Song Kul

‘Don’t tell Chyngyz,’ we said to each other every half hour or so on this side quest. To get to the alpine lake of Song Kul, we took The Tank to places that Chyngyz—the car hire guy—probably would not approve. Song Kul lake delivered on all counts, but it was not without incident.

After our big Aka-Kul hike, we spent a rest day in Jeti-Ogüz, where we tried to visit a sanatorium for a radon bath (apparently radioactivity is good for inflammation 🙃) but it was closed (wonder why?). Instead, Chelsea took an unplanned dip trying to cross a river, adding to her leg injuries from Japan. We gave it up as a bad job and decided to head back towards Bishkek. On our way we stopped and spent an afternoon reading on the beach at the famous Issyk-Kul, a huge geothermally-heated lake visible from space. The next morning we began our campaign on Song Kul, driving through old Soviet outposts still decorated with symbols of rockets, tanks and pictures of infrastructure (though without rockets or much actual infrastructure. They do still have tanks though).

The thing about this region is that Google Maps isn’t very accurate. So we rely on Maps.me, which is supposed to draw on better data. It’s pretty good for hiking trails. What it’s not good for is distinguishing between ‘road’ and ‘dirt that someone once rode a horse across’. In consequence we blithely followed an increasingly vanishing path into the mountains and over a 3,400m pass. Dan took over the more technical driving in the mountains after Chelsea skidded the Tank out on one of the dirt tracks (and we had only paid for one driver, don’t tell Chyngyz). When it got even steeper and scarier, Chelsea bravely walked behind while Dan piloted, in case the car literally fell off the mountain. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

On arrival in the camp on our first day, already gasping from panic and low oxygen, Dan informed Chelsea that in addition to the perilous paths we’d just traversed, we were also very low on petrol. We decided to ignore it and went for a swim (as usual, without telling Chyngyz). The lake was surrounded by smooth, flat pebbles, so Dan—like any responsible, self-respecting male—helped clear up the debris by throwing as many of them into the lake as possible.

Our yurt camp was a rest stop for the popular horse treks, though we only rode for a morning, preferring The Tank’s horsepower to cover significant distances. We had dinner, played cards with friends from Ala-Kul, and star gazed, before returning to our toasty yurt. We were very smug with this situation when we woke up to snow and were the only people in camp not required to get on a horse. We did have to drive the Tank back to civilisation through the snow though. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

We were also faced once more with the problem of getting off a mountain without much petrol. We grumbled through the icy pass on as little gas as possible, then rolled downhill from town to town trying not to touch the accelerator or brake pedals. Chelsea ran into every magazin asking ‘Spasiba, benzin?’ without any joy, so that eventually we covered about 70km with the Empty light on. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

Later, to give Dan a break, Chelsea drove the highway and through Bishkek, which is largely roadworks and chaos. This gave her an opportunity to put her Joburg-taught defensive driving to the test, dodging sheep, horses, and nearly running down not one but two police officers in the rush hour traffic. Don’t tell Chyngyz.

We were relieved to get the Tank back in one piece, and celebrated by painting her pink. Chyngyz bid us a fond farewell with exhortations to have fish and chips in his honour and much hand shaking (impressed by our unscathed return?). Stay tuned for more high altitude adventures and remember: whatever happens, don’t tell Chyngyz.Weiterlesen