Saturday, June 28, 2014
We said goodbye to Nomad Hostel and Bishkek and started our drive towards Osh. Getting out of the city took some time, as it usually does, even here there was urban sprawl. Shortly after clearing most of that sprawl we spotted familiar cops hiding in the shadows, but in passing I very obviously held up the iPhone filming them and we believe that may have deterred them from pulling us over that time… And we weren’t bothered anymore for the rest of the day.
The road first went west but after a while we turned south through the mountains and 2 passes, with a beautiful green valley in between, towards Osh.
We always planned to do the drive over 2 days (we had time to kill since our Uzbekistan visas didn’t allow us to enter before July 2nd), so in Kara-Köl (not to be confused with Karakol at the east side of Lake Issyk-Köl) we hoped to find a place to sleep for the night. Kyrgyzstan did not strike us as the country to go free-camp, so for us that was not an option.
Had it not been for an entry ‘Unnamed’ (*) in the category ‘Lodgings’ on our Garmin we would never have found ‘Hotel Turist’! So yes, we followed the directions to the only lodgings entry in within 50+km and found this tired looking Soviet era hotel. But you know what? It turned out to be alright: although everything looke worn and tired inside and out, everything was clean, including linens, which was the main thing. And the shower had hot water. the place was actually quite busy with locals and foreigners alike (we met South Korean travelers staying here), so this was obviously the place to be. Not too difficult to imagine as it is most likely the only option about misdway between Bishkek and Osh.
Quite the location for the last day of my 49th year!
Sunday, June 29, 2014
On this here my 50th birthday, we continued our drive south towards Osh. The first part was again through beautiful mountains before it flattened out and became less appealing. Again a cop-free day for us although we saw them in several locations.
(*) There are lots of entries called ‘Unnamed’ and it has to do with our Garmin not supporting any other than Latin characcters; that’s just the software we have on it.
