Trekking from Talas to Sary-Chelek and Osh, Sep 2-15

Wow! The last few days has just got to be one of the best things I’ve ever done, it has definitely been one of the most scenic ones anyway! Below is my impressions in more or less diary form through the days, interspersed with what I myself think is some incredibly beautiful pictures.

Day 1 : Shopping

Day one was planned to be a sightseeing day in Bishkek; I’ve lost track of how many days I’ve spent in Bishkek now, but what I did not need was another tour of the ex-soviet cement palaces on Chui Prospekt.

Instead I spent the day preparing for the trek. I bought a new camera, a warm hat, a new knife, and some more stuff, but I mainly just relaxed by the pool...

[Update about the camera: after having researched on the Internet for hours I wound up buying a Casio EX-Z600. After using it for two weeks it comes highly recommended. Picture quality is very good (for the price, US$ 250, although nothing compared to Raquel's incredible Nikon D70 of course!), and battery life is the best I’ve ever seen – after taking 400 pictures the battery is still 2/3 charged. But the best thing is the reaction time. No more missing pictures because the motive changes while the camera takes the picture!]

Day 2: Ala-Archa hike

This was a warm-up day for the main trek. We did a four-hour hike in the Ala-Arch valley south of Bishkek. Nothing that special, except for the snowball fight we got to have at the foot of a waterfall below the glacier. Gotta be the coldest water I’ve ever seen!

Oh, and I got to meet Team Germany, i.e. the German people that will accompany me on the trek. I can’t say that the impression has been too positive: it is two guys (Ulrich and x) and a woman (Antje), that are all around my own age. But they seem so old, and to be honest, boring. Have I spent too much time with young people to appreciate people my own age?

Day 3: Bishkek -> Talas

I met the rest of the teams today. When I signed up for the trek there were only supposed to be two more participants. Sometimes Asia Mountains have talked about them as Germans, sometimes as Australian+Spanish, but today everything has cleared.

Team Belgium is a young girl, she says 25, but I could swear that she is no more than 19. Her name is Karlien (pronounced like Carlene Carter, the country singer), and is a very innocent and naïve political science student, that seems to fully believe that she will be able to come up with a way to create a perfect society, implement it, and rule the world before she retires. Well, there is certainly something attractive with youthful enthusiasm, and coupled with a very charming smile she seems to be very nice. Should be fun to spend more time with her!

When we had to leave, Team Australia and Team Spain was still missing, so we took off without them. Walkover? (Oh, in case anyone was wondering where the whole "Team" thing came from, it is of course inspired by the 2001(?) Raid Gauloise competition, which in turn was about getting around Kyrgyzstan as fast as possible.)

We have not been doing any trekking today, “only” getting from Bishkek to Talas by car. The road there was amazing, with some of the best views I’ve ever seen. As always in these situations, I managed to get the wrong side of the minibus, so I’m hoping to leach some good pics from Team Germany.

Oh, and at lunch time, a taxi from Bishkek showed up, with a nice but quite confused Team Australia+Spain. Although they seem to be very nice, I must admit that I was a bit pissed that they weren’t even able to remember which day the trek was! They actually realized at 11 am that they should have started the trek at 8 am. But they seem really nice both of them, so as long as they have remembered to bring decent gear, I am sure we will have a great time together.

Now to get to sleep in a tent for the first time in I don’t know how many years, except for the Karakol trek last week that is. I might never have done it to be honest? I wonder how many of the others realize that - I think I come off as much more experienced than I really am. It seems bloody cold, especially since I got my own tent. Would have loved to share tent with Karlien instead since we have had a good time chatting today, but of course a guy and a girl could never share a tent... :-( It’s going to be nine lonesome nights in my tent.

Day 4: Urmaral Valley; the first walk

Finally the trek has started for real. The whole team took off up the Urmaral valley this morning, although at somewhat varying speed. Me and Team Belgium (Karlien) seem to be leading the pack, and that suits me fine since she is fun to talk to. The journey was fairly flat, along a beautiful river with a mixture of pine and leafy trees.

