Going to Kyrgyzstan

So good. Loving the pics and details. What's up with that bottle in the second pic? Or is it a pump?

Thanks! It's both actually :) It's a bottle for carrying fuel for the stove. You connect it to the stove, pump up the pressure and then you fire it up. Our backup was to cook on petrol but thankfully we found gas canisters in Bishkek so we never used it.

Day 8. I wake up at 7. It's cold and the inside of the tent is all wet. The downside of using a 1 wall tent I guess. I need to be careful when setting it up to allow for ventilation. For breakfast there's porridge with nutella, raisins and dried banana. After an hour or so the valley opens up. The weather is perfect, 25-30 degrees and pretty much no wind. We are climbing steady (have been for the last two days) but it's up and down all the time so you don't think much about it. We stop by a house with a beer poster on it thinking it might be a store. Turns out we are right and we are invited in and treated to dumplings with some kind of meat in them. I eat politely. The son in the family speak english so we stay for a while, talking about life in the village and back home. We buy some coke, bread and snickers and get on our bikes once again. Later on we meet a guy from Slovakia cycling the opposite direction. We talk for a while. He's got the classic bike around the world setup. Surly LHT with Ortliebs all around. It looks heavy. We put our tents up at 2900 meters. Say hello to the neighbor. For dinner there's pasta for the first time since Bishkek. Good times. The weather turns to shit but by then I'm back in the warmth of my sleeping bag.

Beautiful.

Someone cycling round Kyrgyzstan was staying in my place last night in Karakol - unfortunately I didn't meet him/her, just saw the bike and Shimanos. Lovely time of year for it - long dry sunny days (c19 degrees), but chilly at night. That said, I'm trekking up into the mountains tomorrow to camp for a few days, so camping is still possible. There's been some snow already at trekking altitudes, but not down in the villages and on the roads.

Update: it's Sofiane Sehili (3rd place in last year's Tour Divide), who's riding from Paris to Taiwan. He's stopped today to have a bent fork fixed after a collision with a kid. Lovely fella, he's doing about 200km a day, and doesn't camp, so can go lighter.

Wow

Sounds great. I wanted to go to Karakol but there simply wasn't enough time. Have a blast!

Hi!

Just saw this on Bikepacking.com! :)
http://www.bikepacking.com/plog/given-by-mountains/

This is more or less your route, right?

The Kyrgyzstan landings were faked! This is Uxbridge Road!

Jokes.

Seriously cool adventured. Love the nice pics.

That looks GLORIOUS 😁

Absolutely mental! Couchsurfing only?

No, he's using hotels - when it's about a tenner a night, why wouldn't you? Here's his website - he's way behind with his blog, but says he's just going to write it all up when he gets back. His English is excellent.

http://kenlesstats.com/

He's going back to try to win Tour Divide next year. I scared him a little by telling him @skinny is doing it.

Really cool thanks for the link. I reckon it can be hard to find hotels sometimes, making you having to go more or less far than you intended. Then again there's people everywhere so there's also places to sleep

Just caught this thread. Epic and Stunning!

Thanks everyone. I've added a small selection of pics to my website if anyone wants to have a look. I think there's a few of them that I haven't shown on here. I've done some more careful editing too. Eventually I'd like to change the whole site but this will have to do for now: http://alexanderkirkhoff.se/gallery/true-pearl/

Still got 2 more days of Kyrgy cycling to present here too. Eventually...

You back home now? How was it!?

Yes, their route is similar to mine. I had been planning this for a long time before they published their itinerary. Weirdly enough we had about the same basic idea for a route through these pretty remote parts of this very remote country. I took some sections from them and used my own on others. Turned out great! Their route is longer but I'd go ahead and say that mine is more condensed on the fun if that makes sense. Love the work they do on routing all over the globe.

Oh yeah, in other news, it turns out it wasn't my dynamo that failed, it was just the light. Weird since I tried to just connect my Igaro charger directly to the dynamo and couldn't get it working either so I just assumed it was the hub. Now I just tried it with a different light and everything works as it should.

So what's next for the Vagabond? I'm thinking about sending it away and have triple cage mounts done on the fork. It would also be a good excuse to get a respray. Never been too keen on the purple to be honest.

I'd love some more details on the the chainset on the Surly! How did an inner that tiny inner shift with the 5800?

It was a pain to set up. Lots of wire tension needed. But it shifted alright when done. Not great but alright. Well, until the shifter ate the wire. Related or not? Dunno... Here's a link to the chainset: https://www.spacycles.co.uk/m2b0s109p3383/SPA-CYCLES-TD-2-Super-Compact-Chainset-with-Zicral-Rings

It was great. Got v lucky - arranged my trek when all the agencies were closed for winter and turning people away. My guys just asked for a bit more money. It was utterly glorious, especially knowing that me and my guide were the last people trekking up there this year. Up to 25 degrees in the day, down to -5 at night, waking up beside a frozen water bottle. Big mistake was bringing a one-season sleeping bag made of paper, so had to sleep in a lot of clothing. Views and landscape were staggering. Would put up some photos if I knew how.

I was meant to go to Kazakhstan as well, but they closed the border as there was some political tension due to the presidential election.

He’s raced td before and is classy. He did a really good race in trans am this year. Cool dude.

I’ve got other fish to fry, for now.

I I was searching the forum for inspiration on how to build up my new vagabond frameset, and just just re-read the whole thread. It’s one of the best there ever was.
I was delighted to find the 3 year old cliffhanger:

Still got 2 more days of Kyrgy cycling to present here too. Eventually...

Feel free to just do a photodump ;)

Cant wait to get back to Kyrgyzstan

Can’t wait to see more pictures and ride reports ;)