Hello everyone, first post here. As i will graduate in late march I had the intentions to cycle through kyrgyzstan with my brother, starting from early june till start july (we have anywhere between 20/30 days available).
Browsing through bikepacking.com, we found there were mainly 2 options: the Tian Shan trasverse (984km/16000m uphill) and the Celestial Divide (1065/20000m uphill). Now, the website advises 20 days duration for both of them. My question would be, as moderately trained persons (we have been cycling and running on and off for years, and already had 100+km consecutively although only for 4 days), would it be a stretch to do the celestial divide in 20 days? It would be approximately 1000m per day with 50k.
Although the main concern is not really about distance rather than views. Is one significantly different from the other?
Thank you in advance 🙂
by some_italian_dude
1 Comment
I did the Tian Shan, but backwards to avoid the hike up Kegety Pass (among others). I am also comfortable with ~100km + 2000m vertical for multiple days straight on european gravel (eg. Montanas Vacias, which I can also highly recommend).
In Kyrgyztan, between the heat, altitude, road quality, we probably averaged 70km and 1300m and I was fully maxxed out. Some slight food / stomach issues certainly didn’t help (filter *all* your water, be strict with not eating uncooked veggies, don’t sample the national drink of fermented horse milk even if the nice stranger is being very polite).
Make sure you also have some rest days planned in for things like altitude acclimation or a thunderstorm preventing you from getting over a mountain pass.
In terms of route comparison, I have to say that I really enjoyed the valleys and alpine plateau east of Naryn. That said, I haven’t gone south down to Osh so I can’t really compare that part.