Central Kyrgyzstan: Lakes and Hail
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009We didn’t realise at the time how fortunate we were to have enjoyed glorious mid-summer weather for all but the last day of our six-day Karakol Valley trek. Ever since then, it has felt like the South Asian monsoon packed up and left India, headed north over the world’s highest mountains, and dumped itself on Central Kyrgyzstan. It’s still usually nice in the mornings but it has rained most afternoons for the past week, and if you’re really unlucky you get hail – while you’re hiking. But I’m a few paragraphs ahead of myself.
After resting for a couple of days in Karakol, we were just about to head off for a nine-day trek on the Inylchek Glacier but changed our minds at the last minute due to a few different reasons. Given the subsequent weather, and that we’d still have two days left even now as I type, we’re pretty sure we made the right choice. Instead, we had another day of self-catered tomato and cheese sandwiches and general relaxation in Karakol and then headed to Kochkor at the other end of Lake Issyk-Kol for some further scenic explorations there.
The jewel of Kochkor is Song Kol, a vast lake at 3016m to the south of the town. We contemplated a horse trek, and then just a regular trek once the CBT told us all their horses were booked, but in the end we just took the cheapest and easiest alternative and hired a car and driver for the three-hour ride. Song Kol was nice; we slept in a lovely yurt and our Kyrgyz nomad hosts made us nice food, including fish from the lake. But it rained for much of the afternoon, and though the next morning was lovely, we didn’t think the lake itself was that spectacular, especially compared with Ala Kol. (But it’s funny how different people view things differently: while I found Song Kol unimposing – too large and with the surrounding mountains not high enough – today we talked to a Swiss couple who really loved the vastness and open spaces of it – essentially the same things that I found unimpressive.)
After another night in a Kochkor homestay (Kyrgyzstan is actually a world leader in community tourism; we’ve spent more nights in homestays than in hotels since we’ve been here, which has been nice), we headed off on foot to another lake, Kol Ukok, about a five-hour hike away. The walk wasn’t difficult and it was fine for most of the day, but the suddenly Jekyll-and-Hyde Kyrgyz weather turned for the worse in the afternoon. About 15 minutes before we were to reach a camping spot on the lake, dark clouds gathered overhead and it began to rain. We draped our tent over us like a tarpaulin just before the hail started. The hailstones were small, not even even marble-sized – not like those crazy golf-ball hail storms we get in Sydney once every few years – but it wasn’t altogether nice being stuck as we were, huddled under our tent for about 20 minutes as the path turned muddy and the hailstones rained down on us. Eventually it stopped, and we continued to the lakeshore and pitched our tent properly, and the sun even came out, but it rained for much of the night and was still dark and cold the next morning. Still, the lake was pretty, falling somewhere between Ala Kol and Song Kol on my Kyrgyz lake rankings, and it was a worthwhile trip, but it could have been really nice with better weather.
We weighed up doing something else around Kochkor after returning from the lake, but in the end decided to return to Bishkek instead. We need to extend our Kyrgyz visas and obtain Tajik and Uzbek ones before Wendy goes to Geneva on the 19th, so an exciting week of embassies and bureaucracy awaits…
Nick