14 September – 10 October 2008

The differences between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan became more and more apparent over the first week or two we spent in the country. We got the impression that Tajikistan is more aligned with the religion, language and overall culture of the Middle East. The Pamirs were rugged hyperbole, a remote, striking and hard region with a strong sense of local culture and village life. As we travelled north the Russian influence in Kyrgyzstan was visible. To the Roller’s delight this was a visual feast with the Russian road skiers we encountered in Cholpon Ata (check out our photos to see why). Overall Kyrgyzstan felt much more developed, “modern” and… easy.

A few other notable differences between T and K’stan are:
1) Car cades – although still frequent in K’stan, not nearly as in T’stan. Those in T’stan have far better spectator value – there are more Police vehicles at the head and the tail and there are at least five identical vehicles in the actual procession. The greatest difference is speed –T’stan car cades travel at pace, those in K’stan are often led by Ladas and are therefore at a considerably slower speed.

2) Mutts – we were only really threatened by a few mutts in T’stan but they were threats that were serious. The mutts of K’stan are, you could say, ‘all talk and no action’. Most villages would have at least one, if not two, mutts that would be up for the attack, but as soon as the bikes were brought to a halt the mutts would go about 180 degrees, end of story. Those that came for a second go after the team had ridden off were the ones that really evoked evil thoughts.

3) T’stan’s preferred beast is the donkey which is replaced in K’stan by the horse. We were accompanied and quickly overtaken by a small child on a large horse galloping past us on a main street.

4) Kyrgyzstan is a spelling challenge.

A couple of noticeable similarities between T’stan and K’stan:
1) Mutton. Still number one choice of meat for all occasions.
2) Power outages. Although K’stan has numerous hydroelectric power supplies, most villages and towns are without power for at least a few hours per day. Apparently most of the power has been sold to Kazakhstan.

Bishkek bound
Celebratory brews post-Pamirs and the Roller made a new friend – Anvar, a Kazakh businessman who was driving home to Almaty the following day and offered us a lift in his estate/station wagon up to the capital, Bishkek. Too good an offer to refuse, the following day we jumped in not realising that the journey was 16 hours. Apologies to Anvar as the team were not up to usual form after sinking more beers in the space of four hours than had been consumed over the last two months. En route Anvar conducted and sealed the ‘Steel Deal’ involving a visit to a steel factory, a group of men with serious cigarettes and serious mobile phone calls, a meeting in the CEO’s Lada, the opening of a black briefcase full of cash and the handing over of a huge wad of USD, sealed with a firm handshake (not the Tajik soft which the Roller has perfected). The steel Anvar had just purchased would arrive in Almaty two days later. To those not in the steel business this would look like a classic drug deal from a Hollywood blockbuster – but we knew better.

We spent a few days in Bishkek, indulging in espresso coffee (apologies to our trusty companion the Nescafe), a Turkish bakery and karaoke-accompanied meals, and then we hopped back on the bikes to ride around Lake Issy-kul (the second largest alpine lake in the world) and stopped off for a few days trekking in the central Tian Shan mountain range. Then it was destination China. We finished off cycling around the lake, hitched a lift with a Chinese truck driver, returned to Bishkek to pick up our Chinese visas, cycled our last pass in Central Asia, loaded our bikes into a small sedan and made for the complicated Torugart Pass border crossing.

Saddle perspectives
Back on the bikes and one of the first things that caught the Roller’s beady eye was weed growing prolifically on the roadside as we cycled through the Chuy Valley. That’s Cannibus sativa. Having studied a little botany whilst at the University of Auckland, he was able to simply identify the species but could not give detail on the quality. For this he had to turn to his partner the Stick, who commented “although many of the plants are greater than six feet tall, they are somewhat spindly and have seeded”.

Evidence of boozing is not an ideal thing to see on the road, but the broken vodka bottles, roadside graves and frequent advances from reeking punters were all reminders that consumption of alcohol, any day of the week, any time of day, is very much part of local life. We decided to adopt a policy of only camping in people’s orchards in more populated areas – with their permission – so that we would have some protection from drunken visits. On one occasion we were tucked away under an apple tree and behind a tall fence when we had such a problem. Through sign language we established that the accused wanted money, booze or cigarettes. The Roller quickly covered his parts and headed into the orchard owner’s house with the visitor, who soon received a torrent of verbal abuse from our ex-military host and made a hasty retreat.

