Week 74: to Kegen: into Kazakhstan

August 24, 2016

“What happened to our road” Patrick says after having asphalt a couple kilometers before and after the border crossing. Today was an asphalt tease.

After all the rain, hail and thunder last night the morning is cool and damp but with a clear blue sky, the sun warms our tent slowly. We have our morning coffee and porridge and push our bikes back to the road. We have about 30km more of Kyrgyzstan to cycle, the road remains unpaved, but most of the time there is a smooth track we can follow. The rolling hills are green, we see some yurts and farmhouses, truck trailers with bee hives and horsemen.

At the border Rachel sneaks in a quick photo, but the guard makes her delete it: no photos! Other than that the crossing goes smooth, we get our Kyrgyz exit stamp, walk 50 meters through no-mans-land (where Rachel takes a couple more photos) and get to the Kazakh guards. All say “Welcome to Kazakhstan”. They look very professional with a nice shed and drug sniffing dog. We get a 15 day transit visa-on-arrival, plenty to make it through this small corner of this huge land.

We start with a couple kilometers of asphalt, then things deteriorate to a rough bumpy road full of large rocks. Not a fun start to cycling in Kazakhstan. Then around one corner we see asphalt again, only it’s not a very long stretch and we wonder why they bothered. After about 14km we reach Kapkapa after crossing the bridge we connect to a larger road which is paved and takes us to Kegen, another 14 kms. The valley is broad and flat and leaving Kapkapa, we can see Kegen in the distance.

On both sides of the road huge plains full of grass stretch out. People are mowing and baling it in large rolls. Kegen is a good-sized town, but there is only one bank. We cannot get the visa ATM card to work, so we change some dollars. The bank will not exchange Kyrgyzstan Coms.

There is a hotel marked on mapsdotme, with a note “inside okay” which warns us that the outside does not represent the hotel. We find it, and get a fairly nice room for about 15$. Warm shower downstairs, toilet in the upstairs hallway. Clean and comfortable and to our surprise there is also Wi-Fi.

We’ve received messages from Will, aka Supercycling Man and the French who took the shortcut road. Both say the road was not so bad: road asphalted for 50km up Sovietkoy, then turns left towards the pass on a dirt road for 15 with only 1.5km of steep and rocky (needing to push) and 2km downhill also steep and rocky continuing 23km to the border on dirt road, scenic and quiet. This is 23kms shorter than the main route we took.

After clean-up we walk to the bazaar, have lunch and get some beer for the afternoon.

Now catching up on our journal and photos.