Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/bLGcX5v6Tm5tQCBY9
So because of politics – there was apparently some shooting between the Kyrgyz and Tajik troops at the border over a water source back in March, among other issues – the land border crossing from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan was closed. This meant that my Pamir roadtrip was a loop back to Dushanbe instead of proceeding straight to Osh (Karakul lake was like <2 hrs from the Kyrgyz border and <4 hrs from Osh). Likewise, politics meant that there was also no direct flight from Dushanbe to Bishkek. Literally the only ways to fly from Dushanbe to Bishkek were via layovers in Tashkent, Astana, Dubai, or Istanbul. Tashkent was a no-go because the layovers were 12+ hours overnight, the airport closes at night, and my Uzbek visa wasn’t valid yet (only valid for a month). Astana was a no-go because Kazakhstan does not even allow transit passengers due to COVID. Dubai was ~300 USD cheaper than Istanbul, so I went with that…the caveat was that I had a 24 hour layover in Dubai. I’m no stranger to long layovers though…had a 23 hour layover in Hong Kong when flying back home from Bali when the world shut down due to COVID, and had a 21 hour layover in Dubai when flying from Uganda to Jordan back in Feb. Honestly, I don’t mind the long layovers. The lounge access that my Chase credit card gives here is obviously clutch, with free food and drinks plus comfy spots to sleep. Even back when I was a kid, I always loved layovers in well connected places like Dubai or Frankfurt because I could see all the “exotic” possibilities, places like Nairobi and Tehran and Ho Chi Minh City, while I was either “just” visiting family in India or “just” going to Europe. It’s sort of cool that now I’m the one actually going to these out-there locales.
Spent a couple of days in Bishkek before flying down to Osh (like 35 USD for a 40 minute domestic flight vs. 15 USD for a 12-16 hour share taxi ride) for my 5 day horseback trek – I have like <5 hours of horseback riding in my life…a couple of hours this spring in Copan, Honduras going up and down a ~100m hill, seeing the pyramids via horse for an hour back in 2017 or 2018 (my first rodeo in Egypt, and I forgot which Feb I went and am too lazy to check), and waaaay back in middle school when I volunteered in Costa Rica with my friend Brad where we took a horseback excursion to a small waterfall one day. Anyways, Bishkek was a decent but forgettable city. Not quite as grand and ostentatious as Dushanbe in a good way, but that is because they have cleared the incredibly low bar of being possibly (up there with Uzbekistan) the least corrupt government in Central Asia. The city just felt a lot more natural and lived-in than Dushanbe did. Tons of good-ish cheap food in the city as well. I was there for Independence Day (all the ‘stans have independence day on Aug 31 as they broke free from the USSR in 1991 then), but that was just sort of a generic event with crowds and fireworks and kitsch-y games. Was hoping to catch a game of Kok-Boru aka Bushkazi, which is basically a game of polo but free-for-all and played with a dead goat’s body, but unfortunately there were no games in the capital city for Independence Day. This game allegedly was started by the Mongols who used a dead human, and it has since been modified to its’ current form, and is sort of THE game of Central Asia so hopefully will have a chance to see this (plus the World Nomad Games!) at some point in the future, most likely post retirement. The architecture of the downtown area in Bishkek was certainly more Soviet than Dushanbe, but not in any memorable or noticeable way. In a weird way, Bishkek is almost like what I would imagine Western China to be like. The people obviously are similar to western China and there’s a ton of Uigher and Dungan (Dungan is the word used for the Hui Chinese who fled China 100+ years ago and settled in the Russian Empire) restaurants around…only difference is the Soviet architecture. I expect Uzbekistan to be the same here, but one thing I liked about Bishkek/Kyrgyzstan in general, which was in line with Tajikistan, was all the Cyrllic text that I would practice reading while walking around, plus of course all the fresh melons and fruits that were out here. Lowkey the biggest benefit of majoring in math in college is that it makes it easier for me to read cyrillic, with the different greek letters (gamma, chi, phi, rho, delta, lambda, etc.).
