How I Planned And Hiked The Ak-Suu Traverse In Kyrgyzstan

I'm going to share everything I know, all the behind the scenes of my trip and this is all helpful information that I kind of wish I knew when before I did my trip and did all my research so this should be super helpful to you and I think it'll motivate you to like actually commit to hiking the Aksu Traverse in Kyrgyzstan. So should you go to Kyrgyzstan It is tough to get to and a bit more difficult with the logistics and everything. Probably more expensive depending on where you're flying from but I think it is amazing and I think it'll be better than what you expect. It'll be something new hopefully. All this depends on who you are but me as an American I didn't know anything about Kyrgyzstan but it has really big mountains, it has beautiful beautiful landscapes, the horses, the food, the people and it feels a bit more wild obviously like Soviet era inspired architecture and food and language but very different. It's like a nomadic type of people, horse people. I don't you know I was there for the hiking but I was pleasantly surprised by everything else that I came across. For my trip I flew into I think it's the largest city Bishkek. Bishkek is right here on the border of Kazakhstan. Manas International Airport is where I flew in and then you take a cab into the city. I stayed in this area and the way that I pick where I stay when I do research is I look for coffee shops and like nice hotels. I'm also starting to learn that in places like this if you look for embassies as well usually the embassies are in a nice area and you'll find coffee shops and restaurants and hotels near the embassies. I just used booking.com to find you know something high quality at a low price and five hotel was where I I stopped in. $70 no-brainer easy. I also found some coffee shops nearby for you know food, coffee, wi-fi and just like a place that I can stop and think and figure out my next steps from. Yeah this is what I was saying these like Soviet era landmarks, statues and architecture were all super new to me so that's like the one thing that I did while I was in Bishkek like walk around and look at all the Soviet stuff because that's interesting to me because I'm not used to it. Let's see what else I walked around finding more coffee shops. Ala 2 square was like a main square area that was pretty pleasant to walk to during the the sunset and see all the families and everyone playing and hanging out you know business as usual. Oh I just remembered my situation was unique because I had a subscriber message me on Instagram before my trip and say that he wanted to pick me up from the airport bring me to his apartment and like get me breakfast. He had like a shower I could use. It was just super hospitable but a complete stranger other than you know the fact that he like subscribed to the channel and like told me I don't know is I let a stranger pick me up at the airport in another country and take me back to his place where I took a shower so uh you know if you visit as a westerner and you want some like high quality uh Kyrgyzstan food this is the place to go. The prices are probably a little higher than other places in the city but you're going to like get this and you'll be happy like the meat and the vegetables and the potatoes oh the tomatoes and cucumbers onions. So after I spent some time in the city I had to get all the way over to closer to the trail so the trail is over here this is where Bishkek is so I messaged a Kyrgyzstani influencer Ibrahim on Instagram. I was talking to him and he was giving me advice for what to do and how to get around and he set up drivers. He was super friendly and helpful with just like taking care of that and I definitely overpaid a bit but it was worth it just for the peace of mind. I think I paid like fifty to a hundred dollars to get from here to Karakol and if you... it's a long drive. In my video you like you can see a little bit of that journey but it's like a six hour drive. We went on the south and there was a ton of construction like a ton of construction so it took forever. So like a seven hour taxi ride for $75 honestly is not that bad. Not that bad at all. The alternative was to fly from the airport to another airport over here but they only do that like I think two days a week and my timing it just didn't work out. I could have made one of the flights if I didn't spend any time in Bishkek but I arrived on a red eye so I thought you know I needed a solid sleep. I just wanted to like get situated before I left so I made that trade-off you know of having to do the drive and it wasn't too bad. Honestly I just like watched shows and listened to music and just kind laid in the back. But then I reached Karakol. So Karakol is awesome. I love it. It's obviously a smaller town. It's almost like a mountain town. It reminded me of like Colorado ski towns because of these big mountains right here there is a ski resort somewhere. Yeah ski base. Ski base. It would be fascinating to go skiing in Kyrgyzstan. That would