Miles driven: 114
Time in Car: 3 hours
Borders crossed: 0
View from our guesthouse: the Pamirs looming to the south of Sary Tash.
After some grueling days in the Pamirs, we blissfully slept in. The day was going to be a relatively easy one. The night before, we had exchanged stories and tips with some other travelers who had spent some time in Kyrgyzstan. We were promised that the road between Sary Tash and Osh was perfect tarmac, and we were promised that the trip would only take a couple of hours. And so, thrilled, but skeptical, we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit.
When we finally stumbled out of bed at the nice tardy time of 8:00, we swapped a few more stories with our fellow travelers, answered questions about the rally and the Ramp Less Traveled, and set off for Osh and the much anticipated good tarmac.
My God it was beautiful. Smooth, black wonderful pavement. After days of averaging 15-20 miles on some of the most infamous roads in the world, I nearly teared up when I finally put Stevie in fifth gear. The drive to Osh was uneventful and that couldn’t have made me any happier.
Osh itself is one of the larger cities in Kyrgyzstan. Within a short drive of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and China, the city is a melting pot. It’s no wonder that the city has one if the largest, most colorful bazaars in all of Central Asia. This was our destination after checking into our hostel and enjoying a great lunch of Shashlik at Cafe Atabek. We wandered the absolutely sprawling bazaar before settling on some nuts, dried fruits and other supplies for our Kyrgyzstan adventures. For dinner, we told ourselves we’d seek out some more plov, a dish Osh is “famous” for (although all central Asian counties make similar claims). However, just down the street a stone’s throw away from our hostel, a joint called Dolce Vida called our name with a menu that offered more than rice and mutton. After dinner and some beers at the “Italian” restaurant that served everything from bastardized Italian food to local food to sushi, we called it a night. The next day we would drive to Son-Kol lake, the second largest in Kyrgyzstan, and per the other travels at the guesthouse in Sary Tash, one of the must-see spots in Kyrgyzstan. Unfortunately, we were told that the blissful tarmac did not extend all the way to Son-Kol. The roads were apparently for four wheel drives at best. That sounded like it would be right up Stevie’s alley. We just needed to leave a little early. -FWY
Lenin statue in Osh