Following the Lake

Clearly the move is to get out of Bishkek.  Turns out, once you leave the city, Kyrgyzstan is just one wondrous landscape after another. 

Here’s a lake called Song Kul (“Following Lake”).  It sits at about 9800 feet, about 23 miles by 12 miles.  Not super deep—maybe 45 feet.  But high and cold and pretty much unpopulated during the winter.  There are petroglyphs and burial mounds along the shoreline. During the summer, there’s a modest scattering of yurt camps along the shore, combining herding with giving travelers like me a place to sleep. 

(My yurt, kept toasty warm by a metal stove stuffed with a 
combination of coal and cowpies, is sunlit on the left.)

It’s a long and terrible road to get up to Song Kul, and along the way it crosses over a pass at 12500 feet (3800 m).  I saw, but did not successfully photograph, yaks.  

(Altitude, baby!)

Song Kul is described as one of the more beautiful lakes in Kyrgyzstan, but Kyrgyzstan (like Utah) gets a little brown in September, so it doesn’t currently have any glorious green grass framing the blue water, or any wildflowers.  But I rode a horse on a saddle made of wood with a bone pommel, so I am satisfied.