be so cool. I want to come back and do that. But I arrived and went straight to a hotel that my contact Ibrahim hooked up for me. I think it was yeah Mongu Mini Hotel. Once again super cheap. I think I was the only person staying there. But it was nice to have a place to charge. Wi-Fi. Everything was simple. You know breakfast up in their little little tree house. Some views of the city like an easy place to drone from. So it was good. I ended up going to a different place on my way out but what I liked about it was it was a quick walk over to this main street. And this main street is where I found Sportmaster. Sportmaster had propane tanks so that was good. And then I went to Caracol Coffee. Got some coffee. And there was a supermarket here so I got some groceries there. And there was also a bank ATM. I don't know if it was this one but it was like really close to here where I was able to get some more cash. Because all of the drivers wanted cash. I remember that. So I had a big wad of bills you know. So my plan was in motion. I had another driver scheduled to pick me up in the morning after breakfast there. And then drive me to the trailhead. So let's switch over to AllTrails. I made four AllTrails recordings. And if you you can click on the individual activities to go to my profile to see. And that's the best place to get the information because there's photos that are geolocated. And then yeah it's just helpful to have the photos as well. As well as my timing exactly where I went. My pacing. My total time. So you know I back and I go back and forth between like should I make one custom route map that has all the four sections together with no photos. Because AllTrails doesn't let you upload photos to custom maps now which is crazy. I don't know why they don't do that. But yeah one of the photos I took in the hotel before I departed was my gear. So this might be helpful to see. This is everything I brought. I've got the Hyperlite Unbound 45. And all of this gear I have linked easy for you in the description of the video. So I'll go through like what I brought and why. But you can also see it there. So because I was making a video I had some extra weight. And you can kind of see that right here. A DJI Air 3 drone. It's got the two lenses. I think it's good to have the wide and the telephoto. Gives me some good options for filmmaking. Higher quality. Better in the wind. I think like longer duration batteries so I can fly further away because it's faster and stronger. But it's just heavier. You know it's a trade-off of quality and stability for the weight. Especially depending on how many batteries you brought. I brought three in total. So one, two, three. The controller, the camera, the Sony EV-ZV1 with a 16-35mm f4. It's just the one lens that I need to do everything. This tripod is fantastic with the like the Joby mount. A little bag that can be waterproof for my electronics. So things that I don't want to ever touch water I can store in here. That's a battery bank. I think 20,000 milliamps. Three extra Sony batteries. So four in total. One in the camera. Three here. And I could stretch these to probably one per day. So you know without charging these batteries I was I had more than enough to shoot everything I needed for the video. A headlamp. Ultralight. A clip to hang the camera off my front. Three breakfast granola berries. The propane I bought. A cup for coffee and tea. A jet boil for boiling cooking meals. Hat. Shades. And then I've got some coffee packs. Peanut butter. Pistachios. Rice. An egg. Rice seasoning. I think these are instant coffees that I stole from the hotel. Ramen. Bad ramen. This ramen is gross. Seaweed. Rice. Miso packs. Tea. And dates. I trying to remember if I brought enough food. I don't think I did. I don't think I did. I should have had a couple more meal packs probably. Yeah. A puff. A shell. Therm-a-rest. Sleeping pad. A blow-up for the therm-a-rest. Sleeping bag. I think 20 degree. 20 degree sleeping bag. Yeah. Yeah. Gloves. Hat. Scarf. Shorts. Sun hoodie. A mid-one tent. This was the first time that I was using this. Pulls. Like a mid-pull. The tent and stakes. And then shoes. Trail runners. This would be the last time that I used this tent on a hike I believe. I already got rid of it. I'm back to my Nemo Hornet. I didn't like the size of it. How long it took to set up. The fact that like the other half where my bag goes was like bare to the ground so it would get muddy. And just for like the bulk of it like I still didn't fit. I didn't have enough room. I just I didn't like. I like my Nemo Hornet better. So okay. Once again I think the price was around 50 to 100 dollars for a much shorter. I think it it still took me maybe like two hours maybe to get up here. I can't remember exactly but it's deceiving. It's a really short path. Short distance but this road isn't the best. And then as soon as you get to this area up here it is very winding and there is construction and it was just like difficult to get up here. It was surprising. And I expected to get all