Bishkek to Issyk-kul, song-kul, and back to Bishkek

After a few days in Bishkek failing to get a Chinese visa, I headed east again towards Issyk-Kul, which is the largest lake in Kyrgyzstan and apparently a real resort spot for the locals. On the way I had no less than three people tell me it would be cold (it's at about 1600m). Of course I knew that and wasn't planning on swimming. I followed the north side of the lake at first, which is where all the resorts are. They also have enough money to make the place look nice.

Most of the time I could see across the lake to the snow covered mountains on the other side

I spent most nights camping and spent a night in Karakol in a homestay before heading back around the south side of the lake, first stopping to go a bit up a canyon by jeti oguz. This part of Kyrgyzstan seemed to be a lot like New England with leaves changing color and a pleasant fall feeling including lots of birds chirping. Also the south side of the lake seemed to have a bunch of abandoned resorts and nice empty beaches. There was less farmland and more desert and canyons making it look like the west part of the US.

After making my way around the lake I started heading up into the mountains towards Song-Kul which was at 3000m. I spent most of a day climbing up a dirt road to make it there.

Cooking lunch with a view:

When I made it to Song-Kul, aside from a handful of yurts I was the only one there. It dropped to below -10C at night and I woke up with most of my water frozen. The lake itself wasn't too interesting as it was about 5k from the road in places and there was nothing but dead grass surrounding it for miles. I guess I came late enough in the season that most of the locals had already left.

Leaving Song-Kul was one of the nicest days of riding in a while because after climbing a few hundred meters I descended about 1600. I also didn't see another car until about 5pm when I returned to the main road, so it was blissfully silent (of course even in a day when you only see about 10 cars total you still get honked at).. 

The day after was a slow climb back up towards the pass I had done a few weeks earlier. I somehow managed to find a perfect camping spot that looked to be an old river bed so there was absolutely tons of dead wood and grass around. I had also picked up about 3kg of coal that was dropped on the road by one of the many trucks passing through, so I had an amazing fire that lasted most of the night.

After that it was the same road I had already done to return to Bishkek and wait for my plane flight.

One interseting thing that I saw a lot around Issyk-Kul was all the towns that had old Soviet monuments. Apparently they either don't have the money or just don't care to remove them, so I saw Lenin all over the place:

Also, lots of Afgan war and WWII memorials, mostly in the form of tanks:

This one looks almost exactly like the huge statue in Volgograd:

Osh to Bishkek

Coming out of the Pamirs, Osh was a welcome change. It was back to great, cheap food, with a healthy bazaar and being able to breath again because of the lower altitude. Osh has a bunch of statues and nice parks, such as this huge Lenin statue:

There is also a nice hill you can climb to get a view of the city:

Leaving Osh I decided to head straight to Bishkek, though that included a bit of a detour to avoid crossing into Uzbekistan. I ended up camping every day on the way there as I hadn't planned to do much except see the country. It was fairly standard central Asian scenery for the first bit, though many of the towns have statues of warriors like this:

I was pretty much following a river or lake the whole time, riding mostly in valleys. I met up with two Swiss cyclists headed the same direction and rode with them for a bit. We found some nice camping spots right beside the lakes:

The Toktogul reservoir was a bit disappointing because it was very hazy for the whole day it took to ride around. However you could still see the way the whole country is eroding.

After Toktogul it got a bit more interesting as the population started to thin out and towns were replaced by yurts and I climbed back up from 1000m to 3000m. All the yurts sit at the side of the road with little signs next to them, mostly advertising meat dishes and what is apparently fermented horse milk. I haven't been brave enough to try it yet as I've heard it's awful.

The day after making it to a sort of high grass plateau, I had to climb another pass that I had been warned about. This one I could see directly in front of me, with what looked like switchbacks all the way through the snow line.

