Kyrgyzstan is proving to be a secret wonder for travellers who have a little extra oomph in their travel perspective.  Based on our short experience don’t come for the food or the restaurant service but definitely come for the stunning natural features, the mountains, lakes and rivers, come for the lovely people, come for the culture and history, come for the wonder of travel.  You’ll be rewarded, for sure.

We continued our journey on the perpetually under-construction road which follows the southern shores of giant Issyk Kol Lake, traversing eastward as the conditions would allow.  Issyk Kol, which means ‘hot water’ – it isn’t hot at all but has a brackish mineral water aspect to it and has 80 rivers flowing into it while none flow out – is over 180 kilometres long and we are told it reaches depths of over 700 metres.  It is a growing tourism draw card for the country and when the road is finally finished it will connect the summer leisure attractions of this shoreline and the ski resorts of the mountains with Bishkek and international visitors.  Go Kyrgyzstan!

We headed off on a side dirt road and stopped at the curiously named Fairy Tale Canyon, an area of wonderfully contoured weather-eroded hillsides. The area featured a rainbow of soil colours from the different geologic levels, nutrition and chemical compositions of the soil.  We climbed up and around this spectacular little place, marvelling at the shapes and colours of what nature can create when circumstances are just right.

Further along the coast we detoured inland again and when we parked up at the end a handful of horses with young men riding them miraculously appeared.  “You can ride horses up to the waterfall” said Ilyas, our guide, and that seemed like a fine idea.  Riding these skinny but strong horses with a rudimentary saddle up and down the hill was good fun and the waterfall was much better than expected.

We moved along the coast, stopping at Kyzyl Suu for what the sign promised was ‘fast food’.  Well, fast it wasn’t but good it was and we enjoyed large kebabs and burgers with the curious locals.  Good fun.

We followed the coast further until we came to another dirt road to what the locals call Seven Bulls.  This track took us up into the mountains along a fast-flowing stream to a series of meadows which were buzzing with yurt camps and people picnicking or camping.  We enjoyed one walk across a high meadow, spruce trees covering the steep slopes and snow patches not far above us, loving this alpine scene. We then descended to Jeti-Oguz, known as Seven Bulls, a dramatic outcrop of massive red rocks protruding from the surface and said to resemble, well, seven bulls. 

We walked up on a ridge to check them out from a higher angle and then followed the next ridge back down to their base, a very cool excursion.  Jeti-Oguz is a national symbol of Kyrgyzstan and is often featured on their promotional material.  We can understand why.

We finally made it into the regional town of Karakol and went straight to dinner before making our hotel for the night, another long day.  We pack a punch every day here, that’s for sure, and the six of us keep bouncing back for more.

We had an unplanned day in Karakol because we left Song-Kul Lake a day early due to the bad weather.  We later found out it snowed that afternoon at our yurt camp and our Mercedes Sprinter may have been snowed in that night.  So a fortuitous change of itinerary again and now we had more time in Karakol to check it out. 

And so we did.  Ilyas led us on a little walking tour of this popular mountain town, a base for the nearby ski resorts in winter and the mountain adventure visitors in summer, included a visit to a handsome wooden Russian Orthodox Church that was built in 1867 and a unique mosque that was built for the Dangan people in 1910 after they had been persecuted in China and fled this way in the hundreds of thousands.  And finally, of course, a walk through the town’s very local and authentic bazaar to see their daily lives up close.

After lunch we headed up into the mountains and spent an hour or so at a fabulous mineral hot springs, some of the best we’d ever seen.  The different pools offered a wide variety of temperatures, they were all clean and user-friendly, and there was an option we took up to dip into the icy cold river waters that were flowing past.  Julie and I are always suckers for a hot springs and this was a good’un.

But, as the saying goes, another day another country.  The next morning we piled into Manus’ recently scrubbed Mercedes Sprinter and headed northward through beautiful green hills to the Kazakhstan border.  As we dragged our bags for the fourth and final time across the border back into Kazakhstan we said a sad farewell to Kyrgyzstan.  This place really grew on us with it’s many wonderful outdoor attractions and super-friendly people. Our group of six was undecided on whether it had passed Tajikistan as our favourite country in the Stans.

Reentering Kazakhstan also marked the home stretch of our journey in the Stans because we started this adventure six weeks ago when we flew into Almaty.  But we had a number of action-packed days in the Tian Shan Mountains before we had to say goodbye to this absolutely fabulous region.

The road from the border rose through the mountains and crossed stunning green landscape with jagged mountains on all horizons.  This was almost Sound of Music stuff and we stopped at an idyllic river crossing for a picnic lunch and to be wowed by the mountains.

We pulled into the mountain village of Saty with about 3,000 people living amongst these beautiful mountains and acting as the stepping stone for a couple world class attractions.  The next morning we piled back into the Sprinter and drove up to the region’s must see sites – Kolsay Lake. 

Surrounded by steep snow capped mountains not far off from something in Canada or Switzerland, Kolsay Lake was sparkling in the morning sun and we walked down to it’s shore and along the edge to the little jetty.  A few of us splashed out for a little paddle boat and paddled out to the middle of the lake to get a 360° view of this fab place. 

We returned to Saty and after a doner kebab take away lunch, yes of course why not!, we jumped into one of the most legendary four wheel drive vehicles in the world – and yet barely known in western countries. The UAZ, sometimes referred to as a Uaazzy, was originally built for the Soviet army in the 1950’s.  By the 1980’s they became more broadly available in USSR satellite countries and were legendary for their hard-nosed durability. 

Our Uaazzy was built in 1985 – 40 years ago – and the driver told us the first engine had over 1,000,000 kilometres on it but he was now on the second engine.  As we drove up the bumpy steep dirt road, bouncing around in the back and hitting our head on the ceiling, crossing deep creeks and negotiating the increasingly muddy track the rain started to fall. 

By the time we got to the end of the track it was absolutely bucketing down and fresh snow started to appear on the mountains above us.  We jumped in another UAZ, this one only 23 years old, which took us up closer to Kaindy Lake which was our eventual target.  We carefully walked down the muddy track to the lake’s edge and feasted our eyes on an extraordinary scene – a lake formed by a landslide now filled with dead trees sticking up like giant match sticks from it’s icy cold water.  Never seen that before!

After laughing at our situation, absolutely soaked to the bone and both shaken and stirred by riding the two Uaazzy vehicles down the hill, we enjoyed hot showers, cold beers and a fun dinner down the road in our little village.  One thing we’ve learned – every day’s a winner!