Nota Bene

And so – tomorrow had arrived on our Karavshin mountain trek in Kyrgyzstan!…

We were to be heading off up into those gorges over there – where gigantic granite skyscrapers shoot up some four or five thousand meters, where glacial moraine landscapes spread out in every direction, where the streams run with “glacial milk” (rock ground down to the consistency of flour), and where the sky is so blue and the sun so bright and scorching that you squint even with your sunglasses on!

Here are some of the above-mentioned granite monoliths – paradise for mountaineers and rock climbers (but that’s not us) ->

The remnants of ancient glaciers come creeping down from above, melting away vigorously as they do:

Oh, these mountains – simply magnificent!

It’s curious to see how in places the cliffs along the gorge have been sheared off smoothly – which means the glacier here used to be a whole lot higher. It may even be that this entire mountain system was once covered by a colossal block of ice.

Then the whole icy fairy tale melted away; then it rose again a little – the glacier grew thicker and dragged in lateral moraine ramparts – and then melted away again. You can see it all very clearly in the photo:

And that’s just how it goes… Nature’s cyclical like that, in absolutely no hurry, and couldn’t care less what’s going on on the surface of the third planet of a single-star planetary system somewhere out on the edge of a galaxy that this same indifferent nature never even bothered to give a name to… Those, I expect, were the kind of thoughts running through the head of my ever-contemplative travel companion SP-O as he sat there, melancholically meditating upon the glacial-mountainous scenery:

Yes, the glaciers are melting – so you’d better be quick about looking at them! And in places they melt in the most colorful ways:

So, after breakfast, off we popped!…

…Always with the camera close to hand:

And then I stayed put for a couple of hours’ snooze in the sun.

Why did I stay back? Well, it was clear to me right away that there wouldn’t be much farther up (see my accounts of Antarctica, Greenland, and the Inylchek – plus various other very northern and extremely southern places). Also, walking around on moraine formations, which I’ve done plenty of times, isn’t really my cup-of-tea. So I simply stayed down below and spared myself a two-hour “back-breaker” over rocks of every caliber.

So off went the others to clamber over the moraine boulders.

But I didn’t snooze for all of my down-time. Out came the Sony to capture the surrounding oh-my-granites!

If you look closely, there’s a small glade up there! Ooh, intriguing… If I were a climber, I’d be up there for sure.

Just stunning!

Yes, the views really are magnificent in every direction…

But it was time to be heading back!

And that’s generally how things went on this trip: of a morning – up, washed, breakkie, rolling up our gear, backpacks on, a respectful and grateful bow to the donkeys and porters  – and off on that day’s trail again.

And of an afternoon/evening: kind of the same routine but in reverse – and with breakkie being renamed supper.

In closing, some random pics of some of the more jaw-dropping scenes from this day…

…From afar and up close:

This glacier’s surely going to collapse soon:

Designer scenes:

And that was that: a thoroughly worthwhile walk; highly recommended!

Sure – tough in places, but no major bother!

That’s all for now, folks – until the next broadcast from Karavshin!

The best hi-res photos from Karavshin are here.

Our rambling along the Karavshin route in Kyrgyzstan continues…

Next up for us was a three-day out-and-back leg toward some seriously contemplative views in the gorge that goes by the same name – Karavshin – plus the Asan-Usen glacier, plus some plain old mind-blowing granite peaks.

First, we got ourselves to our next camp (name: “Kara-Suu”) – and that was quite the undertaking: 15km of tramping one way, getting over a couple of passes along the way with a total ascent of a thousand meters, and then back down the same thousand – but very scenically. The next day – a quick march up to the glacier and a look around. While the third day was the trek back from the Kara-Suu camp (yep – another 15km, 1,000m up, and 1,000m down). But – enough of the words already; bring on the photos!…

Read on…

What a joy it was to wake up to rays of bright sun after a rainy, foggy day of lousy weather on the Karavshin trek in Kyrgyzstan! The weather, clearly, had seen the error of its ways and decided to make amends. Bless. Bliss!…

Breakfast, packing up our things, handing over the non-essentials (the stuff that’s only needed at the camps) to be loaded onto the donkeys, then squeezing the essentials into our backpacks – and off we popped!

Read on…

Salam elim!