We camped quite early, so it gave me and Karlien a chance to climb a small nearby peak, to add another 536 vertical meters to today’s statistics. I hope I didn’t overextend myself though – tomorrow is supposed to be much harder.

Dinner was very much like breakfast and lunch - adequate but not really anything special. At least the nan bread is still delicious, I'm sure I will be less enthusiastic about the stale stuff we will have in a week!

Day 5: to Chiim-Tash; my new Dos Ojos

Any long-time reader of the blog should remember my fascination with the cave diving in Dos Ojos in Mexico. Well, now I have another “two eyes” to be fascinated about.

Today we started early, as always with the clangs from the cook’s frying pan waking us up. Yes, we have a cook, which is awfully nice – the mornings are so darned cold (around 0 Celsius / 32 Fahrenheit and a LOT of humidity) that it is almost essential to have hot Chai waiting for you. Hooray for luxury trekking! So after a quick breakfast, we packed, broke tent and set off towards a high mountain pass.

Not very hard for me, but the German and Spanish girls seem to have a hard time, since they fall behind a lot. Blisters coming maybe? The hardest thing is actually to focus on the walking, and not trip while you look at the beautiful landscape!

Today I’ve spent more time with Teams Australia + Spain (Andrew and Eiger), and I must say that I like them a lot already! You meet so many people while traveling, and I don’t know how many I’ve been asked to exchange email addresses with, while knowing that I will not stay I touch. With these guys it is different though – I really like them!

We arrived quite early to the lakes, so I tried to get Karlien to do another peak with me. No such luck – I had to go by myself, but as you can see from the picture it was worth it. What was not so clever was to take a swim in the lake after the sun had set behind the mountains – I have now been freezing more or less nonstop for four hours, and I am sure it will continue until lunch or so tomorrow. Brrr!

The terrain around here is beautiful though, and really looks like what I think high-altitude country should. It is only 3000 meter, but it reminds me of pictures I’ve seen from Everest base camps – cool!

Day 6: Kara-Kuldja Valley

This morning’s camp has been right below the mountain pass, and after breakfast, we set off for the highest point on our trek – 3600 meters. The path almost went up to the small peak I climbed yesterday, after which it followed along a lovely glacier until we had a steep climb up to the Chim-Taash pass.

As I climbed over the ridge, it wasn’t only the hard wind that hit me (although that added nicely to the whole mountaineer-like experience), more than that, it was the magical landscape stretching out in front of me! Mere words can’t describe it, and pictures can’t do it justice, so I guess you guys just have to go here! :-)

Although it was freezing cold, we spent a long time here, just taking the landscape in, with what must have been the biggest smiles I’ve seen in K-stan so far on our faces! As well as a slightly more stressed look at Sasja's face, since he was bored (bored? how can he possibly be?!) and wanted to get down to camp.

The decent was slightly less dramatic, although no less beautiful, and we camped for lunch at a jailoo (pasture in the mountains with yurts and tons of sheep) next to a river. By this time I had put my MP3 player on and was playing some awesome dance music, so I couldn’t really sit still. On the way down from the pass I was dancing(!), and I just kept running around that jailoo for ages, taking tons of great pictures.

This landscape is just giving me so much energy, it feels like I will never tire!

Camp was set just a little higher in the valley which gave us a lot of time in the afternoon for the boring essentials, like cleaning yourself and doing laundry. The others insist on wearing swimsuits when washing themselves, which I find really weird, but at least I snuck off downstream as to not offend anyone. But come on guys – it’s the wilderness!

I’m getting more than a little envious of Karlien’s previous trek now though. They had a big kitchen tent where everyone was having dinner, and which worked as a communal area after that, for playing cards, talking, etc. Here we eat dinner outdoors, after which everyone is freezing our asses off, and just set off to bed. I’m sure that Andrew and Eider can come up with something nice to do in their tent :-), but I am bored out of my skull!

