Tien Shan Mountains

  Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan
Tuesday, July 25, 2006

After a night of luxury in a hotel and several hours' worth of laundry we headed south of Karakol to the edge of the Tien Shan Mountain range - the name apparently means "Celestial Peaks" in Chinese and that gives you some idea of how huge they are. Even now, in the height of Summer, they're snow capped - there are dozens of peaks over 5000m - the biggest being Pik Pobedy (Victory Peak) at 7439m.


We found a beautifully secluded camp and set about putting up our tents and cooking dinner - as usual in Kyrgyzstan within minutes we'd been joined by several very smiley, inquisitive horsemen who came to check us all out and offer their services as mountain guides. The area we'd thought was really quite remote, was bordered by several family yurts and these teenagers were so intruiged by us tourists they spent the best part of the next two days with us.

On the first night they returned after dark galloping up to our campfire to quiz Jim and a few of the others on etiquette and farming practices back home. Among the more amusing questions Jim was asked, via Dilshod our bemused interpreter: "Is it illegal to keep sheep and goats in cities in the UK?" and "Have you ever fired a gun?" They also must be the only people in the world who thought our headtorches were the coolest thing on the planet!

The next day we went for a three and a half hour horse trek through the surrounding mountains with Renee (our tour leader) - the views were incredible - and how cool is it to be able to say you've been horse-riding with Kyrgyz nomads? After a spot of lunch back at the truck Jim climbed the mountain over looking our campsite - estimates as to the height ranged from 3200m to 3800m - still it took the best part of five hours up and back and he was no good to man nor beast on his return!