Tag Archives: kyrgyzstan

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…

A few days ao we wrapped up our whirlwind there-and-back business dash to Kyrgyzstan, and to the Kumtor gold-ore mine and ore-processing complex (aka – a gold-extraction factory: the first time I’d ever come across the term). Why the holdup in getting these write-ups published? Simply because, when you visit industrial sites, you usually need to get a “yep, all good!” from the hosts before posting any photos – even though I hardly shoot anything inappropriate in the first place (my internal censor sees to that).

So. Kumtor…

First, it’s one of the main pillars of the country’s mining sector. Second, it’s one of the highest-altitude mining operations in the world (the second-highest, to be precise – behind the Yanacocha gold deposit in Peru, (also gold-ore)). And third, it’s just plain beautiful! Here are the pyramids they show you as you drive into the open pit:

The main pit – the one they showed us – is impossibly gigantic in size: 3.5km long, by 3km wide, and almost a kilometer deep measured from the ~highest point. And up on the loftiest peaks there are snow and glaciers. What a beauty! ->

Read on…