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.
277 km from Karakul’ to Karakul’, about 4 h 58 of riding. The stops in between: Varakhsha Settlement, Historic Centre of Bukhara, Chasma-i Ayub Khazira and back through Historic Centre of Bukhara. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 34 km this is Uzbekistan Silk Road Route, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
The ancient city of Paikend lies in the desert on the edge of the Bukhara oasis, in Uzbekistan, and it is so old that the Silk Road was only one chapter of its story. Early writers called it the city of merchants. It stood on a major route between the Zarafshan river and the Amu Darya, near the sands of the Kyzylkum, and it was a fortified trading town from the early centuries BC, with a citadel, a main town and a market district, at its peak in the early Islamic period. It declined after the eleventh century, as the river shifted and Bukhara took the trade.
Read the complete Paikend Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paikend Settlement is where the day begins. Next is Varakhsha Settlement.
Thirty kilometres or so west of Bukhara, beyond the last irrigated fields, the land turns to sand and salt crust at the edge of the Kyzylkum desert, and here a low mound of eroded mud brick rises from the flat ground. This is Varakhsha, once a flourishing town and the residence of the Bukhar Khudats, the pre-Islamic rulers of the Bukhara oasis. It thrived in the early medieval centuries, when the oasis extended further than it does today, and was abandoned around the eleventh century, probably as irrigation failed and the desert advanced.
Read the complete Varakhsha Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Varakhsha Settlement comes up about 51 km into the recorded legs. Next is Historic Centre of Bukhara.
Bukhara is a city that feels like a lived-in museum. For more than two thousand years it has been a trading town on the routes across Central Asia, and in the ninth and tenth centuries, under the Samanid dynasty, it was one of the great centres of Islamic learning, home to scholars such as Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna. Genghis Khan sacked it in 1220, but the Kalyan Minaret, built in 1127, survived, and legend says even the conqueror was impressed. Today the old city is a remarkable ensemble of mosques, madrasas, caravanserais and domed bazaars, and it entered the World Heritage list in 1993.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Bukhara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 98 km into the recorded legs you reach Historic Centre of Bukhara. Next is Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.
North of Bukhara, the green irrigated oasis of the Zarafshan river spreads out in a patchwork of cotton fields, orchards, mulberry trees and villages, and the point named Chasma-i Ayub Khazira lies in this landscape, near the village of Khazara, between Vobkent and Gijduvon. Chashma-i Ayub, the spring of Job, is a name given to several holy springs in Central Asia, linked to the legend that the prophet Job struck the ground with his staff and water gushed forth in a time of drought. The most famous is in Bukhara itself, a mausoleum over a spring, and this site near Khazara may be another shrine of the same tradition, listed as part of the Silk Roads corridor of the Zarafshan valley.
Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, about halfway. Next is back through Historic Centre of Bukhara.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Historic Centre of Bukhara write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Historic Centre of Bukhara sits at 165 km, about halfway. Next is back through Varakhsha Settlement.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Varakhsha Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Varakhsha Settlement comes up about 215 km into the recorded legs. Next is Paikend Settlement.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Paikend Settlement write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Paikend Settlement closes the day.
Paikend Settlement → Varakhsha Settlement is 51 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Varakhsha Settlement → Historic Centre of Bukhara is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Historic Centre of Bukhara → Chasma-i Ayub Khazira is 34 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chasma-i Ayub Khazira → back through Historic Centre of Bukhara is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Historic Centre of Bukhara → back through Varakhsha Settlement is 47 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Varakhsha Settlement → Paikend Settlement is 63 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.