Cycling the Silk Road

[Rob B]

Hello! I'm currently planning a two man cycling trip for this summer which will involve travelling from Xian in China to Venice in Italy. Has anyone done this route recently and can anyone recommend any specific places to visit as well as places to avoid (for whatever reason!).

I'm also interested to know about any potential visa problems we may encounter along the way...any help and advice would be really appreciated!

Feel free to have a look at our introductory video below (to see the exact route)....


View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6krrzviOIE0


...and if you like it follow us in our facebook group 'Cycling the Silk Road' or visit our website www.cyclingthesilkroad.com

Thanks!

 

[Ticktockmy]

I think you are too many years too late for it to be an unusual adventure, on your journey you will find hundreds of cyclist heading both ways. May i suggest you look on http://www.crazyguyonabike.com, so much info on there, too many trips similar to your for me to pick out one. But you will get lots of info about visa's and the short-cuts you can take. From my experiences riding in the china-South East area, plan your entry and exit dates well before you start your trip. China can and does require a entry-exit day miss that and you could be stuffed. some of the Border controls are very remote and if you arrive late and miss your exit date, you might have to go back to the nearest town to get a new exit visa/stamp and pay a fine.

 

[Rob B]

Thank you for your reply. Yeah I am aware that this trip isn't unusual in the world of cycling, and it's for that exact reason I decided to post on this forum and pick the brains of the many people that have done the Silk Road recently (as this is going to be my first time doing anything like this, any recommendations would be appreciated!).

Cheers for your advice on China, we are actually going to be doing the Silk Road "backwards" and so starting in China which makes that visa issue a bit easier. Turkmenistan is another country that I was interested to get peoples experiences on...how much pressure does a 5 day transit visa put you under to get across the country?

p.s crazyguyonabike.com is amazing!

 

[ActiveCampers]

Good k to you mate!
It may not be the first time, but its your first time and that's all that matters! We've just come back from 4 months "backpacking" in asia, and hardly the first time anyone did that, but still a stonking adventure for us, new to us, and more challenging trip than 98% of the rest of the UK population does. Your trip is 99.99%
I can't offer any advice, as whilst we travel a lot, not by bike until this summer which will be our first trip (north-south france, c. 900-1000m)
So - just enjoy the journey, and just don't go too fast.... Our travels taught us, "yeah - the next place is new/different - but don't go to quick else you don't maximise where you are...."

GOOD LUCK!

 

[Rob B]

Thanks ActiveCampers! It's always nice to speak to someone with a bit of positivity about them

I'll be sure to bear that in mind... yeah there is always the temptation to rush when travelling although I'm sure my legs will be all too happy to take it slowly!

 

[Ticktockmy]

China can be a nightmare, its ok when like me your partner is Chinese and so speaks the language. on some roads the signs in both English and Chinese, others either Chinese or nothing that what makes china interesting. Lots of young middle class Chinese now cycle tour which makes you a kindred spirit, and will befriend you, more of a novelty being friends with a Caucasian it think, which route are you following as the silk road had a couple of routes, would be interesting to me and others on here to see your planned route.

 

[Rob B]

The planned route is as follows: China (Xian), Kazahkstan, Krygystan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, (Afghanistan, depending on what happens in the April election...), Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy (Venice)...

Despite my best efforts at learning some Mandarin on my phone, pretty sure we will be relying a lot on our miming skills

 

[Ticktockmy]

Interesting route, seems to be one of the favourite routes on Crasyguyonabike, I would like to do that route, but being a old wrinkly my enthusiasm now these days for long tours like that seem to have died..LOL

 

[Rob B]

Yeah I think it's quite a popular route, I will definitely check out crazyguy some more to see what others have written about it.

You can be too wrinkly for a lot of things....but not for cycling haha. I guess the great thing about tour cycling is that you can go at your own pace...although the longer it takes, the more your wallet suffers!

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

From a visa point of view - yes the 5 day transit visa for Turkmenistan is a problem. 550km and you can only cycle a set route, due to the restrictions of a transit visa. the reality is that by the time you have crossed the border on one side (Tajikistan) and made it to the border on the otherside (Iran) BEFORE it closes for the day, you are looking at 3 full days and a couple of hours tacked on to each end. You can not afford to miss the border closing for the day. I understand it adds considerable issues and I know we were looking at taking a lift for some of it (in the end our world tour was aborted prior to getting to the silk road).

Iran - where are you planning on collecting your Iranian visa? You get 30 days from collecting it to needing to enter the country. you then get 30 days in the country and we know from others that extending it in the country is not normally a problem.

