26th September 2002.
So far we have only walked for half a day but are hopeful of getting in a full day today. Worryingly the guide book says that it takes several days to cross over into Kyrgyzstan and we are not keen to be caught on the pass (3,300 metres) for the night. We have an early breakfast and break camp. At 9.00 there is still no sign of our guide. The girls find him asleep and chivy him. By 9.30 we are on our way along a narrow path high above the lake. It is another gloriously sunny day and after about 45 minutes my hands and feet have warmed up. We climb steeply for about 1 1/2 hours following a stream until we reach the third lake. Time for a rest and some water. Pippa confers with Kanat and the local guide returning, she says, with good and bad news. We ask for the bad news first: “it’s 25 km to our destination”. And the good news? “Oh I don’t think there is any.”
We set off again and the country changes from being Alpine to resembling the Highlands or the West of Ireland as we leave the tree line below us and walk across rough grassland. By 12.30 we think we can see the the pass ahead and not too far above us. Kanat proposes lunch but we are keen to get more of the journey behind us. Disturbingly one of the porters, who have nothing to carry today, is looking decidedly seedy. A combination of altitude sickness and exhaustion is taking its toll on these young “porters” who are economics students from Bishkek.
We do stop for a break lounging in a meadow of Alchemilla mollis and the sick porter afterwards rides on one of the ponies. We continue up towards the pass seeing snow on the mountains above us and enough where we are for me to throw a snowball at PJ; it misses. (I really should resign my membership of the MCC.) After about an hour we reach the saddle and the frontier is marked by a cairn of stones under a metal trig point. We have all become breathless and Pippa has had bouts of nausea.
Now we can look into Kyrgyzstan and see Issyk-Kul spread out in a haze far below us. The lake is 182 km long and disappears into the distance merging with the sky. In the foreground its inlets are like fingers probing the land. We can just make out some dark green lines which PJ thinks may be tree-lined roads. Kanat and the porters are as excited as us to be up here as they have never been here before. Kanat welcomed us to Kyrgyzstan and PJ got his passport out for a photograph.
The first stage of the descent is steep but, as on the way up, the ponies make easy work of it. The rest of us pick our way gingerly downwards. As we loll in the afternoon sunshine resting, Kanat reminds us to put our watches back an hour. We are thrillled to have crossed a time zone. The guide and his ponies have disappeared ahead of us. The valley gradually broadens out into a plain stretching to Issyk-Kul. The green lines PJ saw from the pass are rows of poplars lining roads about a mile away. After a few false turns we find our local guide in a farmyard. Kanat negotiates for us to spend the night here. As the sun sinks it looks like another chilly supper outside until our host, somewhat reluctantly, allows us to dine in his house. Alex inadvertently sits on a baby thinking it is a cushion.
We are reunited with Sasha (driver), Tania (cook) and the orange truck.