May 8, 2014
Desert trials: The Challenge continues
Day two of the Desert-Dash and I awoke very early, deciding that the key to victory in this challenge was to wake up with my positive hat on (the orange one) and get as much distance done this day as possible. With that in mind I was on my way by 5:20am (Iranian time, I had no idea what time it was in Turkmenistan) although the fierce headwind I was forced to cycle into did not make me happy to be on the bike. It was blowing at me with such fearsome strength, it was surely the strongest headwind I could ever remember. To make matters considerably worse the traffic had inexplicably increased five-fold from the day before, and with the wind blowing me about I had no choice but to cycle on the gravel shoulder, which slowed me further. And to make matters considerably even worse my eyes filled with dust and sand and became red raw and painful. And to make matters even more really considerably worse, I had a Backstreet Boys song stuck in my head. The whole situation was so bad my positive hat was quickly removed, quite literally, and put away in my pannier before it blew off my head. I was going six kilometres per hour.
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There is nothing more frustrating than cycling into a headwind, except, let me tell you, cycling into a headwind with a Backstreet Boys song stuck in your head. And yet there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I knew that after 20 kilometres I would be making a right turn, and that would turn my headwind into a crosswind, and that would be bliss. This thought was the only thing which kept me going for those first three painful hours, and it would be hard to describe the sense of relief that I felt when that turn finally arrived. Suddenly I could pedal again! And then I made another right turn, and now I had the wind at my back. To be honest I wasn't sure that I was supposed to be going that way, but you can't object to a tailwind like that. Now the only thing limiting my speed was the poor road surface, but then even that improved and I was flying along at 25 kilometres per hour.
After a while I took a left turn and was definitely now heading in the right direction, and still making fantastic progress, when I saw at the side of the road another touring cyclist. I had assumed that I wouldn't meet any in Turkmenistan because any that were attempting the Desert Dash Challenge surely would have crossed the border at the same time as me the day before. But Andreas, a middle-aged Austrian man cycling from Vienna to Siberia, told me that he had crossed the border at approximately midday. Hearing this news left me with two trains of thought. The first was wishing that I could have seen the look on the young official's face when Andreas entered the room, having just been horrified by my bags, in walks another cyclist. The other was just how in the hell Andreas had got here before me. "Yes," he explained, "I took the shortcut." Shortcut! Shortcut! You can't take shortcuts on the Desert-Dash Challenge! Hearing more I realised that I had actually even been told about this shortcut by a local the evening before, but had decided not to take it because the road that had been pointed out to me had no cars on it, and I was worried about getting lost or stuck. Andreas confirmed that it was okay, and all of my toils into the headwind that morning were unnecessary. Well, anyway, for the purposes of any of you reading this who might be crazy enough to consider cycling across Turkmenistan yourself, I include for your benefit the following map showing my route in red and the shortcut in blue. I should, however, point out that if you do take this shortcut you will not have completed the full 500 kilometres in five days and will therefore not be eligible for your 'I did the Desert-Dash didn't I?' certificate (T-shirts also available.)
(Map no longer here, sorry!)
Honestly though, you should take the shortcut, it isn't really cheating. "I also took a lift in a car, the headwind this morning was really bad" added Andreas. Yes, well, that is cheating I'm afraid.
Andreas had cycled from Vienna, although I use the word 'cycled' in this sense quite incorrectly, because he left in March and had done a lot of the journey by bus. He was a nice, if slightly odd man, who seemed quite blissfully unaware of much of what was going on. For example he had argued quite voraciously at the border about the $12 entry fee, the one which everyone has to pay, which he had wrongly assumed to be the demands of a corrupt border official. Furthermore, he hadn't bothered to change any money into the local currency but was planning to spend the night in a hotel in Mary, until I said "You do know that you can't get any money here don't you? There are no ATMs, and not in Uzbekistan either." The look on his face suggested that he did not know this. "Oh, I suppose I won't be staying in a hotel then."
Andreas was a faster cyclist than me and after our first little break the road turned so that it was more into the wind, which was still blowing hard. I wanted to ride on the gravel where I felt safer, but it was even slower going, so I told Andreas that he should just go on without me. "No stress," came his response, "we make it together!" Then he cycled off and I didn't see him again.
I was very, very tired. The wind was now coming mostly from the side but also partly head on. It was blowing sand from the desert across the road, stinging my legs, my arms, my face. Big trucks zoomed past, and every time they did I would be tossed around like a rag doll as the wind was momentarily blocked, creating a vacuum that was immediately replaced by more gusts in the trucks wake. My eyes were filled with sand, and I seemed to have some allergy to the desert as my nose ran and ran and I sneezed and sneezed and felt like throwing up. But I had to keep going, there was simply no time in the schedule for stopping, however hard things got. But then I got a puncture, so I stopped.
After I fixed the puncture I got going again, I was determined not to let this beat me. Then came a miniature sand storm. I had to stop for a moment while the sand swirled around me. It didn't last long though, no biggie. It was okay, things were still going good, nothing to worry about at all. Oh no, wait, then I ran out of water.
Running out of water in the desert sucks! Seriously, it sucks! I must admit, this wasn't the first time it had happened to me. The first time in Death Valley I had to stop some vehicles to ask for water. I was really determined not to have to do that again, because I hated to rely on motor vehicles for help, so I wasn't going to do that again. The second time it happened was in Nevada, and I managed to cycle my way out of that one. I could do it again, for sure. The only problem was that I was really, really, really thirsty, and I still had quite a long way to go to Mary. I had to make it though, otherwise I would probably die. I just kept going. I drank the last few sips of my water. I kept going and got more dehydrated. I stopped and ate my orange and my pear. They tasted so good! Then I kept going some more. Still I saw nothing but desert. I could see no way that this situation could possibly be any worse. Then the Backstreet Boys song came back into my head. This was a terrible, terrible thing. I chased it away with another song, by, believe it or not, One Direction. 'Cause we danced all night to the best song ever!' I sang to myself and this had the remarkable effect of invigorating me and spurring me on. As you may be able to tell I was by now in very, very dire mental straits.
Several years ago, before I started travelling by bike myself, I read Alastair Humphreys' books about his round-the-world bicycle journey. I remember reading a passage in one, which, if I remember rightly, involved him running out of water in the desert of Turkmenistan and being so desperate for a drink that he picked up a bottle of water that he found at the side of the road, put a water-purification tablet in it, and drank it. This slightly disgusted me at the time - how could anyone do that? I found it very difficult to understand. Until this very moment. Now I was myself out of water, dehydrated and desperate and in the deserts of Turkmenistan, now I understood exactly how he felt. I even saw bottles half-filled with water lying at the roadside and how they looked like the most delicious and refreshing beverages one could ever wish to see! If I'd only had a water-purification tablet I daresay I would have done just exactly the same thing. To be honest, I was quite close to drinking one without the water-purification tablet.
Finally though I did not need to as I arrived at a village just before Mary. My mouth was parched and I was exhausted and ready to collapse, but I managed to stumble into a shop, put some money on the desk, grab a bottle of water and pour almost the entire contents into my mouth. The old woman behind the counter looked at me with curiosity. "That was delicious, thank you," I said to her, "I'll take four more please."
Despite all the trials I had cycled 145 kilometres in the day, putting me at 235km/500km after Day Two. It was tough, but I was winning.
Today's ride: 145 km (90 miles)
Total: 18,835 km (11,697 miles)
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