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Issyk kol - Kyrgyzstan

Finally…. we had a tracking number for the package that was coming in from turkey.. the replacement clutch was on route… according to the tracking information on the web page it had arrived in Bishkek we just had to hunt it down… to DHL we go.. the nice girl there was super helpful and said that the package should be in their system by 3pm so we should come back then.. at 3pm we came back and she said it had arrived and was at the airport..

YAY at least we now knew where it was.. Now it was getting it from the Airport to the office in Bishkek that we had to worry about.. we had decided to ship some Christmas shopping home via DHL because the local post companies had been a little dodgy.. The process was soo easy… until it came to pay.. both Heathers and my credit cards came back with errors.. shit.. we had to work out what was wrong and DHL was going to close soon.. The only option was to exchange some of our safety blanket funds from US Dollars to Kyrgyzstan Com… that’s because we had already withdrawn our maximum amount (£100) from the bank to buy the Christmas gifts we planned to send home…. Given that Bishkek is exchange city… it must have at least 500 places where you can exchange that should be easy… well that was just the beginning of our saga. It was Friday afternoon and everywhere was closed, closing or wouldn’t exchange small US Dollar notes at a reasonable rate.. often offering only 40 per $… The official rate was 45ish and most places listed 43 on their screens… It turns out they only offer that for big notes like $100… It was all a big con.. Then to find out that they wouldn’t exchange a slightly older $20 we had just added to the annoyance of the whole situation… Whats worse is that when we called HSBC they said that they had no sign of any transactions on their system.. It seems that the roads are not the only broken thing in Kyrgyzstan… their banks seem to be screwed tooo…maybe that was why we could only with drawl funds from one ATM in Bishkek… In the end we exchanged $200 US but we had a small shortage because they wouldn’t exchange the small notes for a reasonable exchange rate… it had now been an hour and we had gone everywhere around the area.. It was time to head back to the bank and see if we could get any more money out before it closed.. otherwise we would have to wait until Saturday to ship the package.. adding extra cost to the shipping and being a pain if our clutch had arrived in Bishkek already. In the end I went to the bank which was right near a British Airways office/agent which had a nice BA lady who spoke english.. she told me that they won’t exchange small notes because there is such a high rate of counterfiet notes in circulation.. shit that was a pain.. In the end the bank let me exceed my withdrawal limit and take out the remainder of the money we owed DHL…Thankfully.. Its soo annoying that the Bishkek banks only allow you to withdrawal such a small amount and then still charge you a 2% commission on top of a not so great exchange rate. It’s all rigged up to really screw the travellers they are trying to attract…everywhere we have been able to withdrawal our UK limit which has been a blessing to save on transaction fee’s… anyway back to DHL we got our package sent and it only took 1.5hrs to organise the funds.. just as we got ready to leave the office the lady came out and said that our package had arrived.. wow.. we now had to clear the clutch through customs which was simple and we had all our stuff sorted. We could leave early the next morning for Lake Issyk Kol… It was time to Celebrate.. to the supermarket to get some Vodka and juice on route back to our hotel room… YAY!!! something had worked out correctly…. A short time later we sat in our hotel room playing cards drinking vodka with the clutch in its box sitting there ready and waiting… a bottle and a half later we retired for the evening…

Storms coming across from Almaty - Kyrgyzstan

The next morning we woke and packed getting everything sorted so that we could spend the next few days in the high altitude mountains of the Tian Shan.. Our Bishkek chapter was drawing to a close.. It felt strange to realise that after 7 nights it was time to leave and everything had fallen into place… we had one close to fixed pannier that was just a little loose but otherwise it was now working again.. a new clutch and we had stocked up on food etc… we will remember Bishkek as the city that is best enjoyed from your Hotel room at night, has the best fast food burgers of any City on our trip so far.. (and they only cost £0.15 each) and has people that are only to happy to help if you ask!… good bye Bishkek….

