 Ta-da! Lake, lake, lake, lake, lake, lake, lake, lake, lake. That's a nice spot to wake up to. I want to show you what you get when you visit Kyrgyzstan. Absolutely beautiful here. Okay, nope I'm out. I can't get any closer to the lake. It's just full with flies. Like they really don't want me to get any closer. Anyway, welcome to Kyrgyzstan. First things first. Let's get some coffee going. Good morning world. Welcome back to our circumnavigation around the globe. My motorcycle. Good morning, Bumblebee. Good morning, Bumblebee. We're here at the beautiful Lake Issyk-Kul in Kyrgyzstan, the seventh deepest lake in the world, the 10th largest lake by volume, the second deep, biggest alpine lake in the world. And the second largest body of salt water in the world behind the Caspian Sea. This lake has a lot of cool facts about it, so I just thought you guys should know that. Come to Kyrgyzstan. So we camped here last night. You can see our little home built up behind us and actually we checked Olli's sleep score. It was 82 on the Fitbit. I mean, this is the highest it has been since a month or something. It's proven, guys. Being out in nature is just good for the soul, all right? It's good for the sleep. It's good for the body, good for everything, except for the mosquitoes. But we've got some awesome days ahead exploring the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. So let me show you guys where we're headed. So we are here and our mission over the next few days is to head southwest to the ancient Silk Road town of Osh and prepare ourselves to cross into Uzbekistan. So there were basically like two main routes that we had to choose between. One, which was a more northern route, which was on sort of a bigger road. It's a bit longer, but it was a bit easier. And then there was another one, which is like shorter and it goes higher up into the mountains on smaller roads. And we didn't really know which route to pick. So we asked a bunch of people. We asked Andre back in Kazakhstan and some contacts that he had given us here in Kyrgyzstan. So we know that the northern route is pretty much all Tarmac. It's a little bit longer, but I think a little bit more boring as well, because it's a lot of highway. And the southern route, we had really 50-50 answers. Some people said it's really bad. I wouldn't do it. And some people said it's much better now. You have nice views. It's a little bit more challenging because the road is as well gravel road. But they said as well, it's much nicer than the northern route. So we have decided now to go for the southern route, which I'm really happy about because I'm ready for a new adventure. So today we give ourselves a soft start. We will end up at a lake. It's as well a mountain lake, Songkul. Songkul, Songkul. It's a quite short ride, 110 miles, two and a half hours. But we still have to pick up everything and it's already eight o'clock. So better hit the road. Let's go. What are you doing? Look at a whole herd of sheep gathered around us to watch us leave. Yeah. Hello, guys. Can you see their big fat tails? Yeah. Well, that's crazy. That is crazy. I mean, this is definitely something you don't see in Europe. And I think we ate some of that, I'm afraid to say. Mongolia. This is a sheep tail. I'm going to slap sheep tail. Yeah, bumblebee starting on cue without a hitch. All right, let's check the camp. Leave no trace. How does it look? Looks good. Looks good. Hey, yeah. All right. Time to hit the road. Let's rock and roll. Bye bye, beautiful lake. Sorry, guys, we don't mean to disturb your morning. Sorry. Sorry. Just continue as you are, guys. Yeah, don't mind us. Look, these guys with their yurt set up. So that is glamping. Really cool. These guys probably stopped yesterday with their bicycles in front of our tent. Yeah, like 2 a.m. Two people were riding past and then suddenly I heard like like a screech and they both just stopped dead. And then like there was just a whole load of talking in front of the tent. They didn't come to the tent. They didn't do anything. They just eventually they just cycled off. But I was just like, guys, take your conversation elsewhere. Just give us a break. Anyway, I've got my I've got my bear spray. No, seriously, if we get attacked from anyone, it's like game over for us. Please don't attack us. So first, we're going to be heading to a town called Kuchkor, where we're going to be getting some supplies ready for a few days in the mountains. And the town is 32 miles away. GPS is going to take 50 minutes. Yes, I'm excited. Wow, look at this mountains around us. Epic, man. This kind of B road is definitely my favorite type of road. Yeah, it's more scenic. Yeah, it's less busy and it's the tarmac, you know, it's still tarmac. Like and we can still go 30 miles an hour and I don't worry about falling over. That's the only thing I don't like about dirt roads is I don't want to damage anything on the bike. Like we're