Kegen → Karakol → Issyk Kul → Bokonbaev → Tosor Pass → Naryn → At Bashi → Tash Rabat → Torugart Pass
In memory of Kyle Dempster, who in one talk inspired me to take up bike touring and to visit Kyrgyzstan.
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| Me on the road down from Tosor Pass |
Ever since I saw an inspiring talk (based on
this video) by a mountaineer named Kyle Dempster
about bike touring through Kyrgyzstan, I’ve had bike touring through Kyrgyzstan in the back of my mind as a trip I must do. So I made it a key piece of my
overland trip across Asia, taking a detour from the Trans Siberian Railway to
head south across Kazakhstan towards Kyrgyzstan.
The first challenge of the bike tour was figuring out how to
get a bike to Kyrgyzstan, which was solved by convincing my friend Joep to join
for the bike trip, and convincing him to fly both of our bikes and lots of gear
out from Switzerland. We rendezvoused in Almaty, Kazakhstan. We then had 16 days for
our bike tour across Kyrgyzstan, constrained by a fixed date for the border
crossing into China.
The main goal was to make it to the Chinese border at 3752-meter Torugart Pass. We chose our route to stay off the main roads as much as possible
and get into the high mountains of the Tian Shan. The result, not quite according to the original plans, was a 665 km bike tour that took us over 3893-meter Tosor Pass.
Our trip is full of little stories, about meeting people, about
running into biking and camping hardships, and about dealing with a very
strange but interesting foreign country. I’ll share the best of these stories
here, as well as some pictures of the beautiful scenery we found in Kyrgyzstan.
At the end of the post, I will include some of the information we learned about our route in the hope that it is helpful for others who travel this direction.
Day 1: The Beekeeper
On day 1 we found ourselves in wonder of the new country we
found ourselves: Kyrgyzstan. Everything seemed to go perfectly.
The riding was already pleasant in Kazakhstan, from our
starting point in Kegen. We were seen off by a bunch of local kids who rushed
out to the road to say hello and shake our hands. I was immediately impressed
with the landscape and how empty the roads were. Despite a well maintained
paved road, the traffic was mostly light enough that we could cycle in the
middle of the road and just move to the side when we heard a car coming every
10 minutes. It was obvious that livestock outnumbered people in this region
by at least a factor of 10. There were sheep, cows, goats, and horses
everywhere. The road got even quieter as we approached Kyrgyzstan and
eventually we were on a dirt road nearing the border. The border was simple,
just a gate on each side and some passport checkpoints. The scenery was even
more beautiful on the Kyrgyz side of the border as we gained a bit
of elevation and got closer to some big mountains.
Near the end of the day, we passed through a small village.
Other than houses, there was only one tiny shop in a shipping container, with a big Snickers add on the
front. We had forgotten to get camping gas, and were still looking for some,
otherwise it would be cold dinner for the night. The store had no camping gas, so we
just got a bunch of Snickers, setting the standard for food shopping for the
rest of the trip.
As we continued further, nearing where we planned to camp,
Joep was stopped on the side of the road by an old Kyrgyz man, a beekeeper, who insisted that we stay with him. He had a truck on the side of the road
and a trailer full of beehives. I was initially reluctant, because I wanted a
quiet night and it didn’t really look like there was much of a place for us to
stay. But Joep was convinced; he said it was in the eyes. The beekeeper could speak a few phrases of English and sing one Beetles song. He took us
over to his truck and we were immediately given some warm pasta with beef and chicken. It was
a pretty good meal and we were happy already.
The truck was a huge Soviet era truck with two beds and a
small kitchen inside. He was very excited to practice his English and told us stories long into the evening. All of his stories were told in such slow broken
English that we didn’t understand much of anything. Even so, he had such an entertaining style of speech that we kept on listening. He spoke a lot about “five years ago”, either because something
really important happened in his life five years ago, or because he didn’t know another phrase
to refer to a time in the past. He also talked a lot about potatoes. His face
was so expressive and it was fun just to watch him talk, even if we didn’t
understand much. He must have been around 80 years old and had a very wrinkled
face. He wore a Kyrgyz style beanie, a zebra-striped orange sweater, sweat
pants, and slippers with crocs. We eventually learned that he was just out in
the countryside beekeeping during the summer and that he lived the rest of the
year in the small town of Tyup, near Lake Issyk Kul, where he had a wife and at least one kid.
