Cycling the silk roads
The Silk Roads traverse more than 40 countries and are a corner stone in the evolution of Eurasia. Adventure cyclist and journalist, Markus Stitz, takes you for an exhilarating and enlightening ride
Humans have always moved from place to place and traded with their neighbours, exchanging goods, skills and ideas. In Scotland, which I've called home since 2009, cattle were driven from the rough Highlands to the markets in the lowlands by Drovers. The Via Regia, the oldest and longest road linking eastern and western Europe, once crossed through Erfurt, where my family lives. And throughout history, Eurasia was criss-crossed with communication routes and trade paths, which gradually linked up to a network which we today call the Silk Roads.
My personal experience with those routes begins in August 2019 in the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek. The biggest town in the otherwise largely nomadic country is the start and the finish of the 'Silk Road Mountain Race', which, since its inception in 2018, has become one of the most anticipated events in the global ultracycling calendar. Run by Nelson Trees, the race attracts around 200 riders from all over the world to Kyrgyzstan. The event takes its name from the Silk Roads, which continue to stir imaginations with its evocative mystery. For the majority of their long history, these ancient roads had no particular name. It was German geologist Baron Ferdinand von Richthofen who named the trade and communication network 'Die Seidenstrasse' (the Silk Road) in the mid-19th century.
Kyrgyzstan is one of over 40 countries situated along the historic land and maritime Silk Roads. Those trading routes enriched the countries they passed through not only with merchandise and precious commodities like silk. The constant movement and mixing of populations also brought about the transmission of knowledge, ideas, cultures and beliefs, which had a profound impact on the history and civilisations of the Eurasian peoples. Travellers were attracted not only by trade, but also by the intellectual and cultural exchange that was taking place in cities along the Silk Roads. Science, arts and literature, as well as crafts and technologies were shared and disseminated along the lengths of these routes, connecting cultures, religions and languages.
As the clock in ultra cycling never stops, it can be a rather daunting affair racing 1,700km self-supported across the vastness and beauty of the Tian Shan mountains. The Silk Road Mountain Race can be ridden solo or in a pair. It is not just the sheer length and about 26,000m of climbing that makes it one of the hardest races in the world. The climate is often unforgiving in Kyrgyzstan, even at the peak of summer. The daytime temperature in the capital reaches almost 40 degrees, yet I freeze at minus 10 in my tent two days later on a mountain pass.
The race doesn't just follow the ancient Silk Roads, it also includes a section of the modern Silk Road, or One Belt One Road initiative, presented in 2013 by China's President Xi Jinping. Costing an estimated three trillion dollars over the lifetime of the project, it is aiming to link China with 65% of the world's population by road and maritime connections. The land-based Silk Road will connect Mongolia and Russia to the North; South-East Asia, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to the South; and Central Asia, West Asia and Europe to the West. The maritime route includes harbours and coastal infrastructure going from the Chinese east coast to Europe, India, Africa, the Pacific, and the Indian Oceans. The clear intention of the road is to lift the Chinese economy going forward by connecting it to major economies in Europe and Asia, but also to exercise its influence in countries like Kyrgyzstan.
Riding the Silk Road Mountain Race requires me to stop at three checkpoints to get a stamp in my brevet card. The first two checkpoints are in a traditional yurt, the third is in a guesthouse. Providing basic food and hot drinks, those checkpoints are amongst the only places to meet other riders. So far all is going well for me, but after a very fast descent I discover that a spoke had rattled itself loose, and spent the next seven hours fixing my bike. Whilst in the front end of the field so far, I now see many riders passing me and settle for simply arriving at the finish.
Very different to the bumpy miles of washboard gravel roads that lead me to the first checkpoint of the race at Song-Köl, an alpine lake in northern Naryn Region at an altitude of 3,016m, the new Silk Road is made of fast-rolling tarmac. I enjoy its smoothness and cycle almost 80km from near At-Bashi to the Chinese border. After the cruisy section on Chinese tarmac, I have to negotiate a number of ice-cold rivers to get to the next checkpoint, marvelling at snow-capped peaks that rise up to 7,500m.
Medieval Kyrgyzstan was crossed by three branches of the Great Silk Road: the Pamir-Alai Path, the Ferghana Valley Path and the Chuy Path. Passing through the Tien Shan and Pamir-Alai mountains was not easy long before my time, as caravans and merchants struggled to overcome mountain trails and passes. With modern commodities like 11 gears and ultralight components, I am moving much faster than the camels, which covered about 25 to 30km per day and carried around 300 to 350kg each. I average more than 100km per day and carry way less than a tenth of equipment on my gravel bike, but each kilometre is still hard earned.
After the second checkpoint I am first plagued by food poisoning, and later on I arrive disoriented in Naryn with clear signs of heat exhaustion. While wearing an insulated jacket in almost 40 degrees and not sweating, I almost collapse on the dusty roads in the only bigger city on the race route outside of Bishkek, known amongst riders as ‘Scratch City’. I rest for half a day and carry on the next day after some sleep in a hostel. The highest pass of the route, Tong pass, at 4,012m, is still to come. While balancing my bike over ice sheets I can hear huge rock falls beneath me, and feel relieved when I reach the shores of Ysyk-Köl, the ‘warm lake’. Considered for inclusion in the world heritage list, the eighth-deepest and the eleventh-largest lake in the world by volume, and the third-largest saline lake, hardly freezes during the cold winters. The lake is a Ramsar site of globally significant biodiversity, and many historians believe that it was the origin for the Black Death that plagued Europe and Asia during the 14th century.
My final days cycling are challenging. Although the finish of the Silk Road Mountain Race is at Cholpon-Ata, about 80km away as the bird flies on the northern shores of Ysyk-Köl, it takes me almost 600km to get there. The thing about ultracycling is that you never take the quickest way. In my case that involves crossing another three mountain passes close to 4,000m before I finally arrive. After 14 days in the saddle I reach Cholpon-Ata, exhausted and 10kg lighter, but with the desire to explore more of this ancient route by bike.
