Day 25

Last night we stayed at two (CBT) community based tourism houses. The families were brother and sister and lived a few doors apart from each other. They were hosts to two American peace corps volunteers Jonathan, in the house Joe, Andy P, Ben, Chris and I were in and Erin was with the other group. They are here for two years, Johnathan works in a local women's co-operative where they sell the traditional felt rugs (shyrdaks), he's teaching them to put a business structure in place, Erin works in the local school. I knew the US peace corps existed but really didn't know what they did - I now have a healthy respect for their work.

Anywho..

We arrived relatively late last night and we were all cooked a dinner by my host family served in a yurt in the garden. A traditional noodle dish with lots of bread and tea. A really good meal after a spectacular but long day on the road.

We had breakfast with our families - ours in the yurt - a great meal of home made bread, yoghurt, sweet curd and semolina with home made raspberry jam - jam's a big thing over her - and delicious.

We were soon packed and said our goodbyes to our families. Half of us fuelled the cars whilst the rest visited the local bazaar for food to take to Song-Kol lake for the next few days. At the handicraft shop we met two women from - of all places - Knowle - near Solihull.

The road to Naryn passes over the Dolon pass and after about 20km a track heads off into the mountains towards the picture post card of Kyrgyzstan - Song Kol Lake. The track is called 32 Serpentines for reasons that became spectacularly obvious after passing through a long flat hanging valley where we had lunch. On the way up to the lake we came across a Discovery 2 so stopped to have a chat with the Russian guy driving it - good job really as we'd gone slightly wrong and he guided us up the right track. At the end of the valley the fun and the photo opportunities presented themselves in spades. Despite Andy Powell's huge lenses and photographic skills I doubt the shots can be used by marketing - the cars are absolutely filthy having spent the previous day on dirt tracks in the rain..

Song-Kol is a huge lake surrounded by summer pasture and ringed by snow covered peaks. It's a beautiful and peaceful place to be and we're all looking forward to a day off tomorrow. It's the very start of the season here in the mountains and the snow has only just disappeared and it's a bit chilly so only a few herds of horses are here. Wierdly the lake is 29km by 18km long but only 13m deep!

We set up camp at the lake side and cracked open a few beers and here I am tapping away at the keyboard with my fellow leg 2ers - the dream team - knocking up dinner. Tonight it's couscous with chorizo and cabbage (given to us by a Kazakh truck driver that we lift back to his truck with a repaired hydraulic hose on the steppe in Kaz a few days ago).

Its getting dark now and dinner calls so I'll leave it to Tom to fill you in on the rest of this evening in his blog tomorrow..