Out of the Darkness

Kyrgyzstan
Osh is the second biggest city in Kyrgyzstan, but there's really nothing much to do there.

So what did I do?

I cooked.

I guess you can say I'm tired of the same food everyday.

This was pasta with tomatoes and sausage.

This was the same pasta, but mixed with some marinated salad that they sell in the bazaar.

I met some interesting people.

The guy in the middle is supposed to be a big Bollywood film star. His name is Shahrukh Khan and he's supposedly hiding out in this little snack shop in Kyrgyzstan because he can't handle all the media attention he's getting back home.

I met him while I was buying a soda from the shack closest to my hotel. I bought my soda and out pops this really energetic guy asking me if I knew who he was. I'm like, no and if you really wanted to be anonymous why do you need to tell me who you are?


I spent most evenings in Osh eating shashlyk at an outdoor cafe around the corner from my hotel. I would sit down and pretty soon I would be joined by a group of men out for a night on the town. They'd start drinking vodka and quickly get totally drunk. After a while I found it was kinda fun to play around with these guys and we'd communicate using exaggerated gestures and silly sounds.

Time to leave Osh!

Not that easy. After two perfect days in Osh, the weather turned nasty, just in time for me to hit the road. I had to cycle into the mountains to get to China and I wasn't thrilled about riding into bad weather.

I prolonged my stay in Osh hoping to wait out the bad weather. I checked weather forecasts on the internet religiously in the morning and evening everyday, but it always showed 90% chance of rain. I was bored out of my mind in Osh and wanted to get the heck out.

Mother nature has a way of flirting with you. The day that I finally left began with partly cloudy skies. I became optimistic. I sang between breaths as I cycled. Then I met this guy on a horse who wanted me to take his picture.

The sun soon turned to wind and rain.

It was bearable in the lower elevations, but once the road started to climb the rain turned into a full on blizzard.

Cold, exhausted, and soaking wet from sweat, I was tired of this crappy weather. Fortunately a military guy in a Russian jeep showed up and insisted I get in. I put up a good resistance, but forget it I was beat.

I took a picture of my benefactor, Ylombek, at the top of the pass.

Later on, we had tea in a trailer-converted-cafe. That's my mp3 player Ylombek is listening to, having a good time as you can tell.

Ylombek took me to Sary Tash, the last settlement before the Chinese border at Irkhestam pass. To call Sary Tash civilization is a real stretch. There's no running water, but plenty of mud. At 3100m, the place was snowbound and because we were in the middle of a storm you can't tell where the snow ends and where the clouds begin. It's all white everywhere you look, except for the shacks that people live in along with their livestock.

My first night in Sary Tash was a real treat. That night a traveling vaudeville show was in town and since I had nothing better to do, I checked it out. The show was held in the school's auditorium which was about 40' x 30': a very intimate setting. The whole town showed up because this was the main event of the winter. It was ridiculously crowded. People squeezed and pushed each other for a place on the hard bench. Old men in the corner talked and spat sunflower seeds without a care. Kids chased each other in the aisles. Teenage girls huddled close together giggling, while boys hovered on their periphery trying to look cool. Women talked to their neighbors, and grandmas berated their grandkids. The town drunk went from group to group, making a fool of himself.

The show was all song and dance, with men dressed as women which made the crowd go nuts. I didn't understand a word of it and my butt was starting to hurt from sitting on the bench so I made an early exit. I didn't want to ruin the evening for the people there by taking a picture and using the flash, so I just went back to the guesthouse.

I stayed at a guesthouse operated by a friendly family. Their point person, who did all the business transactions, was their 16 year old daughter Aida who spoke the closest approximation to English. Aida was pretty and had a bubbly personality. She always smiled and bounded from chore to chore with the springy gait of youth. Seeing her do her chores it made me think that chores were just another game for her. When I left Osh, I was warned about the wolves of Sary Tash. I saw no canine wolves, but in retrospect I believe Aida was the Wolf of Sary Tash.

 Aida is the one on the very right. This is her store. On the outside is "Kape Aida"

This girl was smart. I got to Sary Tash on Thursday but Aida told me that it was Friday and that the border was closed during the weekend. She did this so that I would have to stay 3 days until "Monday" (which was actually Sunday) when the border was supposed to open. The border actually stays open on Saturday, as evidenced by the heavy traffic on that day. Not knowing any better I stayed 3 extremely boring days in Sary Tash. You can't pick where diarrhea strikes, but when it strikes where there are only pit toilets, then life sucks.
Bored with nothing to do, no one to talk to in Sary Tash.

For food, Aida charged me $1.10 for instant noodles. She sold me a bottle of Coke that had been diluted using the local cola that tasted like medicine.

So Aida's "Monday" rolls around and I am so ready to leave. The problem is that it's been snowing for the last 24 hours and the wind began to blow. Forget cycling, I'm hitching. So I go to the road and wait for 3 hours in the freezing wind hoping for a truck to pass because up here, in this season, that's the only thing that goes to the border. I wait and the road has not been this quiet for 3 days. wtf? Well, the reason is of course it's actually Sunday, when the border does officially close. So I give up and pay $33 for a jeep to take me to the border. Aida's plan was for me to give up and pay for another night at her guest house.

On the way to Irkhestam Pass we get scary weather and I'm glad to be in a jeep.

We came upon these trucks that have been stuck up here for 3 days. We take their 2 Chinese passengers and head back. When we get back to Sary Tash, our jeep needs gas and the only place that sells it is Aida's. The driver caught her trying to sell 4L of gas in a 5L bottle as if it's 5L. How can she do this type of stuff? I mean we can get into some serious trouble if we're stuck out there. I decide to go all the way back to Osh. Osh...here we go again.

Two more days of checking the weather, debating whether I should head to Bishkek and use up the rest of my Kyrgyz visa before giving Irkhestam another try. Forget it, the entire country's got poor weather and I need to get to Kashgar to receive a package.

Irkhestam, part 2. I didn't even try cycling this time. I just cycled to the edge of town and waited for a truck. Fortunately I was picked up by two guys who knew how to have fun. Bastan and Dostik were 18 and 23 respectively and we got along really well. They were going to the border with an empty truck to haul goods into Kyrgyzstan from China so there was plenty of space for my bike.

It was a fun ride. These guys drove like maniacs. They played their music really loud and they liked to drive really close to young girls and honk the truck's air horn. They did the same thing with animals and afterwards we would laugh hysterically. We stopped at a couple of restaurants just to have tea and flirt with the waitresses. We played silly games using improvised toys like empty cigarette boxes and made a competition out of it.

Bastan

Dostlik

Irkhestam, part2: the weather's not much better.

We get to Irkhestam at 9PM. I pay the guys for the ride and take them out to dinner. They insist that I sleep in the truck for the night. Dostlik took the money I paid him and he spent the night in a brothel. He gave a chocolate bar to me as a gift in the morning and saw me to the border.

I found Kashgar in the middle of a dust storm. There was dust everywhere and you can hardly see the sun. I've been in Kashgar before so I begin cycling after a day. It's too early for Tibet so I decided to ride to Urumqi across the Taklamakan desert.

Desert cycling on the brand new 314 highway. Three years ago this road did not exits. Now 1600km of world class highway.

It's like being on another planet.

So now I'm in Aksu, 450km northeast of Kashgar. The day before yesterday I pulled a 216km day, averaging 31.6kph. I was totally fried afterwards, but Aksu has got all the comforts of a Chinesified city.