Steppe-in' Up 4

Karakol

This town is one of the main urban centres on or near Issyk-Kul, a huge lake which sits at an altitude of over 1600m. Issyk-Kul is the second largest mountain lake in the world (after Lake Titicaca, on the border of Bolivia and Peru), and the tenth largest lake in the world by volume, mainly because it's so bloody deep, nearly 670m at its deepest point.

Karakol itself was our first taste of urban Kyrgyzstan, the town sits on one of the many feeder rivers into the lake, but is itself quite a long way from the lake.

It's not huge, with a population of only about 85,000, but is the fourth largest city in Kyrgyzstan, after Bishkek, Osh and Jalal-Abad. That tells you a little about the demographics of this small country.

Karakol's a super interesting place, quite run-down for the most part, and is just generally quite unkempt, which turns out to sorta be the vibe for quite a lot of places around here.

Hotel brekky spot, and reception clocks. I can hardly imagine a town more different to New York than this one.

Another retro barber shop sign. The image of the bearded guy has followed me all over Asia in the past year or two, including in India.

A real supermarket! With cute spice buckets.

Monument in one of the squares close to the main shopping hub.

Beautiful Russian Orthodox Cathedral

Deep-fried and absolutely delicious potato cakes, samsy kartoshka, which are very common bakery items here. You can get all varieties at local bakeries, or even at a good supermarket.

As for the filthy fingers, you can get all varieties of those just by riding my bike for awhile and fiddling with the chain.

Entrance to the local market. Funnily enough, many buildings, even public ones, are sometimes left unfinished, particularly their interiors, with people not bothering to clad the wall framing.

Delicious halva. We bought a nice chunk.

Random street scenes.

The Dungan

In the late 1800s a large minority of Hui Muslims within territorial China escaped, or were forcibly deported, due to a huge revolt against the Qing Dynasty, and the massive reprisals which followed.

The troubles led to huge shifts in the demographics of northwest China, with the loss of a massive 21 million people, as the combined result of massacres, migration, famine, and corpse-transmitted plague. Northern Xinjiang lost 73% of its population at this time, Gansu lost 75%, and Shaanxi Province lost 45% of its population (and a whopping 99.5% of its Muslims).

Various waves of migration resulted in Hui Muslims settling in the then Russian Empire, which included all of the Central Asian countries. Many settled in the Karakol area, and are known as Dungan. Some aspects of their culture remains, including their food.

We went to a Dungan restaurant, where the only dish on offer is ashlan fuu, a delicious cold spicy noodle soup, served with apple juice. It was a great vibe in there, and, in fact, all of the restaurants in that particular covered laneway appeared to be offering the same thing.

Ashlam fu served with potato bread and apple juice. Strange that it's served cold. The soup that is.

Soviet-era apartment block.

We spent a day organising things in Karakol, including servicing our bikes.

And eating strawberry and ice cream waffles. Well, Julian's was an Oreo flavoured one. He's the only person I know in my whole life who hardly ever eats fruit (he doesn't like it, and never has, not even as a kid). He's slowly warming to the idea these days though, thanks to Anna Lena's delicate coaching.

Issyk-Kul

The next day we rode off through the traffic, and were soon out of town. It was quite cool, and threatened rain.

Stunning fields en route to the lake, now heading west.

We passed a few small towns.

And stopped at one for lunch. The sun came out.

Kyrgyz KFC, I guess.

Our first glimpse of Issyk-Kul

Another stag party

Classic Soviet-era Lada from the 1970s. They were a bit of cultural icon behind the Iron Curtain for a few decades during that time. I have fond memories of zipping around northern Poland in one in the 90s, packed to its low roof with every flavour of Krolikowski imaginable, all joking and laughing and stuffing our already dripping purple mouths with more forest blueberries, which we'd just picked.

Such sweet memories.

Tiny husky midget balancing on its ass.

This little boy was the quintessential entertainer. He ran up to his donkey, jumped on top, and then slid right over to the other side (accidentally) and fell off, but somehow managed to land on his feet. He then immediately bounced back on like a well-trained gymnast, and trotted off smiling, not missing a beat.

Kyrgyz ute

Muslim burial monuments

The lake became more and more beautiful as the afternoon progressed.

We stayed at this cute little guest house, as we were a little worried about rain, which was predicted. It was also getting late, and we wanted to maximise our chances of enjoying the lake while it was still light.

We walked through some small farms and hung out down at the lake beach, playing music, singing, snacking and chatting. Sounds good doesn't it.

Not Quite Yet

Anna Lena and Julian plan to head south to Tajikistan, and I'm on my way to Bishkek.

Their plan was to head north from here this morning, over the Arabel Pass, a high altitude pass heading in the direction they want to go. But the weather's been crap in the mountains, and it'd probably be quite tricky to get through in these conditions. Thunderstorms at high altitudes can be super dodgy, and heavy rain consistently triggers landslides up there.

So they decided to carry on west with me, along the southern shore of Issyk-Kul, planning to head south on another route further along.

I'm very happy to spend a few more days with them.

Sometimes you meet really beautiful warm and thoughtful people, and can travel together smoothly and easily, it feels so good.

I feel genuinely grateful to have spent time with these guys.

So, no goodbyes just yet.

There's more Paradise to explore with them, and more amazing and inspiring things to come❤️

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