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ABOUT
KOCHKOR AND SONG KUL
| Where I
slept: |
Kochkor:
private house (Shepherd's life and Community Based
Tourism (CBT) associations) 8$/night
Lake Song Kul: yurt tent (Shepherd's life and Community
Based Tourism (CBT) associations ) 10$/night
|
| Getting
there and away: |
From Bishkek
to Kochkor: minibus (about 4$, 5 hours), it's not
convenient, take a shared taxi!! I hope you don't
suffer the motion sickness.
From Kochkor to Karakol: minibus (7 hours). there's
not direct connection!
Kochkor - Lake Song Kul: private jeep (3 hours,
50$ two ways) find somebody to share the expense
or hitch hike, on the way back I walked half of
the way and the few cars that passed stopped offering
me a lift (of course you have to pay something)
|
| Special
activities: |
in Lake
Song Kul: horse riding or trekking |
Kochkor is mainly considered
a starting point for the trekking in the mountains of
central Kyrgyzstan, but, although quite a small town,
I found it interesting. They looked exotic all its bright
green and orange Lada cars, and the old men wearing their
typical high caps sat on the benches and answering so
politely to my greetings. In the town there're the Shepherd's
life and Community Based Tourism (CBT) associations, that're
a no profit association whose aim is to connect the people
who travel in the region with the locals. I used them
either to find a private house where I slept in Kochkor
either to know how to get and in which yurt sleep at 3000m
near lake Song Kul. They are well organised, and I really
recommend you to drop by there, moreover it's the best
way to let your money spread in the community.
There are 3 categories of private
houses where you can sleep in Kochkor according to the
price. The house I slept belonged to the middle one, it
was clean and the housewife was nice, taking for granted
bathroom it's a hole outside in the garden, but this is
a standard in Kyrgyzstan.
As concerns the trip to the mountains
there're an endless number of different opportunities:
from one day to one month, by foot, by jeep, or by horse..
I think you could trek for months without stepping on
the same trail.
I was lucky, because as soon as
the minibus dropped me off I found a so nice danish guy,
known to weeks before in Samarkand, who was leaving for
3 days trip to the lake Song Kul sleeping the yurt of
the herders at 3000 meter. To share the expenses of the
jeep I joined the group (him and some other travellers)
and I spent three wonderful days in a kind of heaven on
the lake bank. The herders were settled in group of few
yurts spread on an endless relative flat green area. All
around were just free horses and the white smoke of some
far yurt lifting to the sky. The lake is extremely big
to be an alpine one: about 30 km long and maybe 10 km
wide. An old herder convinced us to swim saying it was
warm: my god how much I suffered to enter in the water;
only the swedish girl felt at easy, but Sweds don't count
in such thing ;-) Apart from this painful experience the
lake was perfect in the morning to rinse the face feeling
fresher with all the horses wandering around me! The place
is perfect to ride horses, in fact we rented some (7$
all the afternoon) and had a great trip towards the other
herder camps. As concerns the food you don't have to bring
from the civilisation, they have the essential you need:
as soon as we arrived they killed a calf (poor animal,
I felt guilty :-( , we had with bread and rise for the
dinner. While for breakfast there was bread with jam.
My only regret was first of all
not to have a sleeping bag, in fact I literally froze
during the night when the temperature outside the yurt
dropped some degree below zero. Then not to have time
for a long trekking trip in the area, as it would have
deserved.
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