Cycling Day 3: Bishkek to Paniflov
I left Bishkek early, although I had to prepare my stuff and bring everything down from the 9th floor, so I ended up leaving around 7.
Riding out of the city was nice and easy, since Olesia and Artëm live close to the foothills, I had a nice 5-mile descent as I left.
Outside of Bishkek were endless suburbs. This is pretty nice riding, because the cars are cautious and slow. I still had the nice view of the mountains to the south, and I rode straight through to Kara-Balta, about 75km from Bishkek. Kara-Balta is the crossroads between Bishkek and Osh, another important Kyrgyz city. I had opted not to go to Osh when planning this trip, just to give me some more time to get used to riding before tackling those very intimidating mountains.
Arrival in Kara-Balta
There wasn’t a whole lot going on in Kara-Balta. I hung out in the main park downtown until it got unbearably hot. Then I went to an air-conditioned cafe and ate some more Ashlyan-fu and waited out the heat. It was scorching hot every time I went outside to grab something from my bike.
War memorial in Kara-Balta
I got up to leave around 5pm to ride a little bit further, but the restaurant owners refused to charge me for the tea and soup that I had consumed. They said I needed energy for my ride and they were happy that I stopped by. I never expect this sort of thing, but these sorts of displays of kindness are pretty much becoming daily occurrences.
I figured I would get a head start on my next few days. I was still feeling fresh and I had successfully avoided the heat. Kara-Balta was the last town of any substance until the border and sure enough, the populated suburbs quickly gave way to farmland as soon as I left town.
Arrival in Paniflov
I had found a spot on ioverlander.com, a website for wild camping spots, that showed a nice secluded spot next to a river and out of the way of the road. I figured I would try that. As I got closer to the spot, I stopped at a convenience store to stock up on some water. The shop owner was showing me his bike and asked me about my trip. I showed him where I intended to camp and asked if it was possible. He said, in a manner of speaking, that it wasn’t really a camping spot - not that I couldn’t camp there, but it was just swamps. Well, I still had some time left in the day so I figured if it really sucked I could ride back and ask for advice. When I got to the spot, less than a mile away, I would say that even the shop owner had oversold it…the whole area was dry and appeared to have become a dumping ground for people’s trash, so there were insects everywhere and it smelled terrible.
As I was riding to the spot I noticed another lake out in the distance in the opposite direction. The first road I took that looked like it went there dead-ended in some fields. I tried a different, dusty dirt road, and it looked like it came right up to the lake. There were some farmers hanging out on the road so I went up to them and asked if it would be ok if I put my tent there. They said it was a public reservoir and that it wouldn’t be a problem for me to camp there. One of them came with me to show me some appropriate spots and then hung around while I set up my tent, helped out with the poles and showed me where to prop up my bike. Then, over the next hour and a half or so until sunset, I would say no fewer than 5 or 6 people came over to my spot. I’m guessing that word had gotten around that some weirdo with a bike and a tent showed up at the lake, or they were just on their way home after working in the fields or putting their cows away.
One person asked if I needed my phone charged and he could plug it in at his house, another offered me water and beer, a couple just wanted to know about my trip, one person wanted to ask me about religion and was extolling his Islamic prayer practices.
This man pulled up in his Lada to drop off some plov
I ate the plov and passed out. I planned to wake up as close to dawn as possible to tear down and leave.
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