All the weather you could possibly handle, Aug 28-30

Yours truly at the 3900 meter Ala-Köl pass.

I decided to go on a short-ish three-day hike in the mountains above Karakol. This as partly to see how I handled high altitudes before going on the two-week trek from Talas next week. Well, I’m happy to report that not only did I handle the altitude well, but my gear also handled the weather pretty fine. During three days we not only had all the beautiful landscapes that I have now come to forever connect Kyrghyzstan with, but also all possible weather types.

The first day was constant raining from lunch until we went to bed. When I woke up on the second day, the temperature was well below zero, with the rain from yesterday turned into ice. And during the 9-hour trek to the next valley (we walked over a 3900 meters mountain pass), we had sunshine, rain, snow and hail back and forth, changing every other five minutes. We literally went from freezing temperatures with snow to 20+ degrees and sunshine in five minutes and then back, a few times. Weird!

So arriving to to the base camp at Altyn Aryshyn with it’s hot springs did indeed feel very good! Not to mention the cold beer…

So now I’m definitely more confident about next week’s trek, especially since we will have porters to carry the luggage, as well as having the meals cooked for us. It will be like an actual vacation in comparison!

Wasting my time in Bishkek, Aug 12-20 + getting a new itinerary

The lovely Miraida - Photoshopped nonetheless! The first time I've done that with any of my pics on this site - a price to anyone who can see what I did!

Looking back on the last few days, I can hardly remember what I have done. What I do remember seems to be mostly walking back and forth through Bishkek, and writing e-mails, but I guess there must have been more than that?

Some of all that time-wasting has at least meant meeting a few nice people, chief among them is Miraida, a 20-year old business student who has been helping me with some mysterious Kyrgyz traditional rituals, such as beat-the-bureacratic-guardian-of-the-holy-visa-extensions, and retrieve-the-lost-Mastercard-treasure-from-the-banking-monster.

We have also been improving her English somewhat; although we’ve done nothing about my lack of knowledge in Kyrgyz.

A lot of my walking has been back and forth between trekking organizers and tourist agencies to try to find a nice company to go trekking with. I have decided to go with Asia Mountains, despite that they managed to mess up my reservation a their lovely guest house, forcing me to move back to terrible Kyrgyz Altyn instead. :-(

So, now I have my travel itinerary done for the next month; barring any changes it should look something like this:

• Aug 22: Travel to Barskoon
• Aug 23-25: Build houses, hike, and meet old friends in Barskoon.
• Aug 26-31: CBT hiking and excursions around Karakol on eastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul
• Sept 1: Travel back to Bishkek
• Sept 2-13: Trekking excursion from Talas to Lake Tary Chelek
• Sept 13-19: CBT hiking and excursions around Osh and Arslanbob in western K-stan
• Sept 20: Travelling to Bishkek
• Sept 21: Final shopping in Bishkek - still hoping to find that dream Shyrdak...
• Sept 22 - Oct 3: Istanbul
• Oct 4: Flying home to Sweden

So tomorrow morning at 8 am the bus leaves to Barskoon, and just as before Barskoon has no Internet. Which means that the next post will be from Karakol in a few days – see ya then!

I don’t know if anyone has tried to call me or txt me the last few days, but if so you have failed. I have gotten myself a local SIM card for my phone, so until September 22 (or whenever I go back to Istanbul), my phone number is +996 502 314 626.

Barskoon Build, July 27 - Aug 11

Life-defining trip? Well, that might be stretching things a little, but at least I had a very good time, and learned a lot. I also got a great opportunity to do a lot of thinking and evaluation of my life, not least because there were so many wonderful people on the team, some were very different to me while others were kindred spirits.

All of them however were able, each in their own way, to give me valuable input. So many of them were outstanding examples for how to be a true humanitarian, always giving and generous, both to me and to all the other people we met. I don’t think I have ever met a group that I was overall so impressed with!

I could bore you to death with all the stories about the team, Barskoon, the build and all our other activities, but I’ll just try to give a brief overview here and then publish some focused entries later on, ok?

Meeting the team

Many of you know that I was slightly worried before meeting the team. Habitat is after all a Christian organization and I am...well let’s just say that I’m not! :-) I was worried that there would be daily prayers, and that everyone else would look down at me.

I hadn’t needed to worry though, because everyone was very relaxed, not only about religion, but about pretty much everything. When the group gathered in one of the apartments where we were staying, I was kinda worried about this Jill character, because she was dressed more or less like an Amish, but she turned out to be great, just like everyone else.

Traveling to Barskoon

The road to Barskoon takes you over the plains east of Bishkek, through the mountain passes surrounding Lake Issyk-Kul, and finally around the beautiful lake. The nature surely is very beautiful, and the moment when the road opened up towards the lake was memorable, but my favorite mist definitely be the landscape on the southern parts of the lake.

Barskoon lies squeezed in between the lake and the mighty Tien-Shan mountains, and this gives the village un unparalleled beauty. Every morning when I woke up I had to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn’t still dreaming, so beautiful was the view from the house where we were staying. A big WOW!

Building the houses

Building the houses for the locals was a truly educational experience. Many of us (myself included) came with a lot of ideas about how the houses should be built, ideas that we had to throw away right off the bat.

The Kyrgyz does definitely not build houses like we do, and although many of their methods seemed old-fashioned, they are very well adapted to the materials they have available (or does not, as may be the case), and the tools they can use.

We even had to make our own bricks from mud, straw and water, that’s how basic things were! And the materials had none of the precision we are used to from home (never again shall I complain about warped planks!), which meant that they had to use methods to adjust things that I am sure we used back in the good old days. At least I recognized some of the tools we were using from museums back home!

Very educational – and great fun!

Hanging with the locals

To be honest, wed didn’t spend as much time with the locals as I had expected. This was mainly due to the language barrier, the only people that talked English was some translators that we had on site, but in the evenings we couldn’t talk to our hosts.

Another reason was that we was so well taken care of that we really didn’t need to talk to them. Especially Zauresh, the local coordinator made sure that we had everything we needed the whole time!

And finally, we had so much fun getting to know the other 16 of the project members that we didn’t really have time for the locals.

However, although we didn’t spend too much time with them, they were exceptionally warm and kind. I could go on forever aout all the things they did for us, but that will have to wait for later posts.

Excursions

Life in Barskoon wasn’t only about hard work, we got to play a little too. First I though that we had to much non-working time in our schedules, but I soon realized that was not the case – we really need the rest every now and then.

Among the things we did was:

• Daytrip to Karakol (highlight: the livestock bazaar)
• 2-day hike to jai-aloo (summer pastures) above Bakanbaevo
• Hike up Barskoon Valley
• Toi (very special Kyrgyz party) with waterfall view

All of these things will be detailed out in later posts of course

Leaving for Bishkek...

...felt very sad, but at least it gave us a warm feeling that we had touched people’s lives and actually done something good.

I know that it has made a difference in my life, and I have learned to appreciate other things than what I did before. Maybe it has been life-defining after all?

Focus posts to follow in the next few days/weeks…

Back in Bishkek

I've been back in Bishkek from Barskoon for five days now actually. I had hoped to have new "proper" blog entries up quite fast, but I guess that I have just had too much fun. :-)

Barskoon and the house-builds was great, and the time here with the team in Bishkek afterwards was almost as fun. I will stay in Bishkek for another five days or so to answer my email and update the blog (as well as lounge around the pool at my hotel!), so don't worry, if you haven't received a reply yet, you should do so in the next few days.

Until then, Peter