Wandering Scotsman

It looks like we were very lucky with our visit to Kyrgyzstan as the violence has erupted in a much larger form in the South East cities of Osh and Jalal-Abad, where we were three weeks ago : There’s more reports on the BBC website.

We’re just finished our 6 day trek around the lakes SW of Olgii….walking in the wilderness without meeting anyone else, shitting in the open and washing in the ice cold rivers with stunning views in the Altai National Park.  This is in the far west of Mongolia and not nearly as many visitors come here as it’s normally reached by an expensive flight from Ulanbataar.  It’s only really trekkers and mountaineers that visit here or tourists for the eagle hunting festival in October.

We had a day driving there, 4 days trekking and a day driving back.  The trip was really great and we ended up camping every night.  The first night was outside a herder’s home.  It was a bit of a mission to get there but probably a normal journey for a lot of Mongolians – it was all off road, we were in an old Russian van, passed through a winter storm and had one puncture (which was repaired amazingly quickly).  We stopped at a broken down car 2 hours into our 5 hour journey to discover it was out horseman’s – they broke down the day before and the whole family was sitting it out waiting for a part to come to them.  He jumped in our van and left the rest of the family there.

That night we were in their house and saw his neighbours eagle (it’s a big tradition of hunting with eagles here) – they are massive birds and weigh about 10-15kg.

We had to check in at an army border checkpoint with our permit before starting as we were in a national park right next to the Chinese border.   Despite being so far away from a major town there was a small village here and a bunch of nomad’s gers and livestock.  The first day’s trek took us away from them into valley’s where the herder’s didn’t move to until later in the year so we never met anyone else – just us, our cook, our guide, our horseman and a pack camel carrying the gear.  We walked over a pass at about 2600m which brought us up to the snowline.  It’s been a harsh winter here and a very quick spring where loads of snow has melted in a few weeks…..this as great for us as it meant the majority of the walk was in grassy areas or a dirt track, no families had moved into the area yet, and the surounding mountains were still covered in snow giving us our most scenic camp spots to date anywhere!

The cook was great with various things for breakfast and we had our fair share of fried mutton with rice and noodles although it always tasted great – partly helped by the camel lugging around a proper metal stove for us!

The second and third day’s trek became a bit easier as our legs got accustomed to it, and I guess we got a bit more used to the altitude.  Our camp spots became ever more scenic and we went even more remote.  We crossed quite a few small rivers where we needed to be taken across by horse due to the rapid snowmelt and the fast flow.

On the final day we had a bit of a mission as we backtracked for 90 minutes then walked over what looked like a small pass over a hill.  That small pass ended up taking us three hours to walk up, ending at around 2750m, in wet snow, then a large bit of snow that was deeper than us.  The horses found it hard to cross but were taken across several times to pad it down for the fully loaded camel.  When it passed it sunk into the deeper snow and refused to budge for a bit.  Four of us had to encourage it by helping to lift the load up and putting some branches in front on him.  The horseman even put his jackets in front to try to stop the camel’s feet sinking.

After that we trekked for another 3 hours to reach the lake that never seemed to get closer.  We had three more river crossing where the horses were too far ahead so we had to wade across getting wet almost to our knees at one point, but once we were set up in yet another amazing spot we started to forget about it.

The staff got a bit more used to us after a day or so and I ended up getting one of the horseman’s traditional hats as a gift.

We were picked up in a Landcruiser which made the journey back a bit more ‘exciting’ as he raced along the dirt roads….although we had to stop off in a family’s yurt for yoghurt 10 minutes into the trip.  The driver slowed down a bit though when he ploughed into a short river crossing and the car cut out. It looked drastic as the guide had to walk up a mountain to get phone reception, the car was half in the water, and failed to start.  After about 40 minutes the son gave it another try and whatever was flooded must have cleared, the car started and we were back on our way – saving what could have been a 3 hour wait for another car.

After stopping at the guide’s family home for more tea, we got back to Olgii around 4.30pm.  We were due to take the 2-3 day bus to Ulanbataar but had started to dicsuss getting the flight as it seemed a bit brutal to sit on a minibus for that long, travelling 1500km, with no paved roads….especially after the 6 days of wilderness.

