Rafting on Balyktyg-Khem and Ka-Khem (aka the Little Yenisei) was pretty chilled – there were no particularly dangerous rapids to speak of. The plan of action was simple: keep paddling along the main part of the river, keep clear of rocks and immediately obey the captain’s orders. The instruction that our crew performed fastest was “Stop!”.

There were only a few rapids, probably five. Apart from that there were sand bars with light riffles, fast sections, two or three standstill sections. For rafters, standstills are an inconvenience – you have to paddle! Thankfully, we always had the wind at our backs, or there was no wind at all.

Read on: Unexpected pitstop…

So, just how exactly did we get to the upper reaches of the Yenisei?

Well, obviously, we didn’t walk. It involved various means of transport. First, we drove 400 km from Abakan to Kyzyl. The quality of the road was bearable – it is asphalt all the way, though there were lots of roadworks. Next year it should be in better shape. It took us 6-7 hours because of the repairs, detours and time spent waiting at traffic lights giving way to oncoming traffic on the single-lane sections.

But we finally made it to the city of Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva:

However, this is where things took an unexpected turn for the worse.

Read on: A marvelous artefact next to the airport…

The Yenisei River. Many of you won’t have even heard of it. But that doesn’t make it any less of a mega river: starting out in Mongolia (!), it’s the main river of three great Siberian ones, and the world’s largest river system flowing into the Arctic Ocean. Anyway; introductions over – we headed its way after our Tian Shan adventure…

…And not long after we reached it, sure enough – we were heading down its rapids in rafts.

Now for a bit of geography…

Read on: Now for a bit of geography…

No chronicle of our Tian Shan adventure would be complete without mentioning the travel agencies we used for the trip: 7 Summits Club and Ak-Sai Travel. All the hands-on fieldwork was undertaken by the latter: they met us there, ferried us about in the 4x4s, flew us in the helicopter, and were our guides on all the trekking and clambering and camping. Here’s Ak-Sai’s Ilya at the front with a ‘don’t get lost!’ flag – just like guides have when showing tourists in most any tourist attraction around the world (ok, not necessarily a flag; these days it’s more likely to be a selfie-stick or some such).

I’ve already told you about the camps we stayed at on our expedition, and how they fairly amazed me by their relative comfort in such harsh surroundings, so I won’t go over those again (but a restaurant tent with chairs and a big dining table, minibar, mini-shops, and other modern conveniences will never be forgotten!).

Read on: Occasionally things seemed to get a bit mixed up…

Howdy folks!

Oh no! Summer’s nearly over! So I’d better start winding up these here tales from the Kyrgyz side – our Tian Shan expedition across glaciers and along ‘trains‘ of glacial rubble, aka – what I did this summer…

Now, I have a list of what are, to me, the 100 most beautiful, most fantastic places on the planet – both natural and man-made. It contains waterfalls, lakes, caves, deserts, volcanoes/volcanism, multicolored rock formations, deep canyons, Patagonias and Galapagos islands. And a lot more besides. But conspicuously absent from the list are mountains…

Well now the time has come to correct such negligence…

Accordingly, herewith, I put forward the candidacy of Tian Shan, Engilchek Glacier and the landscapes that surround them, for entry into my Top-100 List of the Most Beautiful Places in the World.

The glacier is reeaaal long – some 60km+ – and we covered almost all 60 (apart from the last 10 up where the glacier starts). But the glacier really starts up on the very highest slopes of the mountains – around 6000-8000 meters up! But there was no way we’d be rock climbing so high: we were, after all, a group of mere-mortal office plankton taking a leisurely, albeit it rather extreme and unusual, ‘stroll’ :).

Read on: Around the glacier in ten days…

Inylchek Glacier is 60 kilometers long, which, for the average normally-office-bound tourist is plenty enough :).

During our Tian Shan expedition, our general direction was steadily up the right-hand slope of the southern sleeve of the glacier. But there were exceptions – one having been our one-day march across the glacier to Merzbacher Lake. And, oh, what a splendid march it was!

It was here where we touched for the first time genuine glacial ice – with both hands and feet:

Read on: stone mushrooms…

Welcome back folks! Herewith, I continue my tales from the Tian Shan side; specifically – our lodgings.

Camp No. 4 – ‘Komsomolets Glacier’

This was our first overnight stay on solid glacial ice – not on relatively warm rock or clay. In a word: brrrrrr. Life on ice. 24/7. And the ice is forever quickly melting…

Read on: Mind-blowing, eye-popping, camera-hungry!…

Over the 10 days we were trekking across Tian Shan, we stayed at seven tent-based (permanent) camps for the night:

Each camp was unique in its own way (the views were always very different), but also similar to the others at the same time (same yellow tents and other camping kit). The spacious camps had specially equipped sleeping spaces, a kitchen, and toilets (v. basic, but better than nothing!). In all, hardly the Ritz, but what are you to expect halfway up a mountain side in the middle of nowhere?!

Ok, let me go through each camp in order.

The first at-jailoo (‘field’ in Kyrgyz) didn’t really count. We arrived there in 4x4s so there was no trekking trickiness or hiking hardships at all. There was another kind of hardship though – that brought on by a particularly noisy generator, as already mentioned. I think the family that runs the camp must have been deaf from birth! So, like I say, this camp doesn’t count.

Our first proper camp was this one here:

Read on:

Hi folks!

August – always quiet. And that includes here on my blog, as you’ll have noticed. So here’s for a bit of catch-up: it’s time to report back from my recent walking trip around the Tian Shan mountains. Coming up: peaks, glaciers, mysterious natural phenomena, daily trekking-tourist notes, occasional rock-climber notes, descriptions of light-headedness brought on by low oxygen levels, and thoroughly non-office-like physical exertions. Also coming up: why we chose this particular particularly remote spot for this year’s spot of extreme tourism…

First off: how did we get there? Here’s a brief pictorial review:

Read on: simple logistics…

Walking on ice for days is… unusual, but thoroughly awesome at the same time.

You might think that since there are no winding paths you could walk ‘as the crow flies’ across a glacier, but you’d be wrong. Much zigzagging is needed in-between and around mounds of rubbly rocks and glacial ‘icebergs’. Walking over smaller rubbly rock is tricky too. And walking on the ice is hardly a walk in an ice-free park either – especially when you can’t see the ice under a thin film of small rocks. But these inconveniences pale into insignificance when you have a look around at the oh-my glaciation landscapes all around!

Under those there rocks – ice. The ice around here inflicts serious damage to the surface of the mountains: as it expands (from water) in cracks it breaks up the rock, and over time grinds up the ever smaller rocks finer and finer and pulls it all downwards down the slopes. The ice melts, there’s less and less ice further down the slopes and more and more rocks – from pebbles to boulders.

Read on: Oh my goodness gracious…