CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
The recorded total and the leg detail need reconciliation. Inspect the leg notes before using this record for timing or navigation. 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.
A 342 km round trip from Tashkent - roughly 7 h 19 in the saddle. It goes by way of Big Solar Furnace, The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve and back through Big Solar Furnace. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available.
Zhemchug means pearl in Russian, and it is the name given to a residential building in Tashkent that looks nothing like an ordinary apartment block. In the years after the 1966 earthquake, when the city was rebuilt, Soviet architects used housing as a stage for their ideas, and some of the results are strange and rather wonderful: curved facades, great circular forms, concrete screens that echo Islamic patterns, and apartments arranged around internal courtyards. The Pearl is one of the well-known examples, and photographers of Soviet modernism have made it a favourite subject.
Read the complete Zhemchug Residential Building write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zhemchug Residential Building is where the day begins. Next is Big Solar Furnace.
In the foothills of the Tian Shan, about an hour north-east of Tashkent, there is a building that looks as if it belongs in a science fiction film: a huge curved mirror, made of thousands of smaller mirrors, facing a field of tracking mirrors that follow the sun and focus its light onto a single point. This is the Big Solar Furnace near Parkent, built in the Soviet era in the 1980s, and still used for research into materials that can withstand extremely high temperatures.
Read the complete Big Solar Furnace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Big Solar Furnace comes up 40 km in. Next is The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve.
East of Tashkent, the land rises steeply into the western ranges of the Tian Shan, and the Chatkal range forms the border with Kyrgyzstan. The Chatkal State Biosphere Reserve, established in the Soviet era, protects a stretch of these mountains, with juniper forests, walnut and wild fruit trees, alpine meadows and rocky peaks.
Read the complete The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
80 km in you reach The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve. Next is back through Big Solar Furnace.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Big Solar Furnace write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Big Solar Furnace, late in the day. Next is Zhemchug Residential Building.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zhemchug Residential Building write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at Zhemchug Residential Building. That is the ride.
Zhemchug Residential Building → Big Solar Furnace is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Big Solar Furnace → The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
The Chatkal State Biosphere Nature Reserve → back through Big Solar Furnace is 27 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Big Solar Furnace → Zhemchug Residential Building is 53 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.