One problem I know of that you will encounter is that address for embassies are usually wrong! Look at CGOAB and various journals, people often have a visa page and list the accurate addresses or GPS coordinates or check out the Lonely Planet Forums - they also have the more accurate locations for embassies etc.

We followed a number of other cyclists journeys for this crossing, but all of them going West to East, so I guess it won't help you much. One that I did recently read was of a guy going from HK to Nepal and he managed (just) to get away with getting through Tibet. He covered quite a bit of the 'issues' he had in China in his journal. http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/hometonepal

 

[Rob B]

Cheers SatNav....I have read on CGOAB that you can pay a third party company to organise the Iranian visa for you...obviously you pay a bit more but it saves a lot of hassle...although there is always the risk of getting scammed.

The practicalities of where and when we actually organise and get them is still a bit up in the air...I believe you can buy this Iranian visa through a third party company who organise everything. Then from the day that your passport has been stamped, I believe you have three months before you need to enter the country (this is what I've read although it could be wrong?!). If this is true, we hope to have them sorted before we fly to China which would give us plenty of time as we cycle west towards Iran....

...but I can see these visas causing numerous headaches!

 

[fossyant]

Good luck.

My best man buggered off on his bike in 2009, came back briefly last year, couldn't settle and was off again. Initially was in Africa, popped back home via Turkey, now is in Asia, taking the long route to Australia. Lucky barsteward.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Cheers SatNav....I have read on CGOAB that you can pay a third party company to organise the Iranian visa for you...obviously you pay a bit more but it saves a lot of hassle...although there is always the risk of getting scammed.

The practicalities of where and when we actually organise and get them is still a bit up in the air...I believe you can buy this Iranian visa through a third party company who organise everything. Then from the day that your passport has been stamped, I believe you have three months before you need to enter the country (this is what I've read although it could be wrong?!). If this is true, we hope to have them sorted before we fly to China which would give us plenty of time as we cycle west towards Iran....

...but I can see these visas causing numerous headaches!

It could be 3 months, I thought it was 30 days, but I can't remember now (it was 2 years ago). We did use 2 companies to sort out visas out. the Iranian one being the easiest of the lot to do and use (though regretfully we never managed that but to the dog attack in turkey.) The other company we used was stantours. you will find them mentioned a lot on CGOAB... We used Iranianvisa.com for the Iran visa. No issues there either.

With the Tajikistan, Uzbekistan & Kyrgyzstan visas, it is possible to buy longer visas and overlap them by several weeks, which is what we had done. It gave us plenty of lee-way and it is always easy to stay longer and sightsee or just cycle less miles in a day! Kazakhstan was not needed for us, but I understand you can get longish Kazak visas as well. It is only Turkmenistan that is the issue.


The best advise I can give is don't worry about it costing $10 extra for getting a longer 60 day visa - get longer visa and built in overlaps. things happen on the road and you need time. Some of the people we were following were snowed in on the Silk Road and literally only made it out of the country in time by paying for a 4x4 to take them to the border.

(We learnt this with Belarus where we only purchased what we needed and then found we could not get into the country at the planned border crossing and had 2 days of riding to get to the next border that took our passports, by which time I picked up a RSI injury in my foot and we had to stay put for 2 weeks before entering the country - the result was that we had 3 days cycling in the country rather than the 3 weeks we had originally planned for. Had we purchased the maximum visa of 30 days we could have had 10 days which would have gotten us down the entire length of the country rather than having to cut a corner and bale as quickly as possible into Poland!)

 

[Rob B]

That all sounds like really good advice, you have helped clear up a few things I was a bit unsure about, thank you! I know you can read a lot about this on CGOAB but I always prefer to have more direct contact with people on forums like this...and fingers crossed I don't come across as many angry dogs as you did!

p.s I just checked out your photography website, good work!

 

[Normu]

I did part of the Silk Road last Summer: Iran (entering from Turkey), Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Regarding Turkmenistan: The shortest route from the Uzbek border to the Iranian border (Farap to Sarakhs) is 470 km long, not 550 km. It's tough to cycle the route in five days, but it's possible.

When we entered from Iran, we lost about half a day for the border crossing, most of it on the Turkmen side. It's not that the border was incredibly busy, but they like to keep you waiting. We also spent one morning exploring the ruins of Merv (very much worth it) and we still would have made the crossing within the five days. What stopped us in the end was stupid accident on the last day, which landed me in a hospital in Turkmenabat.