Our transport – the sardine tin

During breakfast Alex disappeared to do something indecipherable with the permits and we were to meet him at a petrol station on the edge of town. When we emerged from breakfast we discovered the blue lorry had gone and there were 26 kitbags stacked on the ground next to the orange truck with just enough seats for us and no room for luggage. Phone calls to the office in Bishkek provided no help and calls to Alex’s mobile remained unanswered. There was nothing to do but get everybody aboard and then stack the bags three high down the aisle and across the front of the cabin. A health and safety issue. We consoled ourselves with the fact that it was only a short journey to the garage where we would be able to transfer the bags into the blue lorry. That was the plan, anyway. What actually happened was, there was no room in the blue lorry, so we had to undergo the whole journey in very cramped conditions.

In terms of kilometres it was not a huge journey but these vehicles did not travel quickly (just as well in the circumstances), particularly up hill, and we had two passes to cross. The road was not metalled and in the latter stages of the journey it was really off road.

Sasha and Igor deal with the first breakdown

As we were entering an area close to the border with China, we had two passport controls to go through, 10km apart, where they very closely scrutinised our passports. This added at least an hour to the journey. Another hour was added by breakdowns, first to our vehicle that seemed to have a problem with one of its wheels, and then to the other, which had a huge dark stain of black oil on the road beneath the engine.

After seven hours we reached a place to camp, not the original place but that was still a further hour’s rough travel away. The chosen camp took the first day of trek away, giving us an extra day some time later in the itinerary.

Our first camp

We pitched our tents in a beautiful spot adjacent to a river with mountains all around us, many of them snow capped. Beautiful warm sunshine shone from a cloudless sky. A perfect spot.

A little way downstream was a yurt where nomadic shepherds were living during the summer months. A man and several children came to see us, the children, all bar the youngest, able to speak some English. One of the children came into camp on his horse and allowed some of the group to ride his horse if they so wished. He was able to tell us that his home is in a village near to Naryn and that he is here helping his his family. He rode his horse from Naryn over two days, a journey that took us seven hours in a lorry.

Nomadic boy on his horse

The man clearly wanted to practice his English. His story was interesting. At the age of nine months his parents brought him to his grandparents living in the yurt. They could not look after him as they both worked. He remained with his grandparents in this remote yurt until he was six when he went to school in Naryn. He obviously did well at school and went on to university. He then went to Ankara and obtained a Masters in Turkish, returning to Bishkek to teach Central Asian Language. At the moment he is doing a PhD in the comparison between The Kyrgyz language and Turkish. From humble beginnings…. He was here to visit members of his family still living in the same yurt, living the simple life looking after their sheep and horses.

As the sun went down, the temperature dropped dramatically.