{"id":2057,"date":"2017-06-04T11:35:43","date_gmt":"2017-06-04T11:35:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/?p=2057"},"modified":"2017-06-04T11:35:43","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T11:35:43","slug":"30th-may-karakol-to-bishkek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/?p=2057","title":{"rendered":"30th May – Karakol to Bishkek"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning we wake early & surprisingly it\u2019s not too cold as we head outside to the toilet.\u00a0 The main room of the guest house is the dining room and it\u2019s lovely & warm as the wood fired stove is pumping out the heat.\u00a0 The lady of the guest house has the kettles on boiling for tea and she is making bread for all of us for breakfast.<\/p>\n

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4 of the group decide to leave before breakfast and walk down at least as far as where we change trucks.\u00a0 The rest of sit down to a rice porridge breakfast made with fresh milk straight from the cow & it\u2019s so tasty.<\/p>\n

We leave on the truck at 7:30 on this lovely clear morning, with the trip down being quite a bit quicker than\u00a0 the trip up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We go back to the hotel where we stayed the night before last and David, Michael & Henk fit the new bracket to the rear shock absorber on Ginger, while the rest of us head into town to buy supplies for the day & have a coffee.<\/p>\n

We all meet at the coffee shop before taking off on our 404 km drive to Bishkek, which is the capital of Kyrgystan. Our drive takes us through bustling villages and past snow capped mountains.<\/p>\n

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We drive along most of the 200 km length of Issykkul lake, which is the second largest alpine lake in the world, Titicaca being the largest.\u00a0 Opposite the lake are beautiful reddish brown hills.<\/p>\n

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Along the lake there are yurts which I guess are for tourists to stay in, with some of them having lovely murals.<\/p>\n

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There is also a statue of one of Kyrgystan\u2019s national heroes on top of a hill.<\/p>\n

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We stop for lunch at a sandy beach on the lake.<\/p>\n

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Driving into Bishkek the city of just under 1 million people looks more affluent than the country towns we have seen so far.\u00a0 There are newer luxury cars here and although some of the Soviet style apartments still exist there is quite a bit of new construction work being done which is a good sign from an economic perspective.<\/p>\n

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We arrive at our hotel quite late and after we sort out the secure parking we do some washing in our room.\u00a0 Michael has a novel approach to doing his washing!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning we wake early & surprisingly it\u2019s not too cold as we head outside to the toilet.\u00a0 The main room of the guest house […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mak.iqt.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/DSC05248.jpg?fit=3648%2C2736&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8qvHY-xb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2057"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2086,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2057\/revisions\/2086"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mak.iqt.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}