Hiking Days – Alternative, Modern Talking and Diversity

04.04.2022 – 1. part

 

The morning started early. And with bad news. The plan was to take a bus or something similar to the turnoff to Son Kul, from there another taxi for something closer and then hike over a high pass to the lake. At the bottom, there should already be a yurt set up where we could sleep. About 18 Euros per person. Sounded good. However, at about 4:00 a.m. Rakhat got a new message: the yurt was there but no one was on site, so we would have to take the cook, food etc. with us and that would cost well over 100 Euros…Phew – what now? We also didn’t know how snowy the pass would be, maybe it would be completely difficult. In the meantime it was 5:00, the planned time to get up anyway because of breakfast and Ramadan. First we had a drink and thought about it.

 

breakfast

 

For me, it was too much money for such an undertaking. The uncle had an idea. He would drive us to a place where we could hike and then pick us up later and show us something else. It’s supposed to be quite nice there – but he hasn’t been there himself yet. And then we could stay with them for another night. They loved our visit. So did we. I thought: Discovering the unknown: very nice! And I could go to Son Kul another time.

 

And so we got into Uncle’s car and drove west along the empty road. Uncle thought that some music would surely put us in a better mood and plugged in his music stick. And what came out of the loudspeaker? A remix of Modern Talking’s greatest hits. I suffered. But it also made me laugh terribly. So absurd!

 

Local headwear for men

 

I have yet to see a small car here without cracks in the windscreen

 

Die obligatorische Tierherde

 

Paar Leute waren auch unterwegs

 

Tankstelle und Bushaltestelle

 

It got lonelier and lonelier, but then a petrol pump with a bus stop appeared, where someone was even sitting waiting. We filled up. Petrol is cheap for us at 60-70 cents – here it has gone up enormously compared to income. By the way: it is right-hand traffic, but there are so many cars with wheel on the right. You always have to look where you get in.

 

dispenser

 

After the petrol pump we took a left turn, a bit of track to the penultimate homestead and there we got out.

 

last homestead

 

The path was not all that exciting to walk on at first, just a track uphill.

 

non-exciting track

 

But what we saw there! Nature offered an extraordinary variety. And so we did not trudge laboriously uphill but marvelled left and right and in front and behind – and I took a lot of pictures. I am also fascinated by the shapes of the trees here – such beautiful trunks and branches that you can see wonderfully without the leaves. And there is a lot of that to see now:

 

broad river

 

broad starting side-valley

 

tree

 

many trees

 

many trees with rock background

 

trees in puddle

 

truck driving downhill

 

sheep walking downhill

 

horses standing around

 

narrow river and broad rock

 

diverse landscape
different looking landscape

 

photographer in landscape

 

we hiked higher and higher – and then we should see something special

 

Is there something?

 

To solve it straight away: there was something! But what? Patiently waiting for the next blog post! There were also a lot of other things on this day – which is why it has to be divided into 2 parts.