The Final Two Months: Getting Outdoors

It is amazing how fast time flies. There are many, many really slow days here in Kyrgyzstan, but as  a whole these two years have flown by.  The final months have been great. We have been finishing up and as of this week finished the water project at the hospital, I have been travelling and seeing new parts of Kyrgyzstan, preparing for life after Peace Corps, and starting to say goodbye. It is amazing for how many days I’ve felt like I had  unlimited time here, but now I’m struggling to fit everything in I want to before saying goodbye for good.

A few weeks ago Kara, Eric, Taylor and I went on a hiking trip to a park called Ala Archa. It is about an hour or so drive outside of Bishkek, the capital. I’ve done a lot of hiking before Peace Corps and even though Kyrgyzstan is covered in beautiful mountains I have not had the chance to do as much hiking as I would have liked. However, in these final months I’ve gotten in two great hikes so far and have plans for one more. Ala Archa is a popular day trip spot for Kyrgyz locals looking for a day outside of city with an easily accessible waterfall, lush forests, and countless picnic spots near the parking lot. Beyond those spots are rugged mountains. That is what we went for. 

 

The fog starting to let up

Kyrgyz winter takes a toll on the body here. I essentially hibernated. I spent most days indoors staying warm and doing very little physical activity. This led to pathetic results while hiking. Our first day we hiked up to a climbers camp called Rakset hut. Reading the 6.5 km sign with an arrow pointing up a nicely marked trail from the parking lot was very deceiving. We set off in high spirits but those were quickly dampened with the sight limiting fog and mist that set in. For the rest of the hike we could never see more than about 100 ft in front of us because the fog was so thick and did not let up until that evening. Past the turn off for the waterfall the trail got really steep and I slowed down a lot. I was sadly the slowest on the trip and the up-hill was hurting a lot. We kept on going though. I’m not sure if not being able to see in front of us helped or hurt in the long run, but seeing how bad the trail was on the way back down impressed me and me feel a little bit better about how much suffering I did on the way up. Once we got to camp we set up our tents and called it an early night since we were planning to hike up uchitel peak the next day. Rakset hut was at 11,000 feet so in that 6.5 km we gained a little more than 4,000 feet. That is a lot. We got started late the following day. We were all beat from day one but had an optimistic goal of reaching the peak. Uchitel peak is one of the highest non-technical peaks in the park if not the highest so we thought “okay it can’t be that bad.” The peak sits at about 14,800 feet which would have been the highest mountain that any of us have climbed under our own power. We failed.  As a result of a late start, a pounding headache from the altitude and being in bad shape we did not make it. Kara and I turned around at 13,500 with Eric and his wife making it another 500 feet or so up before turning around. Despite not summiting it was an amazing hike. We had glacier views, a beautiful day, and awaiting us back at camp whiskey and dinner. The next morning we hiked down and it was grueling. By this point our legs felt like jelly and the steep downhill was just adding insult to injury. We did see a small landslide/avalanche on our way down. Even though it was small the rock that broke off from the top was a very large boulder and served as a reminder to us all how powerful nature is and how much it would suck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. On our way up on the first day we heard another landslide that was much larger but due to fog we could not see it. It was one of eeriest things I’ve ever experienced. If I return to Kyrgyzstan one day I would love to try to summit that mountain again, but I will be sure to get into better shape first!

 

Our trail, the arrow marks our turnaround point... so close...

The Glacier

The second night was amazingly clear 

Kara and I near our turnaround point

The At Bashy (horse head) statue

We just got back from our first trip to Naryn. Naryn is known throughout Kyrgyzstan as being the most ‘Kyrgyz’ region. They speak the most pure Kyrgyz, eat the most meat, and are almost entirely all ethnic Kyrgyz. We set out for Naryn to go to Tash Rabat. Tash Rabat is up in the mountains of Naryn and is fabled to have been a guesthouse along the silk road. The soviets rebuilt the guesthouse in the 80’s and the reconstructed guest now serves as a popular tourist destination with many yurt camps near by. Our friend and fellow PCV Tamara works in At-Bashy (horse head) and does a lot with the tourism industry there. She kindly helped arranged everything for us. That morning on the drive after turning off the main road one of my Kyrgyz dreams came true. Seeing Yaks! We asked the driver to stop so we could chase them around and take some pictures. When we returned to the car he laughed at us and said there are thousands of them up in the mountains. We did see quite a few more but the first is always the most exciting. They use yaks the same as cattle so for milk and eating, but they are only in the higher elevations and not found in many places outside of Naryn. After dropping off our gear in our yurts we headed to Tash Rabat to go on our little tour of the stone structure. Using our local language skills we scored the local price of 20 som (about 33 cents) for our ticket instead of the 100 som (about 1.50). We were happy. After a quick walk around and counting of the rooms we came out thanked the lady and she told us our count was wrong. As legend goes every time you count the rooms in Tash Rabat you get a different number and the 3 people in our group that counted the rooms all had different numbers and those were all different from what the woman told us. Who knows. You can read more about Tash Rabat on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tash_Rabat After Tash Rabat we headed up the valley attempting to get up to a pass that over looks Chatyr Kol (Roof Lake). Another failed attempt at reaching our destination, but after a 13 mile round trip hundreds of Marmots, eagles and yaks we were more than satisfied. It was one of the most beautiful places I’ve hiked and the gentle terrain made it a perfect day hike. It was also the closest I’ve ben to China. We were only about 20-30 miles from the border. Back at our Yurts we made dinner and relaxed. The owners of the yurt camp were incredibly friendly and some of the nicest hosts I’ve experienced during my two years here. This is their website! http://www.tashrabatyurt.com/

Baby Yak

Larger Yak

One of the hundreds of marmots we saw

Hiking across some frozen ice

Tash Rabat seen from our yurt

Making friends on our hike

After two years I know I’ve seen and experienced more of this amazing country than most Kyrgyz locals do. I feel like I’ve been so fortunate not just to live here and get to know and love this country, but really experience all it has to offer. At the same time I feel like I didn’t take full advantage  of the opportunities for travelling within the country. I guess that gives me one reason to come back in the future along with many others. Next up we will try to do Ala-Kul again, but the season is still very early so due to high snow levels that may not happen. Coming next, finishing up work and saying goodbye.