23.7 to 26.7 A washboard to Kortka

Cass writes…

From Kazarman, our journey continues east into the heart of Kyrgyzstan. There, we ride on washboard trails, along the edge of dry river valleys, up and over 3000 metre passes to camp in pastures - plateaux of high altitude plains where sunburnt, and often drunken, shepards fatten sheep over the summer months. Dining on fresh bread, dollops of cream, homemade apricot jam, hard cheese and intoxicating mare's milk, we accept their invitations into both traditional yurts and their modern- day relative, the 'wagon' - age-old Soviet railway carriages hauled up the mountain, home for these months of harvest.

Aside from skeletal pylons, we share the road with crawling trucks loaded with rocks from a nearby quarry, spluttering Moskovitchs and Ladas crammed with Kyrgyz, as well as galloping horsemen and donkey riders trotting by. In the middle of the plains families sit by the roadside, parents napping beside bundles of baggage whilst children keep a lookout for a rare bus sighting, or perhaps a lift in an bouncy Russian jeep. As we knotch up the kilometres, it's one of the hardest stretches to date, our bones rattled daily on a track shaped like corrogated like waves of bumps. With the tandem's long wheelbase and heavy load, the tyres get the brunt of the force - on the last straight, the front bulges unaturally, the sidewall damaged from so much pounding.

Yet again, like so many of Kyrgystan's tough backroads, the journey from Osh has been more than worthwhile - the complete sense of remoteness, a long empty road, the rugged beauty of the land. It's hard to describe the emotions that riding a bike elicites. There's a feeling of independence and possibility. There's a warmth that seeps through me at the friendship of the shepards - invited into their homes and offered a simple hospitality, it's an act I hope to return to others one day. And there's the natural, healthy lifestyle we're living, governed by day and night, that I crave when confined to a city. The fact that we really are 'out there', pushing ourselves to actually experience trails we once traced with our fingers over a map, inspires our weary minds and limbs.

But after a week of camping, we're relieved to make it to Kortka, the last village on the Naryn River before Son Kol. One final climb awaits to this high altitude lake encircled by mountains. The tangle of squiggles and a converging of contour lines on our Soviet military map tell us it's going to be a tough one. Patching up the tyre, we camp beside a river. The rain is pounding hard on the tent but the stove is filled with fuel, there's a bag of pasta at the ready and we have half a dozen packs of biscuits to tide us over the kilometres ahead.

Tomorrow, Son Kol...