He had a friend out in the countryside with him taking care of him. His friend was
dressed a bit more ordinarily, and was actually better at understanding
questions we asked in Russian, despite not knowing any English.
The beekeeper was nice enough to offer us his two beds,
while sleeping in the cab of the truck himself. We tried to insist that we could
sleep in our tent, but he insisted. He then proceeded to wake us up several
times in the middle of the night. The first time, he was rummaging around for a
blanket, presumably it was a bit cold in the cab of the truck. The second time,
at around 4 in the morning, he woke us and kept asking “socks?” and pointing at
the socks on his feet. We were not sure if he was cold himself, or wondering if
we were cold, but we never quite figured out how to help him.
Spending the
night with him taught us a bit about the simple life. He didn’t own a single
piece of electronics and all there was to do at night was talk. The whole experience
felt like we were living in a book. I’ve never interacted with anyone so
removed from the modern world. It was a very special experience.
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| Km 0, Kegen, Kazakhstan |
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| Looking across the border into Kyrgyzstan |
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| Herders along the road past the beekeepers home |
Day 2: Our welcoming
party
After saying our goodbyes to the beekeeper and his friend,
we set of towards the city of Karakol. It was a tough start to the day, as we
had to climb a few hundred meters over a pass on a very steep rocky road. This
got us a bit scared of what was to come, as our plans would take us over a
2000-meter climb in a few days. From the
top of the pass, it was a gradual transition to civilization over the next
60 kilometers. What stood out to me about this day was how, if we stopped in
any village for more than a minute, the villagers would start to gather around
us to see what we were doing in their town. They were very friendly,
especially the kids. They came out to say hello, to shake our hands, and to pose for pictures, or even to chase after us down the road. It was very pleasant
to stop in a shop for a drink or an ice cream and just wait for people to come
out and observe the spectacle we were creating just by being there. We had a
welcoming party of sorts in every town we went. I have never felt more welcomed
in a country or more like a celebrity.
The scenery around these villages
was beautiful and the biking was pleasant; there wasn’t much traffic on the road until within 15 km
of Karakol. The houses were basic but still looked pleasant, with some nice gardens and
landscaping. Karakol itself wasn’t
exactly a city, though it was the most populous town we went to in Kyrgyzstan. It
actually looked a lot like the surrounding countryside, just with the houses
closer together. While Kyrgyzstan as a
whole is very poor, there was some money in Karakol because of the tourist
industry (dominated by Russians coming for skiing in the winter). As such,
there were some fancy houses and nice parks. Other than a busy market street,
most of the city was dominated by residential districts, and it was very hard
to find a place to eat, and even harder to find a place to get a beer. Our
guesthouse was run by a Dutch/Kyrgyz couple and was very pleasant; it was one
of the only places in Kyrgyzstan that we saw a significant number of foreign
tourists.
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| The road to Karakol |
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| Kyrgyz kids excited to see a foreign face |
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| Looking at us like we are aliens |
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| Hello! |
Day 3: Two flat tires
on an idyllic beach
We expected the next 60 km of biking to be among the worst
of the whole bike tour, because of the busy road. The traffic wasn’t heavy, but
the cars went fast and drove dangerously. Both of us nearly got hit. The scariest part was that cars would pass going the opposite direction, at well over 80 mph, even though this got them within a meter of us.
