Hotel Amir Karakol
Karakol, 32821, Kyrgyzstan
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My greatest challenge to date!
... br> Is that cute girl smiling at me because I have half my lunch stuck between my teeth? (It would explain how, after an entire 3 course meal, I'm still starving!)
Questions such as these plague me constantly, and as a result I have rebelled and attempt to tackle almost everything that insights fear.
Hence the apparent stupidity in action, and enter, the Tien Shan mountain range!
The Tien Shan, literally "celestial mountains" (Mongolian), are a ...
Cliffhanger
... We met up with Giovanni, the Italian we had met with in Cholpon-Ata who was doing the same trek as us but by himself. We started out on our trek with our guide Max and the porter Igor, who was basically the hardest man in the world. Igor basically started running up the hill carrying all our staff whilst Max laughed at him and pointed saying "schumacher". The first day involved about 5 hours walking uphill, it started ok but got steeper and steeper and ...
Retracing my steps.
... get transport on to Jalal-Abad or Osh in the west. Although we were going to different destinations, we actually got on the same marshrutka (old European transit vans with as many seats squeezed into them as possible), as it passed through Balykchy at the western end of Lake Issyk-Kol, where I had to find a shared taxi on to ...
Paradise
... of the passengers door for the entire hour and a half drive.
From Bazaar Korgon I was able to organise a shared taxi for tomorrow night to take us to the country's capital Bishkek before taking our final marshrutka, destination Arslanbob, high up in the Fergana Valley. An old man on the bus, with the slightest grasp of English, was entertaining Gearoid and introducing him to the local babushkas, two of which kept touching his white knees and calling him 'krasiva', handsome ...
Banking woes in frontier town
... food here seems to be variations on the same theme. Everything has minced beef in it! There must be a big vat of the stuff mixed with a few onions. The cutlets are flat patties of the stuff. The manty are steamed dumplings with the mix in them. The samsas are bread-like samosas with the mince mix in. I got a bit sick of the taste after a while.
The very helpful young girl at the tourist information centre, not only helped ...
