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Scenery - Kyrgyzstan

After a chilli night we woke early for Kyrgyzstan’s independence day which is a national holiday… the 31st of August which also marks our 3rd month on the road.. it was a cold wet morning with low mist and fog in the valley… so much for our beautiful view.. the shepherds had come with their cattle early into the valley so we woke and prepared breakfast… I went over to the shepherd to talk with him… wow what a guy.. so many words.. The first thing he said was “neit narcotic mine”… wonder if he was paranoid we may report him… anyway I gave him some nut fudge that we had got in the desert and went back to our campsite.. a conversation that consisted of him saying neit.. da.. was just too exciting.. anyway it started to rain so we put up our small annex and played some cards with the hope that he rain would pass.. some other shepherd rocked up and it all seemed a little dodgy so we decided it was time to leave and find these alpine pastures that everyone talked about near Ak-Su… hopefully second time lucky.. it was now really wet and muddy after several days of intermittent rain we really wanted to find somewhere we could relax and hopefully dry out some more… Unfortunately everything seemed stacked against us… We eventually found Ak-Su which was the town that the police pulled us over in the previous day… then we found the turn off and started going towards the pastures.. the road was not so bad.. then we saw our tell tale sign… the only vehicles coming the other way seemed to be 6×6 KAMAZ trucks… hmmm that’s a sign of a quality road.. after about 15 minutes we hit the first obstacle… a steep incline which took us up so that we would ride along the cliff edge of the canyon with the river below.. It was an exciting ride up the hill where I almost stalled several times and the boulders kept moving under the bike wheels making for extremely exciting riding.. I eventually got up the hill telling Heather to wait while I went and checked out if the road improved further on… it did improve but the whole area seemed a little dodgy..

Islamic Cemetery - karakol Valley

with kids lurking in the bushes, people just sort of hanging about and a small rangers house with a pack of wolves in a cage it was all a bit surreal and I decided that despite the road marginally improving it was time to find somewhere else to go…. on the way back down it was a very exciting ride back to Heather… going down the hill from the canyon top with no traction and a heavy bike in the wet.. When I got back we decided we would try and find somewhere to camp again on Issk Kol and make it to the Kazakhstan border early the next day… on the way back to Karakol we made a few detours to see if we could find anywhere else to camp.. unfortunately we came up with nothing except garbage dumping grounds and places that seemed to be flooded… we eventually got back to Karakol and got completely lost… to give you an idea Karakol is a regional administrative centre.. but it has very very few asphalt roads.. most of them are clay/mud and guess what happens when it rains.. the whole town turns to bog.. after slipping and sliding around we found our way out in the direction of the karakol valley which is another alpine valley which requires you to pay an entrance fee as its part of another national park… being the genius’s that we are we found our way on to the opposite side of the valley to the ranger station and thought it was a good idea to continue in the hope we could find a camp site… all we found was bog, mud and more marijuana plantations.. this time there was a bunch of sinister guys over looking it so we decided to bail.. on the way dropping my bike several times in the slippery mud/clay and bashing my burn against the peg.. all up I was very frustrated and freezing cold.. After about 2 hours we managed to find our way out of town… finally we got back on the road to Issk-kol…… Heather found a beautiful spot for a late lunch and we stopped to relax for a while… as it seems is the norm in Kyrgyzstan everywhere that you stop your never actually alone.. there is always someone that comes by.. this time we had some dugan’s which are from across the border in China come and say hi, followed by the shepherd who owned the walnut plantation we had decided to prepare lunch in.. It also seems that Kyrgyzstan people simply don’t care about the environment… there was so much dumped rubbish everywhere form previous picnicers the shepherd made special note about how disgusting it was.. we made a point of showing him we took all our rubbish with us.. we hope he understood…

Grazing Horses - High Planes between kazakhstan and Krygyzstan

At least we had found ourselves in a nice dry warm place out of the wind for lunch… after a few hours we decided to start heading towards the kazakhstan border and find somewhere along the route.. it was time to get out of Kyrgyzstan… The borders are closed to westerners on national holidays so we wanted to get there early the next day to make sure it went smoothly.. we ended up camping on a small lake about 50km away from issk kol and having an early night as we watched yet another storm coming up the valley.. it was all now soo familiar and yet every time it was something worth watching. Unfortunately the mosquitoes made it unbearable so we had an early night. Waking in the morning to more rain and wet… the road in to the lake had been pretty easy the previous day.. but now it was a complete mud pit.. I nearly rode off into the lake as the bike slipped out from under me.. only just saving it.. I then dropped my bike and burnt my other leg on the exhaust.. it just wasn’t my few days.. Heather on the other hand didn’t drop her bike but managed to get it bogged in mud up to the bash plate (engine protection).. that required me to push it while she revved it.. of course she took the opportunity to cover me in mud… te he he.. now back on my bike covered in Heathers mud we made our way to the border in pouring rain.. the beautiful valley that we soon found ourselves in on the way to Kazakhstan was truly spectacular with 7000 meter peaks in the distance and a huge glacier visible up one of the mountains… it was spectacular even in the shitty weather…. as we approached the Kazakh border we could finally see blue sky.. YAY.. however it didn’t get any warmer than the beautifully warm 6 degrees.. At the border we had our photos taken with the Kyrgyz guards and arrived back in Kazakhstan. The border guards said that it had snowed the previous night but melted early on… dam and we are only just into September and its already so cold.. hopefully it would warm up as we descended back down from the mountains into the steppe of Kazakhstan…

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 7:05 am and is filed under Adventure Motorcycling, Issyk kol, Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, London to Sydney, motorcycle touring, Mountains. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.