Tag: snowboarding

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.

Friends from Germany and I got my own snowboard (January 2024)

In January I had to do a border run to Armenia with Rosinante. Because of customs regulations.

It was actually super nice to spend some time in a mild climate and just hanging around outside. And it was super nice to experience Armenian hospitality again. After a couple of minutes at a nice spot at a river, some guys started a barbeque and invited me to join. We had a great time together.

After a night in Armenia, I went to Tbilisi, visited a nice bazaar with Whoopy and met Racki who went down from the mountain with a Minibus. Together we went to the airport to pick up a friend of her who came to visit us. We spent a nice time in Tbilisi sight seeing and in the evening we went for dinner and a cocktail bar.

In the cocktail bar we met friends who we had met in Gudauri. Our time in the bar was crazy. The waitress and bar keeper was absolutely drunk and maybe on some other drugs and we had weird but funny conversations. After some time a Russian girl joined us. She was drunk as well, very funny, had a rich husband and in the end she paid all our drinks.

And the friend of Racki brought my snowboard and equipment that I had bought in Germany via Kleinanzeigen. It was super awesome to finally have my own stuff. My snowboard was pure red and I called it Zäpfchen. The friend of Racki got late to the airport in Germany because of the public transport. He was so late that there was no time to check in the big bag with all my stuff properly and so the airline let him bring the big bag without paying.

After two days another friend of Racki joined us and together we had so much fun snowboarding, hanging around and spending time together.