This travel writing piece was the runner-up of the 2018 Travel Writing Competition which was done in collaboration with Travel Garage, Egypt‘s must-go to online store for purchasing adventure and travel goodies. That was my seventh month on the bicycle, and after Cambodia, India, Nepal and China, I felt like it would be a piece of cake. The plan was to cross the Kyrgyz border from China, and go to an ATM because I had run out of money. From the Chinese border to Sary Tash it was 70 kilometers, and it was like paradise: beautiful grasslands, crystalline lakes, and huge mountains topped with glaciers 4,000 meters above the level of the sea. At night it was so cold I had to wrap my arms and legs with the rest of my clothes, and in the morning my tent had a layer of ice. I arrived in Sary Tash to discover that there were no ATMs, not one, and I only had a transit visa in Kyrgyzstan for five days, so I had to skip it and try to get to the next ATM in Tajikistan. The Tajik border was thirty kilometers….
