Travelling to Kyrgyzstan by bike – the route, experiences and high points

What is the appeal of a cycling trip?
Tonja: From my point of view, a bike is a very authentic way of travelling, as you are in direct contact with nature and people. It is also an environmentally friendly way to travel, something that is important to us. The speed is perfect, as you travel slowly enough to enjoy your surroundings and the landscape, but quickly enough to cover some distance.

Milan: For me as a photographer, the speed we were travelling on our bikes was almost too fast (laughs). Sometimes, there was a new photo subject waiting beyond each bend, but of course we weren’t able to stop every 500 metres.

Could you give a summary of your trip in numbers?
M: Of course – we were on the road for 193 days, which is around six months. In this period, we travelled from Switzerland to eastern Kyrgyzstan. We covered a total of 6,455 kilometres on our bikes. We bypassed some sections by travelling by train, ferry and bus – unfortunately, we had to fly from Georgia to Uzbekistan and from Kyrgyzstan back home due to COVID-19. We spend around one third of the nights we were away in a tent and the rest we spent in extremely various types of accommodation or with people who we had got to know on the road.

T: We deliberately travelled more slowly because we wanted to really immerse ourselves in the cultures and enjoy nature.

How did you prepare yourselves for the journey in terms of conditioning?
T: We didn’t deliberately train or anything. We simply assumed that we would build up the conditioning required during the tour – and that then turned out to be the case.

M: We had already been on shorter cycling trips in the years before – we were in Piedmont 2018 and Croatia in 2019, meaning we already had some experience and were therefore able to roughly estimate what distances we could realistically cover.

Were you able to simply take six months off?
T: I quit my previous job to go on this trip and originally wanted to be on the road for a whole year. However, while we were on the trip I received an offer for a job as a permaculture gardener and I accepted.

M: As a freelance photographer and industrial designer, I didn’t have to take time off – I simply didn’t accept any new work during this time. However, as luck would have it, I received a job I had wanted for a long time while we were on the trip. I was simply able to do it while we were on the road.

Could you give a rough estimate of how much the trip cost?
M: A total of around CHF 1,000 per person per month. We reduced our running costs in Switzerland to a minimum during the trip – for example, by sub-leasing our flat in Zurich. Of course, we also had some travel costs for trains, ferries and flights along the way.

How did you decide on Kyrgyzstan as a destination?
T: Originally, we wanted to travel along the Silk Road to China then return with the Trans-Siberian Railway. We were hoping right to the end that our ‘dream country’ Iran would open its borders, which it had closed due to the pandemic – but unfortunately this didn’t happen. COVID-19 forced us to improvise and change our plans relatively often, but we therefore also enjoyed more happy accidents. Issyk-Kul Lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan then became our destination – chosen rather at random.

How heavy were your bikes when fully laden?
M: Each of us had baggage weighing around 30 kilograms. My bike weighs 18 kilograms and Tonja’s bike weighs 15 kilograms, meaning that each of us had around 45 to 50 kilograms once we hit the road. I took the tent, the laptop and the spare parts, while Tonja took almost all the food. Of course, the weight changed depending on how much food and water we took with us each day.

Speaking of spare parts, did you have many breakdowns?
T: No, the breakdowns were very limited. For example, I didn’t have a single flat tire because I was using extremely robust Marathon tyres from Schwalbe. On the other hand, Milan had to patch around ten flat tyres. Despite this, we had a relatively large number of spare parts with us, including two brake disks, six brake pads, a set for bleeding the brakes, a spare chain, multiple inner tubes, spare spokes, bolts, brake cables and, of course, tools.

M: Funnily enough, our stands caused the biggest headache for us – in other words, a fairly trivial component. Due to the heavy weight of the fully laden bikes, they kept on breaking. We went to countless workshops because of this, but none of the repairs lasted in the long run. Looking back, a centre stand would have been a better choice.

How many rest days should you plan in for this type of long journey?
T: Of the 193 days we were on the road, there were 71 days on which we didn’t cover any long distance – we really took our time. Sometimes in Turkey, it felt as though strangers were inviting us for a çay ten times every day. These types of encounters are simply not possible if you have a rigid schedule, but, of course, we also met other cyclists on trips who were travelling significantly faster.

Lightweight and fast gravel bikes – in other words, racing bikes with offroad tyres – are the trend right now. Why did you decide to go for robust trekking bikes?
M: It was clear to us from the very start that we would prefer to take too much rather than too little equipment. Speed didn’t really ever come into play when planning the trip. We wanted a bit more comfort and placed more importance on reliability.

