How I Survived Unicycling the World's Loneliest Road

Kazakhstan is huge. It's the 9th largest country in the world, but only has a population of 18 million. To put that into perspective, that's roughly the same population as the Netherlands, but it's a staggering 65 times larger. The main reason for its tiny population density is because it's close to 50% desert, and a lot of the country looks like this. I first travelled to Kazakhstan when I was 19, with the simple aim of riding a unicycle across it. With its poorly maintained roads, sub-minus temperatures, unpredictable weather, and vast stretches in between villages, Kazakhstan for me was by far the most challenging country I ever attempted to cycle. But this video isn't a collection of all my experiences travelling across this beautifully barren country, but specifically about a three-day stretch I spent out on one particularly ill-advised shortcut. So please join me on a tale of struggle, seclusion, and peeing into plastic bottles because you're genuinely concerned you're gonna run out of water and die of dehydration. This is my story of Maka Road, the most remote road in the world. Yeah, I'm definitely over-exaggerating things here for impact. Let's say the most remote road in Kazakhstan. But thinking about that, yeah, there's definitely more remote stretches out there. Let's say the most remote road that I ever unicycled across on my world unicycle tour. Not quite as catchy, but we'll work on the title later. For now, please enjoy the video. We begin in the west of Kazakhstan in a guest house just outside a small town called Kolsary. I'd stopped here to stock up on supplies before heading down the Maka Road, but you'll learn more about that later. Over the previous two weeks, I'd ridden my unicycle 450 miles from Aktau on the Caspian Sea, sticking to the only highway that runs through this particular part of the country. So far, travelling on this road had been rather pleasant. Its smooth asphalt had taken me through small villages full of friendly people, past big old camels, and slowly into the heart of this enormous country. But I'd surely be turning east, and I'd be informed that this nice smooth road that I'd been enjoying would soon run out, to be replaced by a rough stretch all the way to Aktobe, that I was told hadn't really been maintained since Soviet times. So at the moment we're here, and going this way, but this road, it's bad, yes. On top of that, my visa expired in two weeks, and I really wanted to make as much progress as possible in this first entry before returning for my second month to complete the crossing. With all that in mind, I started to scan my map for any kind of shortcut that may help me speed up my progress, and that's where Maka Road fits in. It wasn't a major shortcut by any stretch, but all in, it would help me save about 60 miles of riding. The only downsides were that nobody lived here, or drove this road, it was apparently very poorly maintained, and there was no water sources on this route, meaning I'd need to carry potentially three days worth of water. But it would save me 60 miles, so I decided to go for it. Which brings us to that guest house just outside of Kolsary, the night before heading down the Maka Road. So I found myself in another roadside resting point, I don't know what you use it, but the theory is that I've got about 100 miles of nothing coming up, so I need to have all my supplies with me, and it might take me three days to do it, so stop here, make sure I have enough food, there's plenty of food here so I should be able to load up with some food, and then get off tomorrow. But before you watch me unicycle into the middle of nowhere, first a quick word from this video's sponsor, and please do stick around, because I'll be teaching you how to save some money on your future air travel. 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The 8 litres of water strapped around my panniers, and the blue plastic bag full of bread and sausage, would hopefully see me through this next 100 mile stretch. I shared breakfast with the ladies that ran the guesthouse, and then headed out the door to face what I figured would be quite an arduous few days. Blimey, is this unicycle heavy? It's definitely the heaviest it's ever been. Okay, this ends the three miles of road for today. Now we're turning off onto a track, and yeah, we'll see how this goes. Maka Road, here we go. It's starting to rain just a tad. Obviously, the rain out here is a bit serious. Much more serious than somewhere a bit more populated, because there is literally nowhere to hide from it. Luckily, the rain didn't really end up coming to anything, so I pushed on, now following the slightly smoother dirt track which ran parallel to the muka. I'm pretty sure that's a herd of camels just running. I can't tell because it's just so far away. That's cool. So far, this route hadn't been anywhere near as bad as I'd anticipated. There certainly were large potholes that I needed to pay close attention to, but apart from a couple of sections where shrubs were growing out of the concrete, the road seemed all right. Just as light was starting to fade, I came across a small bridge. This was the first kind of structure I'd come across all day, so it wasn't a tough decision to cool it and camp underneath it for the night. There really isn't this kind of stuff out here, so instead of potentially pushing on another couple of miles and getting stuck out in the rain, I'm just gonna stop here. Even with this massive concrete windbreak, the heavy gusts still made it a struggle to pitch my tent. I eventually found enough rocks to keep it from flying away and settled into sleep, satisfied with the 45 miles I managed to cover that day. Good morning. Still under the bridge. Oh, my feet are so cold. Everything's cold. It's just chilly, and all through the night it was just windy. There was no respite from the wind. The clouds are thick, it doesn't like there's much opportunity for the sun to come out, but it might, like it did