really likely to break a foot pedal if we fall over because we've got one crash bar, which is half bent and the other one, which is fully bent. Yes, that's true. But a normal dirt road should be OK. Yeah, our first Kyrgyzstan camels. Amazing. So cool, hey? Yeah, what a beautiful scene. Wow. Yeah, this is just a stunning place. Wow, all these mountains around is absolutely beautiful. And these guys are bacteria and camels. Those could be distinguished from dromedaries because dromedaries have a single hump on their back and these guys have two humps. Plus, these ones are really fluffy and cute. We forgot to film our first fill up here in Kyrgyzstan. So I'm going to film the second fill up so I can show you guys what it's looking like here. And this is like a super nice new petrol station. Look at this. Yep. So as in Russia and Kazakhstan, Lavi has to go in the shop, give them like an estimate of what she thinks it's going to be. I have to then fill up. Lavi then gets the change. So there's a bit of a convoluted system, but anyway, that's how they do it. Right. So anyway, what I'll do, this is what I saw all the car people do. What they do is they stick it in, they click it on, then they normally go into pay and by the time they come back, it's already filling up. But Lavi's going to go do that bit. So it's going to put it up right. I heard Lavi being like, full, full. As if the Kyrgyz word is for full is full. Yep. It's going zero and it's starting. Oh, it clicked already, but it didn't work at all. So the price per litre for 92 is 5840 Kyrgyz Somme. And that is 52 pence. It's pretty good. Not as cheap as Kazakhstan, but it's pretty good price. So we've arrived in Kochkord and man, it's super busy here. Cars everywhere and sort of a traffic jam for no reason. Yeah, because of this truck there. Yeah, there's a truck, which is totally blocking the whole way. Yeah, we have to turn here as well. Ah, we're going to turn down that street down that street. Yeah, my Lord, my Lordy Lord. So we're trying to go to a supermarket so we can grab some supplies. Definitely a busy place here. Yeah, it's like a little market there as well. But we don't really have space for vegetables. I think we're going more on the scale of noodle packs. Yes. Oh, what do you get? Like yesterday I had some tomatoes with us and yeah, they were totally like squished and not very nice. Anyway, what a stunning location for a town. Hey, I mean, so nice mountains around. It's just incredible. So the supermarket should be just here. Oh, great. Beautiful supermarket. Look at that. Oh, no, it does not exist. Unfortunately, OK, this cannot trust Google Maps. Hey, no, I mean, there's literally nothing here. Yeah, I mean, there were even some pictures, you know, there was pictures. Yes, I guess it's just in the wrong location. I think we'll just head back to the main street. Yeah, just up here. Just keep an eye out for somewhere. We can get some groceries to be found somewhere that says on the market, hopefully there's going to be some supplies in there. Oh, my Lord, what do you got here? There's like full of stuff. Maybe I went over the top again. I think I've heard you say that nearly every time you come out of supermarket. Me, I go in and I'm like, I got two packs of noodles and an egg. Muffins, muffins and they look really nice homemade, actually. So I'm excited for them. Oh, look at those. Wow. It's like a sort of oily, flat bread with some. It looks like maybe some onion in there. Oh, yes. Breakfast. Chocoballs, noodles. Nice. And then two different types of cheese, two different types of cheese. Do you know anything about them? No, it looks more like mozzarella and this looks more like gouda. So. OK. I was like, yeah, let's get some cheese. How spicy are these noodles? I don't know. I think this one's probably more spicy. Oh, no, look, look. It's so spicy on it. And this one says mild. How many spices have any miles? You got two miles, two spices. We had the mild ones last night and they were pretty spicy. Ask her if you can switch the two spicy for two miles, because honestly, even the mild ones were pretty spicy. OK, I will ask her. Awesome. Oh, hello. All right, we've got our supplies. We are stocked up some nice stuff. Some beautiful bread and cheese, of course. And now I'm ready to get out of the town and into some nice, beautiful, winding mountain roads. Oh, yes, me too. Oh, yeah, that's more like it. Beautiful open roads and mountains all around. It doesn't really get better than that. Hey, yeah, I mean, I'm really impressed so far with Kyrgyzstan. And at the moment, the road is really nice, too. Yeah, I don't know how it's going to be over the next two more days after this. But at least for now, this is just an amazing road. So we just turned off the main road and we're hitting our first dirt road of the day. A little bit gravelly, to be honest, in patches. So, yeah, we're just going to have to take it easy, take it nice and slow, because I do not want to repeat of what happened in Mongolia. Oh, no, we fell over. Oh, no, no, no, no. So this day is just going from bad to worse. