Hiking the Alay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan (Part 2)

On Tuesday, August 11, I published Part 1 of my experience hiking the Alay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. If you haven’t read that post yet, I suggest you do to get caught up on the first four days on the trek before reading on to Day 5. 😉

Day 5

This was the first time during our trek when we had pancakes for breakfast, while we also had Ayran and another kind of porridge. My left leg felt a lot better than the prior day but going downhill was still a bit stressful. Meanwhile, the day started with our first yak spotting of the trek.

Hiking the Alay Mountains of Kyrgyzstan (Part 1)

During our trip to Kyrgyzstan, our focus was the eight-day Best of Alay Mountains Trek hosted by Visit Alay from July 19 to 26. They offer several trekking, horse, and cultural tours within Kyrgyzstan, as well as tours along the Pamir Highway in Tajikistan and within Uzbekistan. Our group had six trekkers including Zoe and Braden from Australia, Danilo from Italy, and Leila from Canada; as well as two guides Simon and Daniel. Our trip started and ended at the Visit Alay office in Osh, while most of our evenings were spent at yurt camps. Given the amount of content, I will split this post in two.

A Brief Recap About Kyrgyzstan

Two years ago, Helen and I visited Central Asia for the first time including Uzbekistan and Almaty, Kazakhstan; plus a few days in Istanbul. We enjoyed Uzbekistan’s rich history and cuisine including plov – their national dish of rice, meat, and vegetables – and shashlik meat skewers; while Shymbulak Peak in Almaty was a decent day hike. Since we wanted to further explore that part of the world and get some serious hiking in, we visited Kyrgyzstan this year including an eight-day trek in the Alay Mountains. I will do a separate post about that trek and will use this post to briefly recap Kyrgyzstan.

Wrapping Up Central Asia

My last two posts about the September trip to Central Asia focused on Uzbekistan; the first part dealing with Tashkent, Samarkand, and Shahrisabz while the second talked about Bukhara and Khiva. However, the trip also included four days in Almaty, Kazakhstan and another four days in Istanbul on the way back home. Let’s look at what Almaty has to offer, as well as some of the sights in Istanbul we didn’t explore back in December 2019.

Helen and I at the top of Shymbulak peak near Almaty