the way up here with the car but he dropped me off very early which wasn't ideal. I expected to go up further and he could have but there was like some construction for like a bridge. He would have had to cross like a pretty crazy river here or something. But getting dropped off here and walking up wouldn't be the end of the world. It would just like wouldn't be fun because it's a road walk. The road ended here at this point and that's what I show with this photo. I'm like finally I'm on trail. I feel better but this kind of messed up my timing a bit. I didn't expect to spend half the day walking up on this road. And it was a 10 mile day. Yeah this is like I don't know it's just like surprising. Like a lot of elevation gain. Well not too bad. 7,000 feet to 11,000 feet. So yeah I was starting to feel the altitude a little bit but this wasn't that big of a day for me. So I was a little discouraged by that fact. And up here this was when I flew my drone and the clouds started to roll in. So I just I was in a really bad mood because I had to do the road walk. I was feeling the altitude. The clouds were rolling in. It was about to like rain and hail. So I had to set up my tent really quickly here. Yeah right here. So I'm in my tent and this happened almost every day. Like at some point the clouds would just come in. It's like a really heavy downpour shower and then it goes away. It's like a maybe 10 or 20 or 30 minute thing. But it was discouraging. I think that's probably why it took. Yeah I have four hours of moving time and seven and a half hours of total time. So like that's almost three hours of not moving while I'm still recording. So you know so I continued up the valley. And here let's switch to 3D satellite mode. Yeah these all trails recordings are just helpful. And I'm starting to record more information like places you can set up camps. Like if I should have taken a photo of this camp. But you can see it in my video a little bit going up. And then once I reached this spot it was completely socked in. So it was just also just disappointing in that fact. It seems like a little thing of snow but it's actually big. And I couldn't really go over it. I had to go all the way around it. And then down in the fog until I reached a spot where I could set up my tent. Because it started to rain. Maybe because I was below the fog. But I was just done. I was just done. It's kind of silly because like it would be easier just to go this way. You know like but I don't know that's where the path told me to go. So and in the morning I would take drone footage of these lakes. But I didn't see too many great views this first day. Still getting into the mountains a bit. So yeah that's the first day. Second day a bit more mileage. 13.6 with more elevation gain. More moving time. But still like this is a very big difference. It's almost four hours of downtime while hiking. So I'm taking breaks. I'm taking long lunches. I'm waiting for the the rain and hail to move through. So interesting. It's good to know. And I did this hike in early June of 2025. So I don't know. You can check the best time to go. This is like the best time that I felt I should go. I don't know what the weather is going to be like in different times. Obviously different snow packs, different seasons, different years. This is just what I did and what I experienced. So that's all I can tell with satisfaction. So I hiked down. Saw a bunch of horses. So these are just horses chilling. Cool to see a lot of them. The babies. Down into the valley. What's this? Oh yeah views of more horses with the big mountains in the background. So yeah I finally started to see one with the drone but then also one foot. Like some snow-capped mountains. Some bigger ones. And obviously once I get up over this pass this is when I start to get really big views of the glacier mountains in the back. And as you can see it's blue skies, great weather. Put me in a much better mood. Looking back like the really green grassy hills. It's really pretty. Looking up over the pass. This is where I'm going. Yeah some really big peaks. Start to feel a lot better. Down here I took this photo because this was an easy stream crossing but like one that you kind of want to find the correct way across to not get wet. So there's different levels of stream crossings. So the snow is melting. It's June. So late spring. So all of the snow melt is making all the streams and rivers gushing and bigger. So always keep that in mind. Because streams can be dangerous and they can ruin your time. And there's a difference between like trying to not get wet and then trying to not get swept away and killed. So oh yeah. I think yeah second group of yurts. So I would say most of them had people. And I passed a group of yurts before sunset on the other side of that where I camped. And there was no one there. But maybe they were just inside. But when I passed this one I found other hikers like Germans and whatnot talking and eating breakfast. So this is definitely a place where I could have slept. They