When we got back to the town, like normal when we get back to bigger places everything turned expensive – we reluctantly splashed a lot of cash on a flight, and had to rush between the ticket office, money changers, the hotel, and the internet to check up on tours and accommodation.

But that does man that I sit writing this in Ulanbataar.  The flight was great on a 30 seater plane which was only half full (despite the agent saying there were only 2 seats left when we asked).  We saw great vistas of the wilderness of Mongolia – vast landscapes of emptieness, but there always appeared to be a jeep track somewhere around!

We got picked up by Idre’s Guesthouse which is like your normal backpacker’s place – internet, big tele with DVDs, kitchen and various shared spaces.  This seemed really bizarre for us as there is a load of people just off the trans-siberian, or up from China and loads of chat going on.  Remember we’ve had about 5 proper conversations in English since leaving!

After about 30 minutes we were almost sick of other people, the noise and the weirdos!…but we went out for a proper dinner and a few drinks with an English couple, spent a proper amount of cash in the city (yikes!)….then came back to a night of noise as they watched the world cup in the middle of the night!

Why oh why do some backpackers not give a shit for other people in hostels!!!  I think there may be a few people given a bit of a talking to today!

Anyway, after hearing some horror stories of joining tours with people you haven’t met….(there’s a right freak in the hostel!)…..we’re heading on a 10 day Gobi desert tour tomorrow (Monday 14th) with 3 or 4 other folk from another guesthouse – at least one English girl and a Japanese girl.  We’re trying to get the train to China booked for the 25th of June and then it’s the countdown to New Zealand.

We can’t believe we’re half way into our travelling time already…..although we feel like we’ve been away for ages, when we realise that it’s seems to be going too quickly.

I’ve quickly uploaded some pictures from Arslanbob and Kochkor in Kyrgystan….

(just for you Fiona 😉 )

We are back in Bishkek for a night and been visited by the rain. We have word that our tickets will be ready for our Mongolian flight tomorrow, which is just as well as we’re heading to Almaty and Kazakhstan in the morning.
We had a night in a jailoo last night which is a pasture at about 2700m….we were a bit clogged up with what we assumed was a horse dung fire to keep us warm during the night! We went out on a couple of horses for two hours in the afternoon up to about 3200m…and there was a baltic wind. We turned back as Ciara turned to ice, which is probably just as well as she’s walking like John Wayne today (or at least trying to walk). The horses had a remarkable knack of farting while walking – “Sound of Music” Kyrgyz style. Later I managed to drink some kumuz….which tastes as good as it sounds – fermented mares milk. I managed a few though.
I forgot to say we shared a car with a Kazakh film crew when we left Bishkek last week to go to Lake Issy Kul. They interviewed me as they dropped us at the hotel and asked some questions about what it was like visiting Kyrgyzstan, and what issues people considered….. so there you go….I’m a real life ‘Borat’!
Maybe when we hit Almaty we’ll see me on the tele as we channel hop…….

Been out for a couple of walks around Karakol the last couple of days, and off to livestock bazaar tomorrow… Still no Mongolia flight confirmed, but at least we’ve been doing a bit more (even though we got pissed on yesterday). Anyway, better dash. Will likely be offline for a few days now.

Internet access has been harder to get hold of here than expected.  It’s easy to get on the net but the connection speeds have been so slow sometimes that we’ve given up.  The guesthouse in Osh was still on dial up, and there’s little sign of being able to get reliable access to plug my laptop in, so I’ve been writing some posts offline waiting until I can get a connection.

Our time in Osh was ok but nothing startling.  The border crossing was easy and consisted of keeping the border guards amused while they repeated our names an endless amount of times to get the pronunciation correct, dreamed of having Ciara as their bride, and other things you’d probably have to do to keep yourself amused when working at a border crossing which only has the odd tourist crossing (it’s still closed to locals apart from in exceptional circumstances).  After walking across what’s usually referred to as ‘no man’s land’ between border checks (although it was only about 50 metres here), the Kyrgz immigration guy had to be called over to come to the booth – it had clearly been a busy day for them.