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Dammit. I think in two days, we fell off about six times. Yeah. Bent the crash bars. I broke my rib. It was a terrible, terrible 200 miles. But anyway, if the road stays like that, it's all good. Oh, yeah, this is lovely. You know, I can just go like nice, chilled 30 miles an hour. Yeah, but it's quite funny because there were two signs next to each other. One sign was saying 50 kilometers to the lake. And then another sign was saying 60 kilometers to the lake. Who knows where the lake is. Hey. Oh, wow. Look at this view. Oh, my Lord, look at that. Wow. Whoa, what a landscape. That's stunning. That is crazy. Wow. We've got some little patches of snow up on the hills at the top there. Just a crazy, crazy road go through this landscape. Wow. Amazing. Welcome to Kyrgyzstan. What a nice country. Wow. That road is really 50-50. Sometimes it's quite nice and sometimes it's really, really strong corrugation and bumblebees just shaking around like crazy. Yeah, we can only hope that we're not going to break our new shock. Yeah, exactly. The first shock did like a lot of miles before it packed up. So come on, this one's brand new. You can take it. Yeah. No worries. But yes, the surroundings here are just stunning. Yeah. And one benefit of taking this road over the other one is there's no traffic. Yes. There's absolutely no traffic, which is lovely. There's just these lone places where sheep herders are living. All kind of dotted along the valley. That's nice. It looks like a super, super nice, chilled way of life. Yes. I'm from Australia. Oh, cool. Yeah, I've started in England. Cool. How are you? We're trying to circumnavigate the globe. So we already did Europe and Africa, South Africa, and then we should fight from Canada to Korea. We're to Russia, Oya, Russia now. And now here. OK. Wow. Oh, well. I've got the root in my head. It's like, it makes sense to us. We're on our way home, actually. We're going back to England now. I've not met anyone else doing anything as big as that. You're pretty much coming exactly where I come from. Yeah. The only way I could get around the Caspian Sea was to go from Georgia into Russia. We're going to be shipping the bike across the Caspian Sea and flying into Azerbaijan. Now, that might be OK, because the issue is the Azerbaijan border of Georgia. Yeah. Is it OK to go? Apparently, it's OK to leave. But it's just not OK to come in. It's OK, but going in is an old goal. Yeah. And I had read that as well. I'm just going to move out the way of this car. Oh, my God. Look at this. GB, can you believe it? So actually, this bike is an Australian bike that you brought to England. You plated it in England. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Wow, crazy. Yeah, I brought it in Melbourne in 2016. No waste. This bike's been from Australia to England, and now to here, Kyrgyzstan. Yeah. This is Evan, by the way, guys. We just met him on the road. Absolutely amazing to see another guy on the road. I feel the same way to me. I feel the same way to him. I feel the same way to meet someone else that's doing a crazy trip like this. It's amazing. We're all freaking crazy. Anyway, Evan has very kindly told us how bad the road ahead is for the next couple of days. So we've got that to look forward to. Amazing to meet you, Evan. Amazing. Yeah. Enjoy the road. So we're starting to climb up now. And the road is getting a little bit dodgy, to say the least. So yeah, this morning I was pretty excited. Now I'm a little bit scared. It is quite challenging, definitely. Up in the mountains, eh? Yeah, what are we doing? Is it a mistake, or is it an adventure? Or is it the same thing, eh? Yeah. I think the most important thing is that we keep an eye on the road. We keep concentrated. And don't fall off the mountain. Yeah, exactly. Wow, pretty crazy road, actually, at the end. Yeah, I mean, it started off like just a normal dirt road. It's sort of turning into a rocky mountain track. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, I mean, if this part was like a good part, then I really don't want to know how the other parts are. Hello, guys. Oh yeah, we're starting to climb up high now. Look, we've got snow up there. Wow. Yeah, I can feel the temperature coming down. I can feel the cold air coming. Yeah. Oh my god, look at this bit. Yeah, it's a little bit, as Evan said, technical. Yeah. I like that way of putting it. So we just stopped here at the side of the road for a break. And we were like completely alone, sitting by this little stream here. And then all these guys just arrived and decided to park basically all around this. And they're just like blasting out this dance music on a vacation. This is my father's mother's. This is your best