Steve's Cycling Blog

Yesterday worked! Today I’m back to looking forward to the day which is probably just as well given that this is one of our longest riding stretches at seven days, and there are some pretty significant hills later in the the week.

TDA Weeks

 

It ends up being that rest days are weekends, and riding days are ‘weeks’. Things get a bit confusing at times because the number of days between each rest day varies which means that rest days are on a different day of the ‘real’ week.

 

So, when I talk about the weekend, don’t think Saturday and Sunday, think ‘rest day’, and when I talk about last week, that’s the riding days before the last rest day. This way things will probably make more sense 🙂

Sadly (the other) Steve hasn’t reached the same conclusion and despite the fact that he was supposed to be with us until Tehran he’s not riding today, but taking a taxi to Bishkek where he’ll spend a couple of days before flying home to Seattle. As he said farewell this morning he said how much he’d enjoyed everything about the trip, other than the riding – not great for a biking tour. Basically the combination of long days, rough roads, and bad drivers had made things too unpleasant for him to want to continue. We’ll miss his gentle nature, interesting stories and the evening talks he’s been giving on various topics.

We were on the road before the heat, wind and lunatics this morning which made the ride much more enjoyable.

Stage 48 rider notes

Having been lamenting the lack of things to do along the way, today I saw a sign for Fairytale canyon and decided I should make the most of passing and make the detour. While it’s no Bryce or King’s canyon, nor the arches national park it was worth the 2.5km walk up a sandy track (more photos below)

Fairytale canyon

A little while later I came across this place

The never-completed centre celebrating the Epic of Manas

There’s an oral poem of Manas who united the clans of Kyrgyz people, it’s 300,000 verses long (and has been translated into multiple languages). It’s been added to multiple times over the years. In 1995 someone had the idea to build a centre to celebrate the poem – and that’s what’s left (more photos below). The poem is usually sung or chanted (often in a trance). The dude on the hill apparently knew all 300,000 verses by heart and could chant his way through the whole thing. After the civil conflict in 2005 the people who were driving the project got chucked out of government and the whole project fell apart.

My last stop for the day was in the village of Kaji-say for ice cream, water, soft-drink and a beer for camp.

Tonight we’re camped beside Issyk-kul – the second largest saline lake in the world (and pretty deep at 700m). It’s also a perfect temperature for swimming (and getting somewhat cleaner).

Although I was relatively late into camp I managed to squeeze myself into a spot in the shade

Shady campsite – that’s my tent in the middle 🙂

Since then I’ve been for a wander round the beach and the lake area and Fredier and I also discovered that the cafe behind the lake also has cold beer on tap so it’s possible that we may have had one or two while waiting for dinner.

Hopefully the number of people on the beach will thin out pretty quickly once the sun is gone as there are still rather a number near our tents which might make sleeping a little difficult.

Kyrgyz currency is also pretty colorfull

Riding data

View from my tent

Swimmers in Issyk-Kul from my tent