Asia Tour 2026 - Day 14/25 - 23rd August - Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan - City 10/15 - Country 7/9
Updated: 1 day ago
Just after breakfast we packed up and met our driver for "Bishkek" one potential driver said he was Kyrgyz and could go all the way, but this guy assured us. "Bishkek, Bishkek yes, yes, yes, Bishkek". Not far from our hotel in Shymkent, the driver picked up a mystery traveller and off we went.
I have no idea what speeds we were doing and I was afraid to look, but I recon about 150-180 km/h. Every so often we would slow down as oncoming traffic would warn by flashing that there was a police control. They even had cardboard cut-out police cars on the side of the road to make people slow down. We stopped once for the toilet, somewhere in the middle of nowhere and we saw a mini-tornado, I will call it that rather than the proper name. The road seemed to stretch on forever, long and undulating reminding me of Canada. We passed old soviet trucks, old ladas, a dust storm and real life tumbleweed which was impressive to see.
We arrived promptly at the border, I argued briefly about going all the way to Bishkek, then I realised the second passenger was there as "insurance" in case I decided to be belligerent. There we go, Central Asian tactics again, kicked out at the border, again! Then the usual, exit stamp from Kazakhstan, bag control, enter Kyrgyzstan stamp and a big smile "Ireland, Conor McGregor hahaha". We also went one hour forward in time. There was a smiley happy "taxi-taxi" guy and I first had to change money then off we went, the final 20 km to our hotel was 2000 kgs. I immediately noticed two things, this country looked considerably poorer and the roads were in bad shape, also the mountains were quite impressive standing tall over the city. I managed to use a few words of Kyrgyz to have a mini conversation on the way to the hotel, the whole time admiring the huge mountain chain separating us from China.
We relaxed for a bit before going out to explore the city, we experienced our first drop of rain in 13 days but it was just a quick shower. We continued to Ala-Too square with a huge flag, a statue of Manas a local hero and a very large museum.
The square had lots of modern looking fountains too. We wandered a bit further and found a large and very well kept statue of Lenin too!
Tired from walking we picked a random café as the sun was setting, we ordered a beer and a tea and got chatting to two older Dutch men, who were communists, there was another table with Rotterdammers who were also Commies!
On the way back to the hotel we found a shopping mall and stocked up on postcards and souvenirs.
We returned to our hotel, and the restaurant looked actually quite nice, I ordered a nice 4 cheese pizza with Jalapeños and we stayed put as it rained heavily outside. I had considered getting a taxi to the Irish pub, but it was nicer to just sit and watch the rain.
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