Sometimes the arrival at a destination is so joyous, perhaps even overwhelming, that the grit of the journey to achieve it is quickly forgiven. Reaching the Silk Road city of Khiva at a quarter to seven yesterday evening fell readily into a bracket of atonement that most memorably for me also included the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, which had been awe-inspiring on a balmy evening last June when our son Thomas and I arrived there (and thus completed my ride from home to the edge of Europe).

Yesterday’s 107-mile ride from Nukus to here was, yes, gritty. Under a beating sun and on road surfaces that frequently broke up into rubble, it was already destined to be a gruelling day. A crash – my first of the trip – roughly one third of the way into my ride made it more so. I’d seen the danger – a tram/railway track on a bridge over the Amu Darya river that I needed to traverse at right angles to avoid getting stuck in the track. But I got my trajectory wrong, my back wheel duly lodged in the track, and I was sent sprawling across the road.

My instinct whenever I crash on a bike is to worry about the bike rather than myself. Barring serious injury, my ailments can be fixed. Far from home and in a remote location, the same cannot always be said of the bike. I got back on my feet readily enough – aware of some pain in my right shoulder, right knee and chest. More concerningly, it became clear a little further down the road that the impact of the crash had caused the fixings on one of my panniers that ensures it stays mounted to its rack to shear clean off. Another challenge to solve, but there will be a solution!

Reaching the centre of Khiva’s old city several hours later was a sensory delight. After checking into my hotel – a former madrasa, with rooms set back directly from a large central courtyard whose walls and columns are adorned with green and blue islamic tiling that lends the place an air of great grandeur and calmness – and washing myself and my kit, I set out to explore the old city by night. What I encountered was mesmerising.