We've spent the past two days in Kyrgyzstan's capital city Bishkek. We had a few goals here; to gather some last minute supplies, to finalise some details with our route and to interview some various community members and experts on climate change in Kyrgyzstan. We picked up some delicious snacks from the local bazar for our journey to At Bashi and for our time in the mountains. One of the largest walnut forests in the world is in Kyrgyzstan so we grabbed a bag (reusable:) ) full of those and an assortment of dried fruit and some highly recommended Kyrgz equivalent of snickers. Our first scheduled meeting in our optimistically itineraried day was with Vladimir Komisarov, president of the Kyrgz alpine club. Our main goal with Vladimir was to go over our route options and get advice from the most experienced climber in Kyrgyzstan and from the person who has probably explored the At-Bashi range the most. We were anticipating possibly being yelled at in Russian and told we had no idea what we were doing. Instead he politely told us about the current conditions, that there has been very little snow so the glaciers are likely not to be filled in at all and that we should probably try some virgin peaks further northeast in the range. He then promptly took some shot glasses out of his cupboard and said we weren't allowed to leave until we had at least two shots. We also weren't real mountaineers until we had tried some of his bacon (also stored in the cupboard and a lovely shade of pale green). I've been vegetarian for longer than I can remember now but I said I would have the full cultural experience here and try some meat. I just couldn't do it though, I stomached the alcohol but I feared the bacon would come back up. Luckily Nicole is an enthusiastic carnivore and promptly ate my slice. To sum things up in one word: Stop 1 with Vladimir was awesome. Stop two with the Central Asian Institute of Geological Sciences was awkward. Between us, the institute's secretary and the head of departments something was lost in translation. We were promptly walked out on and told we were a waste of time when it was discovered we were simply some ordinary skiers and not representative of a large global business or research organization. One of the three heads of departments stayed behind however and enthusiastically presented a slide show of the CAIGS's research stations, their measurements of glacial retreat and waterflow patterns and changes through the countries main rivers. A few not so fun facts we learnt: Kyrgyzstan actually has more glaciers now than it used to as larger ones are shrinking and separating into smaller ones. This is especially evident in the At-Bashi region. The glaciers here are receding very rapidly (although not as rapidly as those around the north pole) and now are forming glacial lakes which are at risk of bursting and this is very well recorded. Two out of out scheduled 4 interviews worked out more or less as planned. The remaining two, again mostly because of miscommunication didn't really. Fortunately Johannes Chuboda, an Austrian and (therefore) ski enthusiast went out of his way to meet up with us at our guest house. The At Bashi range, where we are still heading to is having one of it's driest years on record. It's going to be a great place to visit but in reality the skiing may not be so good. Johannes gave us many ideas for back up plans, should the snow not be sufficient. In a country that's 94% mountains the options can obviously be endless and so it was great to have some help choosing some alternative areas. We will also be tracking our routes and giving this info to Johannes for his up coming guide book for backcountry skiing in Kyrgyzstan - watch this space! Our final meeting of the day was with AJ from Nomansland travel. He has been incredibly helpful in helping us plan over the past year and a half, after hundreds of emails and many Skype calls it was great to finally meet him in person. He is going to be our emergency contact here and gave us good reality checks about the likelihood and speed of a rescue. (Not likely and not fast). He also ordered us some Kyrgyz food for dinner - Dumplings! The vegetarian option turned out to be just a little less meat and a little more vegetables. Apparently a common theme here. I ate them and they tasted great. I'm now a Romatarian :) When in Rome... Or in Bishkek.
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AuthorMarian Krogh Archives
August 2019
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