Blogs from Yssyk Kol, Kyrgyzstan, Asia - page 4

Day 4, June 27, 2009, Saturday, Ishembi: Another early morning for me, awaking at a little before 5 am. I forced myself back to sleep and managed to make it to 6 a.m. I am just constitutionally become an old man and waking at the same time each morning. Also, in strange beds, I seem to always wake up and not be able to go back to sleep right away. But, it gives me time to think and read, and usually write some. This morning though, I discovered that Timka had taken the computer to his room upstairs and I did not want to disturb anyone, so I just waited until now. It is about 8:30 a.m., the household has begun to rise. Ainura and Dinara, Asi, Alderit, Timka, Dushen, Timka's father, now his mother and ... read more

Wednesday 11 June - Karakol to campsite, 78 km (610m climb) Breakfast in the courtyard, rather disorganized; bread and their very runny jam, then some cheese and butter arrived, then last the hot water for tea and coffee. There was meat soup that hardly anyone wanted. Today was not a nice ride - the road surface was bad in many places, and the last 30 km mostly very bad. There was a head wind some of the time, too. The road was quite hilly. I got very tired and hungry and stopped and ate my supplies, but then a few km further found everyone had stopped for the official picnic, as the lorries with the camping equipment had not arrived. Hung around a long time, had a walk down to the river. The landscape here is ... read more

KARAKOL, KYRGYZSTAN - (July 2007) Fri 6th - Sun 15th July 2007 - (Karakol) After several days hanging around in Bishkek waiting for my Tajikistan visa to be processed, I decided to go to a town called Karakol which is located at the eastern end of Lake Issyk-Kul. Lake Issyk-Kul which is set amongst the central Tian Shan mountain range is 170km long by 70 km across and is supposedly the second largest Alpine lake in the world after Lake Titicaca. During Soviet times, several health spa towns sprang up along the lake's shore and the lake is reputed to be one of Kyrgyzstan's premier tourist destinations because of the spa towns, and also because of surrounding mountains which are said to have some wonderful trekking opportunities. The journey from Bishkek to Karakol took most of ... read more

We are staying at homestays again and we got divided up into three, after dinner we were serenaded with local music by our gracious hosts, beautiful music and skillful playing. I bought a quilt carpet at the felt factory we went to , the lady demonstrated how to make the felt rugs as well and she made one whose design is the likeness of Gisele our truck. We had a quick lunch afterwards and then shopped for dinner cooking, we drove not far and we reached our camp site on the shores of Issyk Kol, it's a big lake and we will camp on different areas of it as we got around in a loop til we hit Bishkek in a couple days. Our campsite was gorgeous, i cooked the adobo but not really successful.It ... read more