Man tins

Follow the river

We headed east along the south shore of the lake and then up a few hundred metres in altitude until the road become unsuitable for normal cars. Then we began our hike up into the Tien Shan - 'Celestial Mountains'. We'd found some old Soviet military maps in the guesthouse and used them to plan our route and we kept it simple: follow the river. 

The prize at the top to keep us motivated was the hot springs, but no extra incentive was needed: the scenery was stunning. Lush green grass, white water rapids, pine forests, butterflies, and glorious weather. As Jamie put it: like Scotland on a very rare day.

Jamie driving the Kazakh tractor, Zhan and I hitching a ride.

It was constantly beaut the whole way up, with some nice places to stop for a vista or a souvenir photo - like the very old tractor from Kazakhstan, pictured here. But after a few hours with no end in sight the prize of the hot springs started to become more important! Gulnur's shoes from Osh bazaar had broken miles back - more on Osh Bazaar later - the shoes looked like Asics trainers, but it emerged that they had been stapled together; the staples proved to be something between an irritant, a liability, and a hazard. Anyway, it was a fantastic hike with a great finale.

The terrain opened out into a grean valley with pine forested mountains around and snow peaks in the distance; some huts and yurts were situated around the river. This was the top of our climb, a meer 18 km walk; but at 2300m, this is effectively the bottom of the mountain. I'd love to have camped and climbed further, but that's for another day. The small concrete huts pictured below, by the river, hosted hot springs. Hot really means hot - 50C they say - and it took a while to get into the water but it was a fabulous treat for slightly sore legs. Getting into the icey river immediately afterwards was a surprisingly refreshing activity, enough that I did two of the hot-cold cycles.

Altyn-Arashan: valley with hot springs.

The walk down turned out to be just as long as the walk up.