Up the Karakoram Highway: Lake Karakol and the Mountain of Ice

It starts with a lesson in ticket-buying. We rock up 30 minutes before the scheduled bus departure and get told that the tickets have been sold out. A French couple rock up. We share a taxi to the international bus station and buy tickets for the bus to Pakistan. 2 1/2 hour wait.

We go into town. Next to the mosque, there's a Chinese woman taking a shit on the nature strip. Breakfast costs little - tofu/spring onion dumplings, and ricewine/milk soup with rice/sesame/nut dumplings. I mail some postcards. Takes the dude 20 minutes to find the stamps. At least I don't need to use Chinese for prices - Turkish is understood.

When we get back to the station, it seems that nothing is going to happen soon. There's the French couple, 3 Americans and a bunch of Pakistani men ogling the western women among them. The bus disappears, a jeep and minibus come. We have to pay 18 yuan extra each if we want to go anywhere. In the end we cave in and end up in a jeep with 3 Americans and an Pashtun dude from Jalalabad.

Good ride - the driver has a stash of Bollywood soundtracks, the van with the French couple breaks down and the Afghan dude almost jumps out of his seat with joy at the sight. The Karakoram highway is stunning - torrents of water, canyons of red cliffs, 7000m mountains looming above it all. We stop at a Kyrgyz roadside market and talk to a kid wearing an "I love Jesus" hat.

Getting to Lake Karakol, what I fear would happen happens : we get mobbed by impoverished people drooling at the prospect of getting our money. First, there's the dude collecting the 50 yuan entrance fee, then there's the dude running the commercial yurt, then there's the dudes with camels, souveneirs, etc. The whole tourist circus. When we make our move to get away from it all we are told that staying anywhere else is illegal and that the police will come and get us. So it's 25 yuan for a floor spot in a yurt.

It's damn beautiful though. Three 7500m mountains encircling a pristine lake, a setting sun.

At least the hot water for my instant shrimp noodles is free. Going for a walk we plot how to get away. We meet Anayidin. He tells us he can take us to his family's house in the Kyrgyz village on the other side of the lake. Ollie also meets Kaparelli, whom Jason had stayed with. We later find out that Kapareli had been taken away by the cops and beaten up.

We get up early the next day and eat breakfast in Kapareli's yurt - Yak ayran and yak milk tea. Anayidin rides out in front of us on his bicycle to make it look like we are travelling seperately. We sneak past the hotels, then rounding a bend come to walk right in front of the shining white Chinese police station complex. I wave to the cops and smile (wearing my turban). One waves back. We're through.

Anayidin's cousin's place is a homely mud-brick place with all the usual Kyrgyz shyrdaks and rugs. We drink tea at his friend's place, then decide to see how high we can go up the Mt. Mustagh-Ata ('father of ice' mountain - 7546m). It's not easy. The lake is at 3600m. Soon we feel like we are breathing through a straw and our bodies have turned to lead. However, dehydration is more of a problem that the altitude - we only have 500ml of water each. Yak shit makes eating snow dangerous.

In the next 6 hours we make it up to what must be 4500m or so. The views are stunning. Two dry valleys on both sides of a ridge, snow caps everywhere, the icy mass of Mustagh-Ata above us. Absolute silence. An eagle flies by around 50 meteres from me. I hear the scrape of air against the feathers. Not a cloud in the sky. We walk down the same ridge and meet some yaks before scrambling down a steep valley wall.

In the village, the kids have come home, they want to have their photos taken. We eat laghman cooked with yak poo and sleep well.

Getting out of Karakol proves as hard as getting in. We spend around 4 hours trying to hitch and even have a bus drive past. In the end I suggest we walk to the tourist hell of Lake Karakol. It's a good move. Heaps of Chinese day tourists doing the Chinese day tourist thing - buying souveneirs, riding camels, taking photos. One of the busses agrees to take us, for free.