Peak Karavshin.

A new day dawned in the Karavshin valley in Kyrgyzstan. By morning the weather had once again turned so fine that… the joy of being alive was boundless – and infinitely so! The only thing taking the edge off was that, yet again, we had to pull off some physical endurance feats that simply don’t sit well with our comfort-class-tourist designation: to hoof it 12km (that bit’s no big deal) – an rise 1,000m+ up the vertical, then 1,400m back down; in two words: rather brutal. But what were we gonna do? We started; we must finish! Helped along by the views all around. Here are some of them taken from the drone:

Rise and shine!

// By the way, it dropped a fair way below zero degrees Celsius overnight (yes folks – in August!). We could tell by the stream having frozen over:

Up. Off! Up!…

A pattern was emerging from day to day: the higher up – the more spectacular! Up there – the pass we were aiming for:

We must have been about half-way. How did we know? Because the donkeys had caught up with us :)

Just stunning – provided you’re not actually walking, but simply resting on the rocks :)

We’d have liked to have stayed on our sit-pads… But on we pushed – up and up and up…

The farther we went, the less greenery and the more rock there was.

The inevitable – mandatory – rest-stops were regular and relished by all:

Truth be told, we weren’t really in any rush…

This whole route may be no cakewalktrek (nearly every day it’s a kilometer up, a kilometer down), but there’s nothing too physically over-the-top about it.

It would have been over-the-top if we hadn’t had so many stops; but – you know the drill by now (we’re contemplative comfort-class tourists!).

A look back down from where we’d come from:

And here we are at Ak-Tyubek Pass; elevation: 4,400m. The highest point of the whole trek!

The view from the drone:

And the other way:

Someone (not us) had even planted a little “heart” up here:

Next up, the descent – down there:

We had the drone do a recce for us for the following day:

Off we head down…

Down there ->

We take it slow, taking in the views in every direction:

And here’s the river already! We’re down at the bottom:

Here’s our camp for the night – probably the best camp of the lot from a contemplative standpoint:

And the views that were served up from there! Oh my! Especially at sunset, and then lit by the moon, and after that the stars, too… but I gave out and went to bed. Alas…

Until the next installment!…

The best hi-res photos from Karavshin are here.