The day started dry and misty but, as we wound our way round the reservoir, the weather deteriorated. After the village of Toktogul, the road started to rise through a series of hairpins to the Ala-Bel Pass (3,184 metres) and, by the time we reached the top it was snowing. The road continued through high-plateau pastureland with enormous flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of cattle and horses. The horses are bred for their meat. There are yurts at the side of the road offering traditional Kyrgyz snacks, but we wanted to get to Bishkek before dark so we didn’t try them. The road descends slowly before starting to rise sharply and we could see five or six lines of cars and trucks passing through hairpins stretching up the mountainside. The Tor-Ashuu Pass (3,586 metres) is the most dramatic we have been on, although it doesn’t have the single track road and 1,000-foot drops of the Sagirdasht or the potentially lethal mud ruts of the Kyzyl-Arta. The route down was particularly amazing with dozens of hairpins down into an increasingly narrow gorge flanked by enormous cliffs and scree slopes. The Kara-Balta river follows the gorge all the way to the bottom and we stopped for lunch to watch two men fishing in the turbulent turquoise waters of the river.
The town of Kara-Balta lies at the bottom of the gorge at the edge of a plain which stretches for thousands of miles across Kazakhstan and Western Siberia to the Arctic Ocean. The road to Bishkek runs eastwards through a succession of villages which merge into each other with the road flanked by workshops, cafes and commercial buildings. Very boring. We drove to Bishkek and spent the night in a carpark for a block of flats.
