Etappe 123: From Kerbulak to Shengeldy

Of course, Ruslan had to go to work the next day as well. He would have liked to keep both of us longer, but we were a bit annoyed by the wasted day and saw no prospect of improvement. So we told him that we would try it on our own with the bike, which was completely okay for him. I think he had promised us something he couldn't keep, and since he didn't want to lose face, he constantly put us off until the next day and made excuses. All in all, a nice guy who was very happy to stick the Kazakh flag on my bike! As a farewell gift, he gave us each a Kazakh coin (of which we already had many anyway). Unfortunately, I didn't have any euros with me, instead I found some Armenian Dram and Uzbek Sum (comment from Ruslan: Uzbek men have four wives, but still prefer to have sex with donkeys! I think he doesn't like Uzbeks...).

After a heartfelt farewell, we finally headed towards the national park! The road soon became very bad, but we had expected that. The landscape was a delight. It would have been even more beautiful in the park itself, but the guard at the entrance would not budge (what a surprise!). This was probably mainly because there would have been two more checkpoints in the park. If he had let us through, it would have been noticed there. So we still brewed tea and coffee and took it with humor. For the second time, we were faced with a barrier that forced us to turn back. So we drove back along the bumpy road and along the road to Shengeldy. We decided not to stay at Ruslan's again, we finally wanted to camp by the lake again. After all, we had decided to finally part ways the next day, as Aman had to go further north, while I wanted to catch my flight in Bishkek. Shengeldy is not directly on the lake, so we wound our way through field paths further and further towards the shore. It was difficult to find a suitable place to sleep, as the shore was either swampy and full of mosquitoes or already occupied by locals. In the end, we found a very nice spot, very close to a farmhouse with people in sight, but we didn't care. To finish off, we cooked again and admired the sunset, just like back then at Lake Issyk-Kul. This time we skipped the outer tents to be able to see the stars at night. Except for a car driving past our tents at night (probably a fisherman), we had a peaceful night.