Karakol

Took the 6 hour bus from Bishkek to Karakol which goes all the way round Issyk-Kul (second biggest Alpine lake in the world, so quite big) and is bumpy for at least half the journey.

Stayed in a hostel that was slightly abandoned by its owners but with a lot of very friendly travellers and had a very sociable few days out hiking and hanging around the hostel/town.

Karakol is one of the main hiking bases and is surrounded by valleys so did two days out hiking: one up the Jeti Oguz (seven bulls) valley with a lot of very fabulous big views across the mountains and plateaus and another up the Karakol Valley, which we screwed up a bit because we could only get the marshrutka halfway along the road and not to the trailhead, and most people do 3 days up to a lake, but it was still a scenic bit of valley.

Karakol is known for some really fabulous cold spicy noodles called Ashlan-Fu from the Chinese-Muslim Dungan diaspora, which we ate a LOT of (the six bowls between three of us elicited some impressed eyebrow raising from the owners) and we also sampled that Kyrgyz speciality of sushi pizza (it's sold as a combo everywhere, we're still not sure why but apparently could be some "his and hers" thing).

Otherwise Karakol is a quiet, quite suburban but mildly pleasant town with an amazing wooden Orthodox cathedral and a wooden mosque which was built by the Chinese Dungans in 1910 and looks more like a Buddhist temple crossed with a Bauhaus explosion...Baca lagi