Trekking in the Chatkal Mountains

We spent the next three days in the Chatkal mountains around Tashkent that belong to the Tienshan mountain range. We drove an hour and a half from Tashkent already with our guide and cook. At the foot of the mountains we met the donkey man with two donkeys for our luggage and a little one.

We went directly vertical and climbed for a long time, at least for me it seemed like it as my shoes were giving me pain already after the first half an hour:-(. The mountain view rewarded me a little bit.

In the later afternoon, we came back to the river and set up our camp on the high bank. Now we found out what Alex (our cook) and Oleg (our guide) did pack in the big black travel bags: three tents, mattresses, sleeping bags, a table, chairs, cooking equipment, lots of food and no vodka. Andreas could not believe to be on a trip with three Uzbek and having no alcohol with them - it changed his worldview.

Then we took a bath in the river - the water was mountain fresh! - Nonetheless, we tried again and again when we had the chance.

The others built up the camp and Alex started to cook. Later he served us stuffed paprikas and for dinner he had cook still another dish, even we were not really hungry.

We were not quite alone there and some people passed by our camp on donkey or on foot with a herd of goats. We went to bed early and the river sang a lullaby for us. I woke up several times at night as it was getting really cold and the bottom was hard.

The next morning, we set out to the east and crossed a wooden bridge that looked very interesting. We continued in this direction following a river till some time after lunch when we turned south and climbed up to a high pass. Once or twice we nearly lost our luggage when the donkeys mistepped.

On this day, we had a beautiful view on the Chimgan Peak (3,309 m), the highest top of the range.

On our last day, we had to climbed again and my feet screamed like hell. After an hour we saw the chair lift bringing summer tourists to one of the tops and headed for the skiing slope and then walked it down back into civilization. Here Alex cooked his last meal for us before we had to say goodbye. Despite my hurting feet I enjoyed it very much. Both Alex and Oleg are also guides in the heliskiing programme and invited me to come back in winter.

Oleg, Chris, Alex, Inka, Andreas and the donkey man

The night and the next day we spent in a mountain resort where we had cottage all to ourselves.

After an afternoon at the pool we followed the barbeque invitation of our travel operator who booked the whole tour from Tashkent along the Silk Road and to the mountains for us. We met also his family and his father-in-law who is the coach of the Uzbek National Ski Team.

The next day we did pretty much nothing and it was the most lazy day of the whole trip. The most exciting thing to happen on this day was the drive back to Tashkent. As we boarded the "taxi from hell": windscreen broken, window lifters gone and the speedometer stucked at 20 km/h when we driving around 80 at least downhill. About fifty km away from Tashkent we changed cars, the car looked better, the driver was younger, but the driving style was the same.