would charge you money. They'd probably have food for you. But you could sleep. You could probably set up a tent near here. Easy. They probably would charge you. But if you're sleeping there you're probably eating there. And they have a bathroom. So that's nice. So that's good to know. And that definitely would be like a cash only type of place. But a lot of these yurts honestly had Starlink which was surprising. So first time that I'd seen like Starlink heavily used out in the wilderness. Another stream crossing. Or no this is yeah this is the same one I just showed. Like I said it wasn't like tricky or dangerous. It was just difficult to stay dry. You needed to find a spot. So climbing whoa whoa whoa climbing up past this lake. Good views. I went really slowly up here I remember. I remember taking a break to eat lunch I think right here. And just feeling winded. So what I was I was at you know just shy at 12,000 feet. So you'll feel that. You'll definitely feel that. And I felt winded. Absolutely. I really did not acclimatize at all for this. And it showed. It showed for sure. This pass was amazing. There was some snow up there. But totally nothing to hinder me in any way. Clouds started to roll in. And then looking down. Yeah this was an amazing valley. And just the way that the river. Because it's like such big open spaces that no trees. You just get to see the the way that the river winds when it has enough room to to go. Just the grass is pretty. Really was a beautiful beautiful place. So I think that was looking this way. And there's some glaciers. The trails were pretty great. Easy to follow. A lot of times it was just this like compacted grass. Wasn't wasn't muddy. No it was pretty dry. It was fine. And even though it was raining like a little bit every day. Everything was pretty good. Just the wide open views with no trees. It's just really nice up here. And then once I came through this and then looked this way. This is where that really nice view of this peak with the valley and the river and the grass was just amazing to to look at. Like at the mountains. It almost like would have been worth it to go up this way a little bit. Just for more footage of this area. But my path sent me the other way. And I think it's a dead end anyway. There might be like some cool alpine lakes to look at up here. But I'm not sure how far you could go past this this area. I was feeling good going down past the yurt camp. I don't think much was going on with that one. Stream crossing. This had a bridge. So right here there was a bridge. And there was another bridge right here. This river would have been very difficult and a bit dangerous to cross. But I'm pretty sure there was another bridge crossing here. Because I remember thinking yeah there it is. There's the photo. See this is why I take photos. This is why all trails is great. So there's a little um. Okay you know you could cross this but you're going to get very wet. You're going to get very cold. You're going to have a very bad time. Still not dangerous I think. But having these bridges you definitely search them out. Because I remember thinking that I'm like I could cross here or you could cross here. Okay I stopped and had a very long lunch and nap here. I remember because I was just feeling very fatigued and tired. Especially looking up at this view and realizing that I had to go up up up for the next hour. There were so many sheep and goats. This picture doesn't do it justice. It was just covered. The whole mountainside was covered. So that was cool. It was always fun to see those animals and the herders kind of following them along. But yeah I had to work up the motivation to start this and up up up extremely slowly. A lot of breaks. And I planned on getting over the top into the next valley. But I completely gassed out around here. Yeah looking back is just it was a bit hot as well with the direct sunlight. And I ended up right here. Because like you can see the pass it's right there. And then once you get over the pass you can easily muster the strength to get down. And I had a bit of time. But this spot was gorgeous. And you can see it in the video. Like this does not do it justice. I didn't take any photos right here for all trails. But it had a little like a perfect little stream. There was nobody up there. I was completely isolated and and it was private. It was nice. Great view. So I set up my tent there to take early dinner and sleep. And I was I like I was going so slow at that point. Yeah 11,000 feet. 11,000 feet. I mean it's not like it's not Peru elevations. But it's still up there. It's enough to feel. It explains why I was dogging it. Yeah I think it it rained every night. So having a tent that could handle the rain in the night was super important. There's water everywhere when I you know in June obviously. So filtering water was not an issue. Like I said you could sleep and eat at the yurts most of them that you pass. But I didn't. I just wasn't feeling it most of the time until this last day or day three. Yeah so Kyrgyzstan. Traverse day three. 