Cars would almost always honk as they passed you, just to let you know that they were
coming and to say hello. This is just part of the driving culture in
Asia, but it is extremely annoying when you are biking. They have no concept that a loud honk might startle or annoy a biker. It was very typical for a
driver to zip by you very fast, honking several times and waving at us out the
window. They were very friendly, but weren’t used to bikers enough to know
that we might prefer cars to go by us a bit slower, give us more space, and not
honk. The busy road at least meant that it was mostly well maintained, so we
were able to do this stretch in just over 2 hours. Along the way, we met a few
other bike tourers, notably Super Cycling Man, a caped bike tourer who was
traveling all over the world over the course of 4 years.
This road took us to Issyk Kul, a huge high elevation lake
between the Tian Shan and the Ile Aletau mountains. We decided to take a small
path through farmland towards the lake as soon as we could see it. This led us on a pretty crazy adventure down a bumpy road,
across a stream, and through an overgrown path that was hardly navigable on a
bike. After nearly turning back we found a way
through and emerged onto the most magnificent white sand beach. The beach
stretched on for miles in both directions without a person in sight (we could
see herds of sheep and goats however). The lake had beautiful mountain ranges on two
sides and stretched on to the horizon in the third, covered in a beautiful
array of clouds. We went swimming and had a relaxing break on the beach.
By the time we were done at the beach and repacking our
things, Joep noticed that both of his tires were flat (flash back to the time
when he ignored me as I pointed out a spiky plant on the ground). Both of his
tires were completely covered in little spikes. Luckily we had a nice place to
work on tires, and were actually able to patch one of them (with something like
5 patches). The other one had around 8 holes, so we gave up on it. After at least an hour of working on tires, we hit the road again.
On the way back to the main road, we had two very scary
encounters with “rabies dogs”. Even though we both had gotten rabies shots, we
were very paranoid about getting bitten by dogs so far from any reasonable
hospital. We were pointing out every stray dog we saw by shouting “rabies dog”.
These ones were truly scary. We heard the first barking behind a metal fence,
but then panicked and started biking really fast when first, we heard the dog
hit the fence at very high speed and second, we glimpsed out of the corners of
our eyes a dog flying over the fence and barreling towards us at high speed. I
was in back, closest to the dog, and accelerated about as fast as humanly
possible, fueled by a crazy adrenaline rush, with a look of terror on my face.
Joep had a little more separation from the dog and could spare a look back to
see the intense look on my face and realize just how small the dog that was
chasing us was. We escaped that one, but ran into another dog less than 10
minutes later. This one was able to get in front of us and block our path. We
had to take turns pedaling up the hill past it. We had to slowly approach it,
then accelerate up the hill as it chased us, snapping at our heals. Luckily, it
could only focus on one of us at a time.
We were relieved to make it back to the main road, but between
the adventure to the lake, fixing the flat tires, and escaping the dogs, we
were exhausted. We didn’t make it as
far as we hoped and found a cheap guesthouse along the road. Unlike Karakol,
there weren’t many tourists here, just a few Russians and maybe one western
couple. We ended up talking German with a Kazakh German guy who shared some
really disgusting fish with us and talked a lot about how Kyrgyzstan would be
completely ruined if only it weren’t so sparsely populated.
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| Kyrgyz traffic |
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| On the trail to Issyk Kul |
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| Idyllic white sand beach of Lake Issyk Kul |
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| Fixing flat tires on the beach |
Day 4: Road-side
geology
On the next day, we continued along the same busy road, but
it was getting gradually less busy as we got farther away from Karakol. We had
beautiful views of Lake Issyk Kul all day, so it was pleasant riding. My
only complaint was the really bumpy pavement, which was somehow even worse than
biking on dirt. The main attraction of the day was Fairytale Canyon. We didn’t
know much about it, but it was called Fairytale Canyon, so we had to go. After
biking my road bike up a challenging 2 or 3 km of sandy road, we
arrived at an area of colorful badlands. I ran around taking lots of pictures
while Joep looked around for some siderite samples that he could measure for
his research, each nerding out in our own way. I got some nice pictures; Joep
got some nice chunks of colorful dirt to carry with him back to Switzerland
(and has apparently since used them to measure the past temperature of the
area).
