Bikepacking in Kyrgyzstan

When Carl asked me if I want­ed to go bikepack­ing in Kyr­gyzs­tan, I said no. Kyr­gyzs­tan is so far from British Colum­bia that when you’re shop­ping for flights, they take just as long going east as west around the world. But about a month lat­er, I real­ized it was the per­fect excuse to get the hard­tail 29”er I’d been think­ing about, so I shot him a mes­sage say­ing, ​“Alright, let’s do it — Kyr­gyzs­tan.” Before we knew it, we had two DV9s on the way from Ibis and real­ized we need­ed to get our shit togeth­er, buy flights, and fig­ure out exact­ly what this ​“bikepack­ing” thing real­ly entailed. Carl duti­ful­ly pre­pared for the trip by read­ing race reports from the 2018 Silk Road Moun­tain Race while I down­loaded a GPX track from Bikepack​ing​.com and spent the rest of the sum­mer on kayak trips around BC. By the time our flights to Bishkek rolled around, nei­ther of us had man­aged any real shake­down trips or even test­ed our bikepack­ing setups… but we’d both rid­den our DV9s around our local trails in Squamish and had a blast, so we were ready.

One of my bags didn’t arrive, so we spent a day in Bishkek on the phone with a cou­ple dif­fer­ent air­lines and with the non-Eng­lish-speak­ing lost bag­gage office at the Bishkek air­port. The next day, I tracked the bag down — it had been in Moscow — and we picked it up at the air­port and hit the road, dri­ving six hours to our start near Lake Issyk-Kul. Our dri­ver — a friend of my partner’s col­lege pro­fes­sor from a trip he did to Kyr­gyzs­tan in 2005 — left us in a pull­out on the side of a dirt road in the dark, leav­ing us hop­ing that we had every­thing we need­ed. And that it would all fit on our bikes the next morning.

Thank­ful­ly, in the morn­ing, we man­aged to rig up all our gear on our bikes and began our climb through a stun­ning val­ley sur­round­ed by glacial peaks. It remind­ed me of parts of Switzer­land, but with sand­stone walls tow­er­ing over the glacial streams and yurts instead of farm­hous­es. A cruisy day of get­ting used to our loaded bikes, dodg­ing cows, and cross­ing the occa­sion­al stream led us to a camp on the side of a beau­ti­ful alpine lake at around 10,000’. We live at sea lev­el and Bishkek is only about 2600’, so 10,000’ made for a rough night, espe­cial­ly for Carl, who – in his enthu­si­asm about the Silk Road Moun­tain Race – only brought a half-length sleep­ing pad and a 40F sleep­ing bag.

Con­tin­u­ing up towards Dzhuku pass the next day, rid­ing turned to walk­ing, which in turn dete­ri­o­rat­ed to clum­sy vari­a­tions on ​“push the bike one step up loose rocks, grab both brakes, use the bike to pull your­self up the loose rocks.” Hike-a-bike with loaded rigs at 13,000’ is tough going. At the top of the pass, the ​“road” dis­ap­peared entire­ly and we had a long, off-trail cross­ing on a high plateau, com­plete with riv­er cross­ings (sor­ry bot­tom brack­et!). Not want­i­ng to camp high again, we pushed through to the next pass, putting in a 12 hour day, descend­ing into an incred­i­ble, wide-open, grassy glacial val­ley. Well — it was a 10 hour day until we were stopped by some friend­ly Kyr­gyz folks with a bro­ken down truck pic­nic­ing on the side of the road. Two bot­tles of vod­ka lat­er, we put in anoth­er cou­ple hours of rid­ing, camp­ing at dark. Those two hours might’ve been our fastest mileage of the whole trip.

Riv­er cross­ings, riv­er canyons, and rolling green moun­tain­scapes led us down to the desert. We climbed over a dusty grav­el pass and descend­ed into a huge val­ley stud­ded with small agri­cul­tur­al towns, irri­gat­ed with the water of two glacial rivers flow­ing from the tow­er­ing moun­tains on the south side of the val­ley. Hot, tired, and dehy­drat­ed, we found our­selves rid­ing in cir­cles around the town of At-Bashi look­ing for a hotel or guest house. About to give up – Google trans­late wasn’t get­ting us any­where – a cou­ple guys who spoke Eng­lish stopped us on the street and found us a house to stay at that turned out to belong to a cou­ple who were both doc­tors at the local hos­pi­tal. It wasn’t clear if they reg­u­lar­ly oper­at­ed a guest house or not, but it was a sur­re­al expe­ri­ence with great food, eclec­tic home-décor, and a fam­i­ly pho­to album of Sovi­et-era Christ­mases and med school graduations.

Anoth­er few climbs and descents brought us through the last of the real desert and back into more famil­iar land­scapes. The climb to Song Kol lake trav­els through a forest­ed lime­stone canyon rem­i­nis­cent of north­ern Utah, cul­mi­nat­ing in a series of switch­backs that are to grav­el bik­ing what Italy’s Stelvio Pass is to road bik­ing. From Song Kol, anoth­er 5000’ descent (one of many of that scale) brought us back to a main road where we feast­ed on choco­late wafers and pas­tries filled with pota­to and gar­lic. Every store in Kyr­gyzs­tan has a bulk cook­ie sec­tion. Even the tini­est bode­ga-style shop in the tini­est town. Bulk cookies.

We hung a right up the Kokomeren Riv­er, which we would fol­low for the next 100km or more to its source near Karakol Pass. We dodged storms by wait­ing in yurts and wall tents with friend­ly Kyr­gyz folks feed­ing us tea and kumis – fer­ment­ed mare’s milk. Or at least, Carl was still drink­ing the kumis – I’d giv­en up on it about half way through the trip, my stom­ach bug final­ly over­com­ing my polite­ness. Here, in the upper Kokomeren val­ley, the first rac­ers from the Silk Road Moun­tain Race passed us at 9pm after trav­el­ing an incred­i­ble 90 miles with over 13,000’ of ele­va­tion gain in the first 12 hours of the race.

On our last full day, we tack­led the last two moun­tain pass­es, rid­ing past and cheer­ing on all the SRMR rac­ers head­ing the oth­er way, includ­ing a quick road­side Squamish reunion (and com­mis­er­a­tion) with some friends doing the race. Every report I’ve seen from bikepack­ing in this area has shown a snow­storm on Kegety Pass. Our trip was no dif­fer­ent. Blow­ing snow and a hike-a-bike so steep and loose that I had to shoul­der my bike for sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions… all as we approached 13,000’ again. The near­ly 10,000’ descent through beau­ti­ful snow-cov­ered moun­tains, through a band of for­est, and back out into the sun­ny Bishkek val­ley made it all worth it, and after one last night camp­ing in the moun­tains, we cruised dirt canal roads right back into the city.

Kyr­gyzs­tan is a stun­ning coun­try full of var­ied ter­rain rang­ing from glaciat­ed peaks to dense Asian Spruce forests to wide open deserts, with incred­i­bly friend­ly peo­ple and a brand of cen­tral Asian Islam­ic cul­ture we’re not often exposed to in the West. We saw a wide vari­ety of bikes among the SRMR rac­ers, all the way from a tan­dem road bike to a full sus­pen­sion moun­tain bike, but we felt the DV9s were a per­fect tool for the route we did. Light enough to not be cum­ber­some or feel too slow on the road sec­tions, but beefy enough – and with big enough tires – to ride all the descents, and more than that, to actu­al­ly enjoy them!