Who wore it best?

 Parowan Canyon, Utah?

Or Jeti Oguz, Kyrgyzstan?

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Rock Candy Mountain, Utah? 

Or Skazka Canyon, Kyrgyzstan?

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Guardsman Pass, Utah? 

Or Medeu, Kazakhstan? 

(My folks and I were leafpeeping on the same day!)

A farewell to the Tian Shans

I'm so surprised at how deep my affection for these last two Stans has become.  It's not just that I've had such a lovely time in these mountains (though honestly, I've had an outrageously lovely time in these mountains).  It's also the kind people, many of whom are patient with me across at least one language barrier.  It's how livable are these places I've spent the last several weeks, especially Karakol and Almaty.  I could happily settle down in either place for a longer period.  I'm very sorry to leave them behind and to pivot to the next stage of this strange adventure.  

A couple of keepsake photos from my time in Almaty:

1. This amazing Himalayan Griffin at the Almaty Zoo.  

2.  This beautiful piece by Rashida Mugaveyeva from the Abilkhan Kasteev State Art Museum, which renders the Kazakh landscape in the patterns of traditional nomadic feltwork.

3. This kylkobiz from the Ykhlas Folk Music Museum.

4. This charming quintet at a symphonic performance I attended, gamely bewigged for their recital of 18th-century pieces.

5. And here: how the Alatau/Ala-Too/Tian Shans showed up for me as I prepared to leave, the whole sturdy line of them white in the clear blue sky over the botanical garden.

Fabulous Foods of the Stans

Everywhere – All the melons, in all the shapes and colors. Fall is melon-palooza and I ate them all.

Khiva – Green noodles:  the noodle dough is made with dill.  The noodles are served in a hammock of parchment paper, to which is then added a sauce of dill, parsley, chives, and sunflower oil—kind of an Uzbek chimichurri. Toss, then ladle over the top a stew of carrots, potatoes, onion, and red bell peppers, and top with a dollop of plain yogurt.  For the first time in my life, I went back to the same restaurant (The Terrace) for lunch and again for dinner on the same day and ate the same damned meal twice.

Bukhara (/everywhere) – Laghman: this noodle dish is ubiquitous in Central Asia. Handmade wheat noodles of various thickness are cooked and then topped with a slightly spicy stew—either more or less wet, depending.  And many places in Bukhara do a vegetarian version, with tomatoes, peppers, carrots, eggplant, mushroom.

Dushanbe – Khoro tob:  this, one of Tajikistan’s national dishes, is best described as a warm yogurt soup, though I believe it’s actually made from these dried sour-milk balls (yuck) that are pervasive snack food in the Central Asia, mashed-up.  To this soup base (dairy and herbs and water and flax oil) is added strips of a kind of layered naan (or “non,” as it’s pronounced here) akin to puff pastry.  Top with raw onion, tomato, cucumber, and a chili pepper.  Amazing.

Song Kul Lake / Altyn Fatima yurt camp – Vegetarian oromo (ring-shaped dumplings) stuffed with cabbage and potato.  Ridiculous. And crazy that I didn't take a picture.  I was too busy gorging myself.

Karakol – Ashlan fu, which I mentioned a few posts back: Cold spicy noodle soup, the staple dish of the Dungan people, a Chinese Muslim community that fled persecution in the 19^th century to settle in Karakol, just 40 miles west of the Chinese border.  There are generally 2 kinds of noodles in the broth: a potato- or bean-starch noodle and a wheat noodle.  And at the tiny but mighty ashlan fu restaurant As-Saida, they’re served with a potato-stuffed fry-bread called piroushki in these parts.  Bowl of ashlan fu, a piroushki, and a glass of compote (dried apricot juice) for about $1.20.

Almaty - Samsa with cheese: These are sold everywhere from small storefronts/kiosks along the sidewalks.  It’s like puff pastry wrapped around some kind of cheesy deliciousness with a very faint onion vibe, maybe a 6-inch square with sesame seeds on top, and they cost about 60 cents each and I could eat them all day long.

