Ala Archa National Park

I went to Ala Archa National Park with 8 other English speakers. Most of us are English teachers at The London School, but 3 are here learning Russian or Kyrgyz. We were 4 Americans, 1 Australian, and 4 Brits. We called 2 taxis to take us 45 km outside of Bishkek, into the mountains. We were dropped off at the end up the public road, 2,150 meters above sea level and next to an Alpine-esque hotel/bar. I was glad I'd brought my hoodie, corduroy jacket, and scarf, but thankfully Katy had extra gloves, otherwise my hands would have frozen.

There were 3 main paths to choose from, and we chose the waterfall path, a 3.75 km walk. We didn't realize that it would all be up steep mountain slopes. We trekked up and up over the snow-melt river and high up past the tree line. The "waterfall" we were aiming for ended up being a few droplets of water and lot of little icy hailstones falling high from the top of a rock face. We had a few minutes of a great view down in the valley, but the clouds descended quickly. It took us about 4 hours to get up the mountain, but we stopped rather frequently for food and water breaks, and to wait for the whole group to catch up. The higher peaks were covered in clouds the whole time, so I'm not sure how high they towered above us. Had we kept walking up, we'd have gotten to 3,300 meters and to a glacier, but my guidebook said that's for serious mountain people only, and altitude sickness really gets to a lot of people there, so it was definitely not a trek for me. Maybe next summer.

Apparently Ala Archa National Park is home to 170 animal species, including bear, wolves, lynx, wild boar, and even snow leopards, but we had to content ourselves with beetles and birds. Two people in our taxi saw a deer jump across the road, but I was unfortunately looking the other way at the time.

We got back down to the Alpine lodge around 4:30 pm, and sat inside for a while drinking tea and warming up. Some of the teachers who had been before said there was a "Bridge of Death" nearby. It was a wooden bridge that people had stolen all the wood boards from, and there were only two metal slats going across the raging river. So to get across, you had to spread your legs out and inch out on the metal beams. It didn't sound at all like my kind of bridge, but we didn't end up finding it at all, but we got close to the river and it was really clear and beautiful, so it was worth the little extra walk to the water's edge.

We hadn't asked our taxi drivers to wait for us. They would have (for 50 som/less than 2$ an hour), but we figured we'd try our luck finding a taxi or marshrutka/mini-bus back into Bishke, or of course hitchhike back, which they say is safe here. We called some cab companies, but they all refused to come all the way out of the city to pick us up. Katy said that marshrutkas picked up at the entrance to the park, 12 km lower down the mountain. So we walked down the road, hoping that a car would drive by and pick us up. In Kyrgyzstan, all cars basically can be taxis. Regular drivers often pick people up for some money, and I guess people also pick up hitchhikers for free. Around 10 cars and marshrutkas drove by while we were walking down, but none of them stopped to pick us up. Two hours later and after dark, when we finally got down to the entrance gate, it turned out there were no more marshrutkas leaving and there were also no cabs waiting around to pick people up. Ed, an Alaskan in Bishkek for 2 weeks studying intensive Russian and living in a host family, called his host dad, who owns 2 marshrutkas, and he agreed to come out and get all of us for 2000 som/55$ (6$/person). We hung out for 30 minutes at the gate, taking pictures of the bats flying around, and then had a nice clean marshrutka all to ourselves all the way back to the city. If Ed's host brother hadn't come to get us, we would really have had to figure some way to get 9 foreigners 45 km back into Bishkek. We had food and matches so we COULD have camped in the forest, but that would really have been last resort.

So it was a wonderful day in the wilderness, and it's so convenient that in just a half hour you can get out of the dirty busy city and into such pristine nature. We've already made plans to go again in the winter and frolick in the snow, and then maybe try for one of the glaciers in the spring/summer next year. I took tons of pictures, but it might take a while to upload them since it takes so long here. There's an internet cafe a bit farther away that has ActiveX on facebook so that it goes much faster, so when someone heads over there, I'll probably tag along.

I'm quite sore today, but actually didn't feel so exhausted during the walking. Tonight we are all taking it easy and having movie night in someone's apartment, and then I'll have to do my Russian homework at some point. I don't teach at all this week, so I'll again have LOTS of free time to fill. But I will find out my teaching schedule and I can finally start planning my lessons!