Luckily there was a tunnel through the top of the pass that wasn't marked on my map:

After that it was a steady downhill until Bishkek. As I arrived on a Sunday, I checked into a hostel and on Monday I went to the visa service person that everyone uses and asked about getting a Chinese visa. I was told that due to the new rules it was only possible if I was a Kyrgyz citizen or had a one year Kyrgyz visa. This is what I was expecting as I had been told in Khorog by all the cyclists there that it was no longer possible to get a Chinese visa anywhere in central Asia. I went to visit the Chinese embassy as well but they were closed. I decided to stick around until they opened again but when I went back Wednesday morning there was a huge crowd of people all waiting outside the embassy door with an angry guard slowly letting people in. After waiting for most of the time that they were open I was told the same thing as at the visa service office. So I have now purchased a plane ticket to Hong Kong where hopefully I can apply for a visa
there and at least see the southern part of China. If not I should be able to fly to Bangkok and do a loop through south east Asia. In the meantime I will see more of Kyrgyzstan by heading towards the lakes I had planned to see.

Khorog to Osh

The first thing we noticed about being east of Khorog was that most of the annoying children were finally gone. Also less cars meant less honking. Over the course of three days we climbed from about 2100m to 3500m, taking it slowly because after the first pass there wasn't any easy way to turn back in the event of altitude sickness.

At the top of the first pass:

We made a detour to Bulunkul to look at a lake, and we stayed at a homestay there that had no electricity. On the road we also met two of the cyclists who had left Khorog to head through the Wakhan valley.

A few more days of nothing too eventful towards murgab. We were getting tired of the generally awful yogurt, bread, and tea meals that everyone was serving us, as well as sometimes uninspired rice or pasta with a single piece of meat.

We met up with a bunch of other cyclists in Murgab and had dinner and proper showers and a bit of rest. 

Lenin statue:

Leaving Murgab we detoured towards some lakes for a peaceful lunch before camping at the foot of the highest pass on this trip.

The top of Ak Baital pass, at 4655m. Every peak with snow on it is generally above 5000m:

A bit further down:

We again met up with some of the same cyclists in a Karakul homestay to rest a bit. The day we were going to leave I was a bit sick, so I waited an extra day before heading over the last two passes to leave Tajikistan. 

We had two days of terrible headwind bringing some very cold weather and lots of dust and even snow as we made our way to Sary Tash.

We then spent the next two days with two high passes and nothing but headwind, but we dropped from 3200m to about 1200 by following the Gulcha river valley into Osh. On the way up, some of the trucks were moving slow enough we were able to hold on for a free ride up a few hundred meters.

Osh had great cheap food and was nice to rest in for a few days. There was even a pizza place.

Dushanbe to Khorog

Monday morning I walked into the OVIR office in Dushanbe around 9:15 to ask for a GBAO, only to be told I had to go to the bank down the street to pay. After a bit of searching I found the bank, paid my $4, returned the receipt to OVIR, and was told to come back at 4pm, so I did, and after a bit of standing around I got the permit. I quickly made my way out of town and started on the M41, making it about 40k before it started to get dark. I camped in the middle of a previously harvested wheat field:

It turns out that the replacement tent I bought in Baku was just as terrible as I thought it would be. I snapped my tent poles in half in Turkey and I had been looking for a replacement for a while but everything else weighed at least 5 kilos, so out of desperation I bought a terrible chinese tent in Baku.

The next day, It rained most of the day. Tajikistan has apparently forgotten that you need to put drains on your bridges, so they all became flooded with 1-2 feet of water. Most of the day was spent following terrible semi-dirt roads along the river valley. The rivers in Tajikistan are generally full of dirt and it’s interesting being able to literally see the mountains being washed away.

Half way through the day, when fording one of the flooded bridges, I managed to get a piece of cloth stuck in my derailleur. I cleared that out quickly, but about 1km later, the lower cog locked up, making the chain slip which caused the bike to shift all on its own, and generally made riding impossible. I messed with it several times, dismantling the cog and attempting to clean it out, but it looked almost like I was somehow missing bearings. In order to continue I decided to remove the bearings altogether and see how long the cog would last, since there really isn’t much pressure at all on this joint (only from the derailleur spring pulling the chain taught). I was regreasing this constanly and praying that it would hold until Osh.

I ended the day by stopping for dinner at a teahouse, where the owner gave me dinner, breakfast, and a warm place to sleep for free.

The next day was fairly uneventful, following some bad roads with lots of small river crossings in preparation for the large pass towards kalaikum.

