Finding Heart in the Heart of the Tian Shan: Karakol, Kyrgyzstan

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan

“Good Luck,” said a posted sign as we left Kazakhstan and walked across the border to Kyrgyzstan. We didn’t need luck, but a better road may have been nice. We drove along bumpy dirt roads for over an hour before we hit pavement. Welcome to our second country on this journey, Kyrgyzstan.

We would have had a picture of this sign to show you, but the border patrol deleted it. Karen stupidly had her phone in her hand at the crossing, and the guard confiscated it to see if there were any pictures of the checkpoint on it—which, of course, there were (because of said hilarious sign, above). After some half-jokes about deportation, the photo was deleted, the phone was returned, and we entered Kyrgyzstan. Vlad, our trusty Kazakh driver of Russian descent (see previous post), was not amused.

Herds of cows, sheep, and horses greeted us as soon as we crossed the border. Karen’s baby-goat/sheep/horse/cow-loving heart was squealing with glee. We didn’t have much time to enjoy the cuteness or the views, though, as we came into this sparsely-populated mountainous country of six million people in a bit of a rush. Vlad wanted to drive back to Almaty that night, and he had to drop us all off and make his way through the dirt roads back to the border before it closed by 6pm that evening (and it was already 3pm). So, our chubby little van dodged sheep and horses like Bowser dodging banana peels in Mario Kart (effectively, but not gracefully). Vlad dropped us off in the middle of a dusty dirt road where our phones-without-data showed our guest house was supposed to be located, and took off toward the border.

We knocked on what appeared to be a garage gate, but there was no answer nor any signs. A local man rode by on his bike and presumably asked us something along the lines of, “are you lost?” or “do you need help?” We blurted out the street name (which we could not read on the street signs, because, Cyrillic), and he motioned for us to follow him. We followed him half a block to the correct street and rang the doorbell to a metal gate marked “Tesky Guest House.”

A nice gentleman, Taalai, answered and welcomed us into a courtyard oasis of flowers, apple and pear trees, benches, and simple-but-cleanly-appointed guest rooms and bathrooms. Taalai lives on the property and runs the operation with his parents; they are one of hundreds of family-owned guesthouses that partner with Kyrgyzstan’s Community-Based Tourism (CBT) program, which is essentially AirBnB v1.0, wherein families rent out rooms in their homes to travelers passing through. This allows visitors to get a taste of local life across the country and get to know local hosts, while helping spread tourism dollars out across the country rather than consolidated to multinational hotel companies. Each family charges the same standard rate (~$11.50 USD per person per night) and includes a homecooked breakfast, and we pay the family directly in cash. Sometimes, they even handwash your laundry for you, as Taalai’s mother did for us!

(Breakfast often consists of rice and milk porridge or scrambled eggs, occasionally leftover potato soup from the night before, bottomless hot tea, and so. much. bread. with flats of butter and local berry jams. Slices of cucumbers and tomatoes are also often included—almost certainly with lunches and dinners—as they are grown locally in greenhouses.)

Our home base for the next week would be Karakol, a city of about 80,000 people that sits at the base of the Tian Shan mountains at nearly 1,760 m/5,800 ft elevation in northeast Kyrgyzstan. Karakol is a funny mix of charming and soviet, rustic and urban. On one hand, there are few paved streets or lights on the side streets; we stumbled back to our guesthouse on several nights with headlamps lighting the way in the cool dark air, stomping through dirt and being careful to avoid potholes and piles of rubble in the middle of the road. On the other hand, there are many nice parks with benches and flower beds, flanked by Soviet government buildings and lines of banks, ATMs, telecom stores, pizza restaurants, and 24/7 bodegas. Blocky old Russian Ladas dot the main drag in the city, spewing clouds of emissions and swerving around packed marshrutkas.

We were immediately fascinated by the peoples that filled the streets of Karakol. Of course, there are the ethnic Kyrgyz; some Russians (though far fewer than in Kazakhstan, and in Almaty in particular); and then there are the Dungans, a Muslim Chinese group descended from the Hui Chinese. Their one principal mosque in Karakol is unique in that it almost looks like a Buddhist temple with its flared eaves, but with a minaret. Karakol also features the traditional Dungan dish ashlan-fu, a Chinese soup served cold with two types of noodles, tomatoes, eggs, green onions, and chili; though cold noodle soup doesn’t sound good, we can assure you that it was delicious, and at 36¢ USD a bowl, we enjoyed multiple lunches of ashlan-fu in our time there.

