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 Bayramaly it runs 114 km to Bayramaly; allow about 2 h 33 of riding. It goes by way of Kelte Minara koshk, Yaz and Gobekli Tepes and back through Kelte Minara koshk. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Some places in Merv are enormous and some are intimate, and this belongs to the second kind. The mausoleum of Imam Qasim is a small pilgrimage site in the oasis, a place for quiet prayer rather than spectacle, the sort of shrine that has drawn local visitors for a very long time. It sits in the broad landscape of Merv, east of the Karakum desert, within a few kilometres of the town of Bayramaly, and the contrast between the quiet shrine and the huge empty ruins nearby is a big part of its character.
Read the complete Mausoleum of Imam Qasim write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Mausoleum of Imam Qasim is where the day begins. Next is Kelte Minara koshk.
Once there were few cities in the world as big as Merv. At its height, in the twelfth century, under the Seljuk sultans, the oasis city on the Murghab river, in the sands of what is now Turkmenistan, may have been the largest on the planet, with a population counted in the hundreds of thousands, libraries that Arab geographers praised and a position on the Silk Road between Persia and Central Asia. In 1221, the Mongols arrived, and the chroniclers say that the slaughter was beyond counting. The city never recovered its size, but the ruins, which cover a vast area of low walls, mounds and shattered brick, were listed as a World Heritage site in 1999.
Read the complete Kelte Minara koshk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Kelte Minara koshk comes up about 19 km into the recorded legs. Next is Yaz and Gobekli Tepes.
Out on the edge of the Murghab oasis in south-eastern Turkmenistan, where irrigated cotton fields meet the sand of the Karakum, low mounds rise from the flat land. Tepe means hill, and these hills are the eroded remains of ancient settlements: Yaz Depe, which gave its name to an Iron Age culture of the early first millennium BC, and Gobekli Depe nearby. To an untrained eye they are just humps of clay, but they belong to one of the longest continuous stories of settlement in Central Asia.
Read the complete Yaz and Gobekli Tepes write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 52 km into the recorded legs you reach Yaz and Gobekli Tepes. Next is back through Kelte Minara koshk.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Kelte Minara koshk write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Kelte Minara koshk, late in the day. Next is Mausoleum of Imam Qasim.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Mausoleum of Imam Qasim write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Mausoleum of Imam Qasim. That is the ride.
Mausoleum of Imam Qasim → Kelte Minara koshk is 19 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Kelte Minara koshk → Yaz and Gobekli Tepes is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Yaz and Gobekli Tepes → back through Kelte Minara koshk is 41 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Kelte Minara koshk → Mausoleum of Imam Qasim is 21 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.