At the Top of Kyrgyzstan

We set out to find the mythical Sung-kul lake at an altitude of 3100m in the middle of Kyrgyzstan. We kept getting conflicting stories about the roads ... good, bad, asphalt, no asphalt, packed dirt, nasty dirt.

On our way, we went by Issyk-kol, the second largest inland body of water after the Caspian Sea ... it even has salt water ... massive ... ran into our first group of mostly BMW motorcyclists ... 10 or so, some couples, from Australia and New Zealand, traveling from London to Magadan, Russia in 3.5 months ... planning to meet them again in Almaty next week.

After Issyk-kul, the road was dirt, being worked on, then it got narrower and veered into the mountains, went by a village and then ... hell broke loose ... the road starting climbing up, the dirt turned to gravel with some ruts ... then tight uphill switchbacks ... then rain ... then hail! Nature at its best ... surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and gorges and rivers ... no one in sight ... in the middle of a hail storm ... Alexandra, cool as a cat.

After reaching the top of the mountains (@3,500m!), we saw the lake ... huge ... in a huge valley at the top of the mountains ... sunny ... then we saw some yurts ... horses ... sheep ... cows ... in the most pristine and beautiful setting ... are we in Mongolia already?

Hard to describe ... here are some pictures.

We found a group of yurts and asked the woman if we could spend the night there ... we had hot tea, fried bread, jams, and kaymak (fermented milk) in her yurt ... we talked for a while with her niece, Altynai (a bit of Russian, a bit of English and lots of hand gestures, she was 21) ... then they showed us the yurt that we could use ... very nice.

Alexandra and I had a long walk by the lake ... sat on the beach ... talked ... and the world came to a stand still ... we were just in awe about where we were at the moment and of our adventure so far.

At night, the rain started ... glad to be in a yurt and not in our puny tent ... we had dinner, met some people from Norway and Lebanon. We ended up teaching everybody how to play Texas Hold'em in our yurt in the dark, betting paper napkins ... our friends from Kyrgystan loved it ... Sophie's son too.

My left hand/arm has been giving me trouble ... got some pills (thanks Sophie) and Altynai's mom, a doctor, bandaged me ... much better : )

Tomorrow, we will ride some horses around the lake and head back towards the border to get back into Kazakhstan ...