13 miles. Almost 5,000. So very similar. Just a shorter day. And once again the offset is a little better. But maybe two and a half hours of breaks. Half an hour pace per mile. All right so I woke up and crushed this pass. You know thinking to myself this was so easy I should have just done it. But whatever. Once I reach the top. Yeah just oh gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Like the green grass and the rivers. So pretty. And then looking the other way. Oh yeah a bunch of rocks with a shovel marking the peak. And then going down the other side. I don't know like could I have set up my tent up there? The thing is there would have been no running water. So where I sleep I want water to boil for food and tea and stuff. So it wouldn't burn worth it. I think I just had my one liter bladder. So I didn't like carry any extra water because it was so abundant. So yeah these are like these seem like horse trails. Trails that a horse would make. Hiking with no trees is interesting because you can always see where you're going. So it feels like time is moving slowly because because not much is changing. Because you you can see everything. Whereas when you're in the trees you you like feel bored and you can't see much. You're just in the trees and like looking at what's immediately around you. And then every so often it opens up and you have a view. So that's nice. So it's different. But for drones this is fantastic. Like it's much easier to fly lower with you and the trail because there's no trees to hit. There's just a lot of different like positives and negatives. This valley was a bit wider I remember. And a lot of animals. Not too much going on. This was a long long ways. I do remember the drone shots that I got aiming this way with the squiggling river were pretty cool. And then what is this? Oh yeah we got the shrubs and the first bit of trees. So you know just going down down down until there's more and more trees. Different. So it got a little steeper. More horse gates and horse fences and stuff at this point. And then I think this marked like a road area. So you could definitely ride drive at this point. And then passing a bunch of yurts and a bunch of like small farming infrastructure until I reached Alte Erosion. So this was the biggest area. It was touristy for the first time. There were multiple hotels choices. Restaurants, yurt camps, hot springs that were just like rocks pools with rocks I think. I don't know if there was geothermal activity. But a very nice bridge. So this was on the bridge looking that way. This is a river that you could not cross. So there's a very nice bridge there. There's a reason why you know all this infrastructure has happened here. A bunch of like horse riders and all their dogs. Always a dog following the horses which is always nice. This little shop I didn't I didn't go into just because it was busy. But obviously a place that you could restock and buy some stuff. I stopped into this hotel because they had Starlink. Yeah you can see the Starlink right there. They had a place to wash hands and I got some tea and like biscuits. So like a quick snack just because they did breakfast and I arrived like after breakfast. So they were cleaning up everyone left and I was like the only person there and they stopped all the food stuff. They could have cooked something if they wanted to but I just did something easy and then moved on my way. And you can see me walking around getting shots in the different areas. I considered going to one of the hot springs just to show what that was like but I was told that these were like not good ones and that if you're going to go to like a hot spring that actually looks good for photo and video. I think there's one in here on the way up because there's a road that follows the river. The one down here is much better and like aesthetic for Instagram. Following this path on this side of the river through the forest was the most mud I saw on the trip because this was a like a horse highway. A lot of people drive up to here from Karakol and then they ride horses up to the lake and then back down or back down the other side. So this was the busiest touristy area of where I was hiking for a reason. It's beautiful but this was a bit trickier to walk on until I reached this spot where it opened up a bit more and then turned to climb. This was a spot where people could rent horses. So these people talked to me. They like you know came up and tried to sell me a horse ride but I told them no no no I'm walking walking but there were you know I don't know what the price would be but I'm sure a lot of people do that. So you could probably get a horse here. You could get a horse here and it's like no reservations. You just roll up and get a horse. So if you want to do that you can. Climbing climbing climbing. Every so often horses would pass me. I saw maybe six or seven other hikers while doing this trek this day just because this area was busy but the previous two days other than the three or four Europeans