The Last Yurt on the Left

As soon as we were on the other side, a podgy Kyrgyz man in a crowd of other men watching the clearing of the slide started screaming at me in Russian, too quickly for me to understand. He approached me with his hand raised, as if he were going to hit me in the back of the head, so I flinched and got out of arm's length as quickly as I could. The rest of the crowd, which included military and police officers, didn't even give the situation a cursory glance despite an obvious foreigner about to be whacked in the head.

Let’s Stick to Climbing on the Stones

Right at the base of the descent, the ground disappeared below my feet, and I fell into a crevasse.

Did you bring food?

We hiked across the stream and set up camp for the night at the Onion Field trailhead. The next day, we had absolutely fabulous weather for the hike to Camp 1, and only a few instances where we could not find the trail because of snow. Camp 1 is at about 4400 meters above sea level, which was the highest I had ever hiked to before (this is the elevation of Mt. Elbert in Colorado). Needless to say, I was stoked for everything beyond.

Return to Osh: Seeing the Next Objective

The next day, we drove back to Osh, but we had significantly better weather compared to when I drove this route in the other direction a week before. This made the stop at Kara Kul lake absolutely fantastic.

Khorog to Murghab: A Soldier’s Welcome

We arrived late in Murghab, just as it was completely dark, and went to the soldier's home, where a lot of his extended family was there to greet him. It was heartwarming to see such a return, and they welcomed Sailaubai and I in for the best two bowls of shorpa I had in Central Asia.

Ishkashim to Khorog: The Wheelbarrow & The Customs Officer

Anyhow, I now have a scar from the time I was in a bazaar in the neutral territory between Tajikistan and Afghanistan and got run over by a wheelbarrow.