Larry Memmott's Blog

I got a kick out of the photo they used in this article on “Voucher Schemes for Enhanced Fertilizer Use.”

That was a great day. The woman in the photo was a “Hero Mother of the Soviet Union.” I think she said she had eight children. I was handing her a bag of sugar beet seeds as part of our seed distribution campaign under the bilateral Economic Development Fund.

Sary Chelek lives up to its billing as one of the gems of Kyrgyz natural beauty (a pretty tall order). A large alpine lake set in a deep mountain bowl and surrounded by pines, Sary Chelek reminds me of the rugged beauty of the mountain lakes high in the American Rockies (specifically, since they were my stomping ground in youth, of the High Uintas, a spur of the Rockies).

The Sary Chelek National Park is a large expanse with several lakes, and certainly deserving of an extended exploration on foot or on horseback, but we rarely have the time to do that, so my advice is based on a one-day stay. For that I am truly sorry. Mostly sorry for myself.  Some day, I’ll be back.

The lake is truly gorgeous, and, like most places, is at its best in the early morning calm or the late afternoon. That has implications for your first decision: where to stay. There are two choices, a guesthouse up at the lake itself, or a CBT homestay down in the nearby village of Arkyt, just inside the boundaries of the park, but some 10 miles (and a climb of 2,000 feet) on a pretzel of a dirt road.

The CBT home we stayed in was owned by the ethnic-Kyrgyz Baban family, and is marked on the map and the attached .gdb file.  It was very comfortable.  They are obviously re-investing the money they were making from CBT.  We were in a separate house, apparently built just for guests.  Also, they had a solar powered hot shower, which was really welcome after a long day of traveling or before beginning a long day of exploration.  The family was friendly, but unlike some CBT families (such as in Arslanbob) we did not feel included in the family, but very much separate.

As nice as the CBT was, I might be inclined to stay at the guesthouse if I went again.  The guesthouse has only pit toilets (the Baban’s have a real toilet, though it is installed in an outhouse across the garden from the house), and there is no one there to make your meals.  There are very rudimentary cooking facilities, but you would be cooking over a wood fire.  Still, the huge advantage is that you would be at Sary Chelek for those “golden hours” as the sun sets and rises.  I’m sure it is incredible.

The guesthouse sits on a ridge just thirty feet or so above the lake.  There is a small pier there from which you could swim.  And by the way, though I saw on the web that swimming is not allowed at Sary Chelek, everyone was swimming.  What’s more, they were goading us into swimming, and we finally could not resist.

There are lots of opportunities for hiking and trekking in the park.  A short day hike takes you to another nearby lake.  We just wandered through the woods around the lake and had a good (but tiring) time.

Getting There

It is almost 50 miles, and a climb of some 2,000 feet from the junction with M41 (the Bishkek-Jalalabad road) to the entrance to Sary Chelek at Arkit village (and the Baban CBT homestay).  Since we averaged about 25 mph, it took us about two hours to get there.  The road passes through some interesting country, reminiscent (just a bit) of the U.S. Southwest.  There are even a few hoodoos!  (That’s a hoodoo in the photo, for those who don’t know what a hoodoo is.)  From Bishkek, it was about the ten hours we had been told it would take.  From Arkit to Sary Chelek lake is only another ten miles, but the road is much rougher, twisting and turning up the side of the mountain and ascending some 2,000 feet.  It took us almost an hour to drive it. (Click on the maps to enlarge them.)

Connecting

I got a number for making reservations at the guest house while we were there.  I haven’t tried it, so if you do, let us know in the comments whether you get through.  Of if someone has a better number, please report it.  The number I got was: 0372-460-177.  Any reasonable guidebook can give you numbers for CBT.  For calling either option, you should speak Russian, of course.

And just for the heck of it, here is one of my favorite pics from the trip:

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A great New Years with lots of wonderful friends!!!

Millennial Walnut Tree

Arslanbob is a wonderful little village north of Jalalabad. Surrounded by ancient walnut forests, and with a particularly hospitable population, it is a great place to just relax.

	Arslanbob lies some 30 miles off the main Bishkek-Jalalabad road. The road is good, and it’s a pleasant drive through the countryside. Attached you will find a a .gdb file
To Arslanbob (click to enlarge)	which you can use

in Google Earth or your GPS to find your way.

