Video: Cycling The Silk Route With Tour d'Afrique

Over the past couple of months I've posted two trip reports (Part 1 and Part 2) from my friends at Tour d'Afrique who were busy riding 12,000km from Shanghai to Istanbul on their Silk Route tour. They recently finished up that expedition and sent me the video below to share with readers. The short film offers video clips and photos from the ride, giving us all a sense of what it is like to cycle this ancient and epic route. It looks like a fantastic experience and I thank them for sharing some of it with those of us who weren't lucky enough to join them on the ride.

Also, big thanks to Catharina Robbertze for creating the video for us. Great stuff Catharina!

More Stories From The Silk Road With Tour d'Afrique

Back in July I posted a wonderful trip report from cycling tour operator Tour d'Afrique's amazing Silk Route ride. For those who aren't aware of this tour, it is a 12,000km (7456 mile), 129-day journey from Shanghai, China to Istanbul, Turkey by bike. At the time of the original post, the riders were in the early stages of their adventure, but now they are nearing the end and late last week I received another update from the road. This time that report comes courtesy of Comms Director Catharina Robbertz who had this to say:

Expecting the unexpected
There’s always a certain level of risk involved when travelling and when you’re on the road for more than four months you have to be prepared for anything. This is exactly what cyclists taking part in the Silk Route, organised by Tour d’Afrique, have learnt since taking off on a 12000km journey from Shanghai in May. 

For the most part the challenges facing us could have been predicted beforehand. The excruciating heat in the Taklimakan Desert and the frigid temperatures on the Pamir Highway. The headwinds and tough climbing on unpaved passes to altitudes of 4600m. The monotony of food as we ventured into desolate areas inhabited only by a few people, donkeys, horses, marmots and Marco Polo goats. All of these were expected and could be prepared for. But sometimes something happens that cannot be predicted or prepared for and threatens to derail a beautiful journey. 

As we made our way from the highest point of our journey to the city of Khorog we were all relieved to have survived one of the toughest sections of the tour and looking forward to a much-needed rest day. The Pamir Highway had been beautiful and certainly a highlight for many of us but the promise of warmer temperatures and a clean hotel was the cause of some excitement for most of us.

 However, as we woke to the sound of gunfire on the morning we were supposed to leave it became apparent very quickly that we were stuck in a city under siege. The unexpected had happened and a seemingly insignificant act of murder two days before had turned into war. Government troops were streaming into the city while locals had set up road blocks to keep them out and in the first day of fighting 42 people were killed (according to news reports). 

The next morning a cease fire was agreed upon between the two fighting parties but there was still no way for us to get out of the city as roads were still blockaded and snipers were still lurking in the mountains. After days of uncertainty our group of cyclists as well as other foreigners were evacuated from the city by a convoy of vehicles from EU embassies based in the capital of Tajikistan, Dushanbe. Riding the 600km from Khorog to Dushanbe took two days on extremely bad roads and upon arrival we were not only happy to be in safer territories but also looking forward to getting back on our bicycles and continuing our journey in the way we set out to do originally. 

Looking back adding a war-torn city to our route did not detract from our journey. In several ways it contributed to what is already a memorable adventure. We have experienced so much of what the Silk Road traders experienced in the past and being caught in a conflict further contributes to an authentic Silk Road journey. Furthermore, the attitude of the people of Central Asia and in particular Khorog, where they were just as worried about the well-being of perfect strangers in their midst as they were about their loved-ones who were in much greater danger than we were, was particularly humbling.
The stories we will be able to tell when we get back home will speak not only of beautiful scenery, interesting food and nice hotels, but of challenges overcome, expecting the unexpected and arriving at our final destination stronger than we were before. That’s what adventure is all about.

As I said in the first Silk Route report, this seems like such an amazing way to travel through these countries and a fantastic adventure to say the least. Tour dAfrique puts together some great cycling expeditions all over the planet and anyone of their journeys would be a trip of a lifetime. If you're looking for  a travel experience that is unlike anything else, I would HIGHLY recommend you give their site a look. And if you missed the Silk Route ride this year, no worries. There is plenty of time to start planning for 2013!

