Colette's Grand Detour

Today we descended from Son Kul lake to the small village of Kyzyl-Oi. The roads are mostly gravel, and there were steep, winding sections as we descended from the lake. However the scenery was incredible and totally worth the long day of travel. We passed hardly any vehicles, let along tourists for the entire day. Which was lucky as the precarious road was pretty narrow at times, and the drop down into the river below us didn’t look inviting. During the winter this road becomes impassable.

After driving for about an hour alongside Son Kul lake, we reached Kara-Keche pass and got a great view down into the Karakitchi coal mining area. It is one of the largest open-pit coal mines in the country, responsible for almost half of Kyrgyzstan’s coal production. It has an estimated reserve of 438 million tonnes. Most of the coal is transported to Bishkek for use. We took pictures from the top of the pass looking down onto the coal mine and then drove straight through it, passing many trucks slowly ascending up the steep roads laden with huge pieces of coal. At the speed they were going it must take a very long time to reach Bishkek.

We arrived in the village of Kyzyl-Oi (translates as ‘red bowl’) by lunchtime and were treated to a meal of dimlamma (consisting of meat, potatoes and cabbage) in a small hut by the riverside. The folks who ran the guesthouse we were staying at had cooked the food and then brought it down the road for us to enjoy in a scenic location. The village is called Kyzyl-Oi because of how it is surrounded by red-hued mountains on every side. It lies in the gorge of the Kokomeren river and was a silk road stopping point in the area. Today it is a small village of just 850 people, with many families involved in community-based tourism activities such as providing guesthouse accommodation.

Our accommodation was in a small family compound. Even though it was a homestay we each got our own room. It was just the bathrooms we had to share. Unfortunately we arrived on a day when there was upgrade work being done on the electricity transformers in the area. This wasn’t too much of a problem in the afternoon but as it grew dark we wondered if there would be any electricity at all during our stay. It meant no lights, but also no hot water for showers. And we were supposed to have a dance and singing performance by a group of local school children after dinner that was going to be quite tricky.

We could see lots of men working on the problem down the road from our guesthouse, trying to install the new transformer. Finally electricity was restored to the area at 9pm and the school children who had dressed in traditional clothes and who had waited patiently to perform since 7.30pm were able to play us traditional Kyrgyz music, recite some of the Manas epic (an important piece of Kyrgyz literature) and sing some traditional sings.