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.
261 km from Kuqa to Kuqa, about 6 h 08 of riding. It goes by way of Subash Buddhist Ruins, Kizil Cave-Temple Complex and back through Subash Buddhist Ruins. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,800 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 29 km this is Duku Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The Silk Road did not take a single line across Central Asia, it split around the Taklamakan desert, and along its northern branch, under the snow peaks of the Tian Shan, lay a chain of oasis towns. Kuqa was one of the biggest, the old kingdom of Kucha, a centre of Buddhism, music and dance, and the home of the monk Kumarajiva, who translated Buddhist texts into Chinese. Kizilgaha, a few kilometres from the town, holds one of the beacon towers that the Han and Tang dynasties built to signal across the desert, a squat tower of rammed earth, about the height of a three-storey house, standing on a rise over a dry plain.
Read the complete Kizilgaha Beacon Tower write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kizilgaha Beacon Tower is where the day begins. Next is Subash Buddhist Ruins.
The Tarim Basin is a very large, very dry bowl, and Kuqa sits on its northern rim where the Tian Shan drops its meltwater onto the plain. Subash, about eighteen kilometres north of town, is what remains of a Buddhist monastery that once straddled the Kuqa river, with one half of the complex on each bank. The river is a gravel-and-mud braid for most of the year, and the ruins around it are the colour of the ground: mud-brick stupas, walls and cell blocks that have been eroded into soft shapes by centuries of wind and the occasional flood.
Read the complete Subash Buddhist Ruins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Subash Buddhist Ruins comes up about 29 km into the recorded legs. Next is Kizil Cave-Temple Complex.
Kizil is a Turkic word meaning red, and the name suits the landscape around these caves, where bare ridges of rust-coloured rock stand over the Muzat river on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert. Between about the third and eighth centuries, Buddhist monks cut hundreds of caves into a sandstone cliff here, some as cells to live and meditate in, some as halls with a central pillar around which pilgrims could walk, and covered the walls with murals. This was the kingdom of Kucha, a rich oasis state on the northern Silk Road, and its artists blended Indian, Persian and Chinese styles into something distinctive.
Read the complete Kizil Cave-Temple Complex write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 130 km into the recorded legs you reach Kizil Cave-Temple Complex. Next is back through Subash Buddhist Ruins.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Subash Buddhist Ruins write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Subash Buddhist Ruins, late in the day. Next is Kizilgaha Beacon Tower.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kizilgaha Beacon Tower write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Kizilgaha Beacon Tower. That is the ride.
Kizilgaha Beacon Tower → Subash Buddhist Ruins is 29 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Subash Buddhist Ruins → Kizil Cave-Temple Complex is 101 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kizil Cave-Temple Complex → back through Subash Buddhist Ruins is 85 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Subash Buddhist Ruins → Kizilgaha Beacon Tower is 45 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.