Kyrgyzstan Pt.7 Movin on ...

Movin' on ... A wimp in high places.

Bjorn's leaky rear-shock' still seemed to be holding up okay, with no further symptoms evident that were serious enough to bring us to a grinding halt. The main concern was that the whole back-end was much lower, but the expected bouncing from an un-damped spring never really made itself apparent, and the bike therefore continued to be ride-able. Bjorn's decision after some hand-wringing over cost, was to order a new unit from Europe. Oddly enough after giving the forwarding address as clearly marked for our Hotel in Osh, the courier company chose to ignore this with the package terminating it's journey in Kyrgyzstan at their nearest office. Which just happened to be in Bishkek, the country's capital city some hundreds of Kilometres to the north and east.

This then was the trigger to head further into Kyrgyzstan, and after having enjoyed a week's stay in Osh packed up and got ourselves onto the road that would take us in the direction of Bishkek. Sadly I don't have any photographs to illustrate the point but there was some quite startling scenery along the road between these two main Kyrgyz' centres of habitation. The reason for this bit of the trip remaining picture-less, was because I'd lost my camera during our stay in Osh. There was little drama in its passing, such as being stolen at knife-point, or dropping it into the foaming waters of a spectacular mountain torrent. Nothing so exciting I'm afraid ... The evening was wearing on, and we were late leaving to find somewhere to eat. It was during a stumbling night walk along ill-lit roads to one of the local restaurants, that the camera was last seen. A day later and in going to transfer the images from from the SD card onto one of my memory sticks for safe-keeping, the camera simply wasn't anywhere to be found. The discovery came about following a quick rummage in my bag, and after the usual search high & low to the accompaniment of that horrible sinking feeling, the realisation dawned that it had joined the ever growing list of things left by the wayside of this trip. It was initially heartbreaking to lose that camera, as it had been an unexpectedly intuitive present from my old Mum on my 50^th birthday. But apart from that surprised myself in how philosophical I was in finding that it was missing, thinking it was a shame so many of my photo's from Tajikistan had gone forever. But even then it was later found that I had already transferred most of those at an earlier date, so in truth didn't lose as much as I'd first thought. There was however the fact that I wouldn't have a visual record of my travels until I'd found a replacement. A scout around the local shops turned up very few camera outlets, and those that existed in Osh had a limited selection that were relatively expensive. Little choice then, but to address this at some later date, and live with something of a photographic black-hole for the foreseeable future.

In preparation for our forthcoming ride to Bishkek, we made note of the fact that the map showed the road passing across some dark-brown areas where the surrounding lands were various hues of green. Instead of contours interspersed with altitude values 'a la' ordnance survey maps, it could be assumed these dark patches on my general purpose map of Central Asia indicated high altitude regions. If so it looked very much like we were going to have to wrap up warm for part of the ride at least. I couldn't see any spot-heights, so it wasn't certain if there were any really high mountain-passes. But rather than take away all the surprises chose instead to get as far as we could on the first day, and then if it became necessary we could always pick a good place to stay for a night of camping to break the journey. This was okay with me, so long as it wasn't half-way up a remote and desolate mountain and had to freeze my nuts off during the night!

Finally and at last ... We discovered the good roads of Kyrgyzstan we'd heard about back in Tajikistan. But in truth and from the remainder of our time in that country, sadly this was to turn out to be the one and only really good road in all of Kyrgyzstan. The Osh to Bishkek road is generally outstanding, parts of which were a genuine joy to ride on. The highlands were a surprise too, because they were not only high, but were extensive as well. They also had one thing in common with the other high passes and mountainous regions we'd been through, in that it became very cold even though we were crossing it during the warmest part of a late-summers day of settled weather. There was one notable difference however. Unlike other high passes we'd been over, on this road we didn't encounter a no-man's land where the road turned into a difficult to negotiate pile of rubble. Even over the highest pass, the surface remained in good condition with few if any pot-holes becoming evident, so we were able to press on and eat up the Kilometres by keeping our speeds close to Euro-averages. This wasn't a brief encounter with altitude though, because we climbed steadily to something like 2000 plus metres, and afterwards didn't drop below that for something like 2 hours or more of continuously hard-motoring. We climbed yet higher, then after dropping 500 or so metres, again start another ascent up to a plateau sat on an even higher level. Eventually the highest pass was breached, but not before one memorable 'pass that was a seemingly endless series of S-bends connected by short straights that wound it's way up and over a ridge in between two enormous peaks. That pass seemed to be a long time coming, as the road took us across one plateau where the road did a disappearing-act amongst the distant mountain peaks. When we got nearer the road could once again be seen with tiny trucks and cars wending their way impossibly up the side of of a huge wall of rock. This was another one of those days when we dwindled into insignificance, as the scale of nature grew to become a land where only giants would feel at home. I'm not sure of the highest altitude of the day, but am certain it was well over 3000 metres at one point. Just as I was beginning to wonder how much higher this road would take us the land levelled onto another enormous plateau, but this time it had an imperceptible downward grade. Had I not had a GPS, may well have pulled over to get every last bit of warm clothing on, because the heated grips were beginning to fight a losing battle. My previously toasty-warm palms were starting to lose feeling as the cold bit deeper, but the gradually reducing altitude and along with our position on the map told me we were finally going back down. The air temperature therefore should start rising.

