Into the Mountains – Part One

Crossing into Kyrgyzstan from Kazakhstan was one of those experiences that make you realize how much of a pain in the ass you are to the locals trying to go about their daily lives. For them, all that is needed to transit back and forth between the two countries is an ID card. Foreigners, on the other hand, need to go through a separate line and, at the Kyrgyz customs, into a separate room. All the while, the people on our minibus are waiting impatiently for you to get your documents in order.

At one point during the process, a Kyrgyz border officer asked me if I was an alpinist. “After all,” he said, “most foreigners come to Kyrgyzstan for the mountains.” He makes a good point. Unless you’re coming for the post Soviet charm, there isn’t all that much else to do.

After a couple of days in Bishkek, meeting Zofia at the airport in the wee hours of the morning, and going around the city collecting supplies, we decided to head out to the mountains. We ignored all offers for guided tours and figured it was probably just best to get to a point and then start walking up. Our goal was a lake, Son kul, which is Issyk Kul’s (the most famous lake in the country) much less famous and smaller cousin.

Are destination was roughly due south of Bishkek. Probably only a few hundred kilometres as the crow flies. Unfortunately, the road to the area requires you to go east for 200 kilometres, then loop around a mountain range into another valley before heading west for another 200 kilometres. The journey was made a whole lot better by the food stop we made. Nothing like fried dumplings to keep you going.

Eventually we converged on the starting point for our trek. It was nothing more than a village with one shop. This wasn’t exactly how I envisioned the starting point for a fairly popular trek. As it turned out, the path up was the one used by shepherds, not foreigners. At least the traffic would be light.

Somewhere along the way, rain clouds descended over the valley. This did not bode well for our cause. Nor did the fact that the local shop and next to no canned goods. All we could muster was some smoked fish, corn, and fizzy water. We would be dining gourmet on this night.

With our packs organized, the ladies in the shop flabbergasted (if not happy that most of their stock had just been sold), a solid chance of inclement weather, and a handful of polite refusals for fermented mares’ milk, we started towards the mountain. This was going to be a solid pull.