Arriving into a new city after a long day on the bike is not a good way to see us at our most alert. In our haste to to get settled into an actual guest house with a roof and working shower, rather than kipping in a tent in a thunderstorm, we often neglect to stop for our regularly scheduled intake of food and water. Jared demonstrated the folly of this on the way into Bishkek.

He spotted this sign:

several times and, quite logically, took it to be a street name. He was bamboozled to see it again and again as we criss-crossed the city, and wondered how we could still be on the same street after taking several turns.

After about 20 minutes and some head-scratching, he thought to actually read the sign and spelled out the letters (Having spent over a week immersed in the ‘Stans, we’d picked up the Cyrillic alphabet fairly well, and can read the characters without much problem) .

S – T – O – P.

In his hungry, dehydrated state he’d been mistakenly navigating by stop signs. This explained a lot.