Wonderful Kyrgyzstan - We are in love

On the way to Issyk Kol


Lake Issyk Kol


Lake Issyk Kol


Bel Ata Pass at 3176m


Camping at 2440m


Suusammyr valley


It is so damm cold


A minor accident on the road to the snowed Kyzart pass


A major accident on the way to toktogul reservoir


Toktogul reservoir



(Arslanbob)

Hi guys, it was quite a long time since our last blog update, but hey, we didn't find any internet cafes and when we found one it was dial-up modem speed, so forget it.

We are now in Karakkol, a city on the Eastern shores of the Issyk-Kul lake. The lake is the third biggest lake in the world and indeed it is quite sizeable but the most impressive attribute is that it is surrounded by high mountain peaks of 4,000m-5,000m.

Let's start with first things first. Kyrgyzstan has 5 million inhabitants and the country is 94% above 1,000m and 80% above 2,000m..you get the picture?

We arrived in Osh several days ago and unfortunately for us we spent an unusually cold week (for this season) in Kyrgyzstan. We had temperatures ranging from -3 to +14 degrees celcius. It is so freaking cold that we have now all our clothes on. The weather was either very windy (Bora or Mistrak like), rainy, snowy...we had it all, including 2 days only of sunshine. This is so frustrating in particular since it is a random week where the weather is so bad. Apparently 1 week ago, it was more like 2-0 degrees celcius and beautiful sunshine!

We still love it here as the little we could see is more than impressive and beautiful. Imagine all the hidden stuff we couldn't reach because of closed passes etc... and it probably becomes the highlight of the trip so far. The people are very friendly and we stayed most of the time in homestays, a very good system that Kyrgyzstan has set-up.

After Osh we moved to Arslanbob which boast the largest Walnut tree forest (weird hey!) just below a 4,400m peak. We did a small treck up part of the mountain to some high summer pastures and we really loved it. We stayed at Abdullahanjun's family, really a great place to be. I was sick on the second day, so in the end we stayed 3 days there.

We then moved-on under the pouring rain on the main road to the capital (the only one that was the most likely not to have too much snow) and discovered Toktogul reservoir, a very nice high alltitude lake. After the lake, we climbed to the highest point on our journey so far, the Bel Ata Pass at 3,176m. Amazing to be there will all the snow and the peaks so much higher than you. We encountered there a German couple (Bettina and Stefan) that was cycling from Mongolia to Germany for 10,000km during a full year and who started in August of last year. We camped together at 2,440m and whilst cold, we had an excellent night only to discover the next morning that it had snowed.

We then pressed on into the Suummayir valley, a gorgeous day with super mountains all around us. Whilst it is a valley, it is still at +2,000m. We wanted to reach the lake  Song Kol, apparently a beautiful spot in Central Kyrgyzstan at 3,000m but forget it, there was so much snow (and it snowed whilst we were riding on the Kyzar passs (2.,664).I am still glad we went on this road (actually a track + mud) as it was a good test for Mongolia.

So instead of going up Song Kol we reached lake Issyk Kol with strong winds where we are now.

Tomorrow we will drive close to the Kazakh border and cross it the day after to reach Almaty.

We have updated all the Kyrgyz pictues, you'll love them.

Oh by the way, regarding washing...hmm, we haven't had a shower for the last 6 days. We asked our hosts everynight if they had a shower and they have all replied immediately with a No of course. But tonight's the night, we found a place with a shower!