Day 5: A change of
plans
We woke up still exhausted and realized we had spent every
last Kyrgyz Som we had; we didn’t even have enough money for breakfast and
certainly didn’t have enough to pay for the guesthouse. We packed up our things
and asked the guesthouse owner to point us to the bank. He said we had to wait,
that the bank didn’t open until 9 am. So we were stuck in Kaji Say for a while
longer without much of anything to eat. When 9 am rolled around, the wife of
the guesthouse owner pointed out to him and to us that it was Sunday and that
the bank is not open on Sunday. They suggested that we spend another night in
Kaji Say, but we were determined to get out. We considered taking a 40 km
round-trip taxi ride to the next town, where there was supposedly an ATM, but
we weren’t sure we could even find someone willing to take us there. Fidgeting
with my wallet, I noticed that there was a US $20 bill inside and pulled
it out to see if maybe we could pay with that. Even after they gave us a pretty
low conversion rate, we had enough to pay for the guesthouse and enough left
over for breakfast and water. Kyrgyzstan is cheap! We were on our way.
It was a short ride to Bokonbaev, where we planned to stock
up on food before heading into the mountains. Our day quickly started going
better when, as we were getting money from the ATM, a guide came up to us and
started asking questions about where we were going. When we told him we were
going over Tong Pass, he told us that we definitely shouldn’t go that way, that
it would be dangerous to carry our bikes over the small glacier at the top of
the pass. He recommended Tosor Pass instead. This would add at least 60 km to
our trip though the mountains to Naryn, but it seemed like it might be our only reasonable option. The guide was also nice enough to give us some language assistance in buying
our food from the supermarket. His advice wasn’t perfect though. He told us
that we didn’t need to bring so much food because it should only take us 3 or 4
days to get over the mountains and that there were many herders who could provide us with food along the
way. He also recommended a canned meat sauce for pasta. Both of these
recommendations would come back to haunt us, the first because we ended up running low on food, the second is a story for later.
We headed out of town, over a 2540-meter pass (starting from
1700 meters), towards the Tosor Pass road, a turn off the main road that we had
seen a day earlier. This was by far the biggest pass we’d done yet. Joep kept
up a fast pace while I putted along behind. The scenery was nicer and nicer as
we ascended into the mountains. Between his fast pace and a bit of food
poisoning, Joep was completely destroyed by this climb and basically just passed
out as soon as we found a reasonable place to set up camp. I made camp and cooked dinner while Joep slept and recovered for the next 12 hours. We
planned to make the next day a partial rest day, so that Joep could recover
from his food poisoning and exhaustion.
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| Scenery near the 2540 meter pass between Bokonbaev and the Tosor Pass road |
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| Cocoon mode at the end of the day |
Day 6: Slowly uphill
After a long nights sleep, we got up and had
brunch, feeling good enough to push onwards. We only had a little
bit of downhill before we reached the Tosor Pass road at an elevation of 2100
meters. We then had 1800 meters to climb until 3893-meter Tosor Pass. Our plan
for the day was only to make it as far as we could, so that we were positioned
to summit early the next day. The dirt road was steep, but thankfully, fairly
smooth. The going was very slow and we only made it to about 3100 meters before
afternoon thunderstorms forced us to call it a day.
After waiting out one storm under a rock, we were lucky
enough to be passing the campsite of a herder family as the next storm was
blowing in. They urged us to come inside their tent and take shelter from the
storm. The family consisted of an early 20’s guy, two young kids, and their
mother. They were camped in the mountains for the whole summer to tend to their
cattle and sheep. They served us tea and bread with thick cream and piles of
sugar on the side. The young guy was excited to talk to us. We used a mixture
of our few phrases of Russian, hand gestures, a translator book,
and pictures to communicate. During a break in the storm, we went outside to
set up our tent next to theirs. The Kyrgyz guy enthusiastically road around on
our bikes, peddling as fast as he could up the hill and back down with a big
smile on his face. The young kids (3 year old boy and 6 year old girl) were
happy to have company and followed us around, watching everything we were doing. We
went back in for a really basic dinner of rice milk and more bread. The Kyrgyz guy did have a
phone and showed us some pictures of him playing a game on horseback, of other
family gatherings, and of his girlfriend. It was interesting to imagine spending
every summer of your early 20’s helping your family with livestock in the high
mountains of Kyrgyzstan and sharing a small tent with the rest of your family.
