neil lockwood
neil lockwood Joined: December 20th 2006
Logged in: December 20th 2011
Logged in: December 20th 2011
Travel Blog Posts
Ladies who ran a tea stall between Bukhara and Samarkand
Monday April 30. The uzbeck people are some of the nicest of the trip so far. Everywhere I stop they offer me tea and other treats. It is often difficult to pay for breakfast and they have an excellent sense of humour. The one negative side is their terrible driving. Perhaps it is only the third generation of drivers who are sane. I frequently see crashes but even after a crash they seem detached as to why it has happened. I try to tuck myself in behind a slow moving Russian truck and I depend very much on my mirror. During the day I walked around the city visiting the grave of Tamerlane and then the mosque that was partially distroyed by an earrthquake in the 1890s. Tomorrow I leave for Tashkent wit the divertion ... read more
Cycling acrosss the desert.
Monday April 23 and Tuesday April 24. Finally got away from Ashgabat with my adjusted visa and a new guide, Eier and her friend who did the driving. We had 2 days to make the border so cycling was out of the question. We stopped in Merv to visit the ruins of this once famous city smashed by Ghengis Khan who had all the inhabitants mudered. The Hitler of his day he put to the sword nearly one third of the population of central asia in the early 13th century. Wednesday April 25. I was driven to the border where I said goodbye to Eier. It took me 3 hours to get through customs to get out of TM and into UZ. I finally began cycling at mid-day by which time the temperature had reached ... read more
Ashgabat
Thursday April 12. We arrived in Turkmenbashi at 4.30 am. It was to be 8 hours before I competed all the procedures; welcome to Turkmenistan the wierdest country in Asia. In the guide book it is called a Stalinist Dysneyland but I felt it had a large dose of Hollywood. My agent/guide arrived, Oleg, and dealt with the endless paperwork. That night we stayed in a good hotel to the north of Turkmenbashi. Friday April 13. Oleg took me and the bike in his Toyota Surf back to the city and over the mountains behind before I began cycling. As I pedalled he drove about 10 metres behind. We had to cover 600 kms to Ashgabat in three days to maintain the schedule and with the state of the roadsit became apparent that this was ... read more
Wednesday April 4 I woke up to the sound of heavy rain but it had stopped by the time I emerged into the street. I said goodbye to the family and off I went on good flat roads and I was soon making 25-30 kms/hr. I stopped frequently for tea and was even asked inside one of the police stations at the side of the road for a cup of tea. I arrived in Ganca, pronounced Ganja, at 1pm and checked into a typical soviet era hotel. They could put a man in space but never achieved the feat of building a working bathroom. Thursday April 5 I left Ganca at 8.30. The road was very bad in places and traffic moves onto the nearbye fields and makes another road which in time becomes potholed and ... read more
Irena Homestay
Tuesday April 4. I said a fond farewell to Irena and rode the 2 kms into the centre to the telephone building. In the process I had two cars literally drive at me and when I remonstrated they just looked blank. But I am driving a clapped out rust bucket and I am higher up the food chain than you so why are you complaining? These drivers have not taken any driving test and frequently hit each other. The government has a major task on its hands to cut down on drunken driving. It rained hard all day. The border was a depressing place in the rain as the Azeris checked and re-checked my passport. However leaving the border was a most pleasant surprise as even in the rain the people in the fields and ... read more
Tibilisi old town
I spent a week in Tibilisi at Irena's homestay and this was the highlight of my time in Georgia. The rest was a disappointment. The country is very much an ex-soviet nation. The older people are still in a kind of shock. The younger generation and the old communists, who managed to grab all they could lay their hands on, are in transition to capitalism, specifically the second hand Mercedes for the less well off and the new 4x4 for the ex-communists and hangers-on. They drive their cars at pedestrians with horns blaring. Indeed for these rather fat unshaven men in black coats and black leather flat caps the car horn is more important than their own private parts. They would certainly surrender the latter rather than their car horn. I cannot believe that the ... read more
Inside Santa Sophia
March 10 - March 14 I had 5 days in Istanbul cleaning the bike, doing the blog and generally catching up with washing clothes etc. I spent one day visiting the sights and taking pictures. It is 45 years since I was last in Istanbul and the city has changed enormously. I visited Santa Sophia and speculated if it could have been different if 1453 had not happened. North Africa, much of the Middle East, Anatolia and Southern Europe went into a cul-de-sac for 400 years. In the five areas: social, cultural, political, technological and economic history stood still for these countries. Would it have been different had Byzantium survived? I don’t think so but Ottoman rule contributed to the long malaise, its frequent use of terrible violence deeply scarred the nations it ruled. ... read more
Warming beside the stove.
Tuesday March 15. As I had planned I took the bus to Gerade to miss out the heavy traffic. It was a good decision as the traffic is scary along this stretch. The memory of Dave Cook underlines that choice. I set off cycling at 1 pm and made good progress as I climbed higher into the mountains. It got very cold and started to snow. The snow was driven by a strong wind and visibility was reduced. Lorries were seeing me too late but the main problem was the cold and the possibility of hyperthermia. I was seriously cold. I stopped at a petrol station which had a wonderful hot stove. After one and a half hours I felt better but the snow was still falling so I flagged down a bus and they ... read more
Street scene in Samsun
Saturday March 17. I left Merzifon at 8 am. The road is flat at first but then become hilly. Some of the hills are very long. I pushed my bike for at least two hours up these hills. I stopped along the way for tea and bananas. I do enjoy their tea houses. Eventually I reached the top and it was a dramatic downhill to Samsun and sunshine! I booked into a good hotel, Otel Fuar. I had dinner at a fish restaurant and watched Bolton lose to Man United. They know much more about the Premiership than I do. Sunday March 18. It has been the best day since leaving Vienna. The sun shone, almost the first for 3 weeks, it was mild, the road is flat and in excellent condition. My decision to ... read more
Terrib;e roads n Georgia.
Monday March 19. I left Ordu at 7.45 am. As part of the upgrading of the roads they have put in new tunnels and have not yet put in any lighting. It was very nearly my undoing. I checked that there was no traffic and set off furiously to get to the other end. It became absolutely dark and my front light was useless. I was following the white line in the middle of the tunnel with my front light. I heard truck approaching at speed so I went for the side but couldn’t see a thing. I hit a concrete retaining wall, went over and into a culvert in the pitch darkness. I landed across another wall on my right side .At first I thought that I had broken ribs. It took some time ... read more
