As the saying goes, “we make plans, and god laughs”. Today, things went awry. As frustrating as it was today, I can only be thankful that I am in good health.

My plan for today was to ride to Songgul Lake, an ambitious ride of ~450KM with numerous offroad sections. This would form part of an exciting finale to the trip, with the following day visiting Issikul Lake, and riding over to mountains to conclude my journey in Almaty. These lakes are some of Kyrgyzstan’s most famous attractions.

Today’s route in blue (green is in the van)

I was up early, and on the road by 7:30AM. I needed to make distance to get to Songgul early to pitch my tent. It was pleasantly cool for once, and a relaxing ride along the highway. The first stop would be Jalal abad, with lunch at Kazerman, before the final 150KM stretch to Songgul Lake.

The fields outside Jalal-Abad

Unsealed road to Kazerman

Chinese quarters for road construction

Near the summit of the mountain pass

Other side of the summit

The way down to Kazerman

Traditional living

Chinese cement factory?

It was smooth riding, even for the ~100KM unsealed road where the Chinese were building a new road for the Kyrgyz.

The road to Kazerman

By noon, I was in Kazerman, well ahead of schedule. While refueling, I was speaking to a Chinese worker that had come over from Henan to work on a railway project here for the next ~5 years. Interestingly, he described it as “Xi Jing Ping wanted to give these guys rail so we’re here to build it for them” - personifying the actions of the state.

While we were talking, he was checking out my bike and remarked that my front forks were leaking. Not good - a small piece of dirt must have gotten in to the seal, and caused the leak. It was definitely more than a few drops. “Ah well you should ride back to China to fix this” he said. “They definitely don’t have the tools here”. “At least the motor isn’t broken, you have two forks so at least one of them will work, and you should still be able to ride it a long way”.

Uh oh. Oil on the brake disk

And with that, he left. I got a second opinion from a small garage adjacent to the fuel station; it wasn’t very clear what they were saying, but my interpretation was “it’s better to ride to Bishkek, and not go on bumpy roads”.

Fork covered in oil. Note the dark splotches on the wheel rim and brakes

A third opinion from Gemini was to check if the forks were leaking onto the front brakes. If this were to happen, it would be very bad; could materially impact ability to stop (= crash). I pictured going too quickly around a cliffside corner and not being able to slow down sufficiently. Yikes.

And so I made the unhappy call to get a ride to Bishkek with the bike, abandoning the nice finale I had planned.

One person said they were getting a van, and I waited for an hour and a half for them to return. No luck. Another guy rocked up with a Mercedes Sprinter which looked new enough. We agreed on ~$190, for what would be quite a long journey to Bishkek.

Loaded in the van

It was a while to load the bike onto the van, as we had to find a hill where I could ride my bike into the back of the van. (This didn’t work so we got a few people and lifted it in) Eventually, we set off. The guy then proceeded to stop all over the small town. First to pick up sacks and bottles of random liquids, then to go home to shower and change, and then to pick up a passenger! And then to the supermarket. And then another stop for other bits and bobs. It was clear that this guy was treating this as a “I’m going to Bishkek everyone, who needs to ship stuff over there?” opportunity.

By the time we hit the road it was 5PM. Already 5 hours since I had initially stopped, and the trip to Bishkek would be another 8-10 hours.

I fell asleep pretty quickly when on the road, despite the bumps, and then was awoken by a “crack” sound. I looked back at my bike and the windshield had shattered! It was leaning against the side of the van, and obviously had not been strapped down properly. I was quite annoyed - this would not be an easy/cheap fix.

When we eventually pulled over (he wanted to do so at the mountain peak, in case the engine stopped working/overheated before reaching the top) and assessed the damage, it was not good; some plastic shielding around the exhaust had snapped and the windscreen was shattered. He had only braced the right side of the motorcycle against the roof, and this caused it to fall over on its left side.

It was at this point where I realised that this guy was probably just a “dude with a van” that probably had never transported goods properly before. He was clearly inexperienced and not that intelligent.

Plastic on the exhaust damaged

When I told the guy “this is not a cheap Lada, will be very expensive for me to fix this” his reaction was immediately defensive.

Definitely not a cheap Lada, and not a happy Victor

The guy wrote in the translator app “if you consider me guilty, I will not bring you to Bishkek anymore.” No apology for being negligent with my bike. This gives me the the impression that Kyrgyz men are very proud, and probably has some elements of “machismo”.

I was not too happy, but alas, what can you do?

We fixed the mounting together, and proceeded in silence. The guy likely did feel guilty in the end because he kept glancing back at the bike to see if it was okay while driving.

The views were at least nice

Ten minutes later, another “crack”. This time my bike was okay but the roof of the guys van had been damaged (from the braces of the bike). Now we both were impacted by this unhappy union.

In the end, we lay the bike down against some tyres on the floor of the van and hoped for the best.

Bike laid to rest for the final leg

What could I have done differently to avoid this situation?

One answer would have been to continue on riding, and to manage the risk of the leaking seal. I think this probably would have been ok but the consequences of the brakes not working on a cliffside road is not really acceptable to me, so I don’t think this was really an option. (I guess a better understanding of the nature of the risk would help with my decisionmaking).

The other answer was probably to have taken more responsibility and personal care for my own bike, ensuring that it was properly braced myself rather than letting the service provider deal with it. This is especially true when it was clear the service provider wouldn’t take any responsibility for the safe transport of my bike.

Oh well. You live and you learn. I don’t really have a plan for the leg from Bishkek to Almaty; it might be fine to just ride and use the rear brakes as the road is all straight highways.

The driver and the passenger

Finally, by 4AM, we reached Bishkek. The final moments of the drive were rather nervewracking - the driver was obviously tired, and still performing daring overtakes with oncoming trucks. Eventually, we pulled over by a money changer to swap my dollars into Som for his fee.

I felt like there wasn’t any point disputing the fee for the damage that was caused; he had gone through the work of driving me this distance, and there was never any explicit guarantee that my goods would not be damaged during transit. I had just made the assumption that the guy would have been more responsible / intelligent. I would just take it on the chin, as a lesson to take better care of my own possessions.

I found a biker focused hotel to stay for the rest of the night.

Some stats:

• 254KMs travelled (on my motorbike)
• 24.8L fuel added
• 0g coffee consumed
• 5 unique interactions

Altitude map of today’s ride

Route to date