For the English readers – Alice’s story about the Song-Kol trek

For er som kampar med svenskan foljer har Alices beskrivning av var ridtur till Song-Kol…

Salaam Matzbe all!!
Here I am in Kyrgyzstan – I wasn’t planning on writing round robin emails, but after the last four days I have had I felt I could not forgo the pleasure of sharing the amazingness of this country with you!!
After running around crazy Bishkek, finding warm clothes – which is a really hard concept to get your head around when its swelteringly hot outside – and finding the tiny, secluded tourism office to ask about this trek we wanted to do up in the mountains to a lake called SongKöl, to which the woman nonchalantly told us to go and ask the office in a town two hours away…mmmh!
So, somehow using all sorts of hilarious sign language, we managed to drag our hot bums to the named town. A surreal town (not village!) where the main street is a dust road with a few street vendors on the side, which, it turned out was a hub for intrepid foreigners. There we met wonderful Emma – a Swedish girl with immaculate English, who, it turned out, was hoping to find people to do exactly the same trek as us. After sorting out our trek we sat on the side of a bar-ish-place and met other tourists. It was surreal, around the table was sat a sarcastic Canadian guy who’s cycled from Kiev, a quiet French man who’d arrived from a 10 day horse trek, a RRRRRussian who’s hitchhiked from Moscow, a frightfully proper oxfordian who’d spent the last 5 days walking on glaciers with purple legs, cos the fool forgot to buy suncream, and us mere mortals who got there….by car (we weren’t too loud about that!). We sat there for a good 4 hours exchanging stories, and cracking the weirdest jokes before returning to our guest house where Cuka, the landlady cooked us dinner.
We set off the next day on horse back with our glorious 20 year old guide – Azamat who studied linguistics, who had perfect English, a really quick sense of humour, had been a guide in the mountain since the age of 8 and was named the best Kyrgyz guide in 2008. He was making his way up the lake for national games that take place there once a year on the last weekend of July – a perfect coincidence for us – with his girlfriend, Nazgul (hush hush!) who he rode behind bareback ( which greatly appealed to the romantic side of my character and was source of great intrigue and gossip between Emma, George and myself!) and their two brothers- Aziz and “Cheaky Monkey” (no idea what his name was !) who were walking up for the games: a three day UPHILL walk, not for the faint hearted and they were only 14!!
The scenery was amazing – imagine the Highlands on a grand, grand scale, with NO inhabitants apart from the odd yurt (a tent-like structure made up of woollen felt outside and local rugs inside) with inhabitants living there holding horses, cows and sheep. Such a perfect, simple life, following the rhythm of nature until weirdly the mobile comes out of their local-dress pocket! After six hours on horse back, discovering muscles we never knew we had, we got to our Yurt where the family provided us first with tea– amazing bread, fresh cream, straight from the cows, jams and chai, and later with dinner, plov (a local rice dish).
The giggles were endless – one could have imagined that our new Kyrgyz friends would have been slightly put off by three ditzy Europeans, but they were just as bad, which only perpetuated the laughter. Farting horses to the rhythm of Kyrgyz songs; teaching Azamat the term “down it” which was great until the KUMUS came out (the local drink – fermented mare-that is HORSE- milk); making human pyramids , somehow always with the girls as the base; the great local honesty: “You are fat but not heavy” later adding “like a balloon!”; playing a competitive game of “Joluk samai” under the stars (a local game a bit like a jazzed up version of ‘le facteur n’est pas passé” for the French of you where you have to run around a circle trying to catch the other by throwing a scarf); attempting to speak the language but our tongue just won’t twist that way; hundreds of silly photos; Azamat handing me dried up horse dung “to remember him by” after Aziz had handed me a flower for the same reason etc etc etc!
The next day, after waking up at 5am to watch the sunrise and watching the men heard the horses which had strayed around in the neighbouring “hills”, we set off for another 6 hours horse riding to the lake, not one moment getting bored or even wishing for a shower or home food because the banter was so good and the scenery so utterly inspiring! We eventually reached a huge yurt camp set up for the games, and had a terrifying/adrenalin-pumping/awe-inspiring gallop on the plain!
A few tourists also managed to get there, but it has to be said that we were the only ones who swam in the lake, got on a donkey (all three of us at once – yes poor donkey!), were driven in the boot of a car, built more human pyramids with some local children and did some line dancing in the “disco” that was going on around a huge camp fire with at first local music which then became some dodge Russian or Kyrgyz eighties pop blaring out of a banged up car.
I’m sorry this is dragging out so long, but there was just so much! I must just mention the horse games the next day which were amazing to watch! Azamat took part in one where the man has to chase the woman (on horse back) and has to catch up and kiss her 3 times. If he fails, the woman chases the man and must whip him 3 times ! Then there was wrestling on horse back, catching coins on the floor while galloping and the favourite where a headless, bloody goat is attached to one horse and they fight to snatch it off. Of course no sense of Health and Safety there, so the crowd is in the midst of all these galloping steeds, with a few near accidents (me included!) – and of course some minor injuries!
I’m now back in Bishkek, a long way to fall after such an intensive High! Severe Monday-nitus this morning as we were starting our Russian lessons, it felt like going back to school. We’re slowly recovering, but the idea of eloping up in the mountains with Azamat, or at least the idea of his existence is omnipresent!!