So the horse trek was awesome. Horse riding is definitely tougher than it looks, but by the end of the fifth day I felt pretty natural riding my horse, whose name was (I’m sure I’m mispelling it) Hatchka. Over the course of five days we rode about ~75 km, with a max elevation of 3.5k meters and a min elevation of ~2k meters. We honestly probably hit an average of ~2k meters in elevation change every day going up and down winding mountainside pathways. The majority of the time was spent trotting, but we had a few gallop opportunities by our campsites each evening as those were by valleys near streams. It was honestly a phenomenal inner thigh workout, especially for the hip flexor. And while I didn’t feel it quite as much, it was also a pretty good core workout as well. Unfortunately early September is late enough where most of the families have packed up their yurts and headed back to their villages, but I was lucky enough to get at least one night at a homestay with a local family in their yurt. The other 3 nights were camping with my guide, Kuba (again, probably not spelling it correctly), who was this awesome 21 year old kid.
The scenery puts Montana/Colorado to shame. Rolling green “hills” (these were hills that were easily 2k meters in elevation, with the valleys 1k+ meters above sea level to begin with) with the soaring Pamir mountains behind them – I was horseback trekking in the Alay mountains and valley, which is the southern border of Kyrgyzstan with Tajikistan. I was probably honestly a day’s horseback ride from Karakul Lake had the border been open. Obviously not as awe-inspiring for me as Tajikistan was, but I do think that it was more “traditionally” beautiful here with the sort of typical gorgeous alpine scenery. Honestly I got major major LOTR vibes during this entire trip…I was pretty much nonstop whistling and humming the Rohan and Pelennor Fields themes the entire time, and Kuba even joined in since he loves the movies as well! Until I eventually make it down to New Zealand (who knows when that’ll be given their draconian approach to COVID), this will 100% be the most LOTR thing I will ever do in my life. Just totally awesome. I already miss horse riding, and I think that as I strengthen my hip flexors (a quick Google shows that there are exercises I can do in a hostel bed every morning) I’ll enjoy this even more as I won’t have the occasional bouts of soreness. But even more than a horse trip across the steppe or plains – galloping is fun! – I really enjoyed navigating my horse through what were quite frankly treacherous narrow mountain paths. Going up and down steep inclines definitely was more exhausting for me (not to mention Hatchka), and worked my muscles more, but was infinitely more rewarding. Kyrgyzstan is probably THE place to do a horse trek, let alone a mountain one (like 90+% of the country is mountainous, their flag prominently features a yurt, and the entire country is mad about Kok Boru), but still.
The night skies on this trip were awesome. Definitely the closest I have seen yet to Kilimanjaro, and I would say better than Wadi Rum here. Weather was crazy…once the sun dipped below the mountains it would hover near freezing, but morning after the sun rose above the mountains it would be crazy hot and sunny. Not a cloud in the sky for most of the five days which just led to more stunning backdrops. So as I just mentioned, the Kyrgyz flag features a yurt. Some of this might be obvious but I’m dumb, but basically, Kyrgyz villagers rely heavily on their livestock for income – Kuba said they primarily buy and sell the animals themselves for profits, while middlemen will buy during the Alay Valley high season, and then transport the animals to different markets across the country to make profits there. This animal market model is basically like every single medieval RPG ever, but was cool to see how this still happens here in real life. Anyways, the villagers need to head out to pasture during their brief summer for the animals to feed, so they pack up and head to the mountainous valleys with lush green grass and set up their yurts there while their cows, goats, and sheep fatten up. They then head back home towards the end of August as the weather starts to get colder – Kuba said that it was unseasonably warm for early September so I definitely got lucky.
At the one yurt camp I stayed in, the head of the host family was saying (via Kuba who interpreted for me…the kid had an incredible grasp of English considering he only learned how to speak less than 3 years ago) how he won a Kok Boru game a year ago and got a car as a prize from the government. This is no mean feat…there are two variations of Kok Boru. The less popular version is two teams of 5, where the high score after 90 minutes wins. The more popular version is a free for all where there can literally be 1000+ players (this is the one the host family head won of course), and the first person to “score”, aka carry the dead goat (~50kg) to the goal post, wins. This requires an incredible amount of close quarter horse control, great galloping skills once you hit the daylight, and a crazy strong grip to hold on while literally every other person either tries to rip the goat off your hands or tries to block your path, so you’re navigating the startled horse with your left hand. And deaths are apparently quite common if people fall off their horse in the middle of the mosh pit where all the action is happening. It’s apparently predominantly a winter sport, so I really need to either come back to Kyrgyzstan to see this game in action, or catch it in a new country like Kazakhstan or (Taliban-pending) Afghanistan.
