Category: nature

A crazy off-road, play and music festival and a very turquoise lake in Kyrgyzstan (August 2025)

After some more days, we met again with our friends, who we got to know in Tajikistan, for the Travel Fest. The location was directly at the lake, the weather was perfect and there was a lot going on ðŸĨģ
Most of the visitors camped in the festival area in cars or tents and they did a lot of motor sport. First came the motocross and after that the quads 🎉
And then the jeeps 🚀
They had good strategies to cool their cars during the race ðŸ’Ķ
And in the last race, the obstacles got ridiculous! Before the race we and all the visitors and racers investigated the jumps and the big pits. We were wondering how they would approach them in the race ðŸĪ”
Turned out that some would just go with full force 🚀
And took the hard landing ðŸ˜ķ
Got stuck 🙃
And broke down on top of the other side. But after twenty minutes or so the car was running again 😄
In the process some got pushed into the pit by cars (at the top left of the photo) ðŸĪĢ
And others winched themselves out pretty good and fast 🚀
Where as others stayed in the pit until the end of the race and had to get recovered ðŸĒ
We played beach volleyball, were swimming in the lake and had a good time with our neighbors 🌞
Although the four of us were the only visitors from Europe/ western countries. During the day there were a lot of games going on and we had a lot of fries 😁
Every evening the music started and we had good parties ðŸŽķ
With a lot of dancing under the moon on the beach 💃🕚
And after three days the crazy off-road festival was over and we were very happy to have been there 🎊
After the festival we stayed a bit more at the lake and chilled with bonfires…
… and stick bread 😋
One day, the garbage truck which collected the trash from the festival got stuck on the sandy track near our camp spot. We tried to help them but with a truck like that it was pointless. The truck crew waited a long time, we gave them water and snacks but in the evening, they just left. I think the truck is still there 🙃
After the lake, Racki and I made use of the good weather and drove to the mountains of Karakol. At that point of the track, we turned around and took a camp spot nearby. As always it doesn’t look that wild in the photo but it was.  The rental and taxi Buchankas and old soviet jeeps were shaking like crazy going through there 😄
So we took the hike from our camp spot. On the way we came across very beautiful yurt camps 🎉
The hike was beautiful and very famous. We had never met as many hikers on a hike in central asia before 😁
The Ala KÃķl had a very nice color 🎉
And we had a good time hiking back to Rosinante and finishing this 27 km hike. See the whole tour in Komoot ⛰ïļ
After the hike, we went back to the Issyk Kul to chill again 🌞
One day, we built ourselves a scale to check how many bags we would need to take our climbing equipment with us to Malaysia and Thailand from November to March 👍
See them fly 🚀
And push ðŸĪĢ

To Kyrgyzstan, again a broken bushing, and a lot of lakes, and a lot of car recoveries (July, August 2025)

