After saying goodbye to our intrepid visitor we set off with slightly heavy hearts for our final days cycling around Lake Issy Kol. Our time with Harriet’s mother had been joyous and her departure had left us feeling a little nostalgic about our lives back in the UK and the friends and family we had left behind. However, our first night reminded us how lucky we were to be on our trip, as we watched the sky aflame with the last rays of the day while camping in an idyllic bay.
Continuing on the next day we passed striking rock formations and a rather random giant green man sitting on a clifftop, which at first we mistook for Buddha. After scaling a short but rather brutal pass we turned off onto a small track and were rewarded with another beautiful camping spot amongst the reeds.
We finally said goodbye to Lake Issy Kol the next day as we headed off to the town of Kochkor. To our delight the unpaved shortcut we had taken also missed out a rather nasty looking hill. So when we hit the main road again, rather than being met with the sight of inclining concrete, we were looking down over a stunning aquamarine mountain lake with herds of camels pottering around its bays. Feeling very happy and quite smug we whizzed down to its edge past some rather bemused looking dromedaries, and made a small fire to cook our lunch and toast our good fortune with coffee.
After another couple of hours cycling we were in Kochkor, and had checked into a sweet family run hotel, where the elderly owner seemed very amused by us, and kept pestering her grandson to translate our conversations. With the bikes safely stored away in the coal shed we snuggled down amongst our cosy bedding and looked forward to our day off.
The next day we woke up to a white world. The skies had opened during the night and deposited the first serious snow of the year, turning the surrounding countryside into a white carpet occasionally punctuated with craggy peaks. While beautiful, this was slightly worrying as Kochkor is only around 1700m, and we had passes of over 3000m to scale over the coming week. If the snow was this deep here, what the hell would it be like on the passes? Feeling a bit worried, but also happy that this had happened on our day off, we headed out into the blizzard for a potter around town.
The next morning we struck out into this white world with plastic bags tied around our feet, much to the amusement of our elderly hostess. But now the snow had stopped falling and the sun was out. Slowly climbing on the rough dirt road which would be our riding companion for the next week we marvelled at the peaks all around us.
However, as we headed up to our first pass at 2600m our attention became concentrated on the road a few feet in front of us. Unrepeatable expletives were shouted as we were assaulted by the devil’s trinity of cycle touring: a driving headwind, an increasing gradient and a potholed road. 3km from the top we had had enough and set up our tent. The spot was beautiful, but freezing due to the altitude and we woke up to ice on the inside of the tent.
The next day we finished the climb, and were treated to tea by a generous woman busily frying fish for the coal truckers who ground up and down the track.
A rather frustrating ‘whizz’ down the other side then ensued, as we tried to avoid the potholes/sliding over on the gravel. However, the lower we got the warmer it became and we were soon cycling through beautiful green pastures full of a grazing animals – horses, cows, sheep, goats and donkeys all jumbled up together. Then a rather shocking thing occurred: our crappy track suddenly turned into a beautifully tarmacked road. Rather confused, but enjoying this change of situation, we cycled through a series of little villages, dodging packs of small children who would charge out into the road at first sight of us, seemingly oblivious to traffic and their ability to knock us off our bikes.
After a night camping on the edge of a farmer’s field, our track reassuringly resumed its crappy nature. The lack of tarmac was more than made up for by the stunningly beautiful scenery, with the river we were following winding its way through multiple gorges into the heart of the mountains.
Sadly, Jonathan wasn’t feeling his best so we decided to stop early in a little village called Kyzyl-Oy. This turned out to be a wise move as his bowels preceded to empty themselves on a regular basis over the next 24 hours.
Setting out after our day off, with Jonathan’s bowels more salubrious but his general state weakened, we continued to follow the river as it cut through the mountains.
Finishing a final steep climb we said goodbye to our mountain track as we hit the main road linking northern and southern Kyrgyzstan. We would now follow this road for roughly 500km down the length of the country before turning off towards the Chinese border. After almost a week of gravel and potholes the sensation of the albeit rough tarmac was like climbing into a warm bath.
After a camp breakfast of fried bread, honey and coffee we set off the next morning towards the 3200m Ala-Bel pass. The rolling road took us past many old yurt camps which had packed up for the winter, their absence recognisable by the tell-tale circular marks they left on the ground. Unfortunately, as we climbed Harriet began to feel unwell and by the time we had got within 17km of the pass she had become feverish. As we were quite far from any towns, Jonathan quickly set up the tent and got Harriet tucked up inside her sleeping bag. At this point he became slightly worried as a delirious Harriet, who had just taken some paracetamol, created the ‘paracetamol song’ which only involved one word – paracetamol - being repeated over and over again in a distinctly untuneful manner. Sleep, cups of tea and a hot water bottle seemed to ease Harriet’s suffering and by the next morning her fever had abated. However, now it had been replaced with the bowels of an unwell cow and she was forced to leave ‘Harriet pats’ on the icy ground around the camp on a fairly regular basis. Even so, she showed great fortitude and was determined to push on towards the pass that day.
