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Song-Kul Lake and My Birthday

Lucy writes:

Every time we begin one of the trips within our Big Trip, we are given a schedule for the time, with details of where we're going to go and when, whether we're camping or staying in hotels or home-stays, and the number of kilometres we'll be travelling each day. When we began this part of our trip in Bishkek, we were assured that our schedule for this part of our trip would definitely change, and Song-Kul lake was where we were expecting it to change.

It's a plateau area at 3000 meters above sea level with it's own micro-climate. The truck travelling there three weeks before us had tried to drive up to Song-Kul lake, but had to turn back in the snow. The process of trying to drive up, digging the truck out of the snow and getting back down again had taken a whole day. With this in mind, we had nearly given up on even attempting to get there, let alone making it up to the lake, but to our surprise, the night before we left, we were at Kochkor, our guide Claire announced that the weather reports were good and so we would be making our way up the following morning.

We were really lucky - the weather held out, and we slowly climbed up to the plateau - we watched as the packets of crisps bought for lunch a few days later swelled as we climbed in altitude. In China, several had burst in similar circumstances. Unbeknownst to me, there were also several bottles of bubbly wine ready for my birthday in a couple of days time, and Danny was sat listening to see if the corks would all pop on the highest pass, at 3600 meters. Luckily everything remained in tact for the journey.

After a few nights of bush camping, and a night at a home-stay in a village without water, the group was getting a little fractious, so instead of camping and cooking ourselves, we stayed in yurts, heated with stoves and were cooked for by the family that ran them. It is the very end of the season, and many of the yurt families had already left the lake and headed down into the valleys and Kochkor for the winter. Apparently the average winter temperature up at Song-Kul is minus 35 degrees celsius. There were a few yurts still there, but, along with the shepherds, they will be leaving too in the next week or two, and returning again in May for the summer season.

In the summer the plateau is covered with green grass and wild flowers, but now it was scrubby and bare, but still beautiful. A mist sat over the lake for the whole time we were there, sometimes obscuring the mountains around us. It meant that at the lake, it was impossible to distinguish the horizon, where the water ended and the sky began - it was all an eerie and beautiful hazy white.

On the afternoon of our arrival, I wanted to get in the lake for a swim, and despite it being extremely cold - on a par with our swim in a glacial lake - I managed it, along with Danny and some other very chilly people washing their hair and themselves after a long time without water to do so. We went for another dip on the second day too.

As always, when we are fed by local hosts in yurts or home-stays, we ate extremely well. Every Kyrgy table is dressed with an amazing aray of sweets, jams, honey and breads, before anything else is served. Here there was also little pots of extremely thick cream laid out too - a real treat when coupled with the blackcurrant jam. We were served fish fresh from the lake for dinner, and a very creamy rice pudding for breakfast the next morning.

We had arranged the night before with a local shepherd that he would provide seven horses for the group to ride throughout the day, to be delivered at 10am. We waited, and waited, but the horse delivery didn't materialise. The son of the family who ran our yurt camp rode off at great pace to find the group some horses. Said, our local guide, said his theory was that the shepherd had been drunk when the agreement was made, so had forgotten about it in the morning. This is the second time this has happened to one of our arrangements.

Little by little, Said and the son found shepherds willing to rent their horses, and we were given the chance to ride around the plateau, It's very flat and a huge expanse of space, so perfect for riding. Some of the horses on the other hand, were not best pleased with the situation and were extremely stubborn. They all liked being at home a lot - with particular fondness for the pole they were tied to. Given half a chance they would return to the pole immediately, if they moved at all. Throughout the day, a horse would stop, with a rider, and refuse to move. You could kick it as hard as you could, shouting 'choo' ('go' to them), or even swear at them in frustration, as I tried, but they would stubbornly refuse to move an inch. That was until you were holding a whip in your hand. Even without using it, they suddenly paid a lot more attention to your instructions.

We spent about an hour walking with the horses, whilst other, more experienced riders in the group galloped off into the distance, until the horse's owner came and berated the group for riding her horses to hard. Their family was travelling down the mountain the following day, and wanted their horses to be fresh.

The following morning was my birthday. I celebrated by eating some very tasty porridge and jam in a yurt for breakfast, surrounded by balloons, and listening to some loud dance music that the family had decided to play for reasons unknown. Danny gave me a handmade card, and a dress and ring bought in Kashgar. We then packed the truck, and started to make our way down the mountain. The truck is fitted with roof seats, open to the air, mostly used for African safari trips, so I spent the first hour of driving sitting on the roof seat, in the fresh air, looking across the plateau. Until the exhaust pipe fell off the truck.

Luckily it was all fixed, and we drove off again for a couple of hours. Until the air pressure dropped and the hand break locked.

I like to think of it as a positive that I spent a couple of hours on my birthday lying in the sun, while the truck was fixed. If you had asked me in China what I wanted for my birthday, it would probably have been marmite toast and tea with milk - which I got - whilst lying in a field while the truck was fixed. Due to the delay we had to camp a little earlier than expected, but we did manage to get down the mountain. We set up camp in a valley, and, being part of the designated cook group, I helped make my own birthday dinner. Before eating, we cracked open the surprise bottles of bubbly, and I got another card signed by everyone, plus a felt ring and felt donkey from the amazing felt shop in Kochkor. We had a camp fire, and some rum, and all in all, an excellent time.

Unfortunately, the truck was still in a bad way, so our next mission was to drive hundreds of kilometres on terrible roads for over fourteen hours to get to Arslanbob a day early, in order to sort out the truck.

#Kyrgyzstan #Lake #Song-Kul #Horse-riding