Day #7 How I ate a meatless pizza with salami

Despite staying in a slightly disgusting, crumbling base, it was my best sleep of the entire race. I even overslept and didn't set off on the next leg until half past three!

For the first three hours I climbed a gentle hill. A light wind blew against me. As dawn approached, the temperature dropped. I had to put on my down pants. I didn't regret at all that I'd packed them. They rode beautifully.

Along the way I occasionally passed sleeping herds of goats or border guards. Or rather, I passed by one checkpoint where a car was parked, but no one in the window. I didn't want to wake the man unnecessarily, so I opened the gate and continued on. At the next gate, about 20 kilometers later, someone was there, but they didn't even want to see my passport.

I calmly climbed to the pass at three and a half thousand meters and in howling cold descended two thousand meters to the town of Naryn. Even though the morning was calm, the road tired me out, the views got old.

In the valley I passed through several towns, or larger villages, and I realized how long it had been since I'd seen any. I was back in civilization.

🍕 Civilization

Naryn was supposed to be the biggest city on the entire route, not counting the start and finish. And more importantly, it stood at the beginning of a 450-kilometer section where there would be no opportunity to buy supplies. From last place I'd fought my way into the top forty, but here I didn't want to race. I wanted to eat well and prepare. I'd lose the most time if I ran out of food in the middle of nowhere.

Naryn is more or less the halfway point, and being a major town, with long sections of wilderness before and after it, it has become better known as 'scratch city', the point where the highest number of riders drop out and call it a day on their ride. Don't let yourself be brought down by other riders thinking of packing it in though, because the next section of the race is another SRMR classic and one of the most beautiful in Kyrgyzstan. The route up through Eki Naryn, through the Burkhan valley, Arabel pass and valley is spectacular.

First I wanted to have lunch, but most of the places I found on Google Maps didn't exist at all or were closed. The entire main street was dug up and I was desperately looking for something like a restaurant where I could have something without meat - I didn't want to risk any food poisoning.

I crawled into something that looked like a pizzeria. Surely they'd have cheese pizza... well, they didn't. When I asked if they had anything without meat, they offered me salami. In the end I gave up, ordered it and a burger to go with it. She asked a bit surprised if I really wanted both together.

I risked the meat in the burger. The place didn't look too bad... and I was betting on my iron stomach. I could probably trust the salami more, because all the bacteria in it are probably dead. I took two pieces of pizza with me because I felt full.

Then I stopped at the local Globus, where I bought the maximum that could fit on my bike. I even had all my pockets full. I bought two loaves of bread. I fastened one to the handlebars with a strap. Two huge bags of jam. I couldn't take more food and had to leave one package of sunflower seeds on the stairs. Hopefully someone will take it.

I spent a good two hours in Naryn - a very long break during a race, but I came alive with new energy.

🙅‍♂️ No man's land

Just before the start, the route was changed because a bridge had collapsed just past Naryn and we had to bypass it on side trails. I was freezing in the morning, but now the heat was bothering me again and I was rinsing off in a stream.

I crossed over a three-thousand-meter pass and slowly, very slowly, I climbed the endless Burkhan valley up again. On my Garmin I found something that was called a "camping spot". I didn't know what it was, but that evening I passed by a place that was marked like that and there was even some stone building there.

At one village I was getting water. A boy appeared there who offered me to sleep at their home. I considered it, it would be an interesting experience, but I was still in a race after all. I still had fresh legs, which I wanted to take advantage of, so I rode on. How much that could have changed my next days...

When I was almost at my camping spot, some racer shone a light on me and came towards me as I rode past. He asked if I was Michal and that Tomáš Hadámek was sleeping there. I didn't know how he figured me out, because he couldn't have gotten it from the tracker - there was no signal here. And in the dark like this... But I wanted to get to my dream spot, so I pedaled a few more kilometers.

At that camping spot there was nothing at all - I expected that a little. But I didn't mind at all - I could set up my bivy anywhere and the plain was beautifully flat. I fell asleep satisfied and had no idea that this was the last day things would go smoothly without problems.