Finally, Karakol also features another type of people, mixing in with the locals with great ease—the Hardcore European Backpacker ("HEB"), standing out with their tall packs and tall bodies, high-performance gear and fearless attitudes. Now, we’ve come upon a lot of backpackers in our days, and we consider ourselves somewhat adventurous, but relative to the real HEB, we’re really quite pathetic: we don’t hitchhike, we have a budget of more than $20 a day, we pack way more things than them, and we rarely go-it-alone on big hikes using only the Maps.Me app and a solar battery charger.

The reason this is important, and why so many Hardcore European Backpackers find themselves in Karakol (and throughout Kyrgyzstan in general), is because Karakol is the gateway to many intensely beautiful outdoor adventures—undisturbed natural beauty that is becoming harder and harder to find in the world, and to which backpackers are undeniably addicted. We arrived with the intention to similarly seek out pristine alpine lakes, high mountain passes, and natural hot springs via a four-day, 31-mile loop hike through Karakol Valley, Ala-Köl Lake, Ala-Köl Pass, and Arashan Springs, and would meet many HEBs along the way, for better or worse.

Karakol Valley, Ala-Köl Lake, and Altyn-Arashan

While we had our own sleeping bags, we did not have our own tents or other equipment, nor did we know the trail well, so we figured we’d follow the advice of the CBT office and hire a local guide with us on the hike (non-hardcore-backpacker move #1). Meanwhile, Kevin, the solo French backpacker staying at our same guesthouse, had showed up with the intention to do the same hike, with no plans, no tent, no guide, and no food; this appeared to be no problem.

Maybe he had a point. We showed up the first morning of the trek and were met by a team of three people!—our English-speaking Kyrgyz mountain guide Maks, our personal cook Kolsi (sp?), and our porter Sergei! It felt a bit indulgent and ridiculous, especially as their packs were stuffed to the brim with endless supplies just for the two of us—some critical, such as our sleeping mats and tent; and some extraneous, such as the endless supply of sweets and treats that they would whip out every few hours throughout the next four days as if we were walking through the park during tea time (non-hardcore-backpacker move #2). Their packs were so heavy (and they are not big men—Sergei made Michael look like a football player) that we urged them to please leave behind some of the many loaves of bread and treats they were jamming into their packs, as we knew there was no way we’d eat it all, but they had their method and traditions, and insisted on taking everything. So off we started on the 14 km/8.7 mi for Day 1 (16 km if they had not driven us up the initial rocky road, non-hardcore-backpacker move #3). Maks led the way, with the two of us close behind him—and 50 full meals’ worth of supplies coming up behind us (4 days for 5 people).

For the first few hours, this was a beautiful and comfortable hike into the wide sweep of Karakol Valley, gently climbing uphill alongside the surging river. Collecting the heavy snow melt from the massive Tian Shan mountains towering ahead of us, we could tell this river was cold. Like, ice cold. Picture the ice blue from the movie Frozen—it was that color of blue the entire way.

After lunch—which was a ludicrous display of cheese, salami, bread, crackers, cookies, nuts, candies, bananas, and hot tea—the steep ascent began and did not let up for the rest of that day. We climbed 1,200 m/3,900 ft in less than two hours, but the views of the green, river-cut valley below and the increasing enormity of the peaks surrounding us in all directions were more than enough to fuel us onward. Being able to follow the footsteps of Maks, who knew exactly where he was going, eased all of the mental energy needed to navigate unfamiliar territory and prevented us from taking on additional mileage caused by getting lost (something we saw several HEBs who were hiking on their own do). After the ascent and some tricky boulder-hopping, we arrived at our campsite for the night on a rocky bed beside the river, at 2,900 m/9,500 ft high.

But, no longer huffing uphill meant that we got real cold, real quick. As the sun set, we prepared for the temps to go down to -5 C / 23 F that night. Maybe it was because we’ve never actually camped in temperatures that cold before, or maybe it’s because California has made us weak, but we were downright freezing! Despite putting on all our layers and long underwear, our fingers were numb and teeth literally chattering. The hot meat-and-potato stew that our cook made for us for dinner (non-hardcore-backpacker move #17) only eased our numbness for fleeting moments. Meanwhile, Hannes, a solo Belgian backpacker who was hiking and camping alone and who was barely wearing pants, ate his cold bread and tuna next to our piping hot meal, all the while saying that he was not cold at all; we were beginning to feel hilariously puny.

