Category: offroading

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 🥳
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 💦
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 🤔
Turned out that some would just go with full force 🚀
And took the hard landing 😶
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) 🤣
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 🐢
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 🎶
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 Köl 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 ⛰️
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 🤣

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.

Back to Kyrgyzstan, ski/ snowboard tours and the hunt for snow (January, February 2025)

After the visa days disaster in Kyrgyzstan, we checked again how the visa days in Kazakhstan were calculated. And it was the same as in Kyrgyzstan. The amount of days was different, which we of course already knew, but the calculation of the periods was the same. On one website of government there was the exact and right description: “in every period of 180 days you are allowed to stay 90 days”. The most important seems to be the “every” which describes what in German is called a “rolierend” way to calculate the visa days.
We applied for a mountain tourism visa in Kyrgyzstan and luckily we got it. Without it, it would have become pretty expensive and complicated to stay in central Asia for the winter for us.
Back in Kyrgyzstan, we did our first ski/ snowboard tours. Racki had a split board and I went up with snowshoes and my snowboard on my back.
We had good fun and the scenery was super beautiful.
On the hunt for more snow we went up to the highest mountain areas of Kyrgyzstan south west of Bishkek on 2200 to 3200 meters. We got stuck in the snow while looking for a nice camp spot near snow covered hills that would allow ski touring.
We found a camp spot but did not check the weather forecast until it was dark only to find out that the forecast was -25 degrees Celsius. With what we had learned the last time, it went all pretty good.
We did a nice ski tour but the snow was barely deep enough.
After the ski tour, we drove down a bit to have a warmer camp spot while new snow was about to come. After a few days we went up again and found a lot of snow.
We did another ski tour and this one was very exhausting because the snow was so light that I sunk in it even with my snowshoes. Sometimes waist deep.
But still it was a nice tour with the most snow we’ve had so far.
The main road was in very good condition. Even now in winter.
After the ski touring we went further south west to the Toktogul Reservoir. We had been there before in summer and it was very beautiful in winter as well. We took one of my favorite photos of all time at our beautiful camp spot.
And did some laundry and cleaning of Rosinante’s interior and tent fabric.
We went further south in the region west of Osh because the snow was still barely enough for ski touring and we preferred warmer conditions when ski touring would not be possible.
Racki found nice hiking tours. On one we encountered this cute bridge.
Racki’s Slide broke on one of the slopes.
And we found more nice views.
This is the way most locals deal with the snow and wet. They have inner and outer shoes which can be easily separated.
This stuff, which friends gifted us in Almaty, helped a lot curing my throat pain.
We built a nice little website, one which Racki is offering talks and messaging with people who are feeling lonely: https://nicht-alleine.org
And of course we were playing our favorite board games. This round of Spirit Island was crazy but still we won!
We went again up a bit further. When preparing for ski touring with all the equipment it was pretty packed in Rosinante.
Here we had a ski in and ski out. It was a funny tour and we did snowboard down narrow hiking paths.
Our next camp spot already felt like spring.
Slipky (our water kefir) and our plant (called sibling) enjoyed the sun and warmth as much as we did.
And the snow seemed to already be vanishing.