Welcome to Freewheeling across the Himalayas

Le voyage est un retour vers l'essentiel (proverbe tibetain)

WELCOME TO FREEWHEELING ACROSS THE HIMALAYAS

My name is Celine Soulard and on July 2010 I will embark on a 7 month cycling journey from Tajikistan to Nepal. This adventure will take me to some of the most challenging and beautiful roads in the world. I am also undertaking this journey to raise funds for the Mary A. Tidlund Charitable Foundation in support of the Ladakh Project (Health inc). I encourage you to subscribe to my blog to follow me in this great adventure. I will share with you in this blog stories and photos on a regular basis and hope to inspire you to contribute to the Ladakh Project.

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Thanks
Celine


July 12, 2010

Dushanbe, Tajikistan KM 0!

Hi all,

The end of the BC trip went well except for some pain in my right achilles. Not sure where this all came from. I hope that the last few days of rest will be enough.
After 24 hours of travelling, my bike, my luggage and myself are all in Dushanbe. After one day of recuperating I ate some local food and got sick.  So sorry but no pictures from the city and I didn't really have time to learn much about life here. I'm happy to be in a Muslim country. I have only had the chance to travel to Kashmir, so my travel in a Muslim country is very limited.


My friend Sage rented an apartment in a non-touristy area of town. A bit of a "shithole" but the first evening we ended up spending with local women, eating and dancing in their living room, so it was great. Sage is fluent in Russian so she can get by with the Tajiks, thank God, because very little English is spoken here.


this woman used to be a professional dancer and gave us a Tajik dancing lesson!


Our neighbours

It is incredibly hot here and of course our apartment ran out of water, the AC doesn't work, the fridge doesn't work, but other than that all is good!

Today I spent the day doing errands, getting money, food, etc...Never a nice thing in a foreign city!!! I now can say Thank you (Rak Mat) in Tajik but that is about it. Hope I will learn more in the next few days.

There are 5 of us leaving town tomorrow for the Pamirs mountains. For the first week heat is going to be an issue so departure time is 5AM.

Not sure when I will get internet access next. Maybe in 10 days, but this is not positive at all.

Rakh mat
Celine

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to read more!

-Sarah and Danny from Calgary

Unknown said...

Go Celine Go!!!!

You are my hero. about the A/C... Wow... you have one. the fact that is not working is irrelevant: You have AC!!!!

and since you are going to be out of the city for quite some time, no need to have a fridge!

thanks for writing.

DM

Monica said...

You look like you are in your glory Celine! Safe travels.