Egos aside, we were still so cold the next morning that we decided we could not bear to camp at the second campsite planned for the second night, which is an unprotected mountain site at 3,700 m/12,100 ft high—and it was expected to drop to something like -15 C / 5 F. F that! The original itinerary was meant to break our hike into four leisurely days so that each day would only cover about 10-14 km/6-9 mi of hiking, but many people combine the “second and third days” into one long 22-km/14 mi day, skipping the second campsite and making it back down to a lower—and much warmer—yurt camp. We decided to do the same, and started the second day early with the intention to plow through the reputedly difficult path in one go. After another luxurious hot meal of scrambled eggs, hot tea, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a pound of candy if we so desired, we took off—trying to defrost our fingers as we started to climb uphill, and adopting Hannes to tag along with us since his phone battery was running low, which means that he might lose sight of the snow-covered trail at some point on Maps.Me (not so hardcore anymore).

As it turns out, while some parts were challenging, it was not difficult to cover the full distance in one day (some hardcore-ness regained!). The first two hours involved going straight up a rocky mountainside, where we began to encounter snow, but the path was steady without any jarring surprises, and we knew that what awaited us on the other side would be worth it.

And was it ever.

We reached the top of a steep ascent and looked down to catch our first glimpse of Ala-Köl below us, a sparkling turquoise diamond of an alpine lake, dramatically surrounded by snow-capped mountains on all sides. Tian Shan means “Heavenly Mountains” in Chinese, and the name couldn’t be more apt. We were the only ones there the entire time, soaking up its serenity while enjoying the warmth of the strong sun, which was, by then, beating down on us from a cloudless blue sky, quite literally blinding us as it reflected off the lake’s surface in what looked like crystal dandelions scattering into the wind. The vibrant yet deep colors of Ala-Köl felt magical; its presence there in such stillness and isolation unreal.

After a reinvigorating break, we continued on our way. Next stop: the Ala-Köl mountain pass at 3,860 m/12,664 ft, connecting Karakol Valley to Arashan Valley on the other side. Towering above us, we were able to see the pass the entire time, but it looked much closer than it took to get there! While it wasn’t incredibly steep, the path was snowy and slow-going, and the air was beginning to thin. Keeping one boot in front of the other and enjoying the increasingly expansive view of Ala-Köl Lake below us as we got higher and higher, we finally made it to the pass. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree views of mountains and peaks surrounded us, stretching so far that we lost depth perception of how far they were. The pass was not much more than a thin edge, without much room to hang out—plus it was windy—so we snapped a few photos and quickly moved on.

Except… it was completely unclear which way to go. Our guide looked around, pointed down, and said, “we go this way, less steep than the other side,” gesturing to another path that was, indeed, more sketchy-looking. However, there was no trail in front of us either—just the steep north face of the mountain covered in a few feet of snow. We were about to ask, “how do we go down?” when another crazy hiker just sat down on her butt and literally sled down the mountain on her bottom. She made it down the slippery steep face in five seconds, flat! We all laughed and wondered if we should do the same, but Maks encouraged us to try to walk down, as there were lots of rocks that she could have easily hit. So we tried to walk, but with every intentional step down, we would slide about four additional steps, catching ourselves in fits of laughter and trying not to tumble into each other and cause an avalanche. After a few more falls into the fluffy snow, Karen resigned to sitting on her butt to slide down (though with much more control than the sledding woman—non-hardcore-backpacker move #25); we would slide for about 100 feet, get up to try to walk again, and allow ourselves to start sliding again when we would inevitably fall again. In this manner, we all descended the face of the mountain in about 1/20th of the time it took to climb it. What could have been quite a dangerous path became fun play in the snow, and before long, we arrived at lunch (the second campsite that we were originally going to camp at but would now bypass).

The rest of the afternoon was another 9 km/6 mi of comfortable downhill strolling through rolling green hills and muddy horse trails. The four of us (with Kolsi and Sergei slightly lagging behind—poor Sergei and his massive pack!) mostly hiked in tranquil silence, comfortably lost in the trance of repetitive footsteps and peaceful scenery, interrupted only by the welcome passing of a herd of majestic horses or the occasional river crossing. Before long, we were at the door to Arashan Valley, another wide valley of vibrant green hills with snow-capped mountains in the distance, this time with many yurt camps and horses dotted alongside the coursing river. Drinking in this view was the perfect way to end a long but successful day of hiking.

