After 5 days of tackling the Pamir Highway we found some (for the most part) good roads through the beautiful mountains of Kyrgyzstan. “From the Heart” was cruising at good speed on some 95 octane petrol on the roads from Osh to Bishkek. The roads were very windy through the mountains, and a lot of cars passed out, not really adhering to any laws of traffic. As a result, we passed a lot of wrecked cars on the side of the road, which somewhat dampened the otherwise great view through the incredible landscape.
On the way we camped at our worst camp spot yet. We looked up a camp site on the app Overlander which sounded really promising, but also came with the warning of a very steep descent to a river. We drove up just after sunset, but quickly realized that there was no way that “From the Heart” could make that descent. Instead we decided to camp just at the top of the ridge and thought that the area was “levelled enough” to put up tent. As we tried to get a good nights sleep, we found ourselves at the very bottom of the tent multiple times, sliding down the hill in our sleep. We got up early the following morning and were all quite exhausted due to the lack of sleep.
As we got closer to Bishkek (which were completely covered in smog) the roads deteriorated, and we slowly made our way to the Kasakh border. The border crossing turned out to be the most hectic we’ve been through so far. We were split up throughout the entire crossing so that Ed was alone with the car and Freddie and Sean had to do the pedestrian crossing. Everyone was pushing and multiple times the “queue” started panicking, causing a soldier to push back against the crowd trying to get to the passport checks. Not the most pleasant experience.
In the end we made it into Kazakhstan and drove towards the cultural (and former) capital, Almaty. After visiting the Southern Fried Chicken franchise, we stocked up on food for the car. One of the biggest lessons doing the Pamir Highway was never to run out of snacks and proper food. So we bought a box and got plenty of food for at the first proper supermarket we’d seen in ages. Happy with our grocery shopping, we finally might it to Sky Hostel – a hostel on the top 3 floors of a high-rise close to the center of the city with quite a good roof top terrace.
The following morning we got the best breakfast in a long, long time at Coffeedelia in Almaty. After several cups of coffee / hot chocolate later, we strolled around Almaty. We had to little time to fully enjoy the city, but we really at a glance we really liked it. It was easy to walk around, there was plenty of open spaces, parks and the like. Quite a charming and buzzing city.
We needed a rather short day in the car, so we only drove for a few hours before we decided to stop at a beautiful location at the top of some hills next to a river. After watching a beautiful sunset we went for a night swim in the river. Have a look on our Instagram account for some night shots and light painting!
The quality of the road was absolutely incredible on the first couple of hundred kilometres north from Almaty. At the village of Kyzylagash that changed completely. From there and all the way up to Qalbatau we drove on one of the shittiest roads we had encountered – put holes, ridges, trenches and ditches everywhere. We slowly made our way forward, and after a night camping next to a river (where the mosquitos feasted on us), we made it to Qalbatau. From there, a great motorway went all the way to Semey and “From the Heart” were cruising happily at 110 kph the entire way.
We stayed the night at a very Soviet style (but cheap) hotel in Semey, before making our way to the Russian border. After having driven for just about 10 minutes we were pulled over by the Kasakh police – the excuse for pulling us over being that we didn’t have our lights on. The clearly wanted a bribe – in fact they weren’t even trying to hide that fact. We aren’t very experienced with the technique of bribing a police officer, as we haven’t encountered the problem anywhere else on the rally. But when one of the officers starts singing “money, money, money” and writes “$100” on a piece of paper, it’s quite apparent what the deal is. In the end we got away without paying a dime, by playing dumb and appearing to not understand what they wanted. But we didn’t get off the hook until they spotted another (Kazakh) car without lights on – on to the next one, we guess!
The Russian border crossing at Semey was quite efficient and very uneventful – a pleasant surprise!
That was it for now - stay tuned for our next blog post about driving through Mongolia!