A new phenomenon that we encountered was roadside facilities. However after one visit the team decided it was better to opt for a set behind a roadside bush (preferably not of the spindly variety). The one toilet that was visited had plungers at the entrance making it tricky for the Roller to enter but glad it was daytime as it would be a minefield at night. Once he negotiated his way into the actual toilet he noted that the users had not bothered to use the ‘hole’ but opted for using any ‘free’ section of concrete to lay one down. At this point he withdrew and thought he would be wise and head around the back of the block. Yes – you guessed it, there was no free dirt space back there either. Back on the bike it was to the next bush.

We continued to behave like celebrities, waving out to locals as we passed through villages and responding to the excited calls of ‘tooooreeeest’ from children, who would come running over to us from fields or try to race us on their one-speed bikes. Potato harvesting was in full swing and grandma and mum would be tending to the meal on a cooker on the roadside while granddad, dad and the kids would still be picking. Yurts with enthusiastic sales women selling honey, dried fish, fermented mares milk and unidentified delicacies lined the road. Patchwork quilts would be hung out to air on bright blue fences.

The cycling
The terrain started out flat at about 800m across the Chuy Valley. It was fairly busy leaving Bishkek but the traffic soon thinned as we left the city. We then followed the Chuy River winding up the Shoestring Gorge which led us to Lake Issy-kul at 1608m above sea level. The lake is over 170km long and 70km across and surrounded by mountain ranges with snow capped peaks. We headed north around the lake and stopped for a couple of nights at Cholpon Ata, a particularly popular destination for Russian and Kazakh tourists to swim in the warm lake water and for athletes to train. There is a lot of development on the northern side of the lake to appeal to this market, with new resorts being built and the road in good condition. Our next main stop was Karakol, the principal town of the region. This is a popular destination for travellers like ourselves – we met other cyclists there as well as many trekkers who were based there to go long-distance hiking into the valleys and mountains in the area.

We left the bikes for a few days and walked up to Altyn Arashan at 2500m, from where we hiked to a pass at 3860m and Lake Ala Koo. While a very popular route it was fantastically beautiful, pretty hard, and we just made it to the summit before a snow storm set in. We were accompanied by Amanda and Olivier, a French couple who have been cycling for 13 months on recumbent bikes – the ones where you are kind of lying down to pedal – who were cracking company. We made a good party when we got back to our digs in Altyn Arashan with Maya and Esko from Finland who were the other members of our extended team.

From Karakol we continued around the southern side of the lake, which is considered drier and is less developed than the north. The road was gently undulating and fairly quiet. We left the lake with two thunderstorms colliding around us and, with a strong Peterhead and the prospect of reaching our destination in the dark, the Stick decided to extend her arm and flash a winning smile to a passing Chinese truck. We loaded our bikes into his empty truck and he offered to give us a lift to China but without our visas in hand we had to decline.

Batwisas.com
We made a quick trip back to Bishkek to collect our passports with Chinese visas from the DHL office. We’d sent our British passports to our friends the Bats in Edinburgh and travelled on our NZ passports through Iran and Central Asia. We met many a stranded cyclist or‘overlander’ who could not get into China and had to reluctantly turn back or fly over to SE Asia. Obviously these people had not heard of batwisas.com, a newly established operation conducting business from the shores of Granton in Edinburgh. Simply post them your passport, tell them where you want to collect it and within weeks you can enter China. Optional services include: guidebooks, MP3 tunes, maps and poems. We would like to publicly thank them and fully recommend their professional service. (See the promotional photo included in our gallery.)

To China
Our final cycle in K’stan was in the direction of the border, from Kochkor to Naryn – a nice ride with rugged scenery followed by a gravel road pass and then a steep downhill. We struggled to find a good campspot and ended up staying at a random house in a small village and making a teenager and his small brother (or sister?!) pasta for dinner on their electric one-burner stove.

The border crossing from K’stan to China is complicated over the Torugart Pass. It’s a Grade 2 crossing theoretically closed to foreigners, but essentially it’s a money-maker for the Chinese government who insist that you have transportation waiting for you when you cross over from K’stan. We arranged for a jeep to take us from Naryn to the border and another jeep to pick us up from the border to Kashgar in China through an agency. A small sedan picked us up at 5.30am in Naryn and without the kindly tour group staying at our guesthouse and heading in the same direction in a van we would not have been able to take our cycles with us.

Weather
We had all types of weather – it was hot in Bishkek, cool crisp and autumnal around Lake Issy-kul (perfect for riding), there were snow storms in the mountains and periodic powerful electrical storms across the lake and down surrounding valleys. Overall it was getting chillier and time to head south.

Constitutions
RJM:
Throat/cold on the north side of Lake Issy-kul
Surprise projectile vomit from the tent at 1am, Karakol
The above followed by ‘crook guts’ for the remainder of our time in K’stan
DSS:
100% strong as an ox