We bid farewell to Hannes (whom we’d see again later in another Kyrgyz city) and lazied into 36 hours of hanging out at a yurt camp in the valley. We had gained an extra day without hiking, and though we could’ve just gone back sooner and eaten the costs, we decided to spend it at the camp, reading, napping, and enjoying some natural hot springs (or maybe not enjoying…one was so dangerously hot that Michael could not even get in—it was seriously over 45 C / 113 F—while the other was disappointingly tepid no matter how much we willed it to be hotter).

We think our team enjoyed this unexpected respite too; other than the three meals he cooked for us that day, Kolsi spent the entire day catching up on sleep. During the high season (the incredibly short summer months of June-August), these guys take tourists out on these multi-day treks back-to-back, sometimes doing two a week. Then, once the season is over, they go to Moscow for the winter, where there is more work than in Kyrgyzstan. We were their last trek of the season, so we hoped that we could be both fun and friendly for them, while allowing them to enjoy their beloved mountains before leaving for a few months.

That evening, Maks, Kolsi, and Sergei taught us a traditional Russian card game, “Durak,” which means “fool” or “crazy.” We love learning and playing cards in foreign countries with people with whom we could otherwise barely communicate; it brings everyone to the same page and suddenly makes communication easy. You can see the same strategies and thought processes going on in everyone’s head no matter the language they speak, and everyone has the same reaction when they’re dealt a crappy hand.

The objective of Durak is to shed all your cards first, and avoid being, of course, the durak of the group. With every new round, a new card is flipped over to as act as the new trump suit for that round. Interestingly, Hearts came up a lot and acted as the reigning suit for a disproportionate amount of rounds that night. This felt appropriate as one hour slipped into the next, laughing and drinking and having a good time. Before we knew it, we had played for almost seven hours—through Kolsi’s delicious dinner of lentil dill soup and steamed potato manti (dumplings), through a couple hours of K-pop (“K” for Kyrgyz here), and through three bottles of Kyrgyz cognac! (We were almost done when we had polished off just two bottles, but then one of the yurt owner’s family members came over to start playing with us, and reached behind the counter to whip out another new bottle for free. Obviously, we couldn’t say no.)

Needless to say, as midnight neared and the last shots of cognac were downed, we all agreed to a late start the next morning for our final, fourth day of hiking back to town—9:30am breakfast, 10:00am to start hiking; the timing would turn out to be critical.

The Last Day

The last day’s hike is supposed to be easy. Just 14 km/8.7 mi of downhill stroll along a rocky road that many will do in just a day-hike from Karakol, and people can even hire drivers to take them up for a night just to see Arashan Valley if they didn’t want to hike. In an unexpected turn of events, this last day did not turn out to be easy for us.

Within thirty minutes of starting downhill, the now-comforting sound of Maks’ footsteps in front of us were interrupted by the frantic shouts of a fellow hiker. A German woman, whom we later met as Anya, frantically flagged us down, asking if we had cell phone service. Someone was seriously hurt, and we needed to call for help. It was confusing at first, but soon thereafter, we understood that just minutes earlier, she and her friend (another German woman named Felicia) were hiking down the path just as we had been, when they witnessed an old Russian van coming up the steep rocky road. On the steep incline, the driver couldn't get the van into a lower gear and started to roll backward, hit a large boulder and careened off the road, tumbling down a steep ravine, flipping many times over before crashing into a tree. About 100 meters below us near the riverbed, we now saw the overturned car completely upside down with windows blown out; a slew of backpacks, food, and gear splayed all over the hillside; and three people right next to the car down there: the Dutch couple who was driving the car on their own and who had rolled down with it, and Felicia, who had already rushed down there to help them get out.

Miraculously, the Dutch couple was still alive; the man seemingly unharmed, the woman hurt but conscious and able to move her extremities. Our team of guides, who initially felt superfluous for our hike, were now suddenly critical to the lives of the Dutch couple. Of course, all of our phones were out of service up there in the mountains, but fortunately, Sergei and Kolsi were both close behind us. As soon as they arrived on scene within minutes of us, they dropped their backs and ran back up to the yurt camp to both call an ambulance and get other help. As locals who hike this trail weekly and who speak the local language, they would cover the distance far faster and more effectively than either of us or the Germans could. Meanwhile, Maks descended the ravine with a first-aid kit, Michael with some snacks and water; Anya and Karen stayed up top near the trail, where we had all left our gear and where we could flag for help and pass on whatever else was needed down below at the site (over the next couple hours, this included electrolytes, painkillers, bandages, and more water, among others). Maks and Michael reached the Dutch couple and, along with Felicia who was already there, spent the next 30-45 minutes unprofessionally bandaging small cuts, wrapping them in jackets and sleeping bags to keep them warm, and keeping them hydrated.