We took a border to Kyrgyzstan that we had never taken before. It has been opened just a couple of weeks before for tourists. The officers were all friendly but at the passport control the officer did not understand that Deutschland means Germany 🙃
We tried to show him the Russian translation on our passport but he couldn’t read the small letters. Translating with Google Translate didn’t help as well. But apart from us, there was only one more man wanting to cross the border and this one man spoke German. After he ensured the border officer that we are from Germany, he was happy to let us pass ðŸĨģ
After crossing the border, I checked our new bushings in the front shock absorbers and discovered that one was broken again. After 2300 km. To be sure, we removed one front wheel and detached the shock absorber. With only one car jack it got quite tricky to put it in again but as experienced bush mechanics we did it 😁
Our plan was to take a small mountain pass to the Peak Lenin area but because we were not sure if the mountain pass was actually passable, and it would most likely would have been pretty offroady, and we  had this broken bushing, we changed our plan and tried to find a spare part in the next bigger town. We tried several car part shops and mechanics. They were nice and friendly, but we did not succeed. So we decided to drive to Osh (the second biggest city of Kyrgyzstan) ðŸĪŠ
In between, we chilled a bit 🌞
And Racki managed to fix our phone holder ðŸĨģ
In Osh we parked at the Tess Hotel for free. It was a good city camp spot. And after some hours of trying, messaging, communicating and waiting for a couple of days, we got new bushings. Six Euro a piece. Doomed to die soon ðŸĪŊ
In the night, it seemed like all the locals took a walk because it was much cooler than during the day. These little karts looked so funny ðŸĪĢ
Right next to a typical UdSSR monument ðŸ˜ķ
We decided to go back to Issyk Kul (the biggest lake in Kyrgyzstan, the fourth biggest mountain lake in the world) ðŸ˜Ŋ
On the way there, we took a break at the Toktogul reservoir. We had been there a couple of times in the last year but now the locals had been building up some tourist stuff: yurt camp, umbrella rental, etc. ðŸ’ļ
They even had a prehistoric banana 🐉
But still we had a good time, helped two families to recover their cars after getting stucked, got some food gifted and finally helped to recover a local truck with the big off-road overlander truck of another German traveler couple. It was the first recovery of a truck for us and that made me even more happy to have a car instead of a truck… But the local truck driver was super relaxed and grateful. And I learned why there are quite many completely destroyed truck tyres on the sides of the roads: the truck drivers don’t have the tools to remove a flat one and so they keep going until it falls off on its own ðŸ‘Đ‍🔧
At the Issyk Kul, we visited some sites we had not been before and took a swim in a super salty small lake. Perfect for non swimmers. It was not possible to sink in that one and it was very healthy 🊄
Another nice spot at the lake ðŸĨģ
Racki became a Macrame knitting machine and her creations got more and more beautiful âœĻ
There were some thunder storms and the mountains on two sides of the lake looked amazing 🎉
When I checked the new bushings and we investigated a noise Rosinante made only from now and then, we found oil leaking out of her engine ðŸ˜Ŋ
In the end we found that the noise came from Rosinante’s bottom protection and the oil came out of the oil filter. We went to Karakol to have the filter changed and the mechanic needed almost an hour to remove the old one because the last mechanics had put it so strong on the engine ðŸĪŠ

Change of plans and remote rock climbing and nice hikes in Tajikistan (July 2025)

Our plan had been to go to Afghanistan and continue to Pakistan, India and then Nepal.
But after the only border crossing between Pakistan and India had closed after some military fights, we had been stuck in central asia.
After waiting for more than a month we gave up on the border to open again. We researched other options and came to the conclusion that we did not want to go through China with a guide and travel group. It would have cost at least 2000₮ for going to Nepal and if the border between Pakistan and India would not have opened in spring 2026 and we won’t find a travel group back, we would have to pay about 7000₮ to go back through China. What is more the visa and customs situation was not comfortable in India and Nepal without a third country to do proper border runs.
We thought about southeast asia as well, but the visa and customs regulations in Laos, Thailand etc. sounded complicated and in some countries even impossible.
So we made the plan to go back to Kyrgyzstan, then Kazakhstan, park Rosinante in Almaty for the winter and fly to Southeast Asia by plane until spring 2026 and see if the border between Pakistan and India would be open again.
On our way from Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan, we found another rock climbing sector at a pretty remote location. The scenery was amazing!
The crag was awesome as well. Although there were only about four routes bolted. We did one not too hard one. The next day we went for the multi pitch we were looking forward to. To me, it was ridiculous! The route was very dirty and slippery. But still we were lucky, because someone did his best to clean it. There were freshly cut plants and bushes all over the place. But I did not enjoy this route. It felt just stupid to me and I thought about aborting it.
Racki enjoyed it and so I continued. But honestly, the best moment on this route was when we had reached the top/ exit after four pitches.
Happy to have survived.
At our camp spot next to a bumpy dirt road, we got quite some visitors. Among them was one nice elderly guy. We invited him for dinner, talked via Google Translate and one day he danced to my playing of the cajon. It was pretty funny.
We drove further and did a very beautiful hike.
The hike went all around a very famous white crag.
From there a lot of routes were going deeper inside the mountains.
It got pretty steep.
And the glaciers were as impressive as always.
On the way down, we had some fun sliding down the snow fields.
And we met a head attached to the inner remainder of his body.
This white mountain looked very nice. Here is our tour on komoot.
We went on and after driving a long time on bumpy off road tracks, we found a nice camp spot next to a river.
From our camp spot, we started our next hike and met some locals at their summer camp.
The men were herding etc and the women and girls did everything else.
The hike brought us to a very beautiful waterfall!
It looked really nice. Here is our tour in komoot.
After some days, we continued our way back to Kyrgyzstan and took one of the more remote and lonely mountain passes.
And we made it close to the border to a big lake we’ve only been to once before.
And like most of the times when we arrive at a lake, we helped a group of locals to recover their car from the muddiness.