Day 5: 80km of almost flat terrain to Kotchkor (second part)
… from Ottuk to the end of the Orto-Tokoy Reservoir, the landscape is suddenly almost desert like, and there is also almost no traffic. We expect finding some water at the reservoir, but the reservoir is a disappointment, there is no soul in sight, no house nor yurt, the water level is extremely low, and the water canals that we cross on our way look pretty non-operational. It’s a bit depressing and hot. At the end of the reservoir where the Tchuy River flows in, and where we meet the main road from Bishkek, we suddenly enter a green valley, the contrast is surprising. From here it’s another 15km to the outskirts of Kotchkor, and a few more to the bazar. Suddenly, the wind rises, lifting up a lot of dust, and we hurry inside to have a drink. By accident – or intuition? -- we enter the “karaoke café” which seems to be the place where tourists meet, where we find information on the road to Song Kul, a GH and also a good meal.

Day 6: 60km and a 500m climb over another unnamed pass to Keng Suu (or Kek Suu)
Between Kotchkor and Song Kul, we meet both, the best and the worst road conditions of our circuit. From Kotchkor, we have more than 30 kilometers of a brand new, excellent road (it is already excellent starting from Bishkek, and it will soon continue up to the Torugart pass at the Chines border); on the other hand, the 40km of unpaved road after Sary Bulak include large portions of “ washboard road ” of the worst kind.
In fact, we start a bit too late. As long as we are on the good road, traffic is relatively low, but when we reach the awful part with roadwork, also the huge Chinese trucks arrive and create a dusty atmosphere. In Sary Bulak, the entire valley is filled with dust; it is a very busy place where most truck drivers take a rest. Another 5km further up, we leave the main road to the right on a quiet but unpaved road … in fact not as quiet as we have been told, in the late afternoon there are well 20 vehicles per hour … not 5 a day. The road starts with a short climb to a pass from which we see our road for the following day; the Keng Suu village just below the pass, and the large gently climbing Tölok valley ending at the Tölok pass and our road turning left at the end of the valley ground and climbing up to the 3400m Kalmak Ashu Pass. We camp a bit beyond Keng Suu.

Day 7: 35km and a 1100m climb over the Kalmak Ashu Pass to Song Kul
All along the Tölok valley, the road with plenty of gentle ups and downs is really bad slowing us down a lot; there are isolated farms every few km. Once we start climbing up the pass, the road gets much better and the traffic a bit denser. There are foreign tourists --- but we never see them at the lake. There are many more Kyrgyz tourists who come here to admire the Kyrgyz nature and to buy local cheese and kumis; many encourage us with loud hellos, and a Kyrgyz family even waits for us below the pass to give us food and express their admiration.
The view from the pass is breathtaking: a vast, slightly hilly area scattered with yurts and pastures, leading gently down to the lake ... which is still far away; more than 20km, and we never reach the shore, preceded by a several km wide marshy area. Here, we meet some very rural people, and also some not speaking Russian (younger ones). We end up in a yurt almost at the altitude of the lake but still some kilometers away. The yurt is held by an energetic woman from the Naryn region; she runs the yurt alone with her perhaps 10 year old boy. In summer, she makes her living from selling kumis and cheese and hosting tourists; we have an excellent meal with salad, mouton ragout with plenty of cabbage with fresh bread and cream (also for breakfast), and we sleep in the yurt --- together with our bikes, she insisted that we should take them inside … of course, nothing would have happened to them outside.

Day 8: 55km with a 600m climb back over the Kalmak Ashu Pass to the unnamed pass
We get up very early for the sunrise, but from the very morning the sky is lightly overcast, especially in the east. The night was cold, slightly below zero, and because of the clouds, it takes a lot of time to warm up a little bit. We nevertheless take our bikes to have a look at the lake, but we cannot reach it, we have taken a road which turns out to be a dead-end, and anyway the light conditions are not appropriate for taking photos. We start our way back to Kotchkor after the (late) breakfast. Would we have one or two days more, there would be other options, in particular, riding along the south shore of the lake, and then turn either south to Naryn or east to the main road between Osh and Bishkek. The ride down from the pass to Keng Suu is much easier than we expected; just from time to time, arriving too fast (or not fast enough) in a corrugated zone, we --and the poor bikes – are shaken like rag dolls. We stop at the pass just before reaching the main road; we put up the tent above the road, right on the old road which is still visible and offers flat places but gets slowly absorbed by nature.

Day 9: 52km of downhill ride to Kotchkor and back to Bishkek
In the early morning, the road is totally empty! And even the bad portions of the road are easier downhill. It’s the fastest 50km of our tour. From Kotchkor, finding a taxi back to Bishkek is much easier than we expected; it’s enough to mention “Bishkek” to get plenty of offers. This time we have a smaller van which is filled by two bikes and two persons, so we don’t even need to wait. There is a new and shorter road – not on the older maps – to Bishkek which avoids Balyshky and reaches the motorway 30km further up. This first part on very good road could be pleasant by bike, but the remaining over 140km on the motorway aren’t of any interest – possibly quite dangerous – for a cyclist.