Pelotome –
around Uzbekistan on a bicycle.
“Besides a big bowl of cabbage soup at every meal, our Russian host would start in with a half-tumbler of vodka, dispose of a bottle of beer in the intervals, and then top off with two or three glasses of tea.
The mistress of the household, being limited in her beverages to tea and soup, would usually make up in quantity what was lacking in variety.”
~ Across Asia on a Bicycle, Thomas Gaskell Allen, Jr. & William Lewis Sachtleben (1894).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
November 1891 – Published in 1894.
Across Asia on a Bicycle.
“The journey of two American students from Constantinople to Peking” is a beautifully illustrated book “made up of a series of sketches describing the most interesting part of a bicycle journey around the world,” in which the two young riders set off the day after graduating from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, in June 1890 and, over the next three years, “covered 15,044 miles on the wheel, the longest continuous land journey ever made around the world.”
Cycling into modern day Uzbekistan, from Mary, Turkmenistan, they made their way to Bukhara, from where they decided to “take advantage of the Transcaspian railway, and not to hazard a journey across the dreaded KaraKum sand.” to Samarkand. before pedaling on to the capital, Tashkent (at the time part of Russian Turkestan), where they would spend winter, giving Sachleben time to return to London by train and steamer, “in order to secure some much-needed bicycle supplies.”
- by Thomas Gaskell Allen, Jr. and William Lewis Sachtleben.
- Published by The Century Co., London.
THE JOURNEY FROM SAMARKAND TO KULDJA.
“In Tashkend [Tashkent], as in every European city of the Orient, drunkenness, and gambling, and social laxity have followed upon the introduction of Western morals and culture.
The social gatherings at Tashkend were more convivial than sociable.
Acquaintances can eat and drink together with the greatest of good cheer, but there is very little sympathy in conversation.
It was difficult for them to understand why we had come so far to see a country which to many of them was a place of exile.”
~ Across Asia on a Bicycle, Thomas Gaskell Allen, Jr. & William Lewis Sachtleben (1894).