I saw at the year, I don't think I saw a single other hiker walking and moving. I saw horse riders and local people but I didn't see anyone so it was extremely empty or early in the season. I don't know. Oh yeah these little guys marmots. I call them marmots. Gophers. I don't know. Prairie dogs. Yeah this was a bit of a slog and was it right here? I think right here another rainstorm came so I quickly set up my tent just to escape the hail and the hail was pretty extreme. It was hammering down on the tent and how high was I? So I was above 12 at 12 right here so the altitude the fatigue was getting me. I didn't think I had enough time or energy to get up over the pass and then to like do stuff over here so I decided to sleep at this yurt camp because there were a bunch of people here. There was like a whole horse group so I knew that they were cooking food and it was like all good so. Can I see the pass? I think I don't remember if this is the pass or this. I think the pass is like over here to be honest because I remember going this way. Let's see if I've got a photo of where I slept. Yeah here's my my tent in the the skeleton of the yurt. I thought that was fun. Oh yeah going the wrong way. Let's zoom in a little bit more. Oh yeah here's the food. Can I just here let me see like all the photos. Yeah okay so here's inside the yurt. You can also see this in the video obviously. It was me and maybe one other like english-speaking hiker that I talked to but then he left after dinner to go back down because he was like not feeling good and then maybe two other Europeans and a couple other Asian tourists so maybe like five or six of us up here but I thought the food was good. Just like noodles and garlic and some veggies and broth and potatoes carbs right and then I ate as many nuts as I could and dates are always good. The bread the stale bread was not good. I destroyed tea after tea after tea but I think Kyrgyzstani like restaurant food is pretty good. Like all the huts I think they're pretty good compared to other places in the world. I was pleasantly surprised. Yeah and everyone else was sleeping in the yurts but I wanted to sleep in my tent just because I had it and it was cheaper. Very cheap. I forget what I paid. I should have marked what I paid but then I slept and then I was hoping oh yeah the weather also wasn't that good in the sun like the end of the day so that made me want to like reset and hopefully get better weather the next day. Okay the last day. I'll explain it but I didn't think this would be my last day. My plan was to do even more but I ended early. So woke up, had breakfast, eggs and potatoes and whatnot. Paid the guy and then set off. I think I was the first one to get up on this side but there were a big group of people who came up the other morning like the same morning from this side and met me up here at the same time. So yeah I would say more people were going this way than the way that I was going. This was pretty steep. It was not the most steep I've ever seen but it was a little sketchy because as you can see the direction of the sun makes it the cold side so this is the shady side and there was a bit of ice and snow so there was like one or two spots where the ice was like legit tricky and you had to be careful and a lot of the older hikers I saw like getting like help with the guides and there was actually a group going over and one of the guys like one of the older gentlemen like legit couldn't do it and I think he was gonna like head back because he couldn't get down over the ice so I think he could have like I didn't see the end of that the conclusion of that but I think the guide was trying to like find an alternative path over here. It would be insane if they just head back because of that but just to know it's a little tricky but the views up here obviously you can tell uh you know world renowned unique beautiful the amount of big mountains with view like the views of the big mountains the beautiful turquoise lake the size of the lake the steepness of this on both sides and then like looking back it's really good it's just a really unique spot. Do I regret not camping down here at the lake? Kind of? I mean it would have been cool if I had good weather but I didn't even go down to the lake I just skirted around this this side trail here would have been cool to to camp here there like multiple free tent spots that's what it says here on all trails and that is true that is true uh let me let me open up I swear I took photos so for some reason I didn't upload did I not upload any photos yeah I didn't upload any photos okay so I'm going to fix that but for now you can see this here me here in the tent and this was the view with the drone up there and you can see the other people with me chilling at this top area and um oh yeah that was looking up at the pass so I don't know if you can see the trail and is that a person yeah so that's a person oh so that's a person gives you a little bit of perspective um yeah how steep I need to add these to the all trails so