I have tried to lure Karlien to my tent for some talk and card games, but she seems to think that I’m hitting on her, so that doesn’t really work. And the German’s continue to be extremely shy, quiet, and to be honest, boring. I hope for warmer weather as we get down to lower altitudes, else I will commit seppuku with my pen knife!

Day 7: Kara-Kuldja pass and the pine forests

This has not been one of our best days :-(. It started out good enough, although the landscape was a little boring compared to the last two days. A nice gentle slope upward until we came over a small ridge and started the decline through a beautiful pine-covered valley to lower altitudes. It really is amazing how quickly the climate changed from one valley to the next!

But then people really started to feel their blisters. Ulrich has been walking backwards at times(!), and Eider has also had a hard day. As we have approached pine forest country, the landscape has been extremely like where I grew up in Sweden. If not for the fact that you can see the high mountains in the background, it could be home!

For those who know the Swedish forests, you also know that this means a lot of low vegetation (until know we had only had alpine grass and flowers) – and Sasha hadn’t prepared us to wear long pants. Which means that everyone has a lot of cuts on our legs.

And to top it off, the camping spot is crap. We passed a few good ones an hour earlier, but we passed them by. Instead we are camping in a field of rocks, with extremely high and sharp bushes everywhere. :-(

Day 8: Kashka-Suu pass

Today has been an awfully hard day, but as we are trekking this is of course a good thing! Except for the poor blister victims that is... :-( Finally leaving that hell-hole of a camping-site was very nice this morning, especially after a filling breakfast on porridge, sandwiches, and of course warming Chai. And as much candy and nuts as we can eat – not normal breakfast food exactly, but I’m sure we burn a million calories a day here so we need it.

In the morning we trekked up, towards a mountain pass called Kashka-Suu. The trail was not as steep as the one after the Dos Ojos lakes, but it was definitely longer. And we got to walk on real glaciers! Somewhat unexpected I must say, but a definite plus that made me feel even more like a true adventurer. :-) I have been envious of Karlien and her Tien-Shan glacier trek in August, but this at least allowed me to tick “glacier walking” off that mental list! :-)

After the final ascent a beautiful landscape opened up for us, with valleys and rifts visible from our feet to the horizon - possibly the most beautiful sight so far. We selected the right of the two ridges (I love walking on ridges), and followed it all the way down to the floor of the biggest valley, a wonderful walk.

Once again less wonderful for the blister victims (I just love my La Sportiva boots more for each day!). Eider had looked especially pained the whole day, and at the end of the day she finally let me carry her backpack for her, after tons of nagging and some fighting! No wonder: when we got to camp and she took her bandages off, liquid was gushing from almost all her foot. It was like the whole underside of the foot was just two big blisters, one at the front and one at the back!

Day 9: “Rest day” – hiking to the lake shore

I think that we were supposed to come to today's camping spot already the day before, but the slower speed of the blister victioms slowed us down somewhat. Didn't matter much though, becuase we got to enjoy a lovely morning walk down a wide (50-100 meter or so) pristine valley, with a stream in the middle and a couple of farms with their cattle surrounding it. Totally idyllic!

And the short walk meant that we arrived to the camp site well before lunch time - and what a camp site it was! As the valley opened up approaching a small lake, the creek opened up into a small delta, where horses were grazing on the small islands. We pitched tents at a lovely meadow next to the lake, and quickly proceeded to swim at the beach (the water is much warmer here than close to the glaciers!), sunbathe, read, and just generally goof around and have a good time.

Unfortunately I slept through a lot of it - for some reason that I don't really understand, I was completely exhausted and almost fainted in my tent! Well, to be honest I do know why I was so exhausted - you see, I had a little accident this morning...

