By: John Forsyth

Once seen as an almost impossible destination, Kyrgyzstsan now rates as a highlight for the intrepid motorcycle tourist.

The seed for this trip was planted by Max, with a cheeky“ Who’ s interested?” to our group of riding buddies, with reference to the Silk Offroad Tours‘ 11 Passes of Tian-Shan’ tour in Kyrgyzstan. I didn’ t even know where that was, but my interest was piqued and I felt I was in need of a decent holiday anyway. It looked like the stars were aligning for‘ Stretch’ too. That made three. Fast-forward eight weeks and the three of us converged upon the city of Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’ s capital. We took a day to acclimatise and had a look through The National History Museum and tried to find good coffee, before meeting up with our guide / interpreter, Nagim, and got to meet our DR650 mounts for the upcoming 10 days and get our luggage setup ready for departure the following morning.

DAY ONE Our first order of business was to exit Bishkek( Pop. 1.2M) and we quickly learnt two things... 1) The roads don’ t get closed for road works, they just get on with the job and traffic has to skirt around the machines. Not a road cone in sight, take note NZ! 2) Driver behaviour is often sketchy. Having said that we never saw a single prang or any display of road rage. Everybody just gets on with their

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