Mughrab Rest Day, Day 21 (0km)

Pamir Highway Day 7

I wake up in Mughrab eager to take on the bizarre (or should that read bazaar?) and bag the best goods and the pick of any vegetables for my depleted supplies. I decide it’s a good idea to wake myself up at the crack of dawn, in order to descend on the Chinese shipping containers which have been arranged into a market for the crowds. It’s seems peculiar that this far from the sea, where even scrap cardboard seems to be a treasured resource, that people have made the effort to arrange old shipping containers into shops. They look horribly cold in winter, are horribly hot in the winter and are unattractive, dusty and noisy.

Early morning at the bazaar.

The bazaar is strangely empty though. In most parts of Asia the people wake up at the crack of sunlight, but it’s too cold in the white washed mud-brick town to wake up and the bizarre bazaar kicks off at around ten o clock. The town in the early morning orange glow is strangely captivating; maybe I’m starting to understand why people live in this part of the world.

The bazaars shops all seem to sell the same things. There are about twenty shops selling exactly the same goods. Eventually I manage to find a few onions, a top up of my tomato puree and some chocolates on one of the retailer’s gourmet shelves. It’s hardly a treasure trove, but will keep me going. What’s incredible is that nearly everything in the market comes from Osh in Kyrgyzstan, a horrific journey over some tough roads, when Chinese trucks roll thtough the town all day and the city of Khorog lies less than a day away over tarred roads! Krygyz people living here and want to buy Krygyz goods!

I spend the rest of the day trying to post a letter (failed), trying to make a phone call (failed), trying to use the internet (failed) and getting something other than soup or plov to eat (failed); it is definitely a successful day! I end up spending the remainder of the evening having a nice time with the local fire brigade who are the only ones in town who have electricity and who are happy to charge my batteries in exchange for the promise of a few snaps in the post.

The Firemen who have electricity.

Nr. Ak Baital Pass to Mughrab, Day 20 (58km)

Pamir Highway Day 6

Coming off the Ak Baital pass, Mughrab was virtually downhill all the way.

I had camped up in an ancient caravanserai which a fellow cyclist had directed me towards and looked forward to reaching it for most of the previous day. How romantic I’d thought; a small hostel on  the great silk road, having provided shelter for travellers for thousands of years and would now shelter  little me. I had slept in great caravanserais in Turkey, Syria and Iran and always felt safe in their stout stone walls. Yet, when I finally reached the caravanserai, all I could find were small mounds of mud which had been used as a toilet and dump. I was left mortally disappointed. I had imagined a palace fit for the medieval trader, complete with somewhere safe to store my camels (my bicycle?) The rubbish also confused me; why would you drive all these kilometres to dump your rubbish at this particular point? I had just cycled through hundreds of kilometres of potential rubbish tip, but the local riff-raf had chosen to dump their rubbish in a site of such historic importance!

I pack up camp in the morning, wade bare footed through the same cold stream I was forced to cross the previous evening, bicycle above my head away from the site. It’s only when I cycle another five kilometres down the road which I encounter the real Caravanserai. It’s grand and welcoming and built of stout stone. I had camped in a landfill site. Shit.

I thought this only happened in cartoons

I arrive in Mughrab by late morning and claim the last stick of Shasklik in what passes for the bazaar; it’s served luke warm as the kebabi struggles to cook it by burning bits of cardboard covered in Chinese writing. There aren’t any chunks of scolding-white burning coals, to be had here. In fact i havn’t seen a single tree in a few days and cooking one’s shaskliks over the normal Pamiri fuel; a freshly dried cow pat is never going to draw the punters to your kebab stall!

Lake Karakul to beyond Ak Baital Pass, Day 19 (72km)

Pamir Highway Day 5

I wake up not in my tent, but in a small mud outbuilding beside Lake Karakul.  The occupants are out already.  They are gathering grass for the winter to feed their animals around the deep blue, crystal clear lagoon. They cut away at patchy inch high grass with large scythes and seem to be making little or no progress in collecting it. It is the only vegetation for miles, and hardly noticeable on the desert floor. This is a tough existence and to my untrained eye looks like a waste of time. Despite a brilliant blue sky and the lack of a single cloud, the temperature hovers around four degrees.

My kind hosts.

Russian bike, Kyrgyz Men, Tajikistan photographed by an Englishman.

