Over the hills and far away

 "You are going by taxi to Osh?" The receptionist in my hotel i Bishkek looked puzzled. "Why? There are flights there! The taxi will take more than 10 hours!"

"Yes, but then I wouldn't see the country. I want to see as much as possible." I replied. "Aaah!" She understood now. She booked a taxi to the western bus station. I wasn't going on my own. I was going by so-called shared taxi. A concept where the taxi leaves when it is full, and the passengers share the cost. For this trip it was 3500 som each (about 40 dollars).

I had taken a mashrut back to Bishkek after going to the fairytale canyon. It was again a beautiful ride through the mountains. But since I have already showed that in a previous post, I skip that here. Especially since the trip I was embarking on this day, was even more magnificent.

I found one taxi waiting and put my bag in the trunk. Being a foreigner, I was automatically given the front seat. And then the waiting game began. The driver shouted "Osh! Osh!" every time he saw somebody. But to no avail. After one hour, we were still only two passengers. I was contemplating just paying for the rest of the seats. But then suddenly the driver obviously gave up, took my bag and put it in another taxi that had a family of three in the back seat. Missing just one foreigner in the front seat... And we were off.

One of the reasons I wanted to take this long way, was to see the mountain roads. They were supposedly spectacular. And it didn't take long before we started ascending into the beautiful mountains.

Wow! I am lost for words! The contrasts! The colors! The patterns and shapes. And the beautiful rivers and blue-green lakes. My feeble attempts at photos does not do the views any justice. But I did attempt some. Enjoy the few photos I found "average". None were good.

Start of the mountain crossing

Far down to the bottom of the valley

The trail started becoming a criss-cross up the steep hill

Steep to the top

Tunnel the last stretch to the top

At the top

Starting the decent

A yurt on the mountain

Beautiful green lake at the bottom of the mountain

The driver obviously wanted to be a rally driver. He overtook cars and trucks through right turns, dived between pot-holes and rarely dropped below 100 km/h. Honking his horn all the time to get other drivers to get out of our way. Luckily, the view around me was so spectacular that I managed to ignore his driving. And the fact that he was smoking heavily. All the time...

After we had finished the mountains, our driver got more and more trouble with the taxi. The engine was faltering. And the car started jolting and breaking. The driver stopped and restarted the car a couple of times, and the engine ran for a while again. When we arrived in Uzgen, about 50 km from Osh, the driver gave up, got us another taxi to take us the last piece, and we were off again. A little extra adventure for the money. And I had reached my final destination in Kyrgyzstan. The ancient city of Osh.