Day 4 Son Kol

Okay, how can I keep this clean enough not to offend?


I specialise in sleeping badly, and bad nights, but this felt like one of the worst ever! Ten minutes after we returned from dinner the night before, a nice Kyrgyz man came and replenished our log burner. This took us from “toasty” to just short of “crematey”. Jeez it was hot. 


We had single beds, Cate rolled over on hers, and I assumed that she was out sparko. As the minutes and hours passed I stripped off layers, removed the quilt and ended up, well frankly, in my birthday suit. And still I couldn’t sleep. The hotter I got, the more I felt the need to go to the loo…… a 30 metre walk away, in the near freezing cold outside. Get dressed, put on the head torch, go to the loo. Come back, strip off. Repeat etc At 1am I returned, and Cate stirred. She too hadn’t slept a wink. Sometime around 2 I think I fell asleep as the heat from the burner rapidly subsided. 


Of course, then it got cold, and the wind also rose significantly . So we were awoken numerous times. Put more layers on, go to the loo (me), repeat. Then a deep sleep and awoke at nearly 9am. Cate had joined the others for breakfast and had rightly left me. 


However, when I eventually joined the others, it transpired that virtually all of them had slept very badly. Either due to the heat, or animal noises, or wind, or people who couldn’t sleep, talking. Camping huh! All we can hope for, that the log burners are not fired so much tonight.


We had the option of joining our leader on a trek, going horse riding or just hanging out at the camp for the morning. The Americans were up for riding, the Brits, walking. Even me, and that was after Cate said that I’d pass on it whilst at breakfast.


I felt, well to be quite honest, shit! I was also a bit nervous about altitude sickness. The recommended way to acclimatise is to go up no more than 1000 metres per day, and we had gone up twice that coming to Son Kol. However, FOMO got the better of me. And boy, am I pleased I went. 






We got dropped off 10 minutes drive along the lake, and then headed up onto a number of ridges overlooking it. The views were spectacular. The air was thin, and it was tough going for all of us except James, our leader. He, of course, is an experienced mountaineer, and consequently as fit as the proverbial butcher’s dog. 





Down on the shore, and in the valleys below, the Kyrgyz nomads were herding their cattle. A truly spectacular sight, that we’d also encountered the previous day on our journey into the mountains. 





Along the way we also came across numerous “petroglyphs”, ancient decorations on stones. I’ve no idea how old they were, but they were nevertheless interesting.





And that was about it for the day. We had a stroll along the lake shore, and just chilled, trying to recuperate from that night’s “sleep”.


I hope tomorrow’s update doesn’t necessitate a “ cut and paste” of today’s first few paragraphs!

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