During the night it poured with rain but wind dried everything up when I awoke with the sunrise.
From my camping spot the road, apart from when it went over the occasional hill, slowly went down, reaching an altitude not experienced since before Tajikistan. I liked the sense of being surrounded by mountains while at high altitude but the food is so much better, cheaper & more abundant lower down. During the day I passed by 3 bustling well stocked markets & countless cafes, certainly more than in the 2 1/2 weeks in the Pamirs. At the moment I'm most definitely in a food frame of mind.
As with the day before I passed through a land sown with a variety of crops. There were lots of picturesque fields of sunflowers in radiant bloom. On the plateaus beside the rivers rice was planted in paddies. I saw wheat fields & vegetables of unknown types. There was next to no pastoral land & the few cows & sheep that I saw had to make do with what was available at the edges of fields & the road. I saw very little fallow land. Only late in the day did I see a fruit orchard though evidence that they must be around could be seen in the ample presence of peaches & apples in the markets. There were lots of fields of tomatoes which were gathered, boxed & sold by the road. Interestingly there were also lots of marijuana plants, seemingly uncultivated, growing like weeds along the side of the highway. My guidebook said that it used to be grown & used until the '70s. I can't help wondering whether the country would be better off with it over vodka.
One problem problem posed by this intensive cultivation of the land was that there were people everywhere, thus finding a discrete camping spot took a good eye & some luck. Discretion was important so as not to have a gaping audience watching one's every move the whole evening. I figured that the locals were friendly enough so I could also ask to camp on someone's land if my usual guerrilla camping tactics failed. On this evening I found a spot, quite a nice one, beside an empty farm building above a field of sunflowers & a peach orchard. I was quickly spotted & visited but no-one seemed to mind that I was camping there & most importantly I was left to myself.
I cycled 103 km in 7 hours & 17 minutes
Total so far 8717 km in 128 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 41°3.774, E 72°21.659
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