The Mad and the Bad

Kyrgyzstan – what a contrast to Iran. After alcohol-hell, namely theoretically dry Iran, Kyrgyzstan is awash with booze, but I wouldn’t call it alcohol-heaven, it’s a hell of a different kind. Does no one here understand moderate drinking? Drunks stagger round in the mid-day sun, red-faced and sporting the Kyrgyz trilby, the traditional felt hat, or lie unconscious in ditches or under bus shelters. The shops are half-full of booze, mostly vodka. The other half of the population seems to be equally guilty, for they are the pushers and enablers. I’ve seen wives trying to keep their husbands pacified by doling up small cups of vodka rather than give them the whole bottle. But the good side of it is that at least the demon booze prevails over Islam here in Kyrgyzstan!

Bishkek is fairly russified in style, I heard no Kyrgyz language whatsoever and most of the Russian population lives there. It’s a well-integrated place, there is no animosity towards the remaining Russian population who are Kyrgyz citizens. Lonely Planet’s very PC Central Asian phrasebook has 30 pages devoted to Kyrgyz but only 3 for Russian, though the latter is by far the dominant language in Kyrgyzstan, even among the nomads. In fact the first Kyrgyz I can be sure I heard was spoken by a French couple speaking to some nomads who would otherwise have spoken Russian to us. I can remember Turkish numbers and find those are understood by everyone here, they are almost identical to Kyrgyz. Many of the young women in Bishkek dress like Russians – meaning like harlots (!). Down here in the south in Osh, dress is more conservative but not repressive; quite nice taste in fact. The bazaar area of Osh feels very Asian and noticeably more Islamic, for it is only a few kilometers to the Uzbekistan border and the restive Fergana valley, but a kilometer south in the Russian/Soviet-designed government area where I am staying, it feels more European.

After 6 weeks holiday from occupational cycling, I was in shock at being back on the road. The heat, the food! I doubt Russia influenced Kyrgyz food for the worse, that would be difficult, but they can’t have been inspirational either. There’s been a drought this summer, and few villages or small towns have running water. Almost nowhere has plumbing of any kind, even cooking is mostly done outside the house. Homestays are widely understood in Kyrgyzstan, either officially arranged by tourist offices or informally just by asking. It costs a few pounds but you are sometimes fed away from the family, which is a bit depressing, though at other times have to sing for your supper and entertain the kids or help with their English. They have almost certainly never had a native English speaker in their house and maybe not in the whole village, so I always felt I had to get to work if the kids showed any interest at all in me. To be honest I would rather have sprawled out and read another chapter or two of David Copperfield.

I whimpered my way up the first few passes, feeling truly sorry for myself in having made my life so difficult by coming here when I was well past it, etc etc. I had to push the bike half way up to Song Kul, the lake up at 3000m, thinking I was well and truly stuck – couldn’t go up, couldn’t go down as there were some bad hills to climb on the way out. And I had a bit of the runs too, so I was weak. But I kept pushing and made it up to Song Kul and the good times began there. It’s an energizing feeling being so high, the breeze, the fresh air, the quality of light and the seemingly carefree nomads all around. It’s hard, undulating ground for miles, and I never got within 10km of the huge lake but rode around till I found a yurt I thought I’d ask if I could camp by. If I’d had a guidebook I would have known the tourist visits are all organized now, but doing it the unorganized way was more authentic. The nomads were a bit surprised, but said (in gestures and Russian) yes, why not, and we warmed up to each other from there. I sat in my tent for a while reading, thinking that Dickens was pure escapism and had nothing to do with my surroundings, but inside the yurt was the Kyrgyz rural equivalent of the humble homes Dickens wrote about and this was one of his happy, loving families.

