Nota Bene

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!…

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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!

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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 ->

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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:

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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!

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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…

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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?

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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…

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It was a short flight from Lima, Peru up to Bogotá – the capital of Colombia. We had just one day here, and it was a strictly business one at that – alas, no tourism this time. No shots of unusual nature or off-the-beaten-path spots either. But here’s something that always makes me smile in hotels in Colombia ->

Read on …