Trekkin'!

09:00 30 September 2008

I had a wonderful weekend! I traveled into Karakol, one of the larger cities in the oblast, to see friends and then go for two-day backpacking trip. The first night there was really nice, I made macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes for dinner with three other volunteers at their flat. It was really nice to lounge around and eat (vaguely) American food- the salad was made with cabbage as lettuce is next to nonexistent here- and speak English and therefore have a more advanced conversation than I am normally able to. After dinner and shopping for food for the trip, two of the volunteers left and I stayed with the other for the night and got to bed early in preparation for our early rising.

The next morning we rose and gathered to the meeting place complete with all our gear- of course this solicited even more than the usual stares. The trip was originally to pick up trash on the trail and was therefore a free expedition with a Community Based Tourism office. However, the trip ended up being during potato harvesting time so the Kyrgyz nationals slated to go couldn’t- they ended up deciding to do the trip anyway but just as a trek. It was interesting to meet the other people on the trip, there was a Slovenian couple that had traveled from Slovenia all the way here without the use of air transit, they sailed the Mediterranean and then had been traveling over land through Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia- what a cool way to travel. There was also a bunch of volunteers of course, both Peace Corps and JICA, and a British couple that had a relationship with Aigalu, one of the guides and had been to Kyrgyzstan four times.

The trip started off interestingly enough in an old Soviet military truck. We spent over an hour in it crawling our way into the mountains, it was a pretty spectacular ride, and the truck did some things that I was impressed by, the road was extremely uneven, steep, and filled with rocks, and we passengers got tossed around a bunch. The highlight was probably either when we crossed the river on a bridge about as wide as the truck and extremely rickety, or when viewing the road ahead, the driver decided to take a different path which had us at an about 30 degree horizontal incline- I never thought I would have to “get on the high-side” of a truck. Regardless, we all survived and made it to a beautiful spot in the valley where we commenced our trek.

The going was not terribly difficult at first, we continued on the road that the truck had gone on, and while it was impressive in a vehicle, on foot it was quite easy. We then stopped for lunch and encountered a solo British trekker that had just been to the opposite side of the valley from where we were going, we invited him to come along with us, and as he had no specific plans on what to do next, he obliged. Later we crossed the stream again to make our ascent along a valley lined by impressive ridges on both sides. This part was significantly harder, it was very steep for a very long time, I would estimate we gained around 3,000 feet or so. Though each foot we gained, the view became more and more spectacular- the hope the photos can convey even a miniscule portion of the glory. It was just really nice to finally get to see the natural beauty of Kyrgyzstan that I had kept hearing about but had only experienced at a distance.

Once we got to camp-it was a pretty short hike, we set down and began to collect firewood for the evening, it had already gotten pretty chilly there. Once it was started and we had eaten dinner, we commenced to sit around the fire for approximately five hours; it was great to get to know each other. Luka, the male half of the Slovenian couple, said something that I had never really considered before but is absolutely true- while the majestic beauty of nature is certainly a wonderful reason to go backpacking, often times it is the interesting people and connections you make that are the best parts. This was certainly true in this case- the people that I would have never met were really interesting and I hope to keep in touch with them.

The next morning most of the PCVs had to return for work the next day but the rest of the expedition was continuing on for two more nights and to an apparently gorgeous lake. We said our goodbyes to our new friends and made the long trip down towards the valley (we had to cover the ground we had done the day before plus what the truck had taken us on) and we were very tired by the end of the trek. Lastly, I needed to use internet and went to a café before heading back home to my village. What a successful weekend!