yesterday, but we'll see. Oh, just as I was saying that, a tiny little gap. Oh, yes. My celebration of the sun was short-lived, however, because this ended up becoming my entire morning. This is ridiculous. Look at this place. The decent-ish surface I'd followed yesterday had completely disappeared, to be replaced by what I can only describe as loose gravel. On top of that, the wind had seriously increased, and the whole landscape was now blanketed in thick fog. It was impossible for me to ride, so I carried on by foot. This was going to be a much slower day. By midday, I'd made a pitiful nine miles, and with roughly 46 to go until the town of Mucca, I had to face the fact that if I continued at this pace, I was probably going to run out of water. I'd already drank three and a half of my eight litres, and at this rate, I was going to potentially have to make the last four and a half litres last me for the next two, possibly three, days. So I made a decision that I'm not particularly proud of. That's disgusting. All right, just to get this straight, the idea wasn't just to drink it and eat. I'm not that weird. The idea was that if I did become desperate, I could at least use the urine to cook and rehydrate my pasta. I didn't want to do this, obviously, but if I collected it, I thought at least I'd have the option. So now with one of my bottles half full of urine, I continued on down the road. It's starting to get dark. I have noticed there's a couple of lights on the horizon just over there. I'm not quite sure how far away it is, maybe four or five miles, something like that. I'm probably going to push to there, see if there's anybody there. I'm not even sure, but it looks like quite a big area, maybe some kind of industrial place or something. I had no idea it was there, but I'm very welcome. Welcome, because I was now down to my final two litres of water, and I really didn't want to start breaking into the home-brewed lemonade. Night fell around me, and so did the rain. But as I walked on, the lights didn't seem to be getting any closer. I kept on pushing, now frustratingly having to clear the mud from my wheel every few minutes. But eventually I arrived to see that it was indeed some kind of industrial plant. I'd been walking all night, so it was now 11pm. Not particularly wanting to scare anyone, I tentatively made my way towards the front gate. I was soaked through and incredibly cold. To my relief, I eventually found a bunch of workers having tea in one of the buildings. After a little confusion as to why this British guy had suddenly turned up in the middle of the night, a chap called Abbe took me to the mess hall to have some hot food. This unfortunately is the only footage I have from that night, my camera's internal lens fogged up because of the drastic change in temperature, but believe me, the food tasted incredible. I was then directed to a room where I was told I could sleep that night. But before going to bed, I quickly headed outside to pour away the contents from one of my water bottles. You know which one. I know I'd turned up on a unicycle, but I didn't want them thinking I was a complete weirdo. Very early next morning, I sat down with Abbe to try and gain a little more understanding of the roads ahead. What he told me was encouraging. Bad. Bad. Bad, yeah. Bad. Okay, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Super. From there. Perfect. Super. And down this one? It's okay? Super, super. Wow. That's good. That's good news. Over breakfast, I learned that this place was an oil refinery, turning crude oil into various different petroleum-based products. The team here was pretty small, and these guys worked on and off for two to three weeks straight at a time. I'm huge. Yeah, write to me. Email. Email. I'm very grateful that these guys were so welcoming, and I left them with a full stomach and fully restocked water bottles, ready to face the final 30 miles of Mucca Road. Look at this road! This is the first time I've been able to actually break out a bit of speed. 10 miles down the road, the surface suddenly improved, making the distance fly by, and before I knew it, I was approaching civilization. All right, so we're just making our way into the town of Mucca, and we've almost finished the Mucca Road. Just a mile and a half to go. I think it might be walking. This road has just turned bad again, but there we are. It's been a long three days. And with that, I rolled into town, which marked the end of my time on the Mucca Road. While I did enjoy the slightly more extreme nature of this route, I'd probably be sticking to the main roads from now on. It was pure luck that the oil refinery was out there, and without the help from Abbe and the rest of the guys working there, this could have become a very different story. Like with all good adventurous shortcuts, it definitely would have been quicker to go around, but at the end of the day, I enjoyed the challenge, and I'm just glad that I didn't need to drink my own pee. I hope you enjoyed watching that video from Mucca Road. I've had that footage sitting on my hard drive for about four years, but just for whatever reason, I never got around to editing it, so it was nice to have the time to finally put that into some kind of story. As always, I'm now going to say the names of my third-tier Patreon supporters, and if you want, you can become part of this list by going over to patreon.com slash edpratt. Anyway, thank you very much, Adam Wan, Alec and Theo Beer, Alan, Ali, and Baby Bear, Alistair Duran, Annabel Miley, IP, Campbell Daff, Damon Walker, Daniel Perry, Derek Donovan, Gared Nevaeh, Gary Hull, no cars, not going to get squished, cool, Jeff and Kelly Elder, Gerald M. Neville, James Wallace, John Rothwell, Justin Lewis, Kiki Teja, Malvin Zen, Marcus, Mark Paris, Mark Widrick, Philip Merritt, Seymour Butz, Simon Gadd, Stephen Jones, Neil Brooks, Warren Snyder, Wolfie, and finally Yoshi Chu. Thank you very much, and I'll see you for my next video next time, whatever form that may take. Thank you for watching.