Monday, July 10, 2006

Below Taldyk pass

Tajik Customs & Immigration was just below the Kizil Art pass which we reached at around 9am. Getting out of Tajikistan was as casual as coming in, the formalities were completed in under 10 minutes. From there was the pass & 20km of bad road to the Kyrgyz Customs & Immigration. Along the way we forded a river where the road had been badly washed out, probably some time ago. It was hard to imagine that trucks managed to get through but they had to as several had passed us in this direction & not turned back, including 1 truck towing another.

There was a big change in the scenery once we got over the pass into Kyrgyzstan. While Murgab district in Tajikistan had little vegetation growing Kyrgyzstan was immediately a greener place. There was much more water about which played havoc with the road, as described earlier. There were yurts all over the place. These were traditional nomadic Kyrgyz dwellings that were constructed of layers of felt on a wooden framework.

The Kyrgyz border people were like those everywhere, nosey & not terribly polite. Our passports were inspected by several of them before we were let lose on the country. None of them noticed or cared if they did that I had switched passports & that I had no Tajik visa in my UK passport, with which I was traveling in Kyrgyzstan.

After lunch a horrible side wind started up. I watched Roman & Sebastien pull away, the strength of youth, on the slog into Sary Tash, the first town we'd encounter in Kyrgyzstan. I swore that as soon as I got there I'd find a place to sleep & not cycle an inch further. Sary Tash turned out to be a bit of a sorry town. With not much going on clearly a significant proportion of the town's adult males sat around drinking vodka.

After finding some delicious warm bread, which revitalised me, we headed out of town via the Taldyk pass. It was only a 300m climb to 3600m which was almost easy after the more than 4000m passes that we'd done in the last week.

We camped in a field just below the pass. There were 3 yurts nearby. The kids from the yurts soon spotted us & came to investigate in a friendly manner. After we'd setup camp Roman & I went to see if we could buy some milk to cook our breakfast from the adults of the yurts. The people were very friendly & we came away with milk & also with some lovely bread, a definite improvement over that of Tajikistan, some cheese & a bottle of kymys, a kind of fermented yoghurt drink made from mares' milk.

The camping spot gave a great view over the yurts below but it was quite exposed to a cold wind. As soon as the Sun went down it got quite cold & we all went to bed early.

I cycled 56 km in 4 hours & 51 minutes
Total so far 8356 km in 123 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 39°44.693, E 73°9.056

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