Accommodations and guide services are easy. Arslanbob’s CBT headquarters is famous for its helpfulness. We arrived without making prior arrangements and a few minutes later we were set up

with a nice family homestay. We stayed with the Sabir family, whose address is marked on the map below. They were great, and provided us with delicious home-cooked meals throughout our stay.
	Breakfast at the Sabir Residence

Arslanbob is primarily an Uzbek village. Uzbeks from the Fergana Valley have told me that the annual pilgrimages their families made to Arslanbob when they were children had an almost religious nature. It’s understandable.  Spend a couple of days here and you almost feel like you’ve entered a mystic trance.

	There’s plenty to do in and around Arslanbob. There is the small waterfall on the outskirts of town, the big waterfall in the mountains above town, and horses to rent for riding in the hills. Most unique and satisfying, though, are long walks through the walnut forest. We were there in August and enjoyed sampling the many varieties of apples
The “Small” Waterfall

and cherry plums which grow wild and were just beginning to ripen at the time.

The “Big” Waterfall

	The walnuts reportedly ripen in September and the village empties as whole families move into the woods to pick them. Families hold the rights to harvest specific plots within the
Steep Climb to the Big Waterfall

forest. That would be a great time to be there, though it was certainly nice to wander through the woods by ourselves, too, and that feeling would most likely be lost at harvest time.

Around Arslanbob (click to enlarge)

 

This is the New Years card I got from the guys at the Central Asian Free Market Institute (CAFMI).  Love it!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy New Year to everybody, and especially to the CAFMI Crew!

One of the easiest places to go from Bishkek to get away from it all is Alamedin. And though it is a nice trip any time of year, there are reasons why it is an especially good place to go in the winter.

Alamedin Canyon has many advantages. Only about 40 minutes from downtown Bishkek, there are at least two good hikes to take up the valley itself. There is also the side road across to Ala Archa, which makes a great drive in the summer. Then there is the 12 Chimneys restaurant and cottages. Finally, and what makes it a bit magical in the winter, there is the hot spring-fed swimming pool. There is nothing better than coming in out of the cold after a chilly hike and jumping into the hot water!

The route to Alamedin Canyon could not be simpler. Just take Shabdan Baatyra Street (more often called Almatinskaya), south towards the mountains, and keep going. Don’t hesitate when the main road turns left towards Issyk Ata, just keep going straight south. About 15.5 miles from the intersection with Akhuhbayeva, you reach 12 Chimneys. It’s a good place to have lunch, but maybe that should be on the way back down.

Tyoplie Klyuchi Sanatoria is about another mile down the road. It sits well below the road on the right hand side, a fairly large, rundown looking building. Tyoplie Klyuchi is one of those wonderful post-soviet remnants. It was intended as a health spa, but it is mostly falling down, now. After the 2010 revolution it closed, apparently taken over by the new government. Whoever took it over apparently gave up on it soon afterward. Though the sign outside said it was under repair for some months, when it opened up again absolutely nothing had been repaired.

There are apparently curative baths you can take in the rooms down the right corridor, but that doesn’t really interest me. What I like is the swimming pool. Down the left corridor, and through an underpass under the changing rooms (or through the changing rooms themselves) you come into an incredible enclosed grotto with a large swimming pool. The murals and other decorations are a wonderful cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, all run through some kind of soviet science fiction art convention.

And the water is hot. Twice Hot. Not only is it coming straight out of the rock (well, though a series of pipes, of course), but it is coming out laced with radioactive radon. One website I’ve seen suggests that you not spend more than 20 minutes in the radioactive water.

Beyond Tyoplie Klyuchi, it is only another ¾ of a mile to the parking lot. Parking here is intended for the cottages which used to make up the resort. I just use it as a trailhead for hiking on up. This is definitely where you want to stop if you don’t have a serious SUV, but if you do have a serious vehicle, you can continue on up the road for probably another half-a-mile to an area which was been affected by a landslide.

I’ve attached a .gdb file which you can use to find your way. You can use it in Google Earth or your GPS.

