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.
The stops in between: City of Nevaket, City of Suyab and back through City of Nevaket. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 2,100 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It crosses from Kazakhstan into Kyrgyzstan - carry ID and check the toll rules. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
The Site of Aktobe is better known to archaeologists as Ak-Beshim, a ruined Silk Road town in the Chuy Valley of northern Kyrgyzstan, and it was once the city of Suyab. Around the seventh and eighth centuries it was a major stop for merchants, a Sogdian trading settlement and later a Turkic and Chinese Tang garrison town. Excavators found a Buddhist temple and also a Nestorian Christian church, a sign of how many faiths mingled on the road. The poet Li Bai, one of China's most famous, is said by some accounts to have been born here, though the matter is debated. Today it is a field of earthen mounds and low walls under open sky, and you need a bit of imagination to see the town.
Read the complete Site of Aktobe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Site of Aktobe 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 153 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 189 km into the recorded legs you reach City of Suyab. 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, late in the day. Next is Site of Aktobe.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Site of Aktobe write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Site of Aktobe. That is the ride.
Site of Aktobe → City of Nevaket is 153 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
City of Nevaket → City of Suyab is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
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 → Site of Aktobe is 160 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.