I set off in the shadow of Mt Muztagh Ata, one of the several 7 000m-plus peaks that make up the Pamir range surrounding the lake. My diary for day five really lacks articulation, and the constant and fearsome headwinds are to blame. When Marco Polo visited Lake Karakul in the 13^th century and also complained bitterly about the wind, and nearly eight hundred years later and I find myself in the same situation. The painful truth is that I’m likely to be at the mercy of this powerful headwind until the end of the highway at Khorog. I am sometimes limited to 8kmh on the flat plateau by the sheer power of the wind. The road also returned to corrugations for a longish stretch which didn’t help my moral. It depresses me that for another thousand kilometres or so, i might have nothing but the wind roaring past my ears for company.

I pass a number of abandoned collective farms sitting in isolated parts of the plateau; farming was never going to work well in this part of the world, they sit desolate and part occupied. Most of the buildings seem to have been filled with cow pats for burning through the winter, while the occupants have reverted to their felt yurts. The other amazing legacy of the USSR is the power lines and pylons which haul themselves over the mountains and over the passes. You can go a whole day without seeing another sole, but are kept company by the never ending wooden sticks poking out of the ground at regular intervals.  At the height of Soviet Power, not only were there working collective farms in this part of the world, but working electricity and telephones; it all seems a long way away, as the cables sit slack and damaged on the desert floor.

I spend the afternoon climbing the Ak Baital Pass to the highest point of the journey; a 4600m summit. I sit at the top of the climb, in a small cut out in the rock and eat the last of my snickers bars. I wonder if I’ll ever be back at this height by bicycle. I feel quite head achy with the altitude, but I really feel I am crossing a line in the journey and so force myself to sit and enjoy the altitude for a few more minutes. From this point onwards it is more down than up; I’m on top of the world and in punching distance of Mughrab.

Top of the Pass

The only thing I have hastily scrawled in my diary on day 5 was ‘Hard day’. I fall asleep tired and dusty, elated and alive.

Been a lil busy, frying too many fish.

Sorry about the incomplete blog. A few people have been nagging me to get it finished, but i’m very busy with work on other projects. Its all typed up, it just needs a little polishing before I get it up on here. Meanwhile here’s an article which i wrote for Manchester’s Student Direct. Click the picture below to go to the full size. The blog will be finished and polished  in the next fortnight or so!

 

Before Tajik border to Lake Karakul, Day 18 (67km)

Pamir Highway Day 4

I wake up in the deathly darkness and feeling very cold, push open the zip and receive five or six inches of snow inside my tent for my endeavours. The blizzard has cleared overnight, the skies are blue, but the whole world has turned brilliant white and I can’t even see the road. My tent has been turned into an igloo and it takes some skill to pack it away without packing away a large supply of slush puppy; it’s a skill I don’t have.

The pass to the Tajik border station is over 4300m and I painfully push up it, refusing to stop once as, the air gets noticeably thinner for the first time. The pass really hurts me as my slick tyres spin in the snow and I find myself out of the saddle.  It’s  like I’m back home cycling in the Peak-District. The road wound on and on at a strong gradient and constantly I felt myself crashing through small streams which had been covered by the snow. Lungs screaming I reached the top of the Toktogul pass and felt quite like vomiting up my breakfast. It had taken me a few hours to cover the 13km to the top of the pass. Upon summiting, I dip into my supply of precious energy drink. I sit around on the summit for around half an hour, admiring the view from a horribly soviet monument.

The border post is manned by surly looking Tajik’s, not the ethnic Krygyz who live in this part of Tajikistan. They are armed heavily and wear modern looking insulated jackets which look like they were lifted straight from the US Marine Corps, modern boots and the hammer and sickle still displayed prominently on their caps. As if a line has been drawn across the road, at the border the snow suddenly and completely ends but is replaced by a howling, cutting wind and a complete lack of any vegetation. This is the Murghab Pamiri Plateau which will accompany me all the way to the Wakhan valley shared with Afghanistan.  A border guard who looks like he was descended from a bear with a dash of weasel blood snatches my passport on arrival and scrabbles back into his hut.  He scribbles my details incoherently on various scraps of papers and grumpily sends me on my way.  There are local people waiting who will probably be paying some ‘fees’ to enter Tajikistan and the taking of such ‘fees’ must no longer me done in front of foreigners.

