Alay - Pamir mountains

We made it late at night to Sary-Mogul, slept there at a homestay of a local family and went in the next morning with a ride provided by the CBT (community based tourism) people into the mountains. We didn't go directly to the camp but made a stop at a canyon. Here are some first impressions, also there are marmots (German: Murmeltiere). They are super cute and make funny bird-like noises when potential predators come close. If we came too close they all would disappear into their holes, which proved to be a little bit dangerous when covered by snow.

You can't see the marmots very well, later I'll show you a better picture 😌

The photos were taken at an elevation of 3500m. The mountains you see in the picture can easily be 6000m or higher!There are actually people living here, mostly shepherds. You can (barely) see in the center of the picture that a yurt is being built by locals.

That black line are all sheep!

As we arrived at the basecamp we got our yurt immediately heated. Technically it was Hanna's and Max's yurt since I wanted to stay in a tent but I used it as a living room and was very happy that it was heated.

Fire got started with some dried cow shit, then filled with coal. At this altitude there are no trees growing anymore and the coal mine is nearby. A ton of coal costs here 3000 som, that's about 35€... Heating of these yurts is cheap.

Luckily I pitched my tent before it started to snow!

I guess the horse also wasn't amused..

This is Max, checking how deep the snow is (we got maybe 5cm until sundown).

I was afraid that I wasn't up to the task sleeping there even though it's only -5°C during the night and put on almost everything I had. That's 3 socks, leggings + 2 trousers, thermo long sleeve, t-shirt, hoodie, down jacket from Hanna, my own fleece jacket. In the tent were 2 isolating mattresses (one was mine, the other one from Hanna) and the bad-ass sleeping bag I carried all the time with me (thanks for that ❤️).

This is how it looked like in the morning, we had snow until 4 at night. I was actually so warm that I removed both jackets during the night and thought about removing one of the pants.

We had a clear sky in the morning and awesome views!

Somehow Hanna's shoes got completely wet in the yurt and she had to dry them before she could go hiking so Max and I started alone and went for the next basecamp. There are 4 of these camps to get to the highest mountain called Lenin peak that has an impressive altitude of over 7100 meters! It's supposedly one of the easiest 7000+ mountains, a guided tour takes about 20 days (with acclimatization).The views were just fantastic and in the end we easily found the basecamp, it was already populated by locals! They offered us chai, food and vodka. 

Let's just put it this way.. there was no vodka anymore when we left 😂

There are cows and even yaks around! We encountered the yaks later and the snow has already melted away.

During the evening I went up a small hill to capture the sunset as good as possible - in the end the clouds of the day left and Lenin peak was visible from our basecamp!

It doesn't look 'so' high as 7100m right? 

The picture above shows the picturesque spot the basecamp is at! This platform doesn't allow zooming in to photos, so here is a zoom:

Here you can see the yurts. My tent was already gone at that moment.

We played some cards in the evening and I went for the second night into the tent.

We left at 7 in the next morning because Max had to catch a flight 2 days after and still wanted to see the Alay mountains, so that's where we went straight afterwards. Our destination was Besh Kol, its four lakes surrounded by huge, snow-capped mountains. We had 6 hours to get there and back, CBT people told us that would be possible but in the end it wasn't. We did not get to the lakes, not even close enough to get a glimpse of one of them which still makes me a little bit sad. But it was also without lakes a great hike, here are some pictures of the way:

We also had to do a river crossing, let me tell you that these rivers are freezing cold 😂

We saw more marmots and this time I got a good photo of one of them!

It started to hail on our way back but that's at least better than rain since we didn't get wet.

As we left the mountains we stayed at another homestay because I was too tired to keep going. I started to get sick at this time, got a cold. Probably from sleeping in the tent two nights. After some rest, we (that is Hanna and me, Max left in the afternoon to Osh) went hitchhiking back into the north to visit Milan, a friend we met during hitchhiking a couple of days ago. But as we arrived in his city he didn't respond and we didn't know where to go, so we kept on hitchhiking to Osh. The driver bought some plants which a little boy sold on the street, peeled it and gestured us to eat it. We believe it's wild rhubarb.

Later I went shopping on the bazaar and asked how much these super not-fake watches cost. The most expensive one is €10, I could probably get the price down to €7 or €8. If you want one, hit me up 😉 Rolex, Prada, Armani..

Hanna and I will go different ways after Osh, I'll meet again with Mara in Tajikistan, Hanna will move to the east of Kyrgyzstan. 4 weeks is a lot of time to spend together but we will probably see each other again before the journey ends. 

We decided to eat something fancy for our last evening together and went for sushi.

Many restaurants here have cabins which can be closed with curtains, that was also the case in this sushi place. It's a little bit weird to sit in there just on your own.

The sushi itself was.. experimental. It was also warm? We ordered a mixed plate that looked fancy and some of these rolls came with cheese. We weren't huge fans to be honest 😂

As I'm typing these lines Hanna already left to Bishkek, I'm staying one night more in Osh and will go tomorrow morning to Tajikistan. Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan have some political issues right now and the borders are closed so I have to go through Uzbekistan again. I'm not sure if I'll make it to the capital Dushanbe tomorrow but I should be able to make it at least into the country.