15km short of Taraz – 40km short of Shymkent

Some dodgy eggs for breakfast meant that the mornings ride was less than pleasurable.

On the outskirts of Taraz there was a sign directing me to Tashkent but I decided as I wouldn’t be staying in Taraz I should at least do it the service of riding through it. It turned out to be a pretty non-descript kind of city made up of mostly small bars and some rather seedy looking nightclubs.

One new thing that I have discovered in Kazakhstan is the presence of a large number of highly aggressive dogs. They often just come out of nowhere and within no time one is faced with a deranged animal running almost side by side with the bike. Today’s dogs seemed particularly interested in taking a bite out of my calf muscles.

On one occasion today I believe that even with a fully loaded touring bike I’d have given the professional cyclist and sprint specialist Mark Cavendish a run for his money over 100 metres!

I felt rather sluggish on the bike today and I attribute that to the eggs I ate in the morning, despite the fact that I was struggling all day with my stomach I managed to cover over 140km’s much of which in the afternoon was spent going downhill on an incredibly bumpy road.

With no restaurants in sight and my body crying out for a rest I wheeled the bike into the middle of a field and set up camp for the night. One of the things I love about camping out here is that in the middle of the night I’ll often wake up and such is the way my tent is designed means that I can just look directly up at the stars which on this particular night were quiet beautiful.