Honestly, horseback riding is probably one of the most enjoyable things I have ever done. I’d put it up there with scuba diving as the most fun activities I have done while travelling…if we include safaris then that’s above these two, while hiking and roadtrips are just below and at the bottom would be hot air balloons…glad I did it in Bagan but wouldn’t go out of my way to do it again. The LOTR vibes definitely made this already memorable trek go above and beyond for me. The company I went with was through the CBT, which is a Krgyz community-based-tourism initiative where the government set up tour agencies across different regions of the country so that activity-based tourism money stays 100% local. Honestly a pretty cool initiative, though apparently many CBT offices are rife with corruption, but this Alay office is apparently well run (I believe it) and recommended by, of course, Caravanistan.
So after this, I had a day or so in Osh. For such a historic city, it really underwhelmed…was just a generic modern drab city in a developing country. I flew to Bishkek afterwards for a night before catching a minibus to Karakol, out in the northeast of the country, to do a 3 day trek there. Spent a day in Karakol before embarking on the Ala Kul Lake trek (technically Ala Kul trek since Kul means Lake in Kyrgyz). Karakol itself was a shockingly nice town…probably my favorite town/city in Central Asia so far. There was this cool old Dungan mosque (the Hui ethnic group in China are, like the Uighers, predominantly Muslim) that was over 100 years old, and was built with wood and no nails and had a cool “typical” (to my untrained eye) Chinese architecture which I loved. There was also a really neat wooden Russian Orthodox cathedral in town that really reminded me of some of the wooden structures I saw in Suzdal in Russia. This building in particular made me miss Ukraine, and by extension, my favorite European country, Russia. And of course, Karakol had the best food I have had in Central Asia so far by some distance. There was this really cool Dungan dish called Ashlyan-Fuu, which is a spicy (actually spicy!) and cold noodle soup that can be topped with meat. The noodles were nice and stretchy, super similar to the laghman noodles that you get in Uigher cuisine and that I had in both Bishkek and Karakol. But in general I think it was the western Chinese food scene in Karakol that made it my favorite food spot of Central Asia so far…my brief ~10 day stint in eastern China is up there with Mexico as my favorite food travel spot after Delhi/Punjab/Tamil Nadu in India, and while it’s ignorant to describe all Chinese food as the same, there are undoubted similarities, and one of my favorite NYC restaurants is a western Chinese spot, Xian’s Famous Foods.
So after my day in Karakol, I went on the Ala-Kul 3 day trek, which was the main reason I was in town. The first day was super easy, like ~4 hours of hiking as I got off on the matrushka stop at the end of the line and then walked 18km and gained ~600m in elevation. It was a pretty generic walk for most of it until the last ~3km or so, where it opened up to a gorgeous valley flanked by green mountains, with a meandering river in the middle and horses grazing across the meadow. Eventually made it to camp 1, which had a couple of picturesque tourist yurts set up for trekkers with cool valley and mountain backdrops. A couple of hours after I arrived, an Italian/Greek couple also showed up, which it turns out was incredibly fortuitous as we were the only 3 tourists there that night and the next day was, to put it mildly, incredibly wild. Funnily enough, the girl actually worked for the World Food Program in the UN. It actually snowed overnight so we woke up to a light frosting, but our camp manager warned us (in hand signals and noises and pointing) that there might be *heavy* snow on the pass we were hiking to. The camp was located at 2500m elevation and we were going to hike ~8km to a 3900m pass (making this the 3rd highest hike I have done after Kilimanjaro and Acatenango), and then 10km back down to another campsite that was also at 2500km. It was going to be a loooong day, so we left at 6:30am after eating breakfast. There normally would be a rickety wooden bridge to cross, but the bridge collapsed a month ago, killing a Russian tourist who was taking a selfie on it (the river rapids are ridiculous)…we had to negotiate with a local horseman where we drove the price for the river crossing by horse down to 500som a person (it’s roughly ~85som to 1 USD). Obviously the horse crossing was in a different spot where the river was significantly calmer, which only added to our hiking as we had to circle back to get on the trail.
From here, we had a 4 hour slog up to the base of the lake, which was at an elevation of about 3500m, for a 1000m elevation gain over 5.5km. The initial 400m elevation gain was pretty tough and just straight uphill over 2.5km, where we arrived to a valley where a camp would have been located had this been peak season (ie July/Aug, even though this was Sep 11 at this point), which would have made this 2nd day easier. Anyways, after an easy stroll across this valley where we got to refill our water in the stream, we then had to climb 600m over 1.5km, which was by far the hardest part of the day. The heavy snowfall the previous night and lack of other hikers did not help at all…there were no footsteps to follow and we constantly went drastically offpath before correcting, and there was a hearty amount of climbing with our hands involved due to lack of visibility with the rocks and snow. Honestly it was such a fun experience, but definitely could have been dangerous if I was alone since all 3 of us were able to correct each other and scout out potential paths before regrouping. Maps.me is the go to app for hiking obviously, but in a place like this it wasn’t as useful as it normally was as the snowfall actually made the official path inaccessible for certain portions, so we had to adapt and improvise. But yea, definitely an incredibly fun experience but I can totally see why people do not recommend hiking in the snow for beginners.
