CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
From Bishkek it runs 179 km to Bishkek; allow about 4 h 22 of riding. On the way it passes City of Nevaket, City of Suyab, City of Balasagun and back through City of Suyab. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,250 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Bishkek lies at the foot of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too, the northern range of the Tian Shan, and on a clear morning the snow peaks seem close enough to touch from the city's long boulevards. The capital of Kyrgyzstan was a small fort and trading post in the nineteenth century, and was then rebuilt as a Soviet city named Frunze, after the Bolshevik commander born nearby. The legacy is a grid of broad, straight streets lined with poplars and elms, Soviet apartment blocks, wide squares, and statues, including the one of Manas, the hero of the national epic, who stands in front of the main square, Ala-Too.
Read the complete Bishkek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bishkek is where the day begins. Next is City of Nevaket.
Nothing marks the city of Nevaket from the road except a low mound in a field, and the Chuy valley holds a lot of mounds like it. The town once stood on the Silk Road, in the green plain north of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too range, close to the modern village of Krasnaya Rechka, and archaeologists have found there the foundations of a Buddhist temple and a Nestorian Christian church. Sogdian merchants from Samarkand and Bukhara founded towns like this one to trade silk, metal and horses with the steppe peoples, and the faiths of those travellers travelled with them. It is one of the sites that make up the Silk Roads corridor listed as a World Heritage property in 2014, along with Ak-Beshim and the tower at Burana, which is on the route.
Read the complete City of Nevaket write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Nevaket comes up about 51 km into the recorded legs. Next is City of Suyab.
Suyab was a Silk Road city, and it lies in a field. About nine kilometres from the town of Tokmok, in the wide Chu Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, the low mounds of Ak-Beshim mark the remains of a Sogdian trading town that was later a capital of the Western Turkic Khaganate and a Tang-dynasty frontier outpost. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang passed through in 629 and described a bustling place with merchants from many lands, and a local tradition even holds that the poet Li Bai was born here, though historians argue about it.
Read the complete City of Suyab write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 78 km into the recorded legs you reach City of Suyab. Next is City of Balasagun.
A single brick tower stands alone on the steppe south of the Chu river, and that tower is nearly all that remains of Balasagun, a city that once rivalled the great towns of the Silk Road. It was a capital of the Karakhanids, a Turkic dynasty that ruled much of Central Asia around the tenth to twelfth centuries, and it was here that the poet Yusuf Balasaguni wrote the Kutadgu Bilig, an early work of Turkic literature on how to govern and live well. Today the site is known as Burana, and Tokmok, eleven kilometres away, is the town you pass on the way.
Read the complete City of Balasagun write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
City of Balasagun, about halfway. Next is back through City of Suyab.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Suyab write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through City of Suyab sits at 111 km, about halfway. Next is back through City of Nevaket.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete City of Nevaket write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through City of Nevaket comes up about 139 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bishkek.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bishkek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bishkek closes the day.
Bishkek → City of Nevaket is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
City of Nevaket → City of Suyab is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
City of Suyab → City of Balasagun is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
City of Balasagun → back through City of Suyab is 17 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through City of Suyab → back through City of Nevaket is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through City of Nevaket → Bishkek is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.