CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Bishkek and back again: 849 km, roughly 14 h 06 in the saddle. It goes by way of Balykchy, Bokonbaevo, Jeti Oguz and Karakol. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 3,300 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It suits an unhurried touring pace.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 32 km this is Kyrgyzstan Issyk Kul Loop, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Bishkek lies at the foot of the Kyrgyz Ala-Too, the northern range of the Tian Shan, and on a clear morning the snow peaks seem close enough to touch from the city's long boulevards. The capital of Kyrgyzstan was a small fort and trading post in the nineteenth century, and was then rebuilt as a Soviet city named Frunze, after the Bolshevik commander born nearby. The legacy is a grid of broad, straight streets lined with poplars and elms, Soviet apartment blocks, wide squares, and statues, including the one of Manas, the hero of the national epic, who stands in front of the main square, Ala-Too.
Read the complete Bishkek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bishkek is where the day begins. Next is Balykchy.
Balykchy is at the far western end of Issyk-Kul, the second-largest mountain lake in the world, and its name in Kyrgyz means fisherman. The lake, at an altitude of about 1,600 metres, is more than a hundred and eighty kilometres long and deep enough to stay ice-free in winter despite the cold, which is why its name means warm lake. The Tian Shan mountains surround it on all sides, with snow-capped peaks marching along the southern shore, and the water is a deep, saline blue that changes colour with the weather.
Read the complete Balykchy write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Balykchy comes up about 188 km into the recorded legs. Next is Bokonbaevo.
Bokonbaevo is a village on the south shore of Issyk-Kul, the great mountain lake of Kyrgyzstan, which lies at about 1,600 metres and is the second-largest alpine lake in the world. The name means warm lake, because the water, though cold, never freezes, even in the hard winters of the Tian Shan, and the mountains that rise behind it, the Terskey Ala-Too, carry snow all summer. On the road along the shore the lake is a sheet of deep blue on one side and the red and grey peaks on the other, and the contrast is striking.
Read the complete Bokonbaevo write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 280 km into the recorded legs you reach Bokonbaevo. Next is Jeti Oguz.
Jeti Oguz means seven bulls, and the name belongs to a line of rust-red sandstone cliffs that rise above a pine-dotted valley on the southern side of Lake Issyk-Kul, in the Tien Shan mountains of eastern Kyrgyzstan. The cliffs are jagged and stacked side by side, and local legend says they are the petrified remains of seven bulls. A second formation, a red rock split down the middle in the shape of a heart, is known as the Broken Heart, and it is surrounded by a story of two rival suitors and a murdered khan that every guide tells slightly differently.
Read the complete Jeti Oguz write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Jeti Oguz, about halfway. Next is Karakol.
Karakol is the largest town on the eastern end of Lake Issyk-Kul, a place of about seventy thousand people at the foot of the Terskey Ala-Too range, and it is full of surprises. It was founded as a Russian garrison in the 1860s, and it has kept a good deal of its nineteenth-century character, with low wooden houses, painted shutters and tree-lined streets. The Holy Trinity Cathedral, a wooden Orthodox church with bright blue domes, was rebuilt in the 1990s after being used as a gymnasium in the Soviet years.
Read the complete Karakol write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Karakol sits at 531 km, late in the day. Next is Bishkek.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bishkek write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 849 km.
Bishkek → Balykchy is 188 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Balykchy → Bokonbaevo is 92 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bokonbaevo → Jeti Oguz is 131 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Jeti Oguz → Karakol is 32 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Karakol → Bishkek is 406 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.