Road to Issyk Kol - Kyrgyzstan

The road out of Bishkek was interrupted by a quick last Burger stop.. oops we are pigs YAY!!.. anyway back to the ride.. we slowly progress out of the city on route to issyk Kol.. a huge high altitude/alpine lake stuck between two mountain ranges in Kyrgyzstan.. but we wouldn’t be in Central asia without a police stop on the way out of town.. Thankfully the police officer just wanted to know where we are going and so on.. nothing too serious which was nice.. It seems now that most of the Police stops are just for them to get their photo’s taken with us and the bikes.. we really have a certain celebrity feeling here in Central Asia which is quiet nice at times.. I think it must stem from the fact that their heritage is nomadic and they really appreciate the travellers here.. Soon we arrived at issyk Kol.. The dam national park fee was 500 com per bike which was ridiculous… it had better be worth it…. well it was as we came out over the crest we could see the lake’s expanse as far as the eye could see.. its massive compared to all the other water sources we had seen inland so far.. I guess only the Caspian comes close but then that’s a sea not a lake… We soon found a place to have a swim and camp on the lake in a nice private spot…. only to be joined by another group of people about 5 minutes later.. we waited around for a while then found a new place further around the lake which was more private.. That is when we re-named issyk Kol to Icy Pole… its meant to be thermal and It does have warm thermal currents that you can feel between the icy cold Glacier melt… The salty water never freezes even though the winter average is -25c according to one local we talked with… being so cold from the swim we quickly got a fire going to warm up as we sat and watched the day come to a close with a monster storm coming in from the south east corner… As the night rolled on the storm came in and the electrical storm was soo big that the whole night sky turned to daylight for seconds at a time. Revealing the entire silhouette of the 4000+ meter peaks on the south shore and the reflection on the lake was unbelievable.. as we turned around to look north we could see the north range of 4000+ meter peaks being illuminated by Almaty’s lights (Alma-Ata) the capital of Kazakhstan.. It was a spectacular view that we just sat and watched until the storm came by and down came the rain… it was time to retreat to the tent for the night.. It pretty much rained all night leaving the whole place flooded.. The lake rose about 30-40cm in one night which was a massive achievement given the size of the lake… we sat in the tent and played cards eating M&M’s, Nuts and dried fruit for breakfast while we hoped the rain would stop… a few hours later it did and we hit the road again… soon to be noticed by a group of guys in a car heading towards karakol… they wave us to come along side them so they can take photos of us.. we did which I am sure made their day.. we later pulled over for some lunch and they stopped and got more photos of them with us.. Turns out they are Iranians who love motorcycles on Holiday and hadn’t seen our bikes before on the road.. all up it was another case of minor celebrity… After a long lunch we wanted to get to a place near Ak-Su which is a high alpine pasture at about 3000 meters above sea level near Karakol. The plan was to enjoy a thermal spa etc and relax for a few days in the area before heading back to Kazakhstan…..

the view from our campsite - Kyrgyzstan

Unfortunately in Kyrgyzstan there are almost no road signs besides town distance signs on major roads… After finally finding our way out of Karakol we got pulled over by the police to again check where we are going. We asked him if we are on the right road to ak-su and he said yes.. ak-su would be the next town.. In the next town we got told it was further up the road.. following along peoples directions we ended up riding for about 45 minutes and came across a security check point… The guards at the check point seemed pretty drunk but we asked them where the hell we are… they pointed out that we had managed to get ourselves into the border zone with China…. bugger.. we decided to turn back despite the guards saying that we could go on without the required permits… sounded sketchy.. so we turned back with the hope of finding a campsite before it got dark… After turning back we could see several ideal spots but didn’t know if we could camp there as it looked like farm land… given that the spots appeared to be in prime view of the farm house we decided against it.. then heather asked a guy who was on his horse and cart for permission.. bingo we could camp there.. a quick u-turn and we went back down into the valley near the river.. it was a little wet under foot and we could be seen from the road so we decided to move away from the river a little to somewhere more private… in the end we found somewhere that was nice and protected while offering beautiful views of the valley and the 4-6000 meter peaks surrounding it… which is when we noticed these strange looking plants in what appeared to be an animal pen…. turns out we had found a campsite right in the middle of several very large marijuana plantations.

Dope Plantations - Kyrgyzstan

There must have been at least 3000 6-7ft tall plants not to mention the several hundred poppy plants also in the mix… given how nice our campsite was we decided to stay anywhere with the hope that playing dumb would solve any problems if the owners came back!…. that night it was very very cold.. camping at around 2500 meters with the wind coming from the direction of the glaciers made for a great night to have a fire and retire to our warm tent early….

We are Here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 7:02 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, Bishkek, Issyk kol, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Mountains, Wild Camping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.