Auto Bild India GLA Day 14: Dancing with Mithun-da in Bishkek

Bishkek is the capital of the Kyrgyzstan, a country of just five million people. Legend has it that Manas united 40 different clans of the Ughyrs to form the country and hence the national flag has a sun with 40 rays of light emanating from it. And hence also that the main square of the capital called Ala-Too has a statue of the father of the nation, Manas, along with a huge national flag that is guarded by two soldiers at all times. Of course, just over 20 years back a statue of Lenin dominated Ala-Too!

The statue of Manas which overlooks the Ala-Too Square.

While the statue and the flag are impressive, the main square seems ordinary, though it has nice looking buildings with golden domes on the other side. In all, the main square points to a country of modest means.

One of the buildings at the Ala-Too square.

Early morning exit from the city is accomplished without much problem but just on the outskirts we run into heavy traffic that is soon explained by our arrival at perhaps the largest used car market on earth. A few kilometres long, running along the main road, the market has cars lined up as far as the eye can see. We spot a Hummer, a few Cadillacs and a Maserati as well as we negotiate the traffic that has built up because the market draws a huge number of prospective buyers on Sundays. While there may be a few people selling their old rides, the market is usually made up of direct used car imports from both western Europe and Japan. If you are willing to compromise and buy a car with the steering on the wrong side from Japan, you may get a substantial discount of up to 30 per cent.

As the team heads out of Bishkek, the roads are decent enough, however, as the scenery improves, the road disappears.

There are two routes to get to one of the main staging points of the Silk Route at Naryn - one which runs through the mountains and the other that goes by the lake Issyk-Kul, the biggest holiday destination of not only the country but of the region. We decide on the former and are soon negotiating our way up to one of the main mountain passes in the country driving through snow-clad mountains. However, the quality of the roads, it seems, is inversely proportional to the scenery and the views. As the latter two keep getting better and better, the former becomes so bad that soon we are negotiating a dirt and gravel trail which follows a river on its way through Ladakh kind of landscapes, stark and rugged of various hues and colours.

Pretty soon, the team was driving on dirt roads such as this one as they made their way to Naryn.

Driving through village after village we see evidence of the fact that the people are expert horsemen as we find numerous children on horseback with most of them looking to be under 10 years of age.

It is a poor country with happy people and Bollywood seems to be one of the major source of happiness but it is not the SRKs or the ABs that are revered here but Mithun-da is the most popular here and at one of the markets we even had a local sing and dance to a Bollywood number.

Naryn, a city at over 2500m altitude, is our stop for the night as we prepare to cross the main branch of the Tien Shan range into China in the footsteps of Marco Polo and countless others. Our steeds are doing well so far and we hope to do considerably better time than the traders from the medieval times who took a week to do the crossing into China!