Milan, you rode a bike with a belt drive and pinion gears instead of a drive with a derailleur system. Did it stand the test?
M: In principle, yes. In any case, I didn’t have any breakdowns and the gears did their job with no problems. The benefit of this option is that it wears more slowly and you don’t have a rear derailleur that can change or break. However, my bike, particularly the brake discs, had noticeable wear after the trip and the belt made terrible noises every now and again while we were on the road.

How did you plan your daily travel or navigate while you were on the road?
M: At the beginning of the trip, we still had detailed paper maps with us. However, at some point we simply started to plan and navigate with Komoot on our smartphones and a GPS device. The maps in the app are based on OpenStreetMap (note: community project that collects and organises geodata and stores it in a database) and are therefore extremely precise, even in remote regions – with only a few exceptions. In addition, we bought an overview paper map in each country so that we could define the rough destinations.

What equipment did you find particularly practical and which items were more impractical?
T: We took a simple foam sleeping mat with us that was extremely useful, as we sat on it during practically every break or when we were cooking. If the ground was stony, we put the mat under our tent so as not to damage the floor of the tent.

M: We took a tunnel tent from Hilleberg with us. In places the ground was so hard that we could barely bang in the pegs – I would therefore choose a freestanding dome tent next time.

Which country was the most bike friendly?
T: Turkey really surprised us – in a good way. Almost all of the main streets there have a three-metre-wide verge that is very comfortable to ride on. Cars driving by gave us friendly honks on a daily basis in Uzbekistan and Turkey in particular, or people called out things from their cars to spur us on – which was really motivating.

What was the furthest you travelled on a single day?
T: 129 kilometres. That was the penultimate day our journey on the way back from Issyk-Kul Lake to the capital city of Bishkek. On average, we covered around 50 kilometres on the days we were on our bikes.

Were there low points during the journey?
T: A low point sounds bit too drastic to me, but, of course, there were sometimes setbacks. I rode for a whole day in the rain without having waterproof covers on my shoes – and promptly got a foot infection. It was painful, kept me preoccupied for a while and we had to take breaks from time to time because of it.

You often spent the night at strangers’ houses. How did it come to be that you were invited to stay there and did you always simply go with the first person who came along?
M: The hospitality in Turkey and Uzbekistan in particularly was staggering. It usually only took a couple of minutes until we were surrounded by people, even in the most remote regions. Sometimes, multiple families debated ferociously about who was going to host us. We had the impression that people in Muslim-dominated countries were especially hospitable. It was often also true that the poorer the people, the more open and helpful they were.

T: The ways we met people and were invited places were often extremely random. For example, in the Turkish town of Keşan, right in the west of the country, we pitched our tent in a park, as local residents told us that it wouldn’t be a problem. The town’s head of police and his wife came by after we had our evening meal, as he was worried about us. On the spot, he invited us to camp in the police station’s rear courtyard – right next to the water cannon. Someone we didn’t know brought us fresh bread and later the head of police’s family came by with tea, blankets, apples and peanuts.

Wasn’t it sometimes exhausting to make so many stops and have so many invitations?
M: When I’m tired, I sometimes lose interest in chatting, but we are the perfect team when it comes to this, as Tonja is untiring in this regard and is extremely extroverted and friendly with everyone she meets. However, there were a couple of stops when we just wanted to rest in the shade for a bit and therefore deliberately looked for a tree that was somewhat off the beaten track.

T: We visited a family in Uzbekistan, who, like most people in Uzbekistan, didn’t speak any English. They prepared an entire chicken in our honour that evening, which was an extremely generous gesture. The only problem is that I don’t eat meat, but thankfully we had met an Uzbek a couple of days before who had recorded a voice memo for us which explained the concept of vegetarianism/veganism, as the word ‘vegetarian’ doesn’t exist in the Uzbek language. The family were amazed when we played this message to them, but afterwards we received an extremely sumptuous and completely vegan evening meal.

Which encounter sticks most in your mind?
T: On our way to the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan, we encountered a young man who was stamping on an ominous-looking clay sausage. We started talking and he invited us back to his home. We stayed with his family for two days and they really took us into their hearts – even though we could barely understand one another. By the way, the clay sausage was going to be used to make a tandoor oven, which is used to bake bread in this region.

Did you still have the travel bug by the end?
M: We really enjoyed the journey, experienced and learnt a huge amount and really absorbed everything we could, but of course after so many experiences you’ve eventually somewhat had enough. At the end, we were definitely looking forward to getting home. I’d say that six months was the perfect period of time for us personally.

T: I would recommend taking this kind of trip to everyone and to be open to chance. Looking back, these are the moments that make the trip. You don’t have to plan everything down to the last detail. When people ask me what the biggest challenge was, I always say: ‘Simply having the courage to set off.’