Other overlanders in Osh

We were up and going early this morning hoping to cover the 135km to the city of Osh by lunch time in order to have sufficient time to do some extensive grocery shopping. The drive this morning continued like yesterday afternoon. Cultivated fields everywhere, people selling all kinds of vegetables and fruits at roadside stalls. In many of the stalls people were still in bed as we passed; thats right they actually had beds in the stalls and we saw people still asleep in some of them.

Just before the town of Uzgen we stopped to fill all our fuel tanks and then had the pleasure of negotiating the total choas of the towns main street where the locals had turned the street into a parking lot for the Saturday market. Interestingly the congestion and choas must have been too much even for Kyrgyzs as the local police were out moving-on vehicles that were parked in the way. This is something we have not seen before anywhere on our trip. Everywhere else, particularly in Kyrgyzstan, the rule seemed to be "park where ever you like" - even in the middle of the road.

We finally arrived in Osh (the second largest city in Kyrgyzstan) and found our way to the area of the city where we had read was a good supermarket, and even found a parking place on a street. Just as we were getting ready to go find the supermarket a German couple stopped to talk to us and told us there was a good off-street parking place 100 meters down the road and that they and a Swiss couple had stayed in that place the previous night. So we moved the truck and spent an hour or so talking to both couples about there travels. Eventually the two couples set out on their journey to the Tajik border and we started our shopping.

We spent a hot few hours collecting and packing groceries before we too set out to start our journey to the Tajik border, and hopefully find a slightly higher and cooler spot for this evenings camp.