[Day 23]
Leaving Osh, after a relaxing day

On the bike: another traveller, from France, staying at our hotel, which we have now found out is the Osh Nuru (meaning the light of the city)

Kyrgyzstan is a very green country, compared to Tajikistan. Atle under the tree – talking with the Norwegian radio (NRK Sogn og fjordane)

We chose a smaller road than the main road, and as we were leaving the urban and village areas behind we started to see more and more yurt camps with cattle

It was not easy to find the way today – maps were not detailed enough and the GPS was living its own life. In a junction where we had to choose without knowing which, these men stopped and helped us, followed us back to where we had taken a wrong turn (and the GPS did first say that the wrong way was the one we wanted, and when going back it said that going back was right…) . The men required that we took photos of them. We think they thought we had polaroid cameras because they looked disappointed when we didn’t give them anything, but they kept posing for the camera

We are moving north and across Kyrgyzstan, to get to Kazakhstan, Russia and finally Mongolia, we expected that the drive today would be mostly about transportation. But we were completely wrong! As we had chosen to avoid the main road we did realize that this would perhaps be a road without tarmac, but we had no idea that it would be so scenic and exciting to drive, going all the way up to 3000 meters!

We hope that non of the sheep jumped, as we were pushing them close to the edge when passing them

Going back down was just as spectacular and scary! Getting back down to 1500 meters, we found a nice spot to camp along the river.

Oh, the dirt track – that’s just from our car after Atle backed up without looking in the mirror, and the right back tire fell down and the car got stuck, almost falling over sideways. SCARY! Tim prepared to pull us out, and three men came (from where, we don’t know) to help, and stepped on to the car to avoid it falling. Terrified, Hilde could then open the door – just to realise that she could step out onto the grass, only 20 cm below. Everyone were so occupied with helping that we did not get a photo of the incident (in hindsight: the “small” incident)

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