Riding The Silk Road With Tour d'Afrique

Adventure travel company Tour d'Afrique offers several of my dream trips. The company specializes in cycling adventures and in addition to their signature ride across Africa they also have a fantastic 129-day cycling excursion along the famed Silk Road. Earlier this year I was invited to ride some or all of that tour, but unfortunately time commitments and scheduling issued caused me to not be able to take part in the event, much to my dismay.

But earlier this week I received a report from the Silk Road that shares some great insights into what it's like to ride this epic route. It was written by Nate Cavalieri, who is a writer for Lonely Planet and his first hand account of the the early stages of the tour are definitely inspiring. While I certainly appreciate the contribution to my blog, it still stings a bit that I'm not enjoying the ride with the rest of the crew. I hope you enjoy Nate's thoughts from the road as much as I did.

The Silk Route In Slow Motion

Anyone who loves remote places knows the peculiar feeling of being in the middle of nowhere, and here it is: to the left, the folds of the Gaochang – the ‘flaming mountains’ – suddenly rise 6000 meters above the gravel. They’re crossed by no roads, dotted by no buildings, shaded no trees; it’s a horizon defined by folds of bare rock, that look like a crumpled piece of coal-streaked canvas. To the right, under the blinding afternoon sun, it’s just startlingly flat and blank land: sand, rocks and endless miles of dirt. Over the shimmer of heat on the horizon are the white spindles of high-tension power lines, connecting something (likely a massive wind or solar power farm) to somewhere (likely one a massive second-tier cities of ten million-odd Chinese) but this is a place that’s neither here nor there. It’s nowhere.

If most of the joy of traveling comes from the journey itself, arriving at this particular patch of nothingness has been something of a masochistic pleasure cruise. The trip started a month ago, when we left the frenetic southern capital of Shanghai by bicycle with the Tour d’Afrique’s 2012 Silk Route Tour. The plan: to pedal the epic overland route that connects the Orient and Occident, crossing the seldom traveled Pamir Highway through a slew of Central Asian ’Stans, Iran and eventually climb off the bike in Istanbul, Turkey. All that remains is about 100 days, 9000 kilometers and a somewhat nauseating number of sugary Chinese chocolate-covered wafers (apparently the concept of the energy bar has yet to travel this far east on the famous trading route). For cyclists, the challenge is epic.

And though the sights along this path thus far are spectacular – the glittering, hyper-modern, traffic-snarled mess of China’s eastern cities, the ancient kung fu training yards of the Shoalin Temple, the jaw-dropping rows of Terra Cotta Warriors, mountains and valleys in every shapes and size – it’s cruising through the empty spots on the map like this where you gain a reverence for those who cut this path. Not only the marquee names like Marco Polo and Gangus Kahn, but also the innumerable, anonymous traders, merchants and crooks that walked just under the asphalt surface of the ones we cycle on today.

Although the connections between the historic travelers of this path are loose – a good day with camel progressed 25 kilometers in a day, on the bike we’re averaging that much in an hour – there’s something inherently different about watching the landscape change on two wheels at such a slow pace, powered only by legs and a few hundred wafer candy bars. The route connecting East to West unfolds with changes that are so gradual they are almost unperceivable – something that would be impossible to see from the view of the package tour buses which blow by on the road every day, zipping along between China’s sanctioned tourist sites.

At the market on Tuesday, you’ll spot a few melons among the fruit; at the market on Friday, the melons are the onlyfruit. The first kilometers into the rural spaces Gansu Corridor, we paused to take photos of every mosque and flock of sheep; several days further west all the women wear headscarves and the lazy flocks that block the road have become a bit of a nuisance. At the beginning, we rode under the low-hanging, relentless haze of smog and coal smoke and marveled a patch of blue; now we pray for a bit of cloud cover to mute the furiously bright sun.

And in the accumulation of these small changes – pedal by pedal, kilometer by kilometer, one little piece of nowhere to the next – there lies a country, a continent and a historic path.

Nate Cavalieri is a Lonely Planet author and on staff for the Tour de Afrique Silk Route 2012.

Thanks Nate! Keep up the great work and I look forward to hearing more about the ride as it progresses.