Osh was a very busy and crammed town compared to what we had witnessed in Uzbekistan.  There were far more modern cars with regular glimpses of Audi’s and the odd Merc scattered throughout the Ladas.  I’ve now consigned myself to believing that I really would like a Lada Riva 4×4.  I’ve had a secret longing for them and I’m sure even Jeremy Clarkson said they were really useful 4x4s, but over here I’ve seen them bashing through all sorts.  I’m sure it would be a great car to do the Mongol Rally in.  (Pic : Osh ‘cityscape’ 😉 )

You see I’ve also realised that this would be a great place to have your own transport.  I get quite jealous in some ways thinking of the Swiss couple in Tashkent who had been travelling with their own van for 9 months (‘The little BuBu’).  Over here it’s definitely been the hardest place to sort out transport as there is so little English spoken, if at all. I can hardly complain about that if you think of the average Ruski landing in Scotland trying to communicate but hey…I can still say it’s hard.  Even when we turn up somewhere and say we want to travel by ‘marshutra’ (a shared minibus) we’re often met with the answer that there are none……I still don’t know know if they really mean there’s not one.  I think they really mean ‘There’s not one here right now, and you’re a westerner so you probably don’t want to wait and would prefer the comfort of my bashed up car instead’.  Inevitably we feel that we’re cornered and end up paying for a taxi, get pissed off that we’ve been ripped off (even though we may not have been)….and even more inevitably, 30 minutes into our journey, we’ll see a f*$!ing minibus going the same route!!  At the bus station today in the town that we never wanted to go to, we were told 2 different answers to our question of “Sarey Chelek?” between 5 people…so which one do you gun for?  You see you can’t be definite the three year old guidebook you’ve bought it still correct as a lot must change in three years here, but yet you can’t explain what the f*$!ing guidebook says, no-one reads English, the maps are pretty shit (partly due to my obsession for not buying a Lonely Planet this time, and my obsession for having a guidebook for each country I visit…and after our first glance of the Central Asia Lonely Planet we were mad keen to get one – sadly we were in Kyrgyzstan by then!). 

I’m used to getting ‘ripped off’ as a tourist, but in the likes of South East Asia it usually means haggling over a few dollars here and there.  It’s as much a game as anything, and it can get quite fun once you’re used to it.  Today we got offered a starting price of $80 for a taxi which ended up coming down to $23.

Anyway, I go off on a tangent.  Osh is a pretty grubby town really – there’s not much there to hold the tourist’s attention for long apart from one thing which I’ll get to.  There’s an overwhelming stench of fumes that you slowly get more accustomed to.  There’s a small mountain ridge that’s in the centre of the town which you get a decent view of the city (at least it would be decent if the city looked decent).  One good thing is that there are distant views of some big kick ass snow topped mountains in the distance – Peak Lenin which tops off at around 7300m isn’t a million miles away – there’s a road to China, there’s some decent trekking about 80km away, and there’s a bloody massive and really interesting market in town – apparently the biggest in this region outside of Kashgar in China (and if you haven’t heard of that one – it’s massive).

The market spans almost 2km and sells a bit of everything.  If you’ve heard me talking about travelling before you’ll know I love markets.  From cow’s cock in Cambodia to cow’s hoofs in Osh I think it’s amazing what these foreign markets sell – I only wish we had more like it back home where you could just buy 5g of a spice you needed once a year rather than 500g in bloody Tescos.  The spices were amazing, most of which I never recognised, the teas were never ending and there was some great fruit.  The butcher’s stands could have been done with a significant dose of hygiene though.  Strangely there are an uncomfortable amount of fresh Morrison’s supermarket carrier bags offered with purchases from many of the stalls.  I can only hope this isn’t where Morrison’s source their meat from!  I assume some Morrison’s bags have made it across the Chinese border from the factory somewhere. 

