The Adventures of Temple and KG: How the f@#k do you spell Kergistan?

For anyone wondering, it's spelled Kyrgyzstan, because why not? It's a perfectly reasonable way to spell the name of your nation...

After our amazing couple weeks in Kazakhstan is was time for us to make our way to the 2nd of the 4 Stans we would be visiting, Kyrgyzstan, another country we knew absolutely nothing about! Our first stop was the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, a classic old-school Soviet city full of grey concrete, geometric buildings and some of the worst driving we have ever seen.

Our stay in Bishkek was mostly dedicated to gaining our visa for our visit to Iran, a process that wasn't overly difficult, just quite time consuming. The major sites in town were under construction but we were lucky enough to be staying with some Austrian friends in their amazing apartment so we spent the bulk of time between some of Bishkek's tasty western restaurants, shuffling around town after our visa and planning our next few weeks on the road.

For our first venture outside of Bishkek, we ignored the advice of everyone we had met and decided that Cholpon-Ata couldn't possibly be as bad as everyone had said. As it turned out, everyone was correct, Cholpon-Ata was a bit of a dive. This was highlighted by the hostel that we were staying it. To put it nicely, the hostel was grossly oversold on it's listing on booking.com. KG also found a huge spider with an egg sac on her pillow (before she got in to bed thankfully). So after 2 of our scheduled 3 nights we cut our losses and hit the road.

KG at Cholpon-Ata just drying out some fish

Not a bad beach considering the nearest ocean is 3000km away...

Tom at Cholpon-Ata

Next up was a 2 day trek to Song Kul lake kicking off from the bustling little town of Kochkor. We rocked up in a shared taxi, KG fighting for room between 2 tiny but surprisingly space-consuming Kyrgyz old women and set up our next few days. The prospect of a 2 day stroll through the countryside was an exciting one - getting back to nature and all that jazz. It was about 25 minutes into the first day when we realised how long it had been since we a) had done any decent amount of walking at all, and b) had even worn our hiking shoes, that it dawned on us that we probably should have done some preparation for this trek. We eventually stumbled into our yurt camp on day 1 and proceeded to do an immense amount of complaining about our fitness level. There were intense discussions about which one of us was stupid enough to suggest that this was a good idea. After an incredibly thorough nights rest we were back in to it the following day and were feeling better about everything until we realised that our day would begin with a couple hours of straight uphill trekking. Once again, our stubbornness prevailed and we made it to our yurt camp for the evening.

Tom and another gigantic homestay feed - sooooooo much food!

KG and our guise planning how to traverse this raging torrent.

Tom and our Adele-loving Kyrgyz guide.

KG enjoying lunch with some of the local inhabitants.

KG post-walk, clearly enjoying the conditions.

A broken soul.

At the top of the Kyzart pass... the view was OK I spose.

With a couple of spare days up our sleeve we set up shop in a yurt camp just beside Song-Kul lake and enjoyed the spectacular scenery and incredible hospitality. We also managed to squeeze in a day of horse riding, a touch more walking and even took an absurdly cold, ill-advised dip in the lake, which was refreshing but definitely not something we would recommend.

KG atop her faithful steed, Derrnal, a rare picture of him moving.

KG making some friends.

Tom and Javier.

A local mode of transportation.

Tom having a dip in Song-Kul Lake, the rig needs a bit of work.

KG instantly regretting giving Tom shit all day about who would/wouldn't go swimming.

Our feelings of relaxation and refreshment were quickly replaced with frustration, tiredness and sweatiness as our mini-van back to Bishkek was one of Central Asia's finest examples of f@#king about! It all started well, with a good crowd filling up the bus quickly but it descended quickly when we stopped about 4 times an hour - this included the driver pulling over to buy a watermelon, chat to some random, pick up a hitchhiker only to realise there was no room in the van and my personal favourite the mad dash to the shitter (which also involved driving on the wrong side of the road for a few hundred metres). So a 4 hour drive slowly turned in to a 7 hour drive but we made it back in one piece and that's what matters.

Osh was next up to get on the hunt for some travelling companions and a driver to embark on the epic Pamir Highway trip for the next 12 days through Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. We set up shop, and found a couple of Canadians (Fraser and Olga) and an Italian (Alessandro), got a driver organised and hit the road. Piling in to a Mitsubishi Pajero we made our way from Osh to Tulparkul and spent the night huddled in together inside a yurt at high altitude. We had an awesome group for our trip, and thankfully no snorers, so the communal living was actually pretty rad. The scenery was spectacular and was a good introduction to the incredible alpine sights we would be seeing over the next few weeks. Stay tuned for our run down on the rest of our Pamir Highway trip in the Tajikistan blog.