Temirbek and his wife have three children, one just a small baby, but now and then he would pick the little one up and ride with him on his lap. They keep about a hundred horses and some cows. Lunch followed, a bit of a shocker, the inside of the yurt was as filthy as anything I’d seen in Tibet, the same food was brought out three times a day and there was no refrigeration or cover for it. Hands and spoons were all over the food and into mouths but at least no one had a hacking cough or smoked. Everything except the bread seemed to be a dairy product of some kind, lard, flavoured lard, lard rolled with butter and lemon juice into a kind of cous-cous. And koomis, the fermented mare’s milk the nomads are known for. I was relieved to find I liked it, just as I had liked yak-butter tea in Tibet. It has a fizzy yoghurty taste but a strong smell to it and I found I was soon smelling of the stuff and all my clothes were too. I drank as much as they offered as I thought it was an easy way to get nutrition inside me. Temirbek was keen for me to sleep in the yurt, but with five people in it already, I much preferred my tent. He brought me a blanket, thinking I would freeze, but it was a mild night and I’ve not been cold yet.

A fabulous mountain bike ride down followed, on a route not marked on my map and too steep for most vehicles to follow. 45km till I reached paved road again, then another 45km to Naryn and hot running water. From there I headed south to visit Tashi Rabat, the country’s best-preserved (or restored) monument, a caravanserai dating from the 15^th century. You can see it all in 5 or 10 minutes but the location is superb, in high mountains near the Chinese border and an easy hour’s climb from the road, which in that area is not paved for a hundred km or so. I felt sorry for the Chinese truck drivers who probably supply 90% of everything sold in Kyrgyzstan (except for alcohol) and gave every one a wave. They are the only good drivers in the country and Kyrgyzstan cannot afford to pave the roads which allow in these vital imports. I met the French couple using their Kyrgyz phrasebook at Tashi Rabat, and another small group, a Spanish couple and a French woman all of whom were cycling. The nomads serve wonderful food there in yurts to tourists, by far the best and healthiest food I have eaten in the whole country. I spent a day there waiting for the rain to stop and set off at 4pm, hoping to break the next long day into two.

Pascal had told me the turnoff I wanted was only a few km down the main road and I headed north up a long but straightforward pass for an hour or more. As I reached the top, a storm threatened and I felt unsure I was on the right road – there had been no signpost nor any other traffic to ask except for a shepherd on horseback singing to himself over a kilometer away. The valley ahead looked very dry and I only had a litre and a half of water left, and if I were wrong about the road, I would be stuck there for a night. I turned back, racing down the pass, the storm picking up as I reached the main road again and crossed it, riding over open grassland to try and find the river to camp by. Of course I knew the river was there, but trying to find the bit of a half-mile wide shingle river bed that actually has the wet stuff in it in failing light, that’s another thing. It was wide open land, tucked under snow-capped mountains, just me and a few hundred horses. I was too busy getting the tent securely put up and the dry things inside, the wet gear out in the porch, to get depressed or panicky about my predicament, miserable though it was. Better to dip into my food bags and eat some bread, cheese, chocolate and peanuts and read Dickens and hope for better the next morning.

And that was the last of the big rain. Better still, the next day’s ride was the best of the trip so far, a long two-pass day where I still had to push some of the way up the second, higher pass, but rode really well and enjoyed the whole day, celebrating with a potato and soup stew cooked at the top at 3250m. The Italian mountain bikers I met early in the day who had hired a bus for two weeks to carry their bags were rather impressed that I’d hauled up all that gear just so I could cook a proper lunch up there. But you get used to riding with all that gear and have the freedom to stop where you want and some sense of security with so much food and sometimes water. After that it was another great downhill thrashing of the bike to reach a run-down village with a Russian-built guesthouse where nothing had worked for decades. I could see the next four or five days would continue along unpaved roads, meaning I would stand no chance of getting to Osh in time to run into my Spanish friend Salva. No internet anywhere, though most of the sober were standing around staring at their mobiles, just as they do everywhere. Perhaps they were like Mr. Micawber, waiting in hope for something to turn up. No buses either, except back to Naryn. It was either a 1500km circular bus trip and a couple of days to get to Osh, or keep on riding. I rode down to the market to stock up and was surprised and pleased to run into the Spanish and French little family (as they called themselves), Pau, Mig and Karinne. They had planned on taking two days to get there but had taken just one. I could join them to ride west. It was a flat day, but on a road so bad and with such strong headwinds that we would gladly have chosen a high pass instead. To ride into the wind on those roads means spending the day doing less than 10km/h, not much faster than climbing and with no prospect of a downhill afterwards. The land was dry badlands with little water around, and not very clear at that, but beautiful. We had had enough for the day by the time the wind dropped and a friendly farmer offered us his land, near a stream, to camp on and brought us some eggs. Just perfect and we could all sneak off to the stream later for a discreet little wash all-over (and under).