We finally reached the lake and it was awesome. The catharsis of the climb plus the cloudless sky and perfectly turquoise lake ringed by snowy mountains was quite a scene. Rested here for a bit and ate some snacks before continuing to the final ascent to the Ala-Kul pass, which was 3900m high (so 400 more meters of elevation) over another 2.5km. The first 1.5km was super easy as we only gained 100m, but the last km was a 300m walk up a steeeep cliffside where luckily the Sun had melted a bunch of snow, making it much easier to walk up. But obviously at this elevation we had to go, as they say in Kili, pole pole, and it took a good 45 mins to get up. All said and done, we left at 6:30am and made it 8km and 1400m higher to the pass at around 1pm. The view was simply stunning. I don’t know if it was quite as good as the view of Grinnell Glacier that I got at Glacier national park, but it was certainly right up there. Soaring, fully snowcapped mountains in the background (all easily over 5k meters in height), the perfectly turquoise lake, smaller but still jagged mountains immediately encircling the lake, and a massive glacier on the eastern edge of the lake. We probably could peer into China with some of the Tian Shan tips that we saw all the way out east from the lake.
After this was another highlight. There was a steep ~400m descent over the course of maybe half a kilometer to continue, and this side was completely snowed, which was actually a blessing in disguise. I was able to slide down on my ass and go down the whole way in like 5-10 minutes. Would have obviously been much much tougher without any snow here. After this it was a pretty steady downhill walk to our 2nd basecamp, which we wound up getting to around 6pm…so it was a 11.5 hour day, including all of our breaks. The snow wasn’t quite as impactful here as it was was just a steady downhill over rolling hills, but there were a few annoying river crossings that required a lot of rock hopping and strategic thinking about the best path, since it was not at all clear cut.
The final day was much like the first day…a nondescript 18km walk to the town of Ak Su, dropping 700m, before catching a matrushka back to Karakol. We covered 15km and about 650m of the elevation drop in 3 hours (we were rapidly walking since we were exhausted from day 2 and just wanted a nice long hot shower), before a lumberjack driving his van saw us and offered us a free ride to the Ak Su bus stop since he was going to drive by. Again, obviously no English but town names and pointing helped us here. The 3 of us crammed in the back and delicately positioned ourselves between the various logs for this crazy bumpy 5km drive. Just another example of how nice everyone is out in Central Asia (except for the river crossing horse guy…we subsequently heard stories of people being charged up to 2k soms and as little as 300 soms so we did a decent job negotiating to 500 som). One thing to note is that the bulk of days 1 and 3 were done walking along what is one of the world’s worst roads that is intended for 4WD vehicles, while day 2 was obviously all a hiking trail. Anyways, wound up catching the matrushka and got back to Karakol in time to check in and shower before a filling and early dinner. Overall, this was definitely one of the hardest and most enjoyable hikes I have ever done, largely due to the snowfall. Was definitely pushed to my limits far more than Kili ever did, and to be honest, given how it was also snowing during day 3 (was raining for us), I can definitely see this trek becoming closed/too dangerous by mid September, so we were definitely super lucky with our timing.
I took a minibus back to Bishkek the next day. Had a day in Bishkek to kill, so did a half day trip out to the Burana Tower. It is the only surviving landmark of a Silk Road city that is ~1k years old. It was initially a 45m high minaret to a grand mosque, but the top collapsed and all that is left is ~25 meters of the tower now. The brickwork in the tower was pretty nifty, and in the nearby area, there were these ancient carved headstones that looked quite whimsical but were almost certainly intended to be serious in nature when made. Overall it was a pretty cool site and a neat little side trip if you have time to kill in Bishkek.
Have a few more days here which are basically for my PCR test (Uzbekistan doesn’t accept vax cards) and laundry, while I’ll also catch up on some reading. Up next is 2 weeks in Uzbekistan with my dad, and then he goes home and I fly out to Georgia in early Oct, where the plan is to spend ~2.5 or so weeks in Georgia and Armenia.