The plateau in front of me is barren, yet strangely beautiful. Complete silence engulfs the rich brown mountains, deep blue sky and the new Chinese security fence runs off into the distance in parallel with the road. I pedal on into Tajikistan captivated by the scenery; the pain of the morning seemed a long way away. Snow, grass and sheep seem another world away; I pedal off in the afternoon sun, heading south, a solitary figure pedalling away on the horizon towards Lake Karakul.

After the Tajik border, the scenary suddenly changed and the snow disappeared.

Before Taldyk Pass to no-man’s land before Tajik Border, Day 17 (62km)

Pamir Highway Day 3

It was the day I had been dreading and I woke up with a thick layer of ice on the tent and a desire to stay inside my slightly mildew smelling sleeping bag until midday. I crawled out of my tent, smashed the ice on the nearest stream to fill my water bottles and mustered all my strength and energy. I boarded my steed and started the days task of climbing to an altitude of 3500m. The Taldyk pass has been conquered by no one; it’s ferocious weather and steep slopes have beaten many, and the Sovietski road’s condition suggests that it has finally surrendered to the mountains, only for a new contender to take their turn; the Chinese, who are now attempting to cut a new road through the remaining mess. Stories about the ferocious wind, plumes of dust and army’s of Kamaz trucks storming up the narrow channel , have haunted me since Osh, when cyclists arriving at the hostel looked as if they had been marooned on a desert island; coughing sand from their lungs, shaking powder from their hair and stuffing their hungry bellies with kilos of shashlyk. This was the stretch that they said hurt them!

This lone yurt sits alongside the new Chinese road; it might be one of it's last summers.

The surface was in places only sand and the heavy bike sank, forcing me to run alongside pushing the sinking bike to avoid being squashed by the determined Kamaz drivers. It’s interesting that it’s the Chinese trucks which slowed down and offered courteous waves to allow the lone cyclist to weave his way unimpeded up the pass, whereas the Kyrgyz drivers hooted and accelerated to insure a good gassing from their diesel fumes.

Monument to the lost lives at the top of the Taldyk Pass

From my travels in China I had always thought of the Chinese as cold and uncompassionate, yet the mainly Uighur drivers seem to have a great respect for the European hauling his weight over the mountains.

It takes me two hours to reach the crux of the twisty climb and as I approach the monument to the lives lost building the pass, a mighty wind bellows over the summit hitting me and rattling every bolt on my bike and bone on my body. The mighty Pamir is upon me and I am surrounded by snow capped peaks. I barely dare take out my camera to take a victorious photo, and fight a losing battle to move forward off the pass. The temperature has suddenly plummeted and I am cycling in all my clothes and trousers for the first time on the trip (and it would turn out the first of many days for the next weeks).

On the way down I see the wall of the mountain covered in small ant like figures painfully drilling away into the hillside with small hand drills; if anyone can conquer this region, it’s sadly the Chinese and brute force and sheer bloody mindedness are their weapons of choice. At the bottom of the rock face are poor looking Kyrgyz shepherds camped up in traditional caravans that look like they were once train carriages on a Moscow bound route alongside cheap and grubby looking yurts. These are poor people even by nomadic standards. Their way of life has survived hundreds of years, in these parts largely surviving even the long arm of Stalin’s collectivisation; their only protection was their extreme isolation and as the Chinese tar a two lane highway alongside their settlements and over their grazing, you have to wonder for how much longer. My silly nostalgic view takes a hit as I pass a group of Kyrgyz children who have gathered to throw stones at me by the side of the road, they all have snotty noses, are painfully thin, have chapped skin from the constant wind and bloody red eyes from the constant cooking smoke in their Yurts; maybe the Chinese will be their saviours.

The Pamir Highway at Sary Tash; the last petrol station for a very long way.

Sary Tash is the last village in Kyrgyzstan and where the road splits from the Pamir Highway to the road to Kashgar and China. The roads split at a modern looking petrol station which dwarfs over the white washed village which could just as well have been lifted straight out of Tibet or Ladakh. I look out at the road to Chinese Simhana and wish I had fixed my visa problems in Bishkek; I have a Chinese visa but cannot continue my journey there to the Silk Road town of Kashgar. I take lunch in a small cafe, which is probably the last small cafe for a few hundred kilometres, poke around the village to search out any fresh vegetables and set out across the plateau which I have reached only two bruised looking onions and a snickers bar heavier, completely alone but for the howling wind. The sporadic truck traffic which has lent me company from Osh is going towards China, and only an old soviet radar station, its gold dome shining in the sun and a dilapidated Krygyz army base, complete with a comic selection of ex-Soviet hardware, collapsed walls and what look like US-aid tents in place of the crumbling barracks offer any clue to any human inhabitation. Small birds are attempt vigorously to fly off a single line of the tale tale wooden pylons which litter the former CIS heading towards the border station, but are blown back by fearsome gusts blowing from the west. I stick up my hood and push forward head down, struggling to enjoy the view which I have so yearned for in the last year towards Tajikistan.