When I woke up, I had a little..."emergency" to take care of. And at that camping spot it was extremely hard to find a private spot to do "number two" at. So I hastily grabbed the TP roll and threw myself up the steep mountain walls at the back of our camping spot (in front there was only a river...). But when you are in a hurry, you don't always look too carefully when you put your feet, and when I also forgot the Golden Rule of mountain climbing (always keep at least three contact points with the cliff), things went wrong.

As I stepped on a ledge of the cliff, it broke off and I fell hard, suddenly finding myself sliding down an almost vertical cliff face! I was lucky enough to fall right by a tree, becuase the frantic clawing I did at the cliff face didn't slow me down at all. My reflexes made me quickly grab hold of a tree branch and hold on for all my life, and although my arm was almost pulled out of it's socket, and I lost most of my skin on one of my fingers, at least I was dangling in one arm instead of lying at the foot of the cliff!

Looking down, I had another five meters or so to go, so that was out of the question (and my god, I would have been hurt if I had went the whole way down!), and upwards it was three meters or so. Luckily enough, I could scramble around the tree and reach the path from there though... Whew!

At first I thought I was unharmed, but it was just the adrenaline masking the injuries. I have scratches all over my body, my lower back hurts like hell, and I won't be playing badminton with that arm again for another few weeks! Not too mention that something tore a hole in the crotch of my pants, although I seem to be unhurt there - lucky!

The funny thing though is that I didn't really want to cause a commotion in the camp (plus I felt pretty stupid about the whole thing!), so I just got some desinfectant and a band-aid for the finger, and didn't say much about the rest, so no one has any idea how close we were to a serious incident!

So, yes, maybe it wasn't strange after all that I slept most of the afternoon...

Since there was plenty of dead tree branches around (we were after all at what is a river bed during the wet season!), we didn't hesitate to make a fire for dinner, and the following chit-chat. Yes, we finally had that nice relaxed conversation in the evening, and I am sure that the moonshine I bought from some of the farmers we passed helped to add to the nice time we had! As I sat by myself late, late at night and watched the fire burn out, I thought to myself that this is the life...

A sky as starry as they come with the Milky Way shining down on me, and the fire crackling and keeping me warm - what could possibly be better? Well, it should be that special someone to keep me company then! :-)

Day 10: Kuturmu pass and lake Kara-Suu

Yet another rest day I would say, with only four hours reasably easy trekking (although we did 800 verticals in rocky terrain) before we arrived at the camp site, Once again at a lovely lake, and it feels like everyone is getting the feeling that the trek is soon to be over, because everyone was happy just frolicking in the sun, swimming and enjoying a lovely afternoon.

Oh, Karlien slept under the stars tonight. I was seriously tempted to join her, but her -10 Celsius sleeping bag just gave her too much of an advantage. And lucky too, the frost on the ground in the morning did spell problems for my super-light 0 Celsius Mountain Hardwear Phantom32.

Day 11: Sary-Chelek

We got up earlier than usual to be able to spend more time at Sary-Chelek, and after an hour or two of light hiking we made it there. The porters made us a late breakfast while teams Sweden, Australia and Spain was re-united with our luggage that we have had sent from Bishkek! I’m staying around Osh for a week so I need guidebooks, clean underwear and so on, and the other two are moving south to Uzbekistan.

Seeing the luggage reminded us all that the journey is about to end, which did feel a little sad. Especially since Eider started the whole let’s-exchange-email thing. It felt a little bit awkward since I am sure that she and Andrew are the only one’s I will stay in contact with in the long run anyway...

The S-C lake itself was something of a disappointment. We’ve heard so many good things about it, but I would only rate it as average. Probably because all the amazing things we’ve seen before, but still... I made a nice hike with Ulrich and Karlien to the other side though, and the morning light was really good to us, so I got some good pictures.

