This gallery contains 16 photos.
This morning we were covering some bits of history in Kyrgyztan’s oldest city. We started at Sulaiman-Too peak, which houses a shrine, that supposedly marks the grave of the Muslim prophet Solomon. The peak itself is a UNESCO world heritage … Continue reading
We made it into the city of Osh, at around 250,000 inhabitants Kyrgyztan’s second biggest city (after – of course – Bishkek).
We had a couple of hours to kill before meeting up again for dinner. I ended up doing a walk around some of the town’s sights together with some folks from the group.
We first headed South along Lenin Avenue towards the square with a Lenin statue, as well as the Kyrgyz flag – straight in front of the building of the city and county administration.
From here it was downtown. We made it to the Archaeological Museum, which featured an interesting collection of – well – everything … from artifacts from the stone ages to more recent mementos from Soviet times. It felt a bit, as if we were the only visitors of the day.
With Osh’s main attractions (i.e. Peak Sulayman-Too and the market) being included for the following day, we decided, that it was time to finally get an introduction to the Baltika numbering scheme (in other words: we had a pre-dinner drink).
Today we had a distance of 330km ahead of us, we started along the lake until we got to the dam and the power plant; we now did follow the river, to finally hit the border to Uzbekistan.
We continued along the border and eventually made it to the city of Jalal-Abad, where we had a late lunch. We were now looking into an uneventful, postprandial ride to Osh, where we arrived in the late afternoon.
This night’s hotel was located straight at the shore of the lake with a nice little beach in walking distance. The hotel also featured a swimming pool (actually two of them – but only one was filled), various sport facilities, a celebration hall and a restaurant – though most of the facilities were not yet properly prepared for the season and looked somewhat run down.
The beach was a nice sand beach – covered by wild-growing Marijuana plants. The cows grazing at this beach must be some of the most relaxed and happy cows on the planet 😉
We left Bishkek this morning for our 340km trip to our accommodation at the shore of Lake Toktogul.
Initially the road was fairly busy, but eventually we had left Bishkek and the surrounding towns (along with associated traffic) behind. Traffic was light, when we hit the Ala-Tau mountain range, snaking our way uphill towards the Töö Ashuu Pass and its tunnel with a length of about 3km at an elevation around 3150m.
Coming out of the tunnel on the other side, it was downhill again. We had a quick stop at one of the street vendors, to get a taste of two of the region’s specialties:
We continued downhill into the Suusamyr Valley – still well above an elevation of 2000m. Lunch was had in a road-side chaikhana – the first noodle soup of many to come 😉
After lunch we continued along the valley – before eventually heading up again towards the Alabel Pass (3184m above sea level), passing into the Suusamyr-Too mountain range and facing the first and only (left-over) snow of the trip.
It was now downhill again towards Lake Toktogul, a reservoir feeding into a hydroelectric power plant and irrigation systems. We made a trip around half the lake, to reach our hotel.
This gallery contains 12 photos.
I made it into Bishkek in the early morning on a flight from Istanbul. After a bit of confusion related to the airport transfer, I eventually made it to the hotel – and after a good breakfast I did venture … Continue reading