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.