In baking hot weather we tackled a fairly easy pass to beautiful views of nomad pastureland and red and green mountains behind. A second much shorter pass led into a valley of nomad encampments and children on horseback who were shepherds. It’s interesting to see the responsibility they are given and their horse-riding skills at such young ages. They often came over to take a look at us as we rode by. We had a long ride downhill, quite the best of the trip, blazing heat but a gradient so gentle we picked up speed and never had to brake for 20km or so into a vast and beautiful farming valley. The women rode ahead as Pau and I stopped to cool off in a grey, fast-running river. Karinne and Mig’s job – and they were pretty good at it – was to ask around for a homestay for the night. These villages sometimes look very poor but each house may have an acre of two of good farmland for corn, sunflowers and so on, and in this case, 50 turkeys and a dozen chickens or so. They were happy to provide us dinner and a room to ourselves for sleep for a couple of pounds each and their lovely kids showed us around and brought their textbooks over for me to read and ask questions from.

Karinne told us we would leave next morning at 6.30 as we had the biggest pass of the ride ahead of us, 1600m but, as we found out, several practice hills before that, with steep climbs and sharp drops and then down to the bottom of the valley where we would begin the 1600m pass. We probably cycled a total of 2000m uphill that day. I had always thought I would struggle with this group, Pau and Mig were 20 years younger and riding light mountain bikes with rear bags only, and Karinne was an outdoors amazon from Chamonix who works in Mountain Rescue in ski season. But everyone has that fear of not being able to keep up, we would all suffer with the road, the gradient and the heat and were starting out with stiff muscles. We took our breaks in the morning, fuelling up with several Snickers bars each (I would never eat such a thing at home but it’s a quick energy source) and the last of our cheese, muesli and fruit. About seven hours later and three-quarters of the way up, I inched ahead just to get some more wobble-room for myself on such a bad road, but somehow I kept on advancing, as Pau chose to keep Mig company and Karinne struggled with a heavy bike and older, higher gears than the rest of us. Somehow all my carbohydrates kicked in at once, I was no longer crawling up in first gear but standing in fifth, then sitting in fifth focused only on the pass that I could now see. I feared I might burn out long before the pass and have to walk it, but instead I picked up speed. I really don’t know what came over me; it was not competitiveness as I would gladly have enjoyed Pau’s company, but I wanted to get to that pass, thinking the town of Jallalabad and its imagined luxuries were just the other side. They were not, it was another 50km to Jallalabad and the road was not paved, as we had been told, in fact it was rutted and with landslides. Pau’s brakes had almost completely failed by then, he raced down, unable to stop. Karinne took a fall and bruised one hand badly and sprained the other. We finally chose to hitch a ride into Jallalabad on a Russian logging truck.

Another charmless Russian hotel run by ladies with 1960s hairdos with ‘nyet’ rolling off their lips in answer to every question, but we were back on paved roads. Pau, Mig and I chose to ride on to Osh next day rather than relax in that fairly crummy little town of Jallalabad. It was quite a haul in the heat and with such tired legs. I drank 6 litres of water during the 100km ride alone and sweated 99% of it.

I am still in Osh and will stay here for a total of 6 days, just resting and trying to fatten up. A little girl sat by the path with an electronic scale that measures height and weight, it told me I was 76kg, just slightly underweight for my height. The Spanish couple were violently sick all night and I had a close call after drinking tap water in the luxurious guest house, but I’ve found a Turkish restaurant that I will happily go to every night rather than risk more bad Kyrgyz food. I have to decide about the last few days to Sary Tash and the border, as the road is being completely rebuilt and even cyclists say it is murder, all sand and dust. From there on, the road into China looks fine and reports from the Karakorum Highway still sound absolutely fine for tourists despite what you see on the news.