a bit more of the 'sharp-end' of Crossroads' work which I hadn't really experienced much in Hong Kong a few years ago (although I did see some there). The main jobs that I helped with in terms of delivering goods was delivering wheel-chairs which as you can imagine have the potential to really change someones life! I helped deliver 2.5 wheelchairs (1 of the recipients wasn't in when we visited but we spoke to his brother, telephones aren't as common over here!) The first was to a family living in a small house in the Shymkent suburbs. The guy had had a stroke and was partially paralyzed, his wife was so greatful that she insisted Alice (British member of the Crossroads Central Asia team) and I stayed for some food and we left with fruit & flowers from thier garden despite trying to decline :) The second delivery was to a lady in an apartment block in central Shymkent. She had diabeties which had caused here to have to have her leg aputated. When we got to the door she had to drag herself across the floor, move a bench to the door to sit on and then open the door for us. She had spent about half of this year since the amputation on the floor and unable to leave her 4th floor apartment! It was amazing to hear her story and to see how much difference the wheelchair would make! While we were there she confirmed this by saying "now I can sit at the table to eat" and "now I will not have to sit on the floor"! It is amazing to see the work of Crossroads literally changing lives and this was just one small insidence! I really enjoyed my time in Shymkent and thank the team for thier kind hospitality despite heavy workload (the team only consists of 6 people at the moment)

The road from Shymkent was interesting as ever! It was hard to leave the team having made good friends with them over the week I shared but the adventure must continue! Cycling in Shymkent is definitely for "Mad dogs and Englishmen!" the traffic was the worse I'd seen so far with very few rules of the road apparent and lots of cars/lorries/busses flying every which way! The smog was horrible too, I'd pretty much had a perpetual nose bleed since being in Shymkent and as I cycled out I realised why, every breath seemed to excavate another layer of my throat, very unpleasent!! Andy from the Crossroads team had directed me round the edge of the city which avoided much of the traffic and thankfully I was quite quickly back onto the open road and out of the rancid air! On the way out of Shymkent I was passed by a racing cyclist slipsteaming a small van which was quite a sight, had I known they were coming past I might have joined them for a bit! The roads were quite good and I made pretty good progress. There were a few reasonably small hills which were actually really pleasent and felt a lot easier than grinding along the flat steppe! (what goes up must come down!) I arrived in good time at Ryskulov where Crossroads had arranged for me to stay at an orphanage. There was meant to be some texting and phoning to arrange my pickup from a bus stop but as it happened the people I was staying with drove past as I was waiting so we decanted my luggage to the car and I did the usual follow the car act! Noone at the orphanage spoke much English but the managers daughter lived down the road and spoke good English. The kids were really interested and I enjoyed a relaxed evening with them all.

Although tired from the late night before leaving Shymkent I managed to make quite an early start and the view of the mountains was quite clear & very beautiful! Unfortunately they were soon covered up by murk. There were much more bigger hills today but just slowly plodding up them worked and they did have the advantage of the downhill! There was lots of interest in most of the villages as usual and after an apple seller hailed me over I bought 3 apples for 10T (about 3p!) As I got close to Taraz I passed a whole team of racing cyclists going the other way shouting hello to me :) Soon after passing them I met a couple of young racers who'd obviously had problems and I chatted a bit then they cycled into Taraz with me. Unfortunately I somehow got a slow puncture in my rear tyre but being so close I decided to go with it which meant stopping every kilometer or so to pump it up again! Beth from InterLink (my host in Taraz) drove past me just inside Taraz having got a little woried about not having seen me on her way back from Shymkent (I'd made good time again) I then followed her to the accomodation in their offices, unfortunately my young cycling escorts had to go a different way so I couldn't get a picture :( After sorting my self out my sister arrived from Almaty as she'd flown out to drive along with me for a couple of weeks. It was great to see her and catch up a little.

Ruth had bought out new chain with her to replace the cheap Astrakhan' chain so I spent the morning fitting that and sorting out my tyre. In the end we didn't drive away till about 11 which was a little late! It was a real releif to be able to ride unladen for a bit as the luggage was in the car with Ruth. She did a good job of driving slowly ahead of me but neither of us were experienced enough to properly slip-stream so we soon gave up on that! We didn't quite make it to Merke as we'd hoped but stopped at Qulan (about 75 miles) we found a 'hotel' with the usual facilities of very little water (tank filled up manually in the morning) and toilet that didn't flush, it was a huge room though and all for 7 GBP!

The next day we started of early in the hope we might reach Korday at about 120 miles. The road to Merke was good and we made good progress but as we headed North to go round Kyrgystan we hit the steppe like terrain again and had the usual problems of cross wind and endless roads! We still made pretty good progress but at about 5:30 we decided to drive the rest to Korday to get there before sunset. I cycled about 96 miles and my legs were feeling the pace! The hotel was another dump with no water this time but it did boast a brick longdrop! It was cheap but I didn't sleep a lot because I was constantly bombarded by mossies!

On Saturday we aimed for Almaty, expecting to finish it by car as Ruth having seen the Almaty traffic would not let me ride in it! (worse than Shymkent aparently but not by a lot!) My legs were very sore not being used to the long milages and even loosing the luggage didn't make a huge difference! There was a big climb today which also offered a great decent! The mountain views were amazing but again misted over as the day progressed. I pushed on until about 4:30 when I decanted into the car again as we had about 100km to Almaty center and really really didn't want to be finding the hotel in the dark! I also managed to cycle into a bus (parked) which wasn't quite to plan but I came away unscathed just some torn bar tape & a very mucky arm! The Almaty traffic was horrible and we had a little trouble getting to the hotel but eventually found our way there without collision! Went to the hotel next door and had a nice meal from an English menu!! :)

I've now been in Almaty for a few days, we've been out to the Almaty Big Lake which was amazingly beautiful and yesterday we made it out to the Charyn Canyon which again was amazing to see.

I'm looking forward to China although a little apprihensive about the many unknowns particularly the language! I'm sure I'll pick some up quickly though!

As ever thank you all very much for your support.
Tim