Overall, their living situation was extremely basic, but was a great experience
for the night. We wondered why we weren’t doing homestays every night.
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| Up, up, and away! |
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| Up the hill to Tosor Pass |
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| The herder family's summer tent |
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| The children living in the mountains for the summer with their mother and brother |
Day 7: Tosor Pass and
the stormy mountains
After a cold night and a breakfast of rice milk (exactly the
same as dinner), we continued our ascent towards Tosor Pass. Within 400 height
meters of the top, the going got much rougher, with a maze of large boulders
all over the road. The road was steep enough that if you hit one boulder, you
would be completely stuck and would need to walk your bike up the rest of the
hill. Walking up the hill was even more difficult than riding, as our bikes
were really heavy and there was no good way to keep them stable and push them
up the hill at the same time. Joep was still trying to use his clip in pedals
as we biked up one of the steepest and rockiest sections of road and had a
nasty fall, breaking his shoes, but luckily nothing more. We got a boost of
confidence from a group of tourists passing by in 4x4s, who said great job and asked us
how we could breathe at this elevation. We did finally attain the pass, but
were almost too exhausted to appreciate this achievement. It was getting very cold, so we had to continue after a short snack and photo break.
The landscape on the other side of the pass was much more
open, with sprawling views of high altitude plains and a horizon punctuated by
5000 meter peaks with enormous glaciers. It was an otherworldly place. The
stormy clouds made the scene even more impressive, but as it started to snow,
we had to keep moving. As we descended, the snow turned to rain and became
heavier and heavier. The wind blasted up the valley. We did see one crazy
Spanish guy on a bike, big smile on his face, biking up towards the pass
without a concern on his mind. We felt less prepared for the cold weather and
couldn’t see anywhere in sight to offer shelter from the wind and rain. I
didn’t think the tent would be able to hold out the rain with this strong of
wind. We just had to keep biking until we found better conditions down the
hill. Eventually, we emerged on the other side of the storm into beautiful
sunny weather. We could once again appreciate the landscape. I got off my bike
to walk over to a cliff overlooking the river and found one of the most
spectacular views I’ve ever seen. A steep braided tributary stream descending from snow-capped mountains to merge with the main river. We decided that we
couldn’t miss the opportunity to camp in this amazing place and set up camp.
By the time we set up camp and got dinner going, another
storm was threatening. We soon regretted our decision to set up camp in
this completely unprotected location. The storm announced its arrival with
strong gusts of wind. The tent was unable to keep upright in the strong wind
and started leaking as soon as it started to rain. Joep finished dinner while I
tried to save the tent. We both got into the tent cold and wet and scarfed down
our dinner of pasta with meat sauce. At this point, only half the tent was dry and there wasn’t really
enough space to lie down in our sleeping bags and warm up. We were pretty
miserable. After waiting a little while for the storm to let up, we decided we
had to abandon camp and head to a nearby yurt. Joep ran down the hill ahead of
me and was let into the yurt by making shivering gestures, pointing at the
sky, and pointing into the yurt. I found him inside warming up next to the
wood-burning stove. The herders who lived there had gone back outside to finish
up their work for the day, better able to handle the stormy weather than us. We
were left alone in the yurt and just sat there and warmed up. I don’t know
anywhere else in the world where someone will let you into their home and,
without exchanging hardly a single word, leave you alone in their home. It
emphasized to me that this culture of allowing travelers into your home must come from the inhospitable landscape of Kyrgyzstan. These nomadic people have probably found themselves away from home in stormy weather many times,
needing to rely on the hospitality of others.
At dark, the whole family came in for dinner. They were
hospitable, providing us with tea and some food (we had already eaten), but
didn’t talk with us much, mostly because they didn’t speak a word of English.