it's a dirt path so you kind of take one step lose half a step take one step lose half a step it was not scree but it was like loose dirt um looking back the way I came oh yeah here's here's the group going down and I think this is the old person no that's one of the guides that's one of the guides and even the guides were like go slow go slow I was like all right um a bunch of Dutch this was a Dutch group I even had them take a photo for me which was nice uh the flowers up there fantastic I was taking some photos of the campsites down on the lake shore so this was like the super telephoto on my iPhone um they look great though yeah like it would be a good spot for the snowfall and the season it was pretty cold up there with the snow uh but you could I could have totally set up my tent there and had water um yeah I need to add these to the all trails so once I left that area I just I you know I did my drone I did my shots I didn't stay too long and then once you get past it gets a lot steeper and there's like a big set of waterfalls here they say rocky place for tents but I didn't really see too many it was it seems like a hard place to tent camp here um let's see yeah these waterfalls were very big hard to put it in scale I need a person for scale but the trail past right like this is the trail right here right past this huge river going down this year camp definitely had some stuff going on you can see once again it was after breakfast so they were cleaning up um no one like everyone was gone everyone left but you could definitely get some food wi-fi and sleep there for a small fee and it was in the tree line I remember and then going down just got greener and greener and greener but the clouds were coming in it was kind of getting starting to get a little rainy so I made it down to this area which was gorgeous a lot of pine trees and uh you know gorgeous gorgeous spot it was a huge river that I could not have crossed so there was a bridge and um and it was just rainy so I walked around a little bit and tried to figure out my plan my plan actually was to continue up over this area and make it over to this and then this is where I would get picked up and it would have been a much easier jeep ride out this is also another way out there is a road but it's nasty it's muddy it's jagged it's like a very difficult drive so you have to have a more four by four rugged terrain vehicle to get out and because I took so much time the first day that kind of pushed my whole trip as far as timing I mean I could have it would have been tough for me to take another day to do because I probably would have had to sleep there's no way I could have done the whole hike up and over so the timing just didn't work out I intended to do like maybe 60-70 miles in total but I was like I have enough for a video I'm out so um at the wi-fi of this area I actually told my contact I'm going to be in two days I'll be at this spot could I get the jeep here and he was like yeah we'll switch that I'll send a guy up it'll be a hundred dollars though so very expensive but honestly this was the craziest road I had ever seen and I don't know if I could have driven it and his jeep was insane so fine whatever just the business expense but I had a little time to kill before like the timing of when he would pick me up because like we said two o'clock and I got there like maybe 11 or something so I walked around and you know took this little footbridge over took pictures of this gorgeous horse escaped the rain until this guy picked me up in his soviet era jeep they don't call it jeeps though they call it something else at some point he had to do something to like the tires to I think put air in them or something or tighten something because the road was rough and then we got to a point where it's more a smooth normal road and he like had a cigarette break he was like chain smoking cigarettes this whole time but he was like a young guy who was kind of chill didn't speak much english but we listened to like music he was he was like blaring like like soviet or like russian I don't know it was like really funny european dance music so and at this spot you can see it in my video but on the other side there's also like a big van like a soviet era van with a little family selling snacks and food and coke so you could buy something there there was also like a little farmer here that cooked me food and let me use their star link for a price like maybe five bucks I don't know so it was nice to escape the rain and eat some food and have some wi-fi there and then I walked over to this campsite area and they were actually building really nice lodges and that's like in the video you can see those guys building so maybe they're done by now and you can stay there I told them like I want to come back because these lodges they're like I think they were a-frame like aluminum wood and they looked really cool the views were fantastic so I was like I'll come back let me put this in the video and they're like okay okay um yeah yeah it doesn't look that bad but