Made it through the Torugart Pass with only a couple of hours of interrogation – the heavily armed border guards seemed upset that I preferred rugby to football as the only English words they knew were Wayne, Rooney, David and Beckham.
John, our Chinese guide, had to leave us at the Kyrgyz border after showing us round for 7.5 weeks. 100m down the road we were met by Victoria, a half Kyrgyz, half Russian guide who doesn’t know too much about her country but is great fun.
Some poet said ‘He who travels light, travels happiest’ but he’d never been to Kyrgyzstan – just over the border we camped next to an old CaravanSerai in sub zero temperatures. I was fine in a t-shirt with my 3-season sleeping bag, but some of the others had only brought a 2-season to save space and had to sleep with layers and layers of clothing. Being 200km from the nearest town the stars at night were amazing.
In the morning the survivors carried on to enjoy a homestay with a family as part of a Community Based Tourism initiative. We slept in dorms of eight and had a big meal followed by a show of locals dancing and singing.