I finally reach deserted border station to check my way out of Krygyzstan. I’m left standing in the biting cold by the border guards who won’t let me enter their building, and who leave me for newaly forty minutes. I pass though without fanfare into the large stretch of no-man’s land which separates the two republics and snow begins to fall. Slowly snow begins to settle on the ground around me, and dwarfed my snowy giants around me, I pitch up in the shadow of a huge glacier and fall asleep to the sounds of the wind and the blizzard battering my tent. I hope and pray the snow doesn’t settle. For the first time in a long time I fear the wrath of Mother Nature; I am scared.

Beyond Gulcho to before Taldyk Pass, Day 16 (74km)

Pamir Highway Day 2

Farm workers use the road surface to dry and bundle their straw; the traffic or lack of it makes it a perfect work surface.

I’d been warned about this road by many. ‘The corrugations’ they moaned ‘the surface’ they’d cried, and so I had set off with a siege mentality on day two worthy of facing Satan’s secondary sandy approach to the gates of Sodom. ‘The road broke all my equipment’ was the final advice of a motorcyclist I had met in Osh, and so I spent the morning riding every kilometre as fast as I could, always expecting the next to descend into chaos. Every kilometre I pedalled put me another closer to the Pamiri plateau.

The chaos never came though, and although it wasn’t smooth pavement, the road often rewarded me with a small slither of compacted dust by the side of the road to pedal along. Annoyingly it looked like at some point the road had been surfaced; piles of tar sat ripped up at its sides. The surface which had replaced the stout communist looking stuff was of the large pebble type. One can only wonder how a country can move so clearly backwards in time, and this will be my lasting impression of Kyrgyzstan; a state which is reneging as opposed to moving forward, the legacy of Stalin slowly rotting in its former glory.

Climbing again. Central Asia is not a place for people who don't like hills.

The gradient of the road continued at its same steady pace until I found myself surrounded by towering mountains, alongside raging glacial streams and through twisting valleys littered with the occasional village. I cycle along and imagine I am back in Pakistan for a while, hum along to Tracy Chapman and occasionally am rewarded by the staggering views of the glowing icy mountains on the horizon, peeking round the kinks in the valley.

I camp up the day utterly exhausted and nearly unable to walk in a Jailoo alongside Krygyz yurts for what is probably the last time. Tomorrow will see the start of the Pamir proper, Tajikistan, the high altitude desert, the wind and the desolation.

Osh to beyond Gulcho, Day 15 (90km)

Pamir Highway Day 1

I found myself winding my way out of Osh at the head of the Pamir highway on a hot and sunny spring day. I’d spent too many days in the Uzbek dominated city and started to feel the itch which is either a lack of personal hygiene or more likely an indicator of a longing to get back on with the journey. Passing the long neglected rail terminal on the edge of town, it’s hard to believe that it once connected this last outpost city to the rest of the USSR. The only sign of life in the terminal is an informal market of shabby rural men, who sit squatted on the rails selling watermelons. Powerful and industrial looking engines sit menacingly in their sheds neglected and still emblazoned with the powerful symbols of the CCCP, while rolling stock sits rusting around the depot on randomly placed pieces of rail. These are the last watermelons for hundreds of kilometres. This might be the end of the railway, but the road leads off into and over the high Pamir, bordering the Hindu Kush range, which runs into the Karakorum; the range which will become the great Himalaya. From this point onwards you could wonder (evading soldiers all the way!) for thousands of kilometres in high altitude, deserted and isolated mountains all the way to Kathmandu or Lhasa. I am laden with fresh supplies from Osh, my bags give off the smell of smoked cheese and Russian salamis; the Lonely Planet seems to think I won’t find fresh food for well over a week!

There is no big sign which marks the start of the highway, and as usual I feel slightly aggrieved at the lack of fanfare for the start of my big stunt and struggle to find a good place to pose for a victorious photo. All that happens is the largely paved road slowly becomes less busy, with only an occasional Kamaz truck for company on its way to the Chinese border at Sary-Tash and the asphalt slowly peters out into a mixture of gravel, soviet concrete and newly refurbished ‘ke-taiski’ or Chinese road. The start of the highway tacks its way through yellowed grazing fields contained in sun burnt wide valleys, encased by low lying gravelled hills.

