Karavshin trekking: the beginning (and a satellite call for donkey-deliveries).

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:

Second: how do you get there? By plane to the city of Osh, and from there 300km+ along asphalted but far-from-fast roads to the village of Ozgorush:

There are several places with similar names in Kyrgyzstan, so for anyone curious and/or to avoid confusion, here are both Yandex Maps and Google Maps showing this particular Ozgorush. It’s a mountain village, and scenes like this are typical here:

There is some tourist infrastructure here, but not all that much; this, for example, is the gate to the guesthouse we stayed at:

…And inside:

Tourists are put up in little terraced cabins, and the facilities – yes those facilities – are outside! ->

The food is perfectly decent, and the watermelons are especially good – we’d hit the season just right.

And here we are – just arrived, all fresh ) ->

The village from above:

The next morning we had an early start. After breakfast we weighed the baggage that was going on the donkeys and the horse – so as not to overload the poor animals.

All done and ready to trek!

And we’re off!…

The river is fast and full – which is why there’s so much greenery in the valley. Almost all the water is glacial though: there’s hardly any rainfall here (the mountains were bare – even though we weren’t very high up yet). And what’s going to happen when the glaciers melt? Eek: water scarcity is one of the main threats to the region, but that’s not a topic for my travel tales.

We turn off the road and start clambering slowly upward. Today we had 17km ahead of us with more than 1,500 meters of ascent, which, for a first day and for office plankton, is quite a lot.

There was also the altitude we’d be reaching on this first day that needed to be taken into account: up to 3,000 meters above sea-level. That’s nothing much, of course, but it still requires some acclimatization for un-acclimatized lungs – especially given it was unrelenting uphill grind all day long: it gets to you a bit – especially after an overnight flight from Moscow to Osh and then a long day on a bus to Ozgorush (no helicopters here!). But there was no way around it: we had to walk:

At least the path was not half-bad most of the way and with only gentle gains in altitude:

Meanwhile the views kept getting all the more interesting:

A well-earned, much-needed breather. Some sat…

Others…

Duly recuperated – up and… off up!…

Time to stock up on water. There are just two springs along the whole 17km stretch, and you can’t take water from the streams – there are sheep and cows grazing higher up. Drink that stuff and an unforgettable night is guaranteed. So we fill up from the springs and nowhere else.

We’re almost up at the mountain pass, and the scenery’s turning ever more magical:

On and on we plod, plod, plod – with still a long way to go…

One tourist was even managing to look like he was enjoying it :)

And onward and upward again – along the remains of a path evidently made back in Soviet times. Something must have been hauled back and forth here. I wonder who by? Geologists?…

The pass! Then a short way down, and two options: along that track over there – down the valley…

…Or up that gorge ->

Quick aside: why such a long day’s march? Couldn’t it have been broken up into shorter, comfier stages? Alas, no – there’s simply nowhere decent to stop along the way: where the ground is level, either it’s already occupied by grazers…

…Or said grazers have already pitched camp for the night! ->

Then there’s the above-mentioned water scarcity too: what with all the livestock grazing, the water in the streams is unsafe to drink.

Another brief breather, and back on the trail…

In places it’s really beautiful and unusual. Designer rocks like these are set up along the path:

We leave the old track; from here on it’s up the gorge on a narrow path:

Beautiful – even if it was spitting with rain and our strength was red-warning-lighting it…

We finally make it! Permanent camps like this one were where we’d be staying along the whole route. This particular one is called “Ak-Tash”:

A few drone shots of the landscapes surrounding our camp, from drone-master DZ ->

And then something terrible happened…

When we’d hiked the Inylchek Glacier in the summer of 2017 with the same tour company, we got used to being able to stock up at every camp on chocolate and cookies, and buy a few cans of beer or even some local brandy. And we were expecting something similar on the Karavshin route. So you can surely imagine our disappointment when, at the very first camp, it was explained to us that on Inylchek the plentiful supplies come in by helicopter, whereas here there are no helicopters (they’re all in eastern Kyrgyzstan, at the 7,000-meter peaks of Khan Tengri and Pobeda Peak) – so the not-so-plentiful provisions come in by donkey. On top of that – to our further disappointed surprise – neither alcohol nor chocolate is in demand with the overwhelming majority of tourists passing through, so none is laid on!

So picture it: after a thoroughly exhausting day you’re sitting under a tarp, endless rain pouring down outside – and you don’t have so much as a small flask of something warming or a bar of something comforting. So, what to do?…

Well, we got out the satellite phone, called down to “base”, and ordered up a donkey with everything we needed! Alas, the food and drink only arrived the following evening, so that first evening was a little grim given we were so tired and with no “refreshments”. As to the following evening – well, I won’t go into details, but I will tell you that from that day onward the courier-donkey with the supplies was (and still is, and forever will be) referred to as… “alco-donkey” :)

From the trek diary:

– Summoned up the powerlessness to accept that there’s no beer whatsoever.

– We arrive, hang everything out to dry – only for it to start drizzling again!

– Pessimist: “The glass is empty!” Optimist: “They haven’t started pouring yet!”

– At least my poor little legs have come around a little.

So ended our first in-at-the-deep-end day of Karavshinning. We turned in early – for the following day promised to be another toughie. All about it in tomorrow’s post…

The best hi-res photos from Karavshin are here.