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Kyrgyzstan

Mar
2004-09-14 15:23:35

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To Register or not to register
The OVIR is an heritage of the Soviet period where tourists need to register where they are staying overnight. The Central Asian countries have now their own rules about using he OVIR.. In Uzbekistan one must register at each city but especially when cycling it is a not done job to find OVIRS everywhere, so you just don’t. Kyrgyzstan has just released 28 countries from this obligation, but the Netherlands is not on this list. With some help we find the OVIR office in Osh. The officer is almost sure that we are on this list, but we have checked in through several channels. What happened here… almost all EU countries are released but not the Netherlands?!? The officer shows us the list. Next time, take a look under the ‘K’ of Kingdom of the Netherlands (in Cyrillic of course).

The Kyrgyz mountains
03/08/2003. Today we leave for the Kyrgyz mountains! We have calculated to arrive in Naryn in about 4-5 days coming from Osh. Halfway the first day we meet George and Jan, two other cyclists from the Chech republic, and we continue as a group. Although they have left from Osh as well, we have done an extra 22km today. The crossings are not marked at all in Kyrgyzstan, and they speak Russian… It’s just not fair. They tell us that almost all roads are not tarred in Kyrgyzstan (that in contradiction to Uzbekistan). We start to wonder what we are doing here, imagine a dozen cols of around 3000-4000meters.

The next day it’s raining, then it stops and then it starts raining again (continuing through the day). If this is our first day to actually cycle in the mountains and nothing is tarred it’s not a good start. We keep on going. The crossing where we go east and the two Chech go north is soon to be there, or not? According to the map it should have been after 20km, but none of us saw another road. We are already close to Jalabad, and describe to move on ...