Ride and hike through Kyrgyzstan's high summer pastures to camp in a nomad's yurt beside alpine Song-Kol lake.
Kyrgyzstan is where Central Asia's nomadic tradition is still a living, working culture rather than a museum piece, and this trip is built around that fact. From Bishkek we head into the Tian Shan — the 'Celestial Mountains' — walking and riding through the Suusamyr and Kok-Jайык valleys where families still move their herds to jailoo summer pasture every June. The route climbs gradually to Song-Kol, a vast alpine lake at 3,000 metres ringed by open grassland, where we sleep two nights in a traditional felt yurt camp run by a local family.
Days are a mix of hiking, horse-trekking and simple camp life: milking mares for kumis, watching eagle hunters demonstrate their birds, and sharing bread and jam around a wood stove in the evening. It's a gentler physical challenge than the high Himalaya treks in this collection, but the scale of the empty green landscape — and the warmth of Kyrgyz hospitality — leaves an equally strong impression.