We went to sleep in their extra tent, which was perched on the banks of the
river next to their sheep. There was a Kyrgyz man visiting them as well and he
showed us some heavy sleeping bags we could use and basically tucked us in
before lying down next to us. And then the canned meat sauce came back to haunt us? It looked sketchy, with a solidified layer of lard on top, but we had eaten it with our pasta anyway and it tasted pretty good. But it gave
Joep some terrible food poisoning in the middle of the night. In case you're keeping track, yes, everything
bad happened to Joep. I guess I escaped this one by eating more of the food the
herder’s gave us. So with the sound of several hundred bleating sheep outside
(which sounds a lot like they are puking their guts out), Joep endured a terrible
night of food poisoning, too cold to even think about going outside to relieve
himself.
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| The going gets rough |
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| Scenery from the Tosor Pass road |
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| On top of Tosor Pass, 3893 meters above sea level |
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| Surreal scenery beyond the pass |
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| Down the hill as snow begins to fall |
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| Otherworldly Kyrgyz scenery in the midst of a storm |
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| We found this beautiful landscape as we emerged from the storm. |
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| Abandoning our camp for the night to go seek better shelter. Note the encroaching snowline |
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| Warming up in the yurt |
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| The tent we ended up spending the night in and where Joep had his food poisoning misery, next to all the sheep. |
Day 8: No further for
the food poisoned Joep
In the morning, we thanked the herders, offering them some
money for the night’s stay, which they were not expecting at all. We headed back to
our camp and soaked in the morning sun, trying to get some energy to continue.
It was a beautiful day, but Joep was in no state for biking. He was still
feeling the ravages of food poisoning, was unable to keep warm, and had hardly
slept in two days. He also had no desire to spend another night in the cold stormy mountains,
so we packed up camp and started slowly down the road. I was really enjoying the day, but
could tell that the food poisoned Joep was having a rough time. There were
several crazy obstacles in the road where a stream had covered the road with
boulders or taken away the road completely. These pushed Joep to his breaking
point and I did what I could to help out, carrying his bike through some of
the rough stretches. At this point, we were thinking about how to get Joep out
of the mountains. We hoped to find people at the hot spring down the road who
may be able to give Joep a ride out.
Sure enough, as we rounded a bend we saw a small structure
with steam coming out of it and one car parked next to it. We made our way down
the hill towards the car. Once there, we tried to explain in our normal mixture
of hand gestures, Russian, and English, that Joep couldn’t bike anymore and
needed a ride to Naryn. They eventually understood and started making
arrangements. When they realized I would continue on my own, they made some
comment about me being a “wolf”. I initially felt bad for wanting to continue
on my own, but it quickly became evident that there was no way we would both
fit in the car. We set up a rendezvous point in Naryn for the end of the next
day. After making sure they had enough fermented horse milk for the long drive,
the Kyrgyz men were ready to go. They headed out for the main
road, more than 4 hours away, with Joep in the back, looking relieved. Joep can
tell you more about the all day journey to Naryn, with stops for fermented
horse milk, stops for road-side diarrhea, and a second long car ride from the main road
to Naryn.
Day 9: The push to
Naryn
Looking at the map, I figured I still had between 80 and 100
kilometers to Naryn. That would make this the longest day of the bike trip so
far, but at least it was mostly downhill. My last gas canister was the wrong
size for my stove, so I had cold leftover pasta for breakfast and headed out
early. I was running out of food and was happy to find a shop an hour or two
down the road so that I could stock up on Snickers bars.
As the road went into the Eki-Naryn gorge I quickly realized
that it would not be a gentle downhill the whole way; there were tons of steep
ups and downs. This stretch was scenic but brutally long and all on rough dirt
roads. I was exhausted by the time I emerged in Eki Naryn, still 40 km from
Naryn. Now I found the gently sloping down hill that I had been wanting, but on
such a rough gravel road that it was hard to appreciate. As I made my way down
the hill I narrowly escaped an oncoming storm, just feeling a few drops of rain
that were blown ahead of the storm by the raging wind. The wind also kicked up
a number of dust devils around the small rural town of Eki Naryn, creating some wonderful
pictures. I kept moving, needing to pass up an invitation for tea and an
invitation to go fishing with a Kyrgyz man, because I wanted to make it to
Naryn that night.
