The best cheap trekking country on earth
Kyrgyzstan is what the Alps must have felt like a century ago, if the Alps had had yurts, fermented mare's milk and horse traffic jams. Ninety percent of the country is mountains, homestays and yurt camps are organised through excellent community tourism networks, and a day of travelling here, meals included, routinely costs less than 30 dollars. Ten days covering Song-Kul lake and the Karakol treks is the classic first route, and it earns that status.
Bishkek, one day of logistics
Bishkek is a green, low-slung Soviet grid with an excellent bazaar (Osh Bazaar, go hungry, leave with apricots) and enough cafes to plan the trip over laghman noodles for 250 som. Get cash, since almost nothing in the mountains takes cards, buy any camping gas or layers you are missing at the trekking shops, and find the Western Bus Station for the marshrutka network, the shared minibuses that are the circulatory system of the country. The CBT, or Community Based Tourism, offices in most towns will book homestays and yurt stays for a small fee and are worth using, especially for Song-Kul.
Kochkor and the road to Song-Kul
A marshrutka to Kochkor takes about three hours and 350 som. Kochkor is a one-street town that exists, from a traveller's point of view, to launch people at Song-Kul: arrange a yurt night and a shared 4x4 transfer here, or a two-day horse trek up and over the Kalmak-Ashuu pass if you have the extra day, around 40 to 50 dollars with a guide. Song-Kul itself sits at 3,016 metres, a vast silver lake in a treeless bowl of pasture where herding families summer with their flocks. A night in a guest yurt costs about 1,200 to 1,600 som with dinner and breakfast, and the evening ritual never varies: help bring in the horses if you are invited, eat mountains of plov under felt walls, step outside at midnight into a cold so clean it feels mineral, and look up at the Milky Way running the length of the sky. Mornings are for horse rides among the herds; even non-riders end up in the saddle here, since the local horses have carried worse.
Karakol, trekking capital
Back via Kochkor, marshrutkas run along Issyk-Kul, the world's second-largest alpine lake, to Karakol, six to seven hours total. The town itself is worth a day: the wooden Holy Trinity cathedral built without nails, the Dungan mosque that looks like a pagoda, and the Sunday animal market at dawn, where sheep are sold from car boots and men judge horses by feel. Eat ashlan-fu, the Dungan cold spicy noodle dish, for about 150 som in the bazaar, and organise your trek at one of several agencies or just self-arrange: trails are well trodden in season.
Ala-Kul and Altyn-Arashan
The three-day Ala-Kul trek is the highlight of the whole country. Day one climbs the Karakol valley to a riverside camp or the Sirota hut. Day two is the big one: up steep moraine to Ala-Kul, a two-kilometre turquoise lake pinned under glaciers at 3,532 metres, then over the 3,860-metre Ala-Kul pass, a breathless scree staircase with one of the great views of the Tian Shan, before dropping to the meadows of Altyn-Arashan. Day three you barely walk at all, because Altyn-Arashan is a green valley with a river, a handful of guest cabins and yurt camps at 800 to 1,200 som with meals, and concrete pools of natural hot spring water at about 40 degrees. Soaking your trek-wrecked legs while a storm rolls down the valley is as good as backpacking gets. A rough truck track leads back to Karakol; walk it or bounce down in an ex-military 4x4.
Season and money
July to mid September for the high passes; Song-Kul yurt camps operate roughly June to September. Snow can fall on the pass in any month, so carry real layers. All in, we averaged 2,000 to 2,500 som a day. Bring a headtorch, small som notes, and more appetite than you think you need.
