Week 73: to Kaji-Say: Along the lake, dealing with traffic

August 17, 2016

After camping last night, we decide to take a Guesthouse in Kaji Say. While the lake is beautiful, cycling along it is not fun! The road surface continues to be broken up in places, dirt shoulder at best and worst traffic ever! It is fairly busy, but that is not the main problem. Oncoming traffic overtakes and simply runs you off the road. They are very aggressive and would sooner kill a cyclist than back-off and wait. Many seem to be fancier cars and probably from the big city on vacation here.

When we arrived in town, we spotted two other touring bikes and joined the Swiss-Spanish couple at their table in a café. Soon, another two cyclists from Canada and France join us.

Kaji-Say has plenty of upscale resorts with what looks like Russian tourists and several decent stocked shops. A man who rents bicycles from Bishkek spoke with us and pointed out a side street where there are many local guesthouses. We set off down the street, not knowing how to read the signs it’s unclear if the houses are places to stay. We find one obvious place that shows up on Google maps, but is way too expensive for us. They refer us to across the street, and for 400COM pp we have a room and hot shower.

It’s early and after cleaning up go to a restaurant, again a problem with ordering anything from the menu. We manage to get a mutton shish kebab. Rachel’s is good, Patrick’s is mostly fatty pieces. The beer is good though. We shop and pick up more goodies for tonight and the road tomorrow.

Seems like this deceased person had conflicting allegiances.

Nice section of the lake. Don't let the apparent lack of traffic fool you; this is not a pleasant ride.

Meeting up with a multi-national group of cyclists.

Shish kebab. They like big gobs of sheep fat here.

Today's ride: 69 km (43 miles)
Total: 20,696 km (12,852 miles)

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