this was an insane drive from here to here was insanity and then once you hit this little spot it switches on to the main road and then it's gucci from there back in town I decided to try a new spot this any rest this was legit a house with many rooms with one old woman and her cat absolutely fantastic stay uh this is her cat I think she had a couple cats uh but she cooked me breakfast she was adorable she didn't speak much English just enough uh put this hat on me took this photo for me and uh the cat was hanging out so look at this this breakfast well you got the bread the bad bread again I don't I just bread has to be good for me to eat it so I just didn't yogurt was good zero notes tea simple eggs were good cucumber tomato ollie always and forever but uh places during my entire time in Kyrgyzstan people were trying to get me these hot dogs and uh I something about them gave me the ick so I just never had those hot dogs I felt so bad just like leaving the hot dogs so I'd at least like cut them in half I don't know it's just funny um me rolling around in my uh crocs with my suntan I think that's me showing Mika like uh how bad my suntan went I think in the video you can see me drying stuff out it was nice that I just like have a private room um I think that night I went to this bar and had a drink where was that spot that was a it was a pleasant spot it was definitely touristy yeah the hut the hut a lot of tourists English speakers um but a cool spot if you want to grab a drink and then this is also the OG this was a nice so for locals you know it's nice but for me as a new yorker dirt cheap prices but professional you know like an actual menu wi-fi the food was good like the servers are very like professional and you can just get whatever food you want like endless delicious food I got Chinese and breakfast there and rice and coffee shishuka yeah um I went to this place every day probably twice just like work and eat and drink coffee and it was big so I had plenty of room I love places like this I completely abused it as a American traveling with dollars and then before I left Karakol I actually met up with Ibrahim here he is so it was nice to finally meet the guy who was helping me and he brought me to this place and we had this delicious no no no wait oh that was the drive no that wasn't that place I didn't take a photo of what we ate but it was good it was this like popular it's got like almost 6 000 reviews on google but there's like traditional kerg food done well a bit more expensive to local standards but absolutely cheap to me so it was good um and he insisted on buying dinner for me which was insane it was so nice of him uh okay so then um after that trip I hired another he booked me another driver to get to the next leg of my journey which would be the horse trek karakol kaizar yeah so I would be going from karakol to here so another long drive five hours so maybe six or seven hours with a stop right here and that stop right there was to eat this amazing breakfast or lunch with my driver he spoke no english uh loved coke he had his like his dish and I had this amazing I was like this was perfect we got pepper we got tomato cucumber rice steak onion coffee and I swear all of that was like ten dollars so zero notes all throughout Kyrgyzstan these king boxing like punching bag machines everywhere everywhere every every gas station every restaurant had one of those outside so it was really funny to see um I think we stopped for a second just to like look at this place I should have droned but just I think it was midday so it wasn't that interesting like I would have needed sunrise or sunset to get the shadows on the hills a little bit to get some contrast but I remember there was a ton of construction along this lake for the road and also lodges like they were building a-frames everywhere there was so much so much uh investment so it's interesting to see and that's it so the next leg of my journey was a horse trek with another group going south and I think I might make a video about that because I haven't really talked about it but that'll be a separate video so that's about what I can share from my journey watching the video that's on YouTube and then watching this and then also looking at the all trails activities I think should tell you a lot it should help but of course if there's any specific questions that I forgot or missed or you have that I didn't think of leave a comment and I will do my best to like treat it like I'm like helping you like I'm your personal hiking guide assistant for this trip so just like drop a comment and I hope this helped thank you so much for watching and I hope you go hike in Kyrgyzstan and if you do for sure let me know I would love to hear how it was if this was helpful I love seeing YouTube videos from people doing the same hikes as well because I get a little refresher and like I remember that spot but also like it's it's cool to see some kind of impact from these videos and inspiring people to do the hikes as well so all right take care thank you