escape from the valley of death

Two days in the relative lap of luxury in a ex-soviet apartment block saw Holls and I searching for some adventure and wide open spaces. As haphazardly as ever we jumped on a bus heading in the rough direction of UGAM National Park. An hour later we were standing in a dusty, grimey little bus station in the town of Lenger with not a mountian peak, or the steppe in sight. Had we made a grave error...? Our usual course of action now in these situations is to find a cafe, chow down on some more tasty shashlik and a couple of ales. Emboldened with a little dutch (or kazakh) courage I headed off around the town waving a piece of paper with a Kazkah man's name on we heard could be of some use getting us out to the National Park. After a couple of hours I returned to the cafe to find Holly chatting with a couple of Russian security guards who seemed to at least know the street that this guy lived on.

They bunded us into a taxi and we all four set off, Holly and I saying a prayer and gripping the seat backs of the ageing Lada. Amazingly after asking a few people we rocked up to quite a fancy house and were ushered inside by a young girl who suggested we wait for her father, Alixhan, our contact.

When he finally arrived an hour later, Alixhan was midly surprised to see us, and was more interested in how on earth we had tracked him down having been given an incorrect phone number and address. We shrugged, and intimated that a higher force must be at work.

Alixhan, then proceed to sort us out, with firstly a slap up afternoon tea, then a ride out to Kaskasu, the jumping off point for the park. Not before his wife bargained her way around the bazar for us - see previous post.

Now we could actually see the Tian Shan mountain range and having been introduced to Dalibhay the park ranger we saddled our gear onto one of his horses and he led us out of the village and off into the park. After an hour or so we had entered a small canyon. The going was relatively slow, as we often had to ford the river, taking turns on the horse until we were all across. Dalibhay then pointed to a rock and thorntree infested patch of land and gestured that we pitch camp. Something akin to Brer Rabbit's briar patch, Holly and I looked dumfounded but pitched in as Dalibhay started to clear a patch of ground. This was to be base camp, with Dalibhay riding off after a quick toast of Kazakh vodka, promising to return the next day to shift us to a better camp and give us a days guided walk around the park.

We were fairly beat after a heavy days slog and curled up on the hard ground with little trouble drifitng off to the sound of silence, save the babbling of the adjacent brook.

At 10am the next day we had broken our fast and broken camp when we saw a lone head bobbing up and down through the thorn bushes. We were a little surprised to see Dalibhay's teenage son approach on the horse, but he seemed to know what he was doing as we loaded up the pack horse with our gear. He then pointed up the canyon and off we went on a merry trek. Now I'm all for adventure and Holly certainly isn't know to shy away from a challenge but a couple of hours later as the canyon walls rose 200m or so above us it was clear that our guide's was in the somewhat rudimentary stages of his career development. We were constantly forced to ford the river and battle our way through more thorny bushes, often climbing huge boulders, struggling with ALL (25-30kgs) of our baggage. It also became obvious that the Kazakh definition of campsite, was wildly at odds with the English one. Where was the flat, grassy areas, with toliet block and showers?? He did eventually point out a spot that could best be described as a landslide of boulders squeezed between a raging torrent and a cliff face. We cursed ourselves now for losing in translation the point of our trip, and decided that pro-action was the only way forward. It was agreed that we could go no further forward up the canyon, and I suggested it would take at least three hours to back track and that perhaps we should climb out of the canyon as, high above us it obviously flattened out to meadow. Our guide was to say the least, perplexed by my request, saying the canyon was too steep for the horse to climb but agreed to unload the bags and help us carry them out. This was a long, arduous, and at times down right fool hardy exercise which saw us clinging to the steep canyon as we scrabbled about on the loosed rocks and earth. Victoriously however after an hour or so the terrain changed as the canyon opened up to meadow. Our guide returned to the bottom of the canyon to fetch the horse and take the long way round to meet us at the top.

Two broken English soldiers emerged from the relatively dark confines of the canyon to a gloriously sunny day and the most jaw dropping canvas of colourful wildflowers rolling away to steppe which met the mighty Tian Shan a few kilometres away. After a lunch stop and a well earned rest we heard a whistle and on the next ridge we sae our guide galloping along no-handed waving my guitar and cheering! Reunited he led us to what was to date our best camp spot. Grassy it was, and water supply there was, and it was only on an incline of 1 in 12, so we might at least a sleep a wink or two. We relieved our guide of his duties for the day, again to a perplexed shrug of the shoulders, and sat back to feast on the 10 kilos of suppiles we had been forced to buy at the bazar the day before.

For the next 48 hours we wandered up and down this spectacular landscape seeing no-one but a couple of cow boys riding past on the second evening, waving hello as they cantered on. Stunning isn't the word for this corner of Kazakhstan, and hopefully given the time we'll get some pictures up.