For awhile, things were stable, but tense; we didn’t know if the Dutch woman had internal damage that needed medical attention immediately, and we all knew that any ambulance would take many hours to get up the rough mountain path to where we were. We all tried to busy ourselves by providing items as needed, and otherwise cleaning up and collecting items that had fallen out of the car as it crashed (everything from IDs to now-damaged groceries). Cracked eggs had gotten over everything, coating water bottles and toiletries and backpacks with slimy egg-white and yoke. It felt, at once, both important to clean up and completely useless to worry about in light of the situation, but sometimes, it is all you can do.

Honestly, we have never felt more helpless than in those two hours. We couldn’t speak the language, we didn’t know the system there even if we did, we knew nothing about how to medically stabilize someone who may be truly hurt. We made small talk in hopes to get their minds off of the pain and shock while we were all waiting for help. We learned that she worked at a child’s nursery and he worked at a grocery store back in Utrecht; we also learned that she was pregnant, which did not help the urgency of the situation. Sometimes, having human conversations is all humans can do.

We were glad to see Sergei arrive back to us not too long later, reporting that the ambulance had indeed been called. Another 30 minutes or so after that, Kolsi came back riding in an off-road vehicle from the yurt camp, with three other men in tow, at least one of which was a medic for the village. They all descended into the ravine too; the medic checked vitals for the couple, and then they started trying to get the Dutch woman out toward their car. With the six Kyrgyz men down there, Michael and Felicia climbed back up to the road. We all watched as they stabilized the Dutch woman, and, using a mattress that had been in the van as a stretcher, carry her out of the scene and into their car. It took awhile to get them into the car, but once they did, they were able to drive down the bumpy road and meet the ambulance halfway, cutting the time to emergency care (we did confirm later that they met up with the ambulance soon thereafter, transferring the couple and getting them on their way to a hospital in Karakol).

Our last sights of them had them saying “thank you” to all the men who were helping them, so we know that they had their wits about them, and we were also able to send them off with some key personal items, including their passports/IDs and a good amount of their clothes and belongings.

Just before the Dutch man went into the car, he had asked for Michael’s email, and said that they would send us an update in a few days after they were out of the hospital. We never did hear back from them, or at least not yet (it’s now been two weeks). We don’t even know their names. Google searches of any Karakol news story related to this have yielded nothing.

The whole ordeal lasted just over two hours. Anya and Felicia said goodbye and took off to continue hiking down, trying to shake off the incident and what they had witnessed; our team took a break, as the whole thing been quite stressful for them. Of course, without a beat, Kolsi laid out a perfect picnic lunch under the warm sun and bright blue skies, still bringing out the bowls of candy and treats per the Kyrgyz tradition.

We still had the majority of the day’s hike to complete, since we had not gone very far when Anya first found us. At one point, one of the men from the village passed by in his car, and asked if we wanted a ride down. We all looked at each other and said no; happy to take this bumpy rocky road on our own two feet, no matter how heavy the packs.

Throughout, we couldn’t help but think about the course of events that led us to this Dutch couple that day. What if we hadn’t decided to take our extra “rest day” and had hiked down the previous day? What if we hadn’t stayed up late getting drunk and playing cards the night before, and had instead started out early as we normally do and as most hikers had done that morning? What if we hadn’t hired a ridiculous team of three people to care for and look after us during this trek—who would’ve run for help, talked to the local medic, called the ambulance, or brought the extra car to meet the ambulance? We know there is no point in replaying the what-if’s and the could-have’s, and likely someone else would’ve found them and hopefully helped them. But in that moment, we did not feel so puny for not having the hardcore-ness to do this alone, either in a rented van or on foot; it seemed there was a reason we were all exactly where we were, when we were.

That afternoon, we finished the hike and said goodbye to our team. We blew our daily budget tipping the guys that day.

We may not be HEBs, but we are also not duraks. And luckily, most of the time, Hearts reign.

Karen & Michael

Karakol, Kyrgyzstan, September 15-21, 2019