“Take the weather with you” (Crowded House)

The border crossing into Kyrgyzstan was fairly uneventful, other than the fact that we discovered that if you are a bit tipsy and want to get into Uzbekistan, just walk around the portacabin that serves as the immigration control and keep walking – no need for formalities! We farewelled Jalol who had so ably shown us around Uzbekistan, and welcomed our new guide Assele (“you can call me Miss Honey”) and headed to our first stop of Osh. We were staying in homestays in Osh, and I was in an old Russian style apartment that had mercifully been renovated inside… Throughout our stay in Uzbekistan we had not seen a single menu for the local food, as all menus were in Uzbek. What this also meant is that our guide chose to give us a subset of the menu at any restaurant we went to, and so our choices were limited to a few (sometimes while he ordered something that he had not told us about!) We were hopeful that our stay in Kyrgyzstan would yield some different culinary delights, however at the first dinner Assele excitedly explained (although she does most things excitedly) that there were many local dishes on offer, and proceeded to rattle off the same list of dishes as in Uzbekistan! So I ordered shashlik and fries, with tomato and cucumber salad of course, and it was delicious, if a little similar to that which we had eaten for the last couple of weeks! From Osh we proceeded to a very holy mountain which we were given the option to climb. However with the prospect of 5 nights of bush camping stretching ahead of me (with the associated thoughts of no showers, no washing and the fact that all the lakes and rivers we were staying near were either glacial or froze over in winter, thus severely limiting my chances of getting in the water), I decided to decline and instead watched as the others returned a little sweaty! From the mountain we headed to the local market and did a massive food shop in order to cater for the upcoming days. The market was huge and provided the opportunity to purchase delicacies such as pineapples (unfortunately we didn’t due to the cost being approximately equivalent to that of a small house in Kyrgyzstan, give or take a few som), as well as our staples of tomatoes, cucumbers (do you see a theme? Don’t expect me to serve them any time soon after the trip! And as for dill, I wouldn’t have served that before the trip!), aubergines, carrots, cabbages, watermelon, apricots and tiny apples. We also went to the meat part of the market, where the meat hangs from hooks above the counter, and the cows’ heads and hooves lie on the ground. The vege market:

Pete shopping for meat:

The countryside coming out of Osh was arid and dry, however as we descended into valleys we found incredible pockets of lushness, seeming oases in the desert. As we continued on, the mountains became higher and redder in colour, and we started to see beautiful blue green glacial lakes (complete with massive dams!). We eventually turned off the mountain road and descended to a bush camp site by a river. It was a BBQ for dinner, and unsurprisingly as soon as the meat was put on to cook, the rain started to fall, despite Tim’s confident assertion that it wouldn’t rain and that fly sheets were optional! Fortunately it was only light rain, and it let up in time to allow us to eat al fresco (is there any other way?). I learnt an important lesson this night, and that was that to leave your camera behind when you go to bed can result in some very interesting photos being taken on it before it is returned to you the next day!

Scenery along the road:

Me at a glacial lake:

The amazing scenery continued as we headed towards our second bush camp which was by a fast flowing river overlooked by an amazing red cliff. The sky had become increasingly ominous as we headed towards camp (“is that a rain cloud I see? Well we must be near camp then”), and it was just as Pete had completed his “right folks, we are camping here, Tim and I will just go and check it out” and placed his hand on the door handle that the heavens opened and we were caught in a torrential downpour! The timing of it caused mass hilarity, and we sat in the comfort and dryness of the truck while they made sure we weren’t going to get bogged. Miraculously it passed by the time it was time for us to put up tents and the night turned into a beautifully clear one, with the sky becoming a carpet of thousands of stars, and the moon giving the red cliff all night.

The red cliff: