Day 47 - The Easiest Century of My Life
We had a very late night after finishing the planning and reset phaff, but the wind was a very strong motivator to get up early and get on the road as quickly as possible. It was forecast for a stonking tailwind today, and then a stonking headwind tomorrow, so despite our very late night of planning and reset phaff, we were up early to get on the road as quickly as possible. We had to apply for our Indian visas, wash the bikes, grab a bit of food and drop by the train station to double check we couldn't get to Uzbekistan. The first three were easy enough (the visas took hours of page crashes but we got there) and this time we even had change for the car wash! The last one threw a spanner in the works.
We rock up to the train "station" which looks akin to the goods yards of trains you might glimpse at home, and are greeted by a whole host of mechanics and drivers. We ask if we could get a train to Uzbekistan today. "Da da da" came the immediate response. For those of you whose Russian is rusty that's "yes yes yes". Not "maybe", not "yes, but" not even just "yes" but "yes yes yes". After some more dodgy translate we found ourselves in the staff room having tea (semi-consensually, but to be fair we didn't resist very hard) with another decision to make; do we go to Atyrau as just planned, or go back to the original plan, but a week later. It was 2-8 hours (hard to understand) the 100km to Uzbekistan, or 2 DAYS to go 400km further into the country as well.
In the end we decided that actually the facts and times haven't really changed since a couple of days ago, we'd just be doing a road in Uzbekistan not Kazakhstan, so we got on the bikes and headed out of town. It was 1pm, but we didn't begrudge leaving late as we'd just had so much to do, but we did just about manage to avoid going to the cafe (again). And what a tailwind. We rode for 5 hours straight without stopping, not dropping below 20mph (30km/h) the whole time. We did a century (160km) without stopping once. We were going along faster than the car on gravel roads yesterday. We had lunch while cruising along at the usual heads-down-hard-work speed. We could actually hear each other while riding!? "Is this cheating" "No we've earned this!"
I ended up watching over 2 hours of TV! The set up was remarkably effective it turns out (the roads really are that straight and that smooth). I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to be blasting along in your own little world while fast charging the phone 😏
The numbers on the Garmin didn't look real, at least when compared to the effort we were putting in. And they jumped up so fast. I've worked harder on a 14mile ride than this 140mile one?! It was a bit of a shame we hadn't started early to also get the easiest 200mile ride of my life, but I'm not complaining 😅. It felt incredible! It was almost rude to do our longest tour day yet with possibly also out latest start! Funnily enough we saw our driver from yesterday coming back the other way on the road. That makes three days running as he told us he'd overtaken us the day before he picked us up too! We're not quite sure what his job is - something to do with oil, but he sure burns a lot of it driving near constantly!
When we did eventually stop it was the same feeling as stopping the car after a long drive - the deceleration feeling and the sleepy tired setting in. My legs might not be tired, but I certainly know I've been driving all day. We raided some markets in the town, had the now usual photo shoot with curious locals, then pulled off the road to pitch for the night, happy to have made it over half way, the knowledge that the wind would perfectly flip direction and be equally, if not stronger tomorrow, heavy in our thoughts!
Food spend today: 10.58 euros