It's been a while since we stayed so many nights at the same place. We relaxed for 6 nights in Osh doing nothing after this intense trek — doing really nothing! And it felt so good. Anyway, William was still sick. We really don't know what happens in this country, but it's the first time we saw so many travellers with stomach problems…
We motivated ourselves to visit one famous lake of Kyrgyzstan called Sary-Chelek. It's located in the mountains still in the West side of the country. It was more than 7 hours in a marshrutka to reach the city of Artik. Even if the road condition is quite good in Kyrgyzstan, the transport system is one of the worst we saw — just overcrowded and terribly uncomfortable minibuses.
Getting to the Lake
Once there, we started to walk hoping to hitchhike a car on the way up. But hitchhiking in Kyrgyzstan is awful... Most people don't want to take tourists in their car even if they have plenty of space, and 95% of people who stop ask for money. It's normal here that people ask for money because everyone hitchhikes on a daily basis. But from tourists, most people ask like 10 times more for the ride. Like last time in Sary-Mogul, we had people asking for 100$ for 10 kilometres. Anyway… We were really lucky to find a nice couple who took us up to the lake!
Two Nights at the Lake
So, we spent 2 nights in our tent admiring this beautiful lake and nature. It's true that it's really nice, surrounded by mountains and trees. Some local guys tried to steal money from tourists if you camp (some strange unwritten camping fee), but we were lucky — nobody came. There are some basic rules displayed at different places such as: forbidden to do a fire, or doing dishes in the lake, etc. Well, when we arrived, there was a local family doing exactly what is forbidden. And the worst is they threw their trash in the nature like it was normal. Same in the marshrutka — they throw empty plastic bottles out the window…
Anyway, it's still worth going as it's very nice. And maybe because of the weather, we had almost nobody around us — really cool.
The Trek Back
Then, it was time to go back… It was Saturday morning and we guessed it would not be easy to hitchhike. We saw a first car of 2 tourists who totally ignored us (William suspects it was a French couple…). Farmer trucks followed, but they even didn't say hello when we passed them… So, we decided to cut through the forest to reach the Artik village. It was a nice trek of around 3 hours and we reached the road again.
And then the worst part started. We crossed all the village and nobody was willing to take us back to the highway (like 15 kilometres). We waited 2 hours on the side of the small road doing nothing and finally, the neighbour came to talk and proposed to take us. Of course, we paid, but it was the normal local price this time. We reached Altykaragai and took a taxi for Tash-Kumyr. We slept in this village in a kind of hostel and took another taxi the next morning for Bishkek during 8 hours (after waiting 2 hours for the taxi to leave)… So exhausting for us!
Well, now we are in Bishkek, and we are going tomorrow to Cholpon-Ata for the famous World Nomad Games 2018. We hope that the contact with the local people will be much better than our previous 20 days. Maybe the East side is different?
August 23–26, 2018