Fast becoming one of the planet’s trendiest trekking destinations, James Draven finds that the ‘Alps of the East’ are still a whole world away from your average walking holiday
The fog descends like a sledgehammer, bringing darkness and disorientation. Minutes earlier, we’d been slathering on sunscreen and snapping selfies by the side of an alpine lake, its looking-glass waters reflecting landscapes redolent of the Swiss Alps – except our photos were dotted with distant yurts and the occasional nomad on horseback, herding cows with the aid of bright-eyed Alsatians. Eagles soared on thermals, silhouetted by the fierce glare of sunlight. Our hiking shirts were bibbed with sweat, due to the blazing heat and the strenuous trek to get there.
Now, scrabbling back down the mountain to tonight’s campsite, we’re instead slick with cloud vapour. The fog rolls through the landscape with the speed and intensity of a malfunctioning dry-ice machine, deleting unnamed snow-capped peaks, smothering the surrounding trees – and enveloping our guide, Vadim, who has vanished into the mist far ahead of us.
Myself, my partner – and our hiking group of five other guests from the UK, US and Canada – are on day four of our seven-day hike through Kyrgyzstan’s stretch of the Tien Shan mountains: the Terskey Ala-Too Range. After three days of glorious sunshine, we’ve suddenly been forced to abandon an extended trek up to the third lake of the day.
Back at our pre-trip briefing in our hotel in the country’s capital, Bishkek, Vadim had warned us that the weather can turn in an instant. “Weather report means nothing,” he said, shrugging. “You won’t be able to go online to check it anyway in the mountains. You’ll know it’s raining when you’re wet.”
This is tour company Intrepid’s first foray into the mountains and perhaps the trip that most lives up to the company’s name. On my packed flight into the capital, I chatted to a young woman sitting beside me, wearing immaculately manicured nails and meticulously contoured make-up, who assured me that pony-trekking in Kyrgyzstan is the hottest new travel trend, thanks to TikTok and Instagram.
While she would be spending her time meeting nomads from a horseback vantage point and glamping in exquisitely decorated yurts, however, most of my days on my Intrepid trip would involve hiking each morning up the mountains on the eastern shores of Lake Issyk-Kul – the world’s second largest alpine lake – and then straight back down them again to my tiny, six-foot-long tent each afternoon (I’m