Trans-Ili Alatau Mountains

Just to the south of Almaty, easily accessible by bus, rises the north slope of the Tian Shan mountains (which you may recall are called Ala-Too by the Kyrgyz people, and Alatau by the Kazakh people).  This range boasts the 16000-plus-foot peaks Semanov and Talgar, and so many glorious glaciers.  I knew that the Tian Shans held majestic high snowy peaks for days, but I somehow didn't even consider that I would see so many glaciers.  

Here's a shot that includes the Til Glacier (far left) 

and the Ayak Glacier (just left of center).  

I ended up on this hike accidentally.  I mean, I was aiming to do another hike in the same canyon but could not for the life of me find the trailhead.  Warning to potential Kazakhstan trekkers: there is very little signage in natural areas.  You kinda have to just know where the trails begin, wander, and end.  So I missed my intended hike, but stumbled upon a gondola, which I took....and it turned out that it was about a 50-minute ride up three separate lifts to the top of a ski resort!  And from that final tower, there was much, much hiking in various directions, up through the craggiest peaks above Shymbulak: Talgar Pass to Talgar Peak (5017 m / 16450 ft), Pioner [pioneer?] Peak (4031 m / 13225 ft), and my personal favorite, The Peak of the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan (4086 m / 13405ft--shrouded in cloud in the photo below).  So:  hiking-thwarted became hiking-thrilled, like magic!

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Wow, what a great city Almaty is!  Like, easily my favorite city on this adventure so far.  Like Bishkek, it’s very near to mountains.  Unlike Bishkek, you can get to them without a whole lot of effort.  Almaty is very clean, has cool and various museums, and is absolutely stuffed with parks.  It’s a fantastically walkable city—the sidewalks are wide and sometimes flanked by a second sidewalk for bikes and those electric stand-up scooters, of which there are many zooming around. And people are RUNNING on those many wide sidewalks.  Women are running! Solo!  I haven’t seen that since I left the USA.  No one notices me at all.

(running/walking path along the river)

In contrast to Kyrgyzstan, which pretty much operates on a cash economy (and that cash had better be in small bills because no one ever has change!), everywhere in Almaty takes credit cards.  The bus system is in Kazakh and Russian, true, but once you get oriented to the map, moving around by bus is clean, convenient, comprehensive, and cheap (about 20 cents per ride). 

I guess that when I say that Almaty is a great city, what I mean, essentially, is that it’s easy.  I’ve been moving through some places that have resisted me, to a greater or lesser degree.  Even Kyrgyzstan, which I loved, was not without obstacles that just made moving through life normally more difficult.  Almaty could be Denver, except that the signs are in Cyrillic.  I’m grateful to have several days together to decompress here, to be thoughtless about my movements, to wallow in the ease of it all. 

(Ascension Cathedral---Russian Orthodox, where I attended a vespers service)

But again, even here, as in all these Central Asian cities, the air pollution is really something....

Charyn Canyon, Kazakhstan

Or, I have flown a really long way to hang out in Utah, part 4.  Make that: Charyn Canyon National Park, about 4 hours east of Almaty.

    

From Kyrgyzstan to Kazakhstan

Instead of taking a bus back west to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, and then another bus north and east again to Almaty, Kazakhstan, I hired a driver with a sturdy 4x4 and traversed the eastern border between the two countries--the Kegen border, as it's called for the nearest town to the border in Kazakhstan, which is not so very near.  The border crossing was pretty desolate--really nothing there except the cluster of shacks where one country's officials stamped me out and the next country's officials stamped me in.  

Although the Kyrgyz people and the Kazakh people are quite similar in history and culture and language, some of the differences between the two countries were immediately obvious.  The Kyrgyz-side road to the border was (as most roads are in Kyrgyzstan outside of the few good-sized towns/cities) unpaved (a euphemism for damn near impassable).  The Kazakh-side road was paved smoothly with lane-lines painted clearly right there on the asphalt.  Kazakhstan, you see, has a ton of oil and gas and the revenues therefrom.  Kyrgyzstan has mountains.  Great for outdoor tourism (mostly the French tbh), less good for swift and massive economic progress since independence 30 years ago.

Two steppe-dominant hours past the border, my jeep enters Saty village, a zero-stoplight wide spot in the road whose primary traffic comes from folks like me trying to get to two of Kazakhstan's national parks.

