I’ve been here for a longtime…
Feels too long. My body’s ready, my feet are itching and I just want to hit the trail.
Bishkek was great, it’s one of my favorite cities.
A combination of the traditional and the modern.
Kyrgyz restaurants with good kurdak and lagmann and no alcohol, the Osh Bazar where you can buy horse meat sausage, goat heads and get the most meticulous one hour haircuts and shave for about $5, and in the evening go to bars, night clubs and pubs where you can drink dance and party until 6 in the morning. I’ve enjoyed the food, the culture, the night life, and the people so much.
Also, I had work to do. While doing my research planning to go to Kyrgyzstan and create this hike it was very very hard to find any kind of information about the majority of the country.
Any area that’s not very popular or well known was basically non-existent online.
So, I went to Bishkek and got to work; I went to a dozen travel agencies. I talked to so many different people trying to collect any information. My problem was that no one has information. Or at least the information I needed was not documented anywhere.
People have snippets of info about certain areas and I had to collect everything and combine it all to get some kind of idea of what I’m about to encounter.
While looking for maps I found there are no good topographic maps to buy. I was eventually directed to the Kyrgyzstan topographical government agency where I was able to get access to huge binders of old Soviet maps which were from the 80’s and 90’s, and yet were the best I was able to find.
I spent several days looking through maps, trying to understand the topography of the trails, the roads and the villages, and create some sort of route that would make sense.
At one point I went to the restrooms, but when I came back to continue researching I was told that “people saw me walking around the building” and that “they have secret information so I can’t walk around without a Kyrgyz person vouching for me”. So I went back to the hostel where I was staying, and on the next day came back with Umutai, a Kyrgyz friend who signed and vouched for me and also helped me look through the maps. However this did not work for long and was told: “you can’t be here anymore, we have to do our own work and we can’t keep an eye on you and we can’t let you be here on your own either”. (My Kyrgyz friend translated what they said from Russian) So I left.
Luckily, I was able to collect enough information looking at those maps, so later when I found a source online that had a very similar set of maps I could use the information I collected at the government office and downloaded and printed my own maps that would fit the route I was working on.
Still, I know I can’t really trust my maps or my route.
A lot of the trail will be decided during the actual hike. I have to be ready and willing to turn around when the trail is not right and change my plan when I need to. Talking to the locals will be essential. This journey will take a lot of improvising.
I’ve made a lot of friends in Bishkek, locals and foreigners. Yesterday I went hiking with an American who lives in Bishkek and a Russian who was visiting.
We went on a day hike up Mount Uchitel in the beautiful Ala Archa natural reserve 40 minutes south of Bishkek.
I climbed up to 4,000 meters and finally, after almost 3 weeks, it was my first glimpse of the amazing mountains of Kyrgyzstan. This is why I’m here, this is what I came for. At 4,000 meters, the fog came in and rain started. I continued hiking for a while and when I understood that the fog was not going anywhere I decided to stop. I’m going to have enough time to walk through fog, rain and snow in the months to come.
I turned around and hiked back.
Today I woke up at my friend’s house. I took the Marshutka (the mini-bus used all over Kyrgyzstan) and went back to my hostel. I made a promise to the hostel owner and workers that before I leave I’m going to cook them some Shakshuka, so that’s what I did! I organized my stuff, got a good night’s sleep and I’m leaving the city finally.
HERE I GO!
