Near Kant

I think the day started at 10,000m over Uzbek airspace. I lost a significant portion of the day when I put my watch forward from Turkish (GMT +2 hours) to Kyrgyz (GMT +4 hours). Though later this was made up by hardly sleeping.

I chatted through the whole duration of the 6 hour flight from Istanbul to Bishkek with my seating neighbour, an economist for the Islamic Development Bank. The plane touched down at the convenient hour of 1:30am. Getting a visa then going through immigration took ages & to add further to things all passenger baggage was x-rayed on exit!

I got into a private taxi in which the driver had a friend before considering this a bad move & taking a more official cab. I'd forgotten to arrange accommodation. I hoped that the gate to the guesthouse where I'd left my bike would be unlocked. I was dropped off neither robbed nor ripped off at the guesthouse, which was open but with no sign of life. I set my sleeping mattress & bag on a bench in the garden. At around 4am (which my body thought was about 11pm) I slept. My body dictated when I went to sleep but the Sunrise overruled any say the body had about waking time.

The early waking hour was ok as I was needed to determine quickly whether the successful mounting of my new front rack would require more mechanical skill or bits than I had. It seemed to all work all right allowing me to set a rendezvous time & place with Nick, a cyclist from Argentina who I'd met earlier in Bishkek. The rendezvous point was somewhere along the South side of Isyk-Kцl lake or a town called Kochkor a little South of it if I decided not to go along the lake. Both were around 200km from Bishkek.

After a quick visit to the bazaar to get some honey & yummy jam I hit the road. I'd considered getting some chicken pieces to make a change in my relentlessly vegetarian camp cooking but didn't want to risk the non-refrigerated products on offer.

I didn't hit the road until around 4pm, which still allowed for a few hours of cycling before the 8:30pm when it becomes too dark to find a campsite. Amazingly, considering how little sleep I'd had, I didn't feel tired. My road started off on the busy main highway that runs East-West through Bishkek, with Tashkent at one end to the West & Almaty a bit to the East. The Kyrgyz are generally quite nice people but they, like the rest of Central Asia are horribly rude drivers. I tuned the traffic out & concentrated on spotting a campsite. I didn't find one that was sufficiently sheltered from sight & sound of the road until quite late. It was a nice spot, grassy & not far from the highway but shielded from it by a hill beside however it was alive with mosquitoes. I received a visit from some local lads who admired my bike while I put up my tent. I cooked a late dinner under a bright starry night

I cycled 51 km in 3 hours & 43 minutes
Total so far 9321 km in 137 days
GPS Coordinates of end point - N 42°53.904, E 75°2.144