We drove over a mountain today! Where the Japanese would have built a tunnel the Kyrgyzs built a road. The said tunnel would have been expensive, over engineered, straight and pretty damn boring. This road, on the other hand, was cheap to build, extremely basic, curvy and absolutely totally exciting.
The mountain is over 3000 metres and we started the climb up from an elevation of 1500 metres. It was 40km to climb up one side and to descend down the other; which took us about 1.5 hours! The road had about 40 bends, many of which were hair-pin, and there were no barriers at all; apart from the odd bit of piled up snow or rocks. The mountain was covered in loose scree and the road had literally been carved crudely out of the sides. Small rivulets of water cascaded down sections of the road and created puddles; some of which were large and deep. There were only narrow parts, mostly on the corners, where one could overtake the coal ladened lorries that traversed the mountain at a snail’s pace.
It was, without doubt, the most exhilarating road both of us have ever been on……
Enough talk: some photos and a short video clip that I recorded with the phone….to the soundtrack of the Arctic Monkeys 🙂