After making it to the top of the pass, I had about a 1900m descent to the bottom of the valley. On the way down, it started to rain, and I got to watch a small flash flood happen as the river next to me turned from blue to brown within minutes, and then back to blue about an hour later.

It was here that I had to confront the bridge that I had been told in Dushanbe might still be out.

I took my bags off and a Tajik guy helped me carry the bike across that.

Some fairly uneventful days following the Panj, and I arrived in Khorog. The right half of this picture is Afganistan.

Khorog:

In Khorog I stayed at the Pamir lodge, where there were about 20 other cyclists also staying. Most of them were leaving at different times, with slightly different routes. I met Peter, a German Cyclist who I had met in Baku, and he offered me a replacement derailleur cog. I also left with Dan, a Welsh cyclist. We spent the next three days slowly climbing up towards the first pass of the Pamirs mostly because we wanted to go slow for the altitude, but also because we were exhausted by about 3 each day.

Pictures of the Pamirs will follow when I can find the patience to upload them.

Bukhara to Dushanbe

Bukhara is another compact old town in Uzbekistan with tons of historical sites. Most of them look similar to the ones in Khiva.

Lots of interesting plates and tea sets were for sale here. I considered buying some, but figured they would get wrecked in the mail.

It was at this point I started my new game: How many of these green domes can I get in one picture? So far, four:

After two days in Bukhara it was a decent three day ride to Samarkand. It was here that I started seeing a number of cars from the Mongol rally, and I tried to say hello to most of them. One team stayed at the hotel I was at for one night, and they left early the next day, meaning they didn't really see any of Samarkand.

Like the Registan:

Or Timur’s tomb:

Or the Shakhi Zinda complex:

After going through most of Samarkand, things started to look the same again. All these buildings have been heaving restored and they charge you $3-4 dollars to enter each one, so it got quite annoying paying to enter every single place in town. However I guess it’s reasonable as this is what they look like before restoration:

After leaving Samarkand I headed south towards Sharisabz the birthplace of Amir Timur, climbing a small mountain on the way.

When I arrived in town and was looking for a hotel I was approached by an Uzbek guy who offered me a place to stay in his home, so he fed me dinner and we walked a bit around the town with him pointing out landmarks. I realized then just how much I appreciate indoor plumbing.

I made it to Guzar the next day, which was a small town where I stopped and asked if there was a hotel, to which someone replied that there wasn’t. Then I asked a second group of people who showed me a hotel about 200m from the first group of people I asked. I paid about $4.25 for a room that even had a shower, so that’s a new lowest price for me. As I was leaving to find dinner, I was stopped by three people at the hotel who offered me some of what they were cooking, and later they drove me around town to a cafe and bought me coke and ice cream. One of the guys kept asking me about where I was headed and if I was going to Afghanistan, and he revealed that he had been in the Soviet army during their invasion of Afghanistan, and he showed me a bullet hole scar in his shoulder. So that was also unexpected.

After that it was several days of riding through mostly desert scrub and the foothills of the mountains. Since they weren’t irrigating this section of Uzbekistan it was mostly sheep/goat herders with very annoying and vicious dogs.

I spent a night at the border, meeting another few Mongol Rally teams dealing with their visa problems. It took about 3 hours to cross into Tajikistan, mostly because the Uzbek side was slow.

First views of Tajik mountains:

I arrived in Dushanbe which is a city that has put money into the main street, but much of the rest of town still seems poor and unpaved.

Once I get my GBAO permit I will head into the mountains where I imagine I will spend 3-4 weeks riding to Osh.

Notes on Uzbekistan:

Many of the cities seem to pick up at night when it’s no longer 100+ degrees, with lots of people congregating in the main squares.

The hardest thing to find in Uzbekistan is a trashcan. Only the large cities have them and even then you have to hunt for them. Most of the people here just throw their trash wherever they want, and it shows.

It seems to be the custom in Uzbekistan to get your attention by whistling at you, which is incredibly annoying. Throughout the more populated areas of Uzbekistan I have been honked at, shouted at, and whistled at. Every time I stop anywhere I get asked 100 questions by half the town.

Lots of people in Uzbekistan ride bicycles, but they all ride the same old and terrible Chinese single speed:

The preferred means of transport in Uzbekistan is the shared taxi in the form of these white vans that are everywhere: