It started as one of those spontaneous ideas where you say: "Right then, Kyrgyzstan! Sounds good, nothing's keeping me at home, I'm going!" And you buy the plane tickets. Only then do you get a guidebook and find out on page two that nobody goes to Kyrgyzstan in mid-May, because the mountains are buried under heaps of snow and it's unbelievably freezing. What would anyone do there? Yet in the end that turned out to be our big win. If Kyrgyzstan counts as a wild country, at this time of year it was even wilder. Even emptier. And even more beautiful.
Because it all falls into place by itself, and plans only exist to make God laugh anyway. Or rather Allah, here in Kyrgyzstan. So at five in the morning in the arrivals hall in Bishkek we still haven't the foggiest where to head from the airport. Which means the taxi drivers pester us in vain. Thanks, no idea. We have no plan. We still don't have one two hours later, when, half-dead after a sleepless night, we're being grilled by yet another taxi driver in his favourite café, where he's dragged us with visions of fat profits from two confused tourists. And we don't have a plan on any other morning of our two weeks in this stunning country either. Just a rough idea and plenty of opportunities that always lead us to exactly the right experiences.
So in that café we decide to head for the Ala Archa valley, an hour and a half from Bishkek. And of course the taxi driver rips us off good and proper straight away. Just like every first taxi driver I meet in any new country.
If it were up to me, I'd give it five stars. But they don't collect reviews on booking.com up here. Four beds probably isn't enough capacity to get listed. Parking is only available 1,800 vertical metres and a day and a half's walk further down. Mobile data coverage is lousy and the heating only works when the sun is shining. And on top of that, mice have moved in. Not one for the ladies. Apart from the two hanging on the wall. Sadly, even under their watchful eye I don't sleep particularly well. Not enough oxygen. My head hurts. And my legs. The sleeping pill doesn't even work as a placebo. Only the ibuprofen at four in the morning does the trick.
But it was still beautiful to spend the night here – in the Korona Hotel. Surrounded by mountains. By snow, ice and emptiness. In the morning we give up on climbing the peak of the same name above us. The weather throws a spanner in the works. So we try the seemingly easier Pik Boks massif on the other side of the glacier, but we only climb a steep couloir full of avalanche debris up to the col and retreat from there. A mixed ridge in fog and a snowstorm isn't exactly tempting. We disappear down into the valley. In snow, rain and cold. In the evening we light a little fire and dry ourselves out.
Good thing we built that stone wall around it. It was just a brief flash of insight that it might come in handy overnight. And now, as the wind rattles the flysheet and wakes us up, I no longer mind that I trapped my index finger between the stones while building it. That'll heal. As long as the wind finally dies down.
Wrapped up in our sleeping bags, we wait until almost eight o'clock, when the first rays of sunshine creep over the ridge above us and touch the tent. Time for breakfast and off we go. I go to fetch water. And look... the stream has frozen! And there I was thinking it was quite cold last night. No wonder! We're at 3,050 metres, the sky is completely clear and the snow line starts just a little way above us. Well, the climb up to the col below Elektro peak will warm us up.
And warm us up it did. Grrr! The snow is impossible to walk on. It's so wet and soft that every few steps we sink in up to our waists. Never had that before. So we have to climb up the scree. Slipping. Stumbling. Cursing. At the col we call it a day. Rather than this, we'd better enjoy the last two hours of sunshine by the tent. By six we're crawling into our sleeping bags anyway. And we don't emerge again until 8 the next morning.
"Well, for meat. Business. Kharasho?" Oh dear. It had all been so romantic up to now. A fifteen-kilometre valley, 150 horses grazing freely... and they're raising them here for meat. The worst part is that I can't even say I'd never put it in my mouth. Because it's quite likely that over the previous days in the valley I didn't manage to avoid horse meat. They put it in everything. But I'm not trying the fermented mare's milk. I'd be on the loo for days...
Today we end up at the Sirota Bivouac on the tree line at 3,000 metres. And a surprise to round off the day – there's no water here. Normally there probably is, but because Lake Alakol, 600 vertical metres above us, is still completely frozen, nothing is running down the stony stream bed. All that's huddled here – hidden from the sun under the roots of a tree – is a roughly metre-long chunk of hard ice. Frankly, it doesn't look all that appetising. But we'll boil it, filter it and if worst comes to worst, close our eyes. And at least we're not lugging the ice axe around for nothing. Without it, all we could do with the only bit of water in this no man's land would be to lick it. Yuck!
Around midday the next day, as we look around the huge frozen cirque of Lake Alakol, searching in vain for the bright blue surface from the postcards, it starts to snow. Again. We leave. Now it's properly snowing. It'll probably be raining down below. Oh dear. We'll be packing a wet tent again. We descend. And it isn't raining in the valley. It's snowing there too. Well, hopefully we'll at least warm up by the fire this evening...
I can't explain otherwise why that woman keeps shovelling it into us. The food is already spilling over the edges of the table onto the floor. If we went short on instant bag meals over the past ten days, we'll quickly gain those calories back during this one evening with the locals. And our hostess doesn't know that at lunchtime a gang of kids from Karakol had already dragged us into a yurt, where we stuffed ourselves fit to burst. They simply want to kill us with food. On the other hand – unbelievably good food made from fresh ingredients picked from the garden and from the neighbours. You wouldn't believe how good it is...
We spend the last two nights before returning to Bishkek with a local family on the shore of Lake Issyk Kul. The kids play with the ice axe and the sleeping mat, while we get bogged down in a conversation with mum and grandma that's about as deep as talking to your dog. English just isn't exactly a universal means of communication in Kyrgyzstan. I think I'll start learning Russian.
In the morning, old hands by now, we hire a marshrutka to Bishkek – this guy isn't going to rip us off. And we jump feet first back into frantic civilisation. I don't see much difference between Bangkok and this city. Except maybe there aren't as many motorbikes here. Shall we head back to the mountains? We'll have them to ourselves there...