The Hikes

There are two ways to ascend Alamedin Valley, depending on the side of the valley you want to climb. I haven’t been far up the valley (as the maps show), so I can’t say which is better overall, but for a simple day hike, the waterfall, up the right, or west, side of the valley makes a nice destination. It’s about a four mile hike, one way.
The one challenge here is the bridge. It is pretty scary, with a swinging cable to hold onto to keep from toppling over into the stream. I have not done this in winter, but I imagine that the ice makes it no easier.

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Aliciya had a blast, as you can see in this short clip. That made Christmas for all of us, of course. Merry Christmas to all!

See 24.kg for the story.

Osh, Jalalabad, Batken, Sary Chelek, Arslanbob. Whereever in the south you are going to, the most direct route is down M41 south from Kara Balta. Down, though, might not be the right word, since you first have to climb to 10,000 feet of altitude — twice!

Even leaving out the destination, and there are several you should not miss, this road is one you should travel anyway sometime while you are in Kyrgyzstan. The climbs up over two high passes, the passage through the Susumyr Valley, and the views of the Toktegul reservoirs (though they do just keep going on and on and on) make the long drive worth it.

The directions are pretty simple. Drive west on Chuy Avenue all the way to Kara Balta. Hang a left at the only big intersection in town, and follow the road for as long as you dare. Measuring from the intersection of Chuy and Prospect Mira, the turn in Kara Balta is some 37 miles away. From Kara Balta you climb the Ala Too range from 2,500 feet of elevation in KB to 10,000 at the pass, in only 40 miles.
At the top, you drive through a tunnel. There is a stop light there, to show you which way the traffic is flowing, but no one seems to pay it any mind, and traffic is flowing both directions through the narrow tunnel, with only inches to spare. I don’t mind admitting that I was scared, both times I went through.

After the tunnel, we were ready for a break, and found the nearest semi-flat spot for lunch. The road then drops back down to the floor of the Susumyr Valley at about 7,400 feet, in another 20 miles. Then it climbs up the other side of the valley, surmounting a second high pass at 10,250 feet another 40 miles along.

It’s still another 40 miles to the town of Toktegul, on the side of the Toktegul Reservoir. Though the lake-in-the-middle-of-a desert look starts out interesting (sort of like Lake Powell in Utah), it seems to go on forever and ever. In fact, 80 miles later when you reach the turnoff to Sary Chelek, you are still not entirely past the series of Reservoirs along the Naryn River.

Here’s a .gdb file you can use in Google Earth or your GPS.

A couple of weeks ago I visited the Bordunskiy/Krasnyy Most area near Boom Canyon on the road to Issyk Kul Lake. I’d been told to expect a Grand Canyon-type experience. Well, that’s a bit of an exageration, but the area is gorgeous, anyway, and pretty unspoilt. Definitely worth a day trip, and I’d love to go back sometime to camp up there.

There may be various roads to get into this area from different directions, but the one I took is simple, and the road is pretty good. It was easy to drive it in my RAV4, and I expect a sedan would do fine, as well. The only question is about width. The road is pretty narrow in places, with a deep chasm on one side and a sheer wall on the other. I was definitely happier in my RAV4 than I would have been in a wide-based Land Cruiser or Hummer, for example.

I got out of the car and went hiking without getting to the end of the road, so I don’t know where it gets to in the end or what wonders I left still unexplored. Have to go back there soon, I guess. The area I hiked in, though, was gorgeous. I started down one of the many slot canyons, but as is usual, didn’t get far before coming upon a 15 foot cliff. I could have gotten down without too much difficulty, I expect — but I’m afraid I’d still be there. Serious hiking in this kind of terrain requires some rope and some climbing skill — not to mention a lot of caution. Still, camping in the area would certainly be rewarding.

Getting There

The route is easy. Take the road to Issyk Kul. At 78 miles (from the turn off of Almatinskaya) turn right onto a dirt road across some railroad tracks. Don’t worry too much when the road runs right into the bed of a small stream. The ground is stony and you won’t likely sink in (this trip is not recommended in the rain!). You just keep following the road, from which there are no turnoffs. Remember, when you get to the gates, to leave them as you found them. Here’s a .gdb file you can use in Google Earth or your GPS.

View Larger Map

Scroll a bit to the left and down to see the green arrow at the place where I stopped along the road.