Pelotome –
around Turkmenistan on a bicycle.
“Not a tree nor a green thing is visible. Except for the sea, and the raggedness and abject servility of the poor class of people, one might imagine Krasnovodsk [Türkmenbaşy] some Far Western fort.
Scarcely a female is seen on the streets, soldiers are everywhere, and in the commercial quarter every other place is a vodka-shop.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).
My Life and Times
by Jerome K. Jerome
From £4,75
June 1886 – Published 1888.
Around the World on a Bicycle.
“From Teheran to Yokohama” was the second illustrated volume of Tom Steven’s pioneering ride around the globe and covers the second half of his journey on a fifty-inch Pope “Columbia” high-wheeler, from Persia to Japan.
Although he doesn’t actually get to cycle in Turkmenistan, the Englishman makes a brief stop at Türkmenbaşy, while sailing on a Russian steamer from Bandar Gaz, in Iran, destined for Baku, Azerbaijan, after he had been refused passage through Afghanistan.
With smaller vessels joining their ship in the Caspian Sea, from Ashūradeh Island and Chikishlyar, to transfer mail and “several Turcoman traders going to Baku and Tiflis with bales of the famous kibitka hangings and carpets,” he goes ashore “for a couple of hours” at Krasnovodsk (now Türkmenbaşy), “to look about”, visiting a vodka shop and observing the lower class Russians, before sailing on to Baku, for his much diverted onward journey towards India.
- By Thomas Stevens.
- Published by Sampson, Lowe, Marston, Searle and Rivington, London.
TAKEN BACK TO PERSIA.
“Tchislikar [Chikishlyar] is the port whence a few years ago the Russian expedition set out on their campaign against the Tekke Turcomans.
Three hundred miles inland is the famous fortress of Geoke Tepe, where disaster overtook the Russians, and where, in a subsequent campaign, occurred that massacre of women and children which caused the Western world to wonder anew at the barbarism of the Russian soldiery.”
~ Around The World on a Bicycle, Thomas Stevens (1888).