It took a long time though, and my hands stayed cold for the better part of another hour before the air became detectably warmer. The Bishkek side of the highland road was routed along a very gradual descent, so that getting below a 1000 metres came as a blessed relief where the accompanying rise in temperature allowed dead-fingered hands to get some feeling back into them once again.

Just to reassure what many of you are probably thinking, for how much of a wimp I am in whinging about being cold up at altitude. I'm not really sure of the exact effect that sustained high altitudes have on the human body, though do know that up to a given point Homo Sapiens can acclimatise. For the duration of the ride across the Kyrgyz' highlands nearly every part showed signs of habitation of one kind or another. Mostly these were yurt-like abodes set back from the road, with a few shacks around for I'd guess storage or animal shelter during the nights. There were stalls set-up close to the road, where honey could be bought and remembered being surprised at this because I didn't think that honey-bees would be happy up there. But who knows? Maybe bee-keeping was just a brief summertime activity, and only after bringing their swarms with them. I'm certain too that a good percentage of nights would see the thermometer dropping well below zero, with some sharp and piercingly cold winds most days, which advertised that once again these people I was passing were a breed tougher than myself.

As with so many places I'd passed through on my trip so far, it was nice to see the Kyrgyz' highlands, but was most certainly pleased when I came back down on the other side. Barren landscapes are one thing, but barrenness along with sustained and biting cold is quite something else ...

We chose our campsite by a lake. A big lake too and without the map in front of me can't remember it's name. It might've been another Issy Kol as there seemed to be quite a few of these so-named lakes all over this part of Central Asia. After things warmed up following the trek across the highlands we were nevertheless still expecting the evening to cool down, but instead the heat of the afternoon seemed to hang about. The breeze that blew to whip up waves on the lake increased gradually and our evenings chill-out near the edge of the lake was brought to an end by a dust-storm shrilling through the camp. Bjorn was intent on having a cook-up, but I was too tired to eat much, so nibbled furtively on a bit of stale bread before heading into my tent. Morning came and dug myself out from under a fine layer of dust that had migrated inside the tent. We brushed ourselves off, packed up and got ourselves on the move again with intentions of grabbing some brekkie on the road.

This was another of those fantasies dispelled, as earlier planning had shown a number of lakes along our route in this region of the world. Months before leaving the UK dreamt of spending time along the forested shores of these Coniston sized lakes. But this was not to be so, because for the most part they were all inhospitable places and this one was no exception. There were a few signs of buildings where people lived, dotted along the lake above the high-water mark. But they mostly appeared desolate and treeless places where as a home they seemed to have little going for them visually to act as a warm welcome for their inhabitants.

A light shower accompanied our first half an hours riding along the southern shore-line, then we left the single dark cloud behind as we rounded the end of the lake. A further 5 Kms or so, and the road we wanted took us north away from that giant body of water. Bjorn and I finally arrived at the outskirts of Bishkek and promptly lost each other. In hitting some dense traffic I decided to pull over to get a street-map of the city printed out in an internet cafe, on the basis that it would give us some chance of finding one of the guest-houses. We managed to meet up again, when I doubled back and saw his bike parked outside of another netcafe which i'd spied on the main road into town.

Not learning from our lesson of 30 minutes earlier, we lost each other again while searching for the elusive Sakura guest-house. We'd been riding back and forth in blistering heat and traffic and during one of the about-turns Bjorn was no longer to be seen. 'The Sakura' was supposedly situated close to a main-road junction, so spent some time waiting for him there in the hope he'd happen-by in his continued search. He didn't ... and so i eventually gave up and started to once more go looking for the hostelry in question. With renewed energy it was found secreted down a small lane from the one and only tiny sign nailed high up on lamp-post, which gave a vague clue to it's location. But in my arrival discovered that Bjorn had already been there and had now gone again. Evidently he wanted to try and get to the DHL office to pick up his new shock-absorber before it closed. I was greeted with a smile from the owners, but was told there were no beds available. But rather than a flat refusal we'd been invited to camp in the building site of a new guest-wing still under construction. The cement covered floor of the new building didn't look at all inviting, but heat and tiredness disinclined further guest-house hunts that day and so decided to go with it for the moment. A souring mood soon turned to delight when I spotted an overland cyclist I'd first met in Samarqand, who was sat talking to another guest. It turned out my good friend Salva' was staying there and so instead of a dour evening bemoaning the poor sleeping conditions, it would be a chance to catch up on his travel anecdotes. But first, as befits all good blokey mo'bike travellers ... beer!