Kaindy Lake is also called the drowned forest.  In 1911, a massive earthquake caused a limestone slide that dammed the gorge where the lake now sits.  The spruce trees that were submerged in the water turned lustrous white and the water, fed by glaciers and dusted with pulverized limestone, changes from dark blue to turquoise.  

The Kolsay Lakes are easier to get to and more touristy--or at least the bottom of the three lakes is. It has paddle boats for rent.  The general vibe reminds me of Lake Louise in Alberta, Canada.  There are two additional lakes--one about a 3-mile hike further up, and one another 4 miles after the middle. The one bummer is that it took some time to drive from Karakol and across the border, and also to visit Kaindy Lake, so when we arrived at Kolsay, it was pretty late in the afternoon and getting dark, so I didn't hike to either of the further lakes.  Ah, well.  Something to do next time I come to Kazakhstan.

Jeti Oguz and Devechi Kosi waterfall

Or, I've flown a long way to hang out in Utah, part 3

Jeti Oguz, or the Seven Bulls, is about 15 miles west of Karakol. Catch a marshrutka and you're there in half an hour. These giant red bulges flank the mouth of the canyon.  

Follow the canyon upriver and you arrive in the Valley of Flowers.  Lots of working yurt camps/villages up in the canyon (an easy 3 or 4 mile walk from the Seven Bulls).  

Once the trail leaves the river, one might find oneself edging along an evergreen slope to reach Devechi Kosi falls, which I think translates to Maiden's Plaits.  

This'll be my last hike in Kyrgyzstan, I'm sorry to say.  I freaking love this country: it has combined the very familiar with the wonderfully new--landscapes I understand and a culture I've been delighted and honored to be able to learn about.  I'll be sorry to leave.  

Large hike

Ala-Kul Lake, high in the Tian Shans, requires some time and effort.  

Day 1: You begin by walking up the Karakol Gorge, maybe 10 miles to the bridge over the river.

After the bridge it is a 3-mile grind up to Sirota Camp, a very small yurt camp in the valley below the pass to the lake.  

It's possible to get to the lake in one day, but why would you, when this camp offers dinner and breakfast to fuel up, a bed in a yurt, and the company of other trekkers?  Of course, it's also chilly this time of year.  I can't speak for the other yurts, but each of the 5 folks in my yurt slept fully clothed, in all our winter layers.

Day 2: early start.  2 hours to the lake, and again, the grind.  The trail to Ala-Kul offers 3 challenges:  it's steep AF; the trail is covered in sand, loose gravel, and scree, such that every step up involves a half-slide back down; the pass is over 3900 meters (nearly 13000 ft).  Any of these factors would present the hiker with some difficulty.  The combination is killer.

But look what's at the top!  Ala-Kul, "the pearl of the Ala-Too," which is the Kyrgyz name for the Tian Shans (meaning black and white, because of the way that the white snow sits on top of black peaks).  Fed by the glaciers that ring the lake, the lake is about 2 miles long and lies above 3500 meters (nearly 11500 feet).

And the mountains just keep going and going and going and going....

After skirting the lake and traversing the high pass on its east side, it's a long snowy drop down to Altyn-Arashan village.  Total miles for day 2: 14?, I think...

Day 3:  After having slept in the most comfortable bed since I left home (in a yurt!) and having a fabulous breakfast of mushroom-potato hash, I retread my 10-mile trail from a few days ago, from Altyn-Arashan down the canyon to Ak-Suu.  This time, no bucketing rain.  

Medium hike

Started at Ak-Suu village and went up the canyon from there to the small village of Altyn-Arashan, golden springs.  Heavy rain, slippery path that doubled as an occasional and spine-jolting road for giant old Soviet tundra buses.  Gorgeous, moody canyon views.

Ten miles later, the village of Altyn-Arashan lies in one of the more beautiful valleys in Kyrgyzstan:

And it is home to a bunch of natural hot springs--the perfect way to end a rainy hike.

Small hike

This not-too-challenging trail goes through the Ak-Suu Arboretum.  It's really just a nice 9-mile hike through a forest from Ak-Suu in the east to Karakol in the west.