This was no easy feat: 13 of the last 17km proved to be at ski slope gradients through snowy peaks, and Harriet’s stomach was unable to tolerate anything other than a tiny packet of Haribo and water. But she was not to be defeated and we reached the pass happy but exhausted. Our reward was an amazing 67km downhill to the town of Torugart, where we reached speeds of over 55km an hour as we whizzed by beautiful pine forests and lush woodlands quite unlike the windswept valley we had just left.
Our descent was only broken to buy a giant pot of honey from a roadside stall which was then greedily consumed with bread.
On reaching Torugart, we found a lovely guesthouse with a French-speaking hostess. Our experience there was only slightly marred by the presence of the most horrendous-smelling loos we have come across so far, with an odour which lingered on our hair and clothes long after every visit. Nonetheless, we spent a happy day pottering around the market, having a picnic overlooking the reservoir, and generally taking in the town’s relaxed atmosphere, before setting out again through an amazing lunar landscape of peculiar rock formations which surrounded the town’s reserv
En route, we bumped into some fellow cycle tourers heading in the opposite direction, and while exchanging information about the route ahead suddenly found ourselves mobbed by an entire class of school children all eager to practise their English skills on us.
The rest of the day was somewhat rolling though, and we were very happy to end the day camped in a little cove, where we even braved a swim in the surprisingly warm water.
After a fairly intense start to the next day climbing over a small pass, we entered a series of spectacular gorges. This looked like an amazing place to spend a day off, so we happily rolled our bikes down to the river where we set up the tent and soon had a fire roaring away.
However, our happiness was slightly dulled the next day when the river started to rise, and it looked like our idyllic camping spot would soon be under water. A hasty retreat further up the hill ensued.
The next day we continued through more spectacular gorges, dodging large boulders on the road which had been brought down during a storm the night before.
After a couple of hair-raising tunnels which were completely unlit, on corners and uphill, we popped out of a final tunnel to find a pocket of cafes where we had a very relaxing cup of coffee and devoured chocolate to calm our nerves.
We now left the hills behind and entered a warm lush valley full of farmsteads and, surprisingly, swathes of wild cannabis growing out of every spare bit of land.
This added a somewhat pleasant aroma to the whole area. We soon bumped into another cycle tourer from Belgium, who to our delight had been cycling with our friend Tomaz (who we had met in Georgia), and informed us that he was now heading towards the same village as us -the amusingly named Arslanbob. This news reinvigorated us somewhat for the road ahead, although the proximity of the Uzbekistan border made us a little nervous and camping proved tricky – we finally pitched our tent in a dry river bed, after extensive conversations about the likelihood of early-winter flash flooding.
The next day we headed towards Arslanbob, an entirely Uzbek village famous for being surrounded by the largest walnut forest in the world.
The forest is particularly beautiful at this time of year as the leaves change colour and the walnuts are collected. Arriving in the village after an arduous 50km uphill, it took around 5 minutes for us to bump into Tomaz. It was so nice to see him again after several months, with all three of us looking a bit hairier and more weather beaten than before.
We quickly checked into the same guesthouse as him then headed out to see the local waterfall, before walking up through the walnut forest to a plateau high above the village where we were rewarded with spectacular views.
After a night catching up on each other’s adventures, the three of us headed back down to the main road for a final lunch before saying our goodbyes, Tomaz on his way Kathmandu and us to Hong Kong.
After completing yet another gruelling ascent we turned off the main road to camp behind a hillock, and stumbled across a couple settling down to a late evening picnic. After an initially frosty reception, they soon warmed up when they realised that we were there to camp and promptly shared their bread, tea, offal and vodka with us. The offal was secreted way in our cycling helmets. After a stilted conversation involving many hand actions we came to the conclusion that they were having an affair, and had initially thought that we were some kind of weird scouting party sent by their spouses. That night, looking out at the twinkling lights of the small villages in the valley below us, we contemplated our cycle into Osh, a city which had always seemed so far and unreachable but which was now only a short pedal away.
Rising early to find ourselves surrounded by a flock of sheep and a slightly embarrassed-looking shepherd, we finished off the climb before entering rolling (for a change) farmland.
After around 80km we could finally see it, Solomon’s Throne, the iconic rocky outcrop that sits at the heart of Osh. Not quite believing we were finally there, we entered the famous Silk Road city, ready for a couple of days’ rest and in slight anticipation of the last leg of our journey in Kyrgyzstan, a ride over the 3600m Tongmurun pass to the Chinese border.