The ride is easy despite the slow gradient and I even muster the energy to shout ‘Ne Hao’ (hello) at every group of Chinese engineers I see and humour the request of every third Krygyz (or are they Uzbeks? This is a confusing part of the world demographically, and it’s better not to get involved less you start another civil war) to take their photographs.   Children run after the bike with armfuls of apples on several occasions, and I humour them as well by polishing off the lot.  I could get used to my new role as a responsible tourist.

Suddenly as if a line was drawn across the road the landscape changes and I find myself climbing up the first of three passes to the top of the Pamir plateau. The first mountain pass pass sits at around 2300m and I struggle up it without using the c-word once which I feel is quite a good achievement. The top of the pass is marked with another soviet looking monument to the comradeship of the (mainly forced) labourers who patriotically built these killer roads.  The Jailoo at the top of the pass seems largely unaffected by the monstrous clouds of dust thrown up by the Chinese engineers and their machines which are laying a European quality road through the middle of their historic grazing grounds, and young boys gallop around on horseback enthusiastically to display their skills to the ‘velocipede turista’.

Around 80km outside Osh I reach Gulcho, where the heavens open and it starts to rain. The town is full of drunks, and one shitty cafe which serves meat dumplings known locally as manti for two or three times the going rate. The town boasts a number of soviet era concrete apartment blocks, whose inhabitants no longer have running water, having failed to maintain any of the roads and the place stinks of decay and neglect. The buildings could well have been lifted from Moscow, St.Petersberg, Warsaw or East Germany, yet these ones are inhabited by people who only sixty years previously had probably never even heard of the Soviet Union.

Despite struggling on for another 10km the man upstairs is definitely telling me to go to rest up and so I commence my search for the perfect camp. I pitch up for the day in a small valley which seems to be perfectly secluded and hidden from the road; perfect for a good night’s sleep and away from any prying eyes. I’m just cooking my first plate of instant noodles when I realise I’ve parked up almost on top of what is in fact a road to a nearby village. Sigh. The first locals arrive whooping with delight with their donkeys five minutes later. Oh the joy.

Osh, Day 11 (740km)

The Abdirahmanov dynasty are a well known family in this part of the world. They have the third biggest flock in the region, enjoy luxuries like jam with their bread and live well for nomads. They have a crystal white yurt, the interior covered with Shydraks (felt rugs), carved wooden doors and fur lined clothes. After a long day of shepherding, milking around the family yurts, the sun began to set over the jailoo once more and a boy mounted a horse to fetch the herds from the high pastures. I was keen to help after failing so miserably at milking a mare and proving I was physically uncapable of hauling water from the nearby stream at this altitude and so volunteered to go along to help.

The family seemed quite surprised at my request; why would i want to go and fetch the sheep, it was a job for boys! Eventually they agreed though and a horse was saddled for me. Yet it seemed that i hadn’t volunteered to help, but infact volunteered to fetch the sheep.

‘But i don’t know how to round up sheep’ I complained. ‘I also don’t know where the sheep are, how many of them there should be and which ones are yours’.

Sultan was quick to dismiss my concerns ‘You will know. Don’t worry’ with which he pointed up the mountain side in the direction of the sheep. I trotted off into the hills for a baptism of fire in shepherding sheep with a lame horse (a bad workman blames his tools).

The sheep safely in their pen for the night and the clouds turning pink over the lake, Sultan showed me the marks and wounds on the horses from wolf attacks only a week before. As a precaution now he sets chinese fire crackers off every night, throwing them overarm into the distance which reverberate around the quiet valley. We light gas lamps around the pen to further discourage Mr. Wolf from having a shashlyk party and go to sleep once more in the yurt.

From Song Kol it was a 400km slog over an awful road to the Uzbek town of Osh. Upon finally reaching tarmac after riding on appauling gravel roads, i found myself averaging over 35kph due to the ease of my new passage. I now sit at the head of the Pamir Highway which i expect to complete by early september. Expect the next excert from the town of Khorog, at the end of the highway and the Wakhan Afghan valley. With the grace of god the 4500m passes will be beaten, as they say in these parts inshallah.

See you in a fortnight!

