A skier's diet in Central Asia & biking & hiking Kyrgyzstan

 

I am crazy: Fun summer plans include the following journey by jeep and bike. I started out by riding from Almaty, Kazakhstan to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and on to Lake Issky Kul and Naryn province, both of which would have amazing skiing high up where yurts are for the summer months. The riding along the shepherd's tracks is hard to beat though. Now I'm in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, waiting for a ride through the high desert to Murghab, Tajikistan. 

Obviously, whenever you do something that makes you sweat for hours on end, you need some food. But in Central Asia the only Clif bars available are the ones you bring (trust me, I should have brought more), and the only truly safe calories are those obtained from snickers bars and Coke. So I've become good at spotting somewhat safe roadside food stands, banana sellers, and the very very occasional supermarket (I am pretty sure they only exist in towns over 50,000, of which there are only about five in Kyrgyzstan). 

Here are some pictures of the delicious and normally safe things I've been eating while on tour. I hope to ski a bit in the Pamirs but acquiring skis has proved very difficult Kyrgyzstan so I may have to do as the locals and hammer some tin cans to planks.

Shashlik house in Kazakhstan. These dot the more popular highways. If you want safe-ish meat, make sure you choose the kind you want from the refrigerator and have them cook it all the way through. Expect at least 50% fat and some bone mixed in, but both are good for growing skiers.

 

Mystery liquid. Every few days I buy a big bottle of mineral water, and then pour in the rest of whatever soda I find along the way. Most small roadside shops sell Coke and Fanta, which may or may not be chilled depending on the availability of power. I keep another bottle on the bike that I use for fresh water, but in the south of the country where I am now fresh water is not always available or clean due to the pesticides and agricultural/ livestock debris. And two stage filtering sucks. And I don't mind the extra calories in soda while I'm riding. 

 

Chocolate of any kind. There is no denying that it is hot in Kyrgyzstan during the summer, with temperatures over 100 much of the time. So it would seem like a bad idea to buy it and carry on the bike. But the reality is that if you don't want to stop for chai and some shashlik, most stores on the roadside sell little other than flatbread, milk, coke, alcoholic drinks, chewing gum, and snickers. M&Ms are especially difficult to find and often limited to the larger towns. My riding diet I try to balance between 2 snickers and 1 pack m&ms per day plus and alpen gold bar. 

 

Anything found in the bazaar. I gave up on peeling fruits and veggies about 5 days into the trip. Despite warnings from locals about major food safety issues, I keep buying fruits and some veggies. I stay away from the sketchy prepared salads, but otherwise whenever I find something interesting I'll buy it. Dried apricots run around $1 per kg, cabbages about 75 cents each, and watermelons around $3 though the price will fall to 50 cents or less in August. I buy enough for a few days and hope they survive in the food-safe drybag I put them in. Soft ice cream runs around 20 cents a cone and is found in the larger towns too. The Jaymaa bazaar along the river in Osh has fallen victim to street paving some some fruits have an oily sheen, but they can only pave a road so many times.

Lagman. A staple of almost all restaurants in Kyrgyzstan.  Originally a Uyghur dish before they were mostly kicked out under Soviet policies. Choose a popular place and the meat is probably freshly cooked and the noodles are almost always safe to eat. As long as you don't think too hard about the meat, you'll be fine. I won't post the pictures I have of half-cows hanging in the 100 degree heat in the bazaar with various insects.