On the Karavshin trek across the Pamir-Alay mountain system, summer weather is normally glorious. Mornings bring guaranteed blue skies, by midday a few insignificant little clouds might swell up (or possibly rather more significant ones); and toward evening there might be a fine drizzle. At night the clouds dissolve, and whoever’s lucky enough to have insomnia (though, after long marches, plus all the up-and-down tramping, insomnia is a rarity around here), or unlucky enough to need a nighttime call of nature, gets to gaze at an infinitely brilliant starry sky, and at the satellites scurrying back and forth across the heavens around this planet of ours.

Like I say, that’s how things are normally. We, alas, weren’t so lucky…

For some reason, by the end of day one and for almost all of day two of our trekking trip, a thoroughly atypical scoundrel of a cyclone rolled in over the mountain ranges, drew a dense gray blanket of cloud across the sky, and doused everything (and everyone) in a spiteful rain that drummed dismally on our tents – drumming that woke us all up on the morning of day two. But what could we do? Not much besides waiting for nature’s gloom to turn a little more transparent and then head out along the trail ->

Read on…

Hi folks!

Ok, you’ve had a couple of intro posts already; now let’s get this started properly: the Karavshin trek – one of the most beautiful routes I’ve ever walked with my own two feet – our first day…

First up: where is it? In the very southwest of Kyrgyzstan, on the border with Tajikistan:

Read on…

It’s time to move on to fuller accounts of our July-August adventures in Kyrgyzstan and the Sayan Mountains, and I figure that their telling should go in chronological order: first, the Karavshin trek in the Pamir Mountains, and then rafting down the Sayan Oka River. But before anything else we need to settle some geographical terminology. And for this we need to switch on perfectionist/pedant mode so as to clarify that we weren’t actually walking in the Pamirs as such, but in the Pamir-Alay mountain system; and to be even more specific – in the part of this mountain system called the Turkestan Range. But enough already with pedantic perfectionism; main thing: it’s simply beautiful here!

Read on…

Ladies and gents, boys and girls – greetings!

It’s been a while. But of course it has: there was a vacation-heavy summer to get through! And now, finally, the time has come to begin my traditional tales from the summer-holiday side…

This year I’ll be splitting these write-ups into two segments: the first – all about our mountain trekking adventures; the second – all about our mountain-river rafting escapades. But first – also as per tradition – overview intro-post: an overview of what we did, and what’s coming up in both photos and texts…

First we hiked the Karavshin route in Kyrgyzstan, then air-teleported ourselves over to the Sayan Mountains (Russia) and rafted down the Oka River there (not to be confused with the more well-known Oka River not that far from Moscow – literally five thousand kilometers to the west:).

So how was it? In a word: awesome!

Karavshin = 10 days on foot, 115 kilometers covered, total ascent and descent = 7.5km:  the most physically punishing trek I’ve ever done. Even Kamchatka-2015 (315km trekking up and down volcanoes) was easier. All the same – it was worth every step!

The views on show there are downright magical:

The (southern Siberian) Oka River is a real beauty too…

Read on…

Privyet, droogs!

Yes – we’ve been stitching time and saving the world a full 29 years already! And last Friday we celebrated those 29 years in typically unrestrained, loud, colorful, and rock & rollicking style. Also typical: the venue – the only one in the Moscow Region that can fit us all in: the Zavidovo resort complex:

Yet another typical: the weather didn’t cooperate right away…

Read on…

In the summer of 1982 – 44 years ago – arguably one of the greatest works in the history of Hollywood-kind premiered: Blade Runner.

But in Chinese numerology, 44 is a “bad” number (“four” sounds a lot like “death” in Mandarin), so, should we wait until, say, summer 2027 to bring this topic up?

Read on…

On our Irkutsk–Yakutsk–Magadan–Yakutsk winter road-trip we finally rolled into civilization and were fast approaching Yakutsk Airport, from where we’d soon have the good fortune to be heading home. But before the triumphant finale to our adventures, we decided to investigate a topic that’s been pertinent to the locals here since, like, forever: connecting the two banks of the Lena River to give Yakutsk – a city of almost 400,000 – year-round access to the “mainland”. And our investigations hit upon some very positive news: construction of the Lena Bridge has finally begun! Hurray!

But first things first…

Read on…