After 60 km on dirt roads that day (and 200 km since the
last paved road in Bokonbaev), I was very happy to find pavement in Tash
Bashat. My body had been shaken so much that day from biking over endless washboards
on my road bike. Unfortunately, the pavement ended right after it started and I
had another 10 km of washboards before the pavement returned. It was then a relaxing
ride into Naryn (except for one point when a rabies dog was chasing me going over 30
km/h). I rendezvoused with Joep at the chosen guesthouse and went out for
dinner. He had only just started to recover from two days of crazy food poisoning.
The two days by myself were some of the most remote of the
trip. There were hardly any Kyrgyz people around, but I did meet some other adventurous travelers. I met a young Swiss couple traveling with a purchased donkey, two
cars that had driven all the way from Austria and Israel respectively, a hiking group guided
by our friend from Bokonbaev, another redheaded bike tourer who biked by
without a word, and a Slovenian guy on a horse. These days were also some of
the most scenic, with huge open valleys, beautiful meandering rivers, and views
over distant peaks.
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| The Eki-Naryn Gorge - looking a little bit more like the Rockies or the Alps |
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| A storm hits the small village of Eki Naryn |
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| The Naryn river east of Naryn |
With me exhausted from a long two days of biking and Joep still recovering from food poisoning, we planned to take a proper rest day in Naryn, which then turned into two rest days. In another blog post I will talk about our onward journey towards Torugart Pass and China.
A few logistics
Our rough route was taken from the Google Maps directions from Kegen to Torugart. I will talk here about the section from Kegen to Naryn.
The road on the first 50 km from Kegen over the border and into Kyrgyzstan was great for biking: at least 50% paved, with very little traffic. The border crossing itself was very simple, just some ordinary passport checks on each side of the border.
We turned off on a road for Ak-Bulun and Karakol at the
beginning of our second day. This road was rough going (very rocky and steep)
as we went up over a small pass, but was easy biking from the first town in the
next valley (Jergalan). The road got busier at the junction of two roads in Novovoznesenovka
and then gradually got busier and busier all the way into Karakol. I can highly
recommend the Riverside Guesthouse in Karakol, a cute and modern guesthouse run
by a Dutch/Kyrgyz couple.
The road was strait forward from Karakol to Tosor, where
there is a turnoff for Tosor Pass. We continued past this to Bokonbaev, because
we were aiming for Tong Pass instead. If one were to turn here for Tosor Pass, it
would be at least worth the small detour to the west of Tosor to see Fairytale
Canyon.
We continued on the paved road until Bokonbaev, and then backtracked
over a 2540-meter pass on a dirt road to the Tosor Pass road. This smaller pass
was challenging but problem free. The road up to Tosor Pass zig zagged up a hill on the east bank of the Tosor River. This was a long climb, from 2100 meters to nearly 3900 meters, but was relatively problem free until about 3500 meters. The last 400 meters of climbing was extremely rocky and steep, which didn't allow much biking. It took a couple hours to push our way up this last climb.
The south side of Tosor Pass was much gentler. It would probably make more sense to do our route in reverse. Overall, the biggest problem we encountered on this side of the pass was the cold weather we encountered at high elevations in late August. It was getting down below freezing most nights, which wouldn't have been a big problem for us if it weren't also raining almost every day. It's important to be prepared for long periods of near freezing rain when traveling this route at this time of year.
From the hot spring at the junction of the Tong Pass and Tosor Pass roads, it is about 130 km to Naryn. This is a long two day ride with more up and down than one would expect from looking at the map. My GPS recorded over 1200 meters of elevation gain on the second day, where I covered the last 90 km to Naryn. There is no pavement on this route between Bokonbaev and Tash Bashat.
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