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 Konimex it runs 240 km to Konimex; allow about 4 h 13 of riding. The stops in between: Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, Varakhsha Settlement and back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Halfway between Samarkand and Bukhara, the old caravan road crosses a stretch of steppe that is flat, dry and almost empty, and in the eleventh century someone decided that a traveller crossing it deserved a proper stopping place. Rabati Malik, the Rabat of the King, was built in the 1070s by a Karakhanid ruler named Shams al-Mulk Nasr, on one of the main branches of the Silk Road. The caravanserai itself is now mostly collapsed, and what remains is a tall brick entrance portal, ornamented with carved terracotta, standing alone in the plain like the front of a theatre set.
Read the complete Rabati Malik Sardoba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Rabati Malik Sardoba is where the day begins. 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 comes up about 55 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 122 km into the recorded legs you reach Varakhsha Settlement. Next is back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Chasma-i Ayub Khazira write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira, late in the day. Next is Rabati Malik Sardoba.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Rabati Malik Sardoba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Rabati Malik Sardoba. That is the ride.
Rabati Malik Sardoba → Chasma-i Ayub Khazira is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Chasma-i Ayub Khazira → Varakhsha Settlement is 67 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Varakhsha Settlement → back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira is 66 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Chasma-i Ayub Khazira → Rabati Malik Sardoba is 52 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.