Song Kol, Day 7 (369km)

I left my riverside camp beside Sary Bulak village with tired legs and the knowledge that within 50km i would arrive at the prize of Song Kol; a beautiful lake set amongst rolling pastures and summer jailoos (high altitude summer grazing). Within a few hours I would be camped up beside the lake with my book, a beautiful selection of salamis and cheese from the bazaar in Kochkor and go for a swim; i even had purchased a cigar for the occasion. The previous day had been surprisingly reassuring as i had entered the central Tian Shen mountain range and covered nearly 100km without too many problems

Sary Bulak is a village constructed from chinese sea containers, a common sight in cetral Krygyzstan, made only to serve the road and serving tired travellers greasy mutton and the occasional stale snickers bar. Snickers bar in mouth i begun the 50km climb away from the tarmac on a corrugated road, past glacial streams and away from the connected world for a week or two.

By mid afternoon i had climbed only 39km, i had left the camp at 8am. My average speed had reduced to 8kph and I was seriously starting to doubt whether i had the power to go on. I started to push my bike solemnly along the road , through the dust and felt once again thouroughly miserable.

Spitting blood and now struggling to push my bike along the dirt road, I saw a crest in the road; i had now been climbing solidly for 43km, it could well be the end of my ordeal, perhaps I had finally broken the 3400m pass to reach the Jailoo and lake. From the horizon a european party came into view on a horse tour. The lead rider could well have been Camilla Parker-Bowles and was trotting along with an authority as if she was performing for the crowds at horse guards parade. She didn’t so much as flick me a coursery glance as i administer myself CPR in the dirt for the tenth succesive time in the last kilometre. From the depths of my good nature i managed to muster a ‘Afternoon’ from the depths of my lungs, it was reciprocated with seeming surprise and shock as the women looked down from the side of her horse. Perhaps she hadn’t noticed me on a lowly bicycle, while she was riding on a fine nomadic steed and enjoying her cultural experience.

‘I don’t spose you could tell me how many more kilometres it is to the lake could you?’

‘WHAT?!’

‘How many kilometres is the lake?’

‘How should i know? I’m riding a horse.’

‘But surely you must have been riding for a period of time, and cover on average an average number of kilometres. So how many hours have you been riding?’

‘In which case… 30 kilometres. Have a nice ride.’ With which she rode off down the pass and was followed my a number of snotty girls, probably named Florence, Tibby, Tabby and studying theology at the University of Durham.

I sat by the side of the road in a state of panic and shed a tear. I ate my last fruitella from home and begun to plot my suicide. In the distance the smoke plume from a Lada fighting its way valiently up the pass came into view and i watched it in a slight daze as if it was a mirage. The krygyz driver passed me, honked his horn and came to a screaming halt. Moustache on lip and gold teeth glistening in his mouth he started to babble on in Russian and offered me a drink of vodka. Then he danced around my corpse with a camera phone and posed for various pictures with my bicycle . He was about to jump on his car when i mustered some enegry.

‘Pass. Pass. Kilometre?’ I demanded making a mountain shape with my dirty hands. The driver held up three fingers. Fuck. That meant thirty kilometres. The English horse ridey lady wasn’t as thick as she looked.

‘Thirty Kilometres?’

‘Nyet Nyet Nyet.’ He held up three figures again ‘Metres’.

I looked at the ridge infront of me and suspiciously pushed the next thirty metres passed the snow in the road. In the near distance Song Kol glistened from the near distance, surrounded by rolling meadows and surrounded by small yurt camps and large flocks. I was at 3400m and suddenly my energy seemed to have returned to my body. Again i was the powerful adventurous cyclist, not the tearful, lost, amatuer I once was.

Flying through the meadows i narrowly avoid running over a number of marmots, which stand on their hind legs whistling as they dart through the grass. I finally reach the lakeshore and camp up.

The weather is glorious and i am surrounded by snow capped peaks, as the sun slowly turns pink on the horizon. I am about to plunge myself into the icy waters when a boy on a horse arrives by my side.

‘Hey you English man. You’ll stay with me tonight’

‘Where?’

He points towards a perfect white yurt camp sitting up on the campsite. ‘We have sheep to eat’. I’m persuaded. It looks like i’m staying with Sultan’s family. This should be an experience. I pack up my things and merrily push the bike upthe hillside.His grand father waits for Sultan’s return, looking though a pair of Soviet binoculars, while resting on his staff. ‘Salaam Aleikum’, he is quite forceful, it’s time for a good hearty dinner.