Mountain life
Due to holidays and weekends we had three whole days where we didn’t need to show up at the embassy. A few hundred kilometre from Bishkek at 3000m there are a few natural hottubs. We liked the idea of a long hot bath high in the mountains and off we went. The easy bit is getting at the feet of those mountains. You just need to sit for 5 hours cramped in a minivan that was driven by someone with a certain death-wish. We arrived late in the afternoon and spend the night in Karakol so we could go up at first light *ahem*. From Karakol it is about 30km to the actual trail, this we did by minivan as well. The lonely planet states that is a 5-6 hour walk from the gate, where the minibus stops, to the hottubs. My sister said it was more like 3-4 hours. What both failed to mention is that the last few kilometres are very steep and that taking a 15+kg backpack doesn’t make that any easier.
We had started early-ish but by the time we arrived at the steep part it was just past noon and the sun shone merciless in our face. We were already packed like a mule so we opted to bring only 1 litre of water each counting on streams to replenish us. A risky strategy, but fortunately it played out well. When we finally made it to the pass we were covered with salt crystals, but hadn’t ran out of water. From the pass we had a good view of the valley. It was as picture-perfect as the lonely had promised. At the far end there were snow covered peaks, both flanks still had traces of snow and the valley it self was covered with a thick blanket of green grass. Along the silver stream a few houses and huts were scattered around.
Finally at the highest point
We walked down into the valley looking for the old man with the rusty quad. The first guy we met turned out to be this old man. He invited us in and gave us chai and honeybeer. We had hauled our tent all the way to there so when he offered us a place to stay we declined politely and asked if we could just pitch a tent outside. Due to his reputation as a chef, we did decide to join the communal dinner. Apart from us, two French couples and a mother and daughter from Austria joined. We found out that everybody was leaving the next day and figured we might run into each other again on our way back.
After all the candles were burned we went to bed, preparing for the race to Bishkek. The others had the big advantage that they only needed to eat their prepared breakfast and run down the mountain with their light daypacks. We, however, had to prepare, eat and clean up our breakfast. Pack our tent and stuff and struggle down the mountain with our mighty backpacks. When we finally arrived in Bishkek we already had overtaken the Austrians and met one French couple at the busstop. They informed us that the other French couple left 30minutes before.
At the busstation we could board a minivan which immediately left for Bishkek. If the first driver had a certain death-wish, this one surely wanted to get as many others involved as well. However, he managed to do the trip in considerably less than 5 hours. We went to our hotel, had dinner in the city and did some shopping and were quite astonished when we saw the French couple enter our hotel, stating that they just arrived. They had taken a real bus, without death-wishing driver.
After going back and forth, back and forth and back and forth to the Kazakh embassy we found ourselves once again with two days without embassy. We already had been so long in Bishkek that people started to recognise us, so it was time to leave again. Bishkek, although nice, is not a place where we wanted to spent another two days idling in its streets. So we left for the Ala-Archa canyon nearby. Since it was only for one night, we shed as much luggage as possible and walked up the canyon. This is a beautiful and very accessible canyon. Unfortunately the locals had discovered that almost any car can drive up to the “Alplager” and did so in quite large numbers. We didn’t look forward to camping between partying and picnicking locals and hoped to find a way out once we arrived. At the alplager we took a good look at the mountains around them and noticed a small rock outcrop on the other side of the river. The bridge over the river was already enough of a barrier to stop everyone who had arrived in a SUV and the path up the mountain was steep enough to be another watershed. The top looked reasonable flat and we figured that would be a perfect spot to pitch our tent. From that spot we had a clear view of a 4800+ meter high mountain on the other side of the valley and of the locals who had managed to get lost in the mountains above us. After we guided the locals back to the trails with lots of armwaving and whistling, we prepared ourselves a nice risotto.
A mountain of risotto
For some reason a chilly wind came down the mountains in the evening so we packed ourselves in fleece and gore-tex, gazed at the stars and drank our wodka. The wodka ran out sooner than the stars so we went down the mountain to see if we could get some more wodka at the Alplager. The moon was half-full and provided us with enough light to navigate both the steep slope and the reminiscences of the bridge. Once we arrived at the Alplager is was closed, so were the buildings around it. We were already heading back to our tent when we ran into a few locals. We asked in our best Russian: ‘Wodka’? They spoke English and immediately understood our predicament and invited us in for more wodka and some unknown Kyrgyz’ drink. After they ran our of wodka as well they tried some more houses but alas, it was time for us to climb back up the mountain.
Sierk crossing the br.d.e