All I walked away with from the market were some pistachio nuts (which are still bloody expensive here), some cherries, dried grapes, and the creme de la creme…….   3 felt Kyrgyzstan hats to be proud of.  One traditional one, and one modern ‘Kyrgz’ baseball cap take on the traditional!

Quality eh?

Ciara was also getting friendly with some locals :

Whilst in Osh we stayed at the Osh guesthouse which is basically a tiny apartment in a run down block of Soviet apartments – a bit like Westerhailes in Edinburgh, but worse looking.  We opted for the flashpacker option of the private room and facilities, which was basically the apartment next door.  Credit where it’s due though, the guy who runs it is admirable in that he is offering budget accommodation for tourists right where it’s needed.  He offers some great advice and information, and can help with visa’s, private itineries and shared or private cars to take you around.  If the rest of Kyrgyzstan had guesthouses and hostels like this then it would transform Kyrgyzstan for backpackers and provide a credible alternative to the expensive tour companies.

Anyway we split from there and headed to Arslanbob which is in the mountains.  Oh yeh, and we never saw any sign of violence in Osh – even if there was we probably would have been unaware.  We also only passed through Jalal Abad’s bus station but were unaware of anything.

Arslanbob was quite easy to get to on public transport but again we felt a tad ripped off from the taxi driver – we paid 1500 Som instead of what should have been around a tenth of that from Bazaar Korgon to Arslanbob.

Our home stay was lovely with a really friendly family.  We sorted out a one day trek with Community Based Tourism to see the ‘small waterfall, panoramic view, walnut forests and big waterfall’.  It turned out to be a deceptively big day and we were both a bit knackered after 6.5hrs walking up to about 2100m (but started out at 1500m!).  We had got used to the long drop outside toilet by the time we left, but there was sod all to do around the village.

The next day we headed to Sarey Chelek….where most Kyrgz ‘dream of’ going to one day’ according to the guidebook……

Turns out it was a mission to get to, we felt ripped off again, stayed in another homestay where we didn’t really spend much time with the family, and yet again, the scenery was great but nothing better or more exotic than you could see in Scotland.  Tomorrow we’re heading to Bishkek. We met a tour group from Exodus in Sarey Chelek today and it was great having a conversation with others in English but for once I got quite jealous of people in a tour group as its been hard communicating here.  They never rated the east of Kyrgyzstan much (“a run down Soviet resort”) so it never got our hopes up.  They informed us that apparently there had been trouble in Osh with a couple of killings and some injuries, probably the day after we left there so their tour was re-routed back to Bishkek rather than crossing at that border.  We may try and spend some time in BIshkek trying to sort out some kind of tour in Mongolia so we don’t feel the same there.

I’ve got some quotes from Ciara though :

“When do you think we’ll stop long enough to realise where we are?”.  Said on….. Day 2 of our trip.
As we watched a cow walking past the window of the Sarey Chelek homestay :
“All I can smell is shit.  Shit in the garden, shit in the long drop, shit on the road, the whole place is a shithole.”

We’re going to buy some vodka soon.  The picture here is from some wee shop in Osh – quote some vidka selection I thought.  Sometimes on this trip, I think we’ll need it, and so far (apart from at Chimgan, Uzbekistan) it hasn’t been quite as flowing as expected.  Jeez we can’t even find a bloody shop to buy water  in the village that we’re in just now. That’s hardly a surprise though as the guy stopped to get a bottle of petrol out of some guys garden this afternoon.  It may be some days until this is posted……

Just a quick note to say we arrived in Osh, Kyrgyzstan after crossing the border from Uzbekistan this morning.
We visited the silk factory in Margilan (Uzbekistan) and paid over the odds for a crappy hotel there last night (still only $50 for the room but we were really miffed – were expecting $20 – we are obviously right into travelling mode!). We practiced our French though as we joined on the back of a tour group.
Only had a quick wander around Osh this afternoon and it was good to have to put on a long sleeve top for a change.
Osh Bazaar is massive – around 2km long and full of stuff. I love markets in countries like this. Apart from that it’s not a ‘bonny’ place really.
We’re going to spend tomorrow trying to get our Kyrg plans in place.
More soon, but not sure when!