And I would do anything for love...: The day I met Wilko again
The next morning I offered to go back up the mountain in order to help Ana get her bike up around the landslide. It was the only course of action a real honourable gentleman such as myself could make really. She responded by saying I should drink some kumus and asked a small timid woman from the nearest yurt if we could have a glass. Ana explained to me that kumus was the national drink and that everyone drank it, a kind of Kyrgyz Irn Bru. Hard to believe any national drink could taste worse than Irn Bru, but perhaps not so hard to believe when I tell you that kumus is fermented horse milk. I won't try and describe what I tasted as I took my first sip, no doubt you can imagine, and I wouldn't want to put any of you reading this off your dinner. Fortunately Ana had told me that if I didn't like it she would drink the rest, an offer that I held her to. I watched her as she downed the glass, and inserted the occasional "mmm" and "ahh" of satisfaction in for the benefit of the watching woman. Ana had been in the country for more than a month, and I had to admit she was a real pro at the 'pretending to like fermented horse milk' game.
So we cycled together back up the road towards the landslide, chatting away happily on the quiet road, until yet another touring cyclist came towards us. It was the Frenchman that Gero had told me about, Jacques. He was also on a world tour, but going westwards and having spent more than three years cycling the Americas, sailing the Pacific, and cycling across Asia, he was on his way home. But, upon hearing that I was going back to help Ana he also offered to come back and provide additional assistance. 'Dude you are totally cramping my style!' I thought. Ana considered his offer but finally declined it after looking me up and down and deciding that I was all the help she needed. It was shortly after the two of us said goodbye to Jacques and cycled on together that she told me that she was short-sighted and had poor vision. "Ah! Of course!" I said, "that explains a lot!"
Jacques - world cyclist, extreme tourist, and possible pirate
We arrived at the point where the road was closed and headed for the track that I had taken before. I had rather optimistically believed that the two of us would be able to push the loaded bikes up between us, but the way was rather steeper than I remembered and there was no big motorcyclist to help. It actually took both of us to push the unloaded bikes up, and the bags had to be carried up separately. There were five switchbacks in all, and the whole process took more than an hour of back and forths. And to make it more fun it was raining again. There were plenty of people walking up the side of the mountain to get between taxis on either side, and a couple of entrepreneurs on horseback were offering to carry people or their bags up for a small fee. I wasn't having any of that though, poor horses, and Ana and I completed the job under our own steam.
Okay so here is a picture of the landslide. The huge gouge in the top middle of the picture is what had fallen, and below that to the right you can see it half covering the road. The day before it had been twice as high.
We cycled the rest of the way up the two passes and then had a nice long descent into Sary Tash, where I guessed I had to find an old man stinking of cigarettes to apologise to. But it was another familiar face that caught my eye as we rode towards the village, a motorcyclist zooming past in the opposite direction and then turning to come back and talk to us. Of course it was Wilko. Unable to get past the landslide he and his buddies were camping near Sary Tash, and he was now riding up to have a look at the current situation. Its so easy on a motorbike isn't it? As for what I myself was doing back on the wrong side of the landslide, well, that took a bit of explaining.
On the second pass Ana got the local kids to help her get the bike up. I'd call that cheating
"Are you still f*cking following me?" said Ana sweetly as the next day I escorted her the rest of the way to the border. It was the only really honourable course of action for a gentleman such as myself to make.