friend. You go Songkul to the lake. How many days? How many days? Two. Two days at the lake. OK, nice. Tomorrow we go towards Osh. Osh? Mm. There's a whole herd of yaks up here. Amazing. Look at these fluffy, cute guys. I can see as well where the road goes. Oh my god, we are going up, up, up. I think it passes over there, doesn't it? Yeah. Oh my god. We just ran into a couple of bikers from Switzerland as well. And they're heading the same direction as us on the tenoraze. Yeah, they were blasting their way up the hill. I guess you know, on their own, they just like flying. Yeah. Anyway, ready to get back to it? Baby yak on the side of the road. Oh. Oh, and there's the mother yak. Oh my lord. I thought they were going to charge us. Oh my god, this is like yak heaven here. Look how many yaks there are around. Beautiful yaks. Wow. They have so nice fur. Yeah, fluffy with these beautiful horns. I can't look too much because, as Emma would say, it's a technical road. I wonder if we will ever see tarmac again. But we've been like 20 miles on a dirt road. We've got to embrace the shake, my love. OK. Embrace the shake, all right? This is adventure. This is it. OK. You know? Oh my lord. Hey, it wasn't that adventurous. Totally. I am still loving the life. First few years of Songkul lake ahead of us. That is amazing. Yeah, we successfully managed to climb up the pass. And now we are on a quite high elevation. The bike's recording 11,000 feet at the moment. And then we're dropping down a little bit to get down to the lake. But yeah, that climb was a little bit hairy at times. Hey. Yeah, totally. But once you get back on this road, you're like, oh, that's not too bad. That's nice. These are the more enjoyable moments. Once you've come over the pass, you've got the views. And you're just on your way down, hey. Yeah. A group of roaming horses. Hello, guys. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Not this way. Oh, god. They're fine. And over here we've got traditional Kyrgyzstan yurt, which we might be sleeping in tonight. Here's the Swiss fellas again. Yes. Nice. What a beautiful scene around. There's just like horses everywhere. There's like yurt camps dotted around. And there's an amazing lake in the background. Look at that. Yeah, really, really stunning. And luckily the road got a little bit better as well. Relatively. Good enough, hey. Good enough. Anyway, we are nearly finished for today. We're going to spend the night hopefully at one of these yurt camps coming up. Oh, yeah, look, there's a whole bunch of ones up here. Yeah, let's just take one of those, I think. Yeah, let's go here. Well, there's a lot of yurts here. Wow. Wow. Look. It's OK? Yes? Oh, no. Not yet? Not yet. All gone. Oh, OK. Yeah, OK. OK, OK. Yeah, yeah, we will just camp. OK, camping down there. OK. Rahmat. Rahmat, Rahmat. OK, so we tried two yurt camps. And both of them were fully booked. So unfortunately, we won't be having a yurt tonight. No. Can you believe it? Yeah, so many yurts. But it looks like all yurts are fully booked. This lake in front, Songkul, is like, let's say, the second most famous lake after Isikkul. Yeah. We've got our own stuff anyway. We've got our tent. Let's just pick a space down by the lake, hey. Totally, I'm excited. So we just go up here. Yeah, in between all the horse poo. Yeah, let's try and find a bit where there's no horse poo. We'll make our own yurt for tonight, won't we? Cool. It looks so cozy. Beautiful, look at that. Got our chair set up, got the tent set up. And I'm just getting ready with our rain covers, rain trousers for the night, because we don't know how cold it gets. Over 3,000 meters above sea level here. So yeah, we just want to be prepared with every piece of clothing we have inside the tent just in case. Whoa, that was a crazy ride to reach the lake here. We were sort of like, oh, two and a half hours ride. Not too bad. But I think at the end, it took us like five hours or six hours. It was a mad road, oh my god. I was already saying like, Ollie, let's cut back to tarmac. Hopefully the road doesn't get worse. Yeah, I mean, it is tough. It will be tough. But I think we just pushed through it. Yeah, the next couple of days are going to be an adventure. For sure. So that's it from us today. We hope you enjoyed the video. If so, please give us a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. Share the video with your friends and family. Comment below. And if you really, really, really, really, really, really like our videos, you can join us on Patreon. The link is in the description below. We will see you next time. Working hard after a hard ride. We're just loading on all the footage at the moment to make sure that everything is all right. And then we have to work on a couple of thumbnails. It's not a bad office, is it? And there's quite a lot of flies around. I'm not sure yet if there's mosquitoes or just flies, but I'm still protecting myself just in case.