Road to Tokyo

8 days and 1,461km (Total: 112 days and 22,623km)

The Pamir Highway had delivered ridiculous, otherworldly scenery — but at a cost. The high altitude, broken roads, and stale-bread-of-a-diet had been slowly beating the shit out of us, one punch at a time. By the time we arrived in Osh, we realised we were close to KO.

We took a day's rest in the city and treated ourselves to an apartment that had the luxury of a toilet you didn't need to walk fifty meters outside in the freezing cold to get to. We had an easy day planning our route through Kyrgyzstan and lubing our aging bike chain with a bunch of kids watching and saying “hello” on repeat.

We left Osh and rode four hours to a guest house called October, in a town called Oktyabr. We were back in forty degree heat and back in the world of unfathomable generosity as two local men brought over bread, cheese and fruit as we took a break under the shade of a tree. We continued on and arrived at October, agreeing €30 for a private room including dinner and breakfast with a woman that looked like she was going to give birth any moment. A few other overlanders turned up later that evening but we all silently acknowledged the fact that no one had the energy for small talk — so we did our own thing and went our separate ways the next morning. Perfect.

Maps.me is popular here, but the routes it sends you down is a roll of the dice. Anything ranging from new asphalt to dirt tracks that look like they're only used by horses or donkeys. We tried our luck and on our first day the dice landed on gravel. We rode a hundred kilometres over two hours with the bike vibrating and traction control in overdrive. It wasn't the most enjoyable ride, but oftentimes that's the trade-off in exchange for stunning views with no other humans in sight.

We needed to find a place to camp, which is more tricky in practise than theory when the sides of the roads are either steep drop-offs or covered in sharp shrubbery and/or rocks. The road continued to wind down over the mountain pass and we weren’t having much luck. We realised Becs had dropped her phone and then I dropped the bike turning round to go try and find it. Picking up the fully-loaded bike on an incline, at the end of a long day, took every ounce of energy we had left from the kilos of bread we had consumed in Tajikistan. Luckily the helmet was hiding my facial expressions which probably resembled a world strongest man competitor mid boulder lift.

Eventually, we found a spot. The sun was setting so we ate some bread and cheese before setting up camp. At about 11pm, the wind introduced itself, hissing over the hills. By midnight, it had matured into a deep bellow, rattling our tent as it swooped through. It soon had pulled every peg from the ground and warped the tent to the point the only thing holding it down was our body weight.

I knew I had to do something before the whole thing flew off. So I ventured out into the darkness in my boxers, sandals and head torch and continued my world strongest man training, carrying the biggest rocks I could find and strapping the tent to them. Whilst Becs held the structure together from the inside, I completed the fortress with a chain of cable ties hooked to K — the 250kg beast stood there unfazed.

Eventually the gusts calmed. Despite a restless night — Becs very much over camping at this point — we woke early and boiled some tea on the stove before loading the contents of our bedroom, kitchen, and wardrobes onto the motorcycle — alongside ourselves — and shuddered our way down the rest of the mountain pass.

We soon came to a T-shaped fork in the road. Previously, choosing a direction meant a close examination of Google Maps. Now, after a month in Central Asia, it boils down to one thing: which road looks less fucked? We made the right call and followed a smooth and empty road for hundreds of kilometers around Song-Köl (a lake) — our eyes, ears, skin, and noses receiving data we hadn’t felt since Europe: endless greenery and crisp, cold air. It was beautifully nostalgic. Over our intercoms we agreed that Kyrgyzstan is a true hidden gem — our favourite Stan.

The next day I even had the chance to run, led by a dog that I’d befriended and trotted on like a guide. She even waited for me as I took off my shoes to cross a river after she had nonchalantly waded through it. It was nice to chat to someone/thing other than Becs despite being seriously out of breath — which I originally thought was lack of fitness but later came to a more flattering hypothesis that it was because I was over 3,000 metres above sea level (as 40% of Kyrgyzstan is).

The nostalgia continued the next day, but in a different guise: cold and heavy rain. As we skirted the edge or Issyk-Köl (another, much vaster lake) the dice landed on mud. It was a challenging ride over slippery roads and near-zero visibility, as the rain peppered our helmets like we were driving a car in a storm with no windscreen wipers.

We knocked on the door of a guest house in the next town, which wasn't our first choice but turned out to be bloody perfect. The room clean and the bike sheltered, but more than that — “perfect” was the feeling that we’d be happy making this our home for the night. So much so, that after we had stripped off our riding gear — this time wet from rain and not sweat — we asked our Russian host if we could stay two nights instead of one. “Da,” she said.

Despite the frequent power cuts which meant it took at least thirty minutes to boil the kettle, Guest House Amirhan and the town of Bokonbayevo made its way towards the top of our favourite stays so far.

On our eighth and penultimate day in the country of the Kyrgyz, we continued East, stopping for a swim in the lake on the way of our short ride to a village called Jeti Oguz. We've loved the guesthouse experiences so much in Kyrgyzstan that we enjoyed our last one in the foot of the mountains, where our host made us a simple but incredibly tasty dish of potatoes, cabbage, and beef (or horse), served alongside dozens of extras: bread, watermelon, apples, apricots, pears, nuts, raisins, salads, sweets, and a bunch of other things I couldn’t identify (but they were all delicious).

On our final day, the nostalgia eventually overstayed its welcome. We rode towards the border in a non-stop downpour for two hours — the kind that soaks through to the skin and sucks all the warmth from your body. Still, it wasn’t able to dampen what had been an incredibly positive experience of a country that we fell more in love with on every turn.

Next stop: our last (and first) Stan.