Lake Issyk-Kul is a huge lake in eastern Kyrgyzstan and its western end is about 105 miles east of Bishkek. I had to give a £5 bribe at the ugly little town of Balykchy for doing 63 in a 60 km/hr zone, and then got stopped again outside Cholpon Ata by a policemen who wrote “72” in the dust on the van’s rear window.. I looked suitably outraged and wrote “49”, which was my actual speed. So he said “OK” and waived me on. To be fair, his colleague had flagged down someone else who was going much faster than me, and maybe the cop mixed up the cars on his speed gun. I would like to think so. We found a big Beeline office in Cholpon Ata but the mifi needed charging, so we decided to drive out of town and bed down at the side of a side road for the night and go back and get the internet sorted in the morning.