Oh, and Ulrich and I skinny-dipped, which was really nice. I asked Ulrich to take a picture of me naked which I studied later, and I must say that I must have lost a lot of weight. Or at least lost a lot of fat around the waist, although I have probably gained a lot of muscles as well. Although Karlien laughed at me (when she managed to get hold of the picture) it still feels good. I might not look like I’m 25 anymore, but at least I look better than 6 months ago – and more importantly I feel A LOT better now!

The afternoon was spent in a car going through Kyrgyzstan’s counterpart to the Ruhr in Germany, i.e. their coal mines. The less said about that the better...

The evening was great though – we are staying in a great guest house in Osh, where I have my own little suite. And the price is only US$ 15, if I want to stay here after the trip is officially over tomorrow.

After arriving here, we asked the hotel staff if there was any bar or something nearby, and one of them followed us for more than 15 minutes to the local hangout (yes, that's how friendly everyone is here!). Normally I’m sure that it is completely desolated on a Tuesday, but today one of the locals was celebrating the birth of his little son, he invited us, and we had a great time!
I had far too much beer, smoked too much cigarr, and had a great time! The music they played was similar to what is played at Re:Orient/Akaba back home in Stockholm, and everyone was on the dance-floor to have F-U-N. Everyone took turns going to the center of the ring to perform (always fun!), and we even played out a small mini-play where I picked up one of the local girls and her boyfriend battled me to win her back!

Some slow dancing too – Anna, I am eternally grateful for the dancing lessons you gave me back home, even though I didn’t dare to try all the moves you taught me of fear that Karlien would think I was hitting on her!

Hey, what is this – Peter writing so passionately about dancing? Yeah, I must be changing... All in all a great night – and I will surely miss Team Germany and Team Belgium when they leave tomorrow. Luckliy enough Andrew and Eider will stay for a few more days.

Day 12: Osh

Sasha (our Russian guide) took us on a tour of Osh today. Osh isn’t a exactly a marvelous town, but the tour was nice enough. We started out at a historical museum at the foot of the Suleiman Hill (make sure you have an English guide if you ever come here), and than did the hill itself.

Supposedly the third most important Islam pilgrimage after Mekka and Medina, Suleiman Hill contains a few sanctuaries that we westerners weren’t really supposed to go to, but also a few more "lightweight" ones.

My favourite among them was the caves where you were supposed to pray to get preganant easier, but where Karlien though that you were supposed to actually have sex in the caves. No wonder that she was looking so carefully there... :-)

Also good was the slide along the mountain to cure your back. My back possibly became worse after the whole thing, but the slide itself was impressing. There had been so many people sliding down over the centuries that it was a foot deep crevasse in the rock surface!

The bazaar that we went to was quite impressive too. We were too many people to make it possible to shop, but it was nice to just look around. I will come back tomorrow or so to buy some clothes and other stuff. I still have some room in my bags that I need to fill...

After saying goodbye to the rest, I’ve spent the rest of the evening with Andrew and Eider. The more time I spend with these guys, the more I love them – certainly two of the more impressive and lovable people I’ve met on the trip so far. I’ve been reading a book (“Emergency sex” it’s called, but it is actually very serious and comes recommended) the last week, and Andrew & Eider reminds me very much about the people in the book. They have made a conscious decision to work in the NGO-like community and have been doing SO many great things even before going on their six-month journey.

And now on their journey they have a great project going on, where they document the ecological impact on people of different projects in the areas where they are traveling. Obvious things like the Three Gorges in China and the Aral sea in this area, but also less obvious things like rice farmers in Indonesia. I can not enough recommend their Environmental Memoirs site at http://www.swin.edu.au/ncs/environmentalmemoirs and their personal travel blog at http://www.weareheadingwest.blogspot.com/. If you want to know more, let me know, and I will get you in touch with them.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I will get a look at the 100+ mails I got from you guys the last two weeks. I sneeked a peek earlier today, and I know that there’ll be some pleasant stuff and some not-so-pleasant. Please keep it coming though – I always love your feedback, whether as blog comments or email!