Naryn to Karakol, (1/X); 27th July

27th July

We woke up at 6:30 and made a large omelette for lunch and for breakfast had the leftover chicken and potato soup MayLyn made yesterday.

The small hotel is building an extension, and the builders commute on these steel bikes with (I'm guessing) three speed Sturmey Archer internal gear hubs. very old, but meant to be very reliable.

There’s a Globus supermarket in Naryn which has pretty much everything a supermarket in the UK has, so we had eaten pretty well, indulging in yogurt, milkshake and pizza from the restaurant across the road. There’s also a traditional market/bazaar where I got some tomatoes, apples and almonds for the next few days.

Because of this I felt well rested and nuritied, ready for the next few days of slow climbing to reach Tosor Pass, and then a short sharp descent to Issyk Kul, a huge lake where the Soviet Union used to test torpedoes.

Partly because Naryn was a place of abundance, we didn’t properly think about how much food we needed to pack, assuming we would find some shops on the way to Issyk Kul.

We stopped for lunch at around 12, next to a small stream where we enjoyed the omelette with baked beans. About six bikepacking cyclists went past us — they were so lightly packed I thought they must have a support vehicle, especially if they were camping.

After lunch we passed a few villages, one of which had three shops listed on OSMaps, but none of which were open.

At about 50km we passed a yurt encampment, open for tourists. I had assumed it would be aimed at western tourists and therefore be expensive, but it seemed like there were mainly Kyrgyz tourists staying for the weekend.

When we were filling up water to soak the lentils in, a young guy, asked if we wanted to come fishing with him. I wasn’t entirely sure if this was a paid service or if he just wanted to hang out, but we’d never been invited to fish before and it was appealing. However, there didn’t seem to be any shops between the yurt camp and Issyk Kul as we had not been able to pick up any more rice. As such, we did not have enough dinners for 4 days of cycling, but only three.

We ummed and ahhd about it, as we had stopped at that point, we would get over Tosor Pass in four days. So, we initially said no to the fishing.

We then shortly changed our minds and tried to find the guy, but we weren’t sure if he had gone all the way back to the yurt camp and go down to the river to fish, so we couldn’t find him.

We gave up on the fishing and continued cycling and the gradient increased. I was pretty tired at this point, and therefore getting a bit grumpy. I was regretting not staying in the yurt camp as we’d likely have been able to get a meal with the stay, and also been able to go fishing with the guy.

By the 70th KM we finally found a turn off with a patch of flat ground next to the river. A prettty good camp spot. As we were filtering water, a 4x4 that had passed us earlier that day came down from the valley side of the path and asked us where we were from. It was an Uzbek and Kyrgyz guide, guiding two Russian tourists. They suggested we go further up the path, from there they had come from, as there was a better spot there.

We moved up, and it certainly was much better. Far away from the road, nice large flat patches of ground, and brilliant valley views. After cooking and a bathe we felt well rested after a long day.

We slept without the outer, as it was not too too cold

Still not sure how many days we will cross the passing. 3 days would be fast and would likely be a bit too much for us in some parts. Two Dutch cyclists we met coming the other way said there was a small shop which sold ramen, which would sold out food question by giving us one extra meal, allowing us to complete in 4 days.

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