After having some rest from Pamir adventures, in Kyrgyz Osh, we departed for new adventures: to the famous Sary-Chalek lake.
How to get.
Marshrutkas (small buses) depart from Osh in 10.00 (260 soms per person), and the road is not easy. There are too many people, the buses are stiff, and the music played by the drivers is far not the most tasteful. After all, we arrived at 4 pm, at the end the bus was extremely slow.
Our stop was the final, and a small girl got out of the bus together with us and offered to stay in her grandmother’s house. The price was regular – 600 soms for two nights with food. We got acquainted with the local population and had a dinner.
Sary Chalek
In the morning, we started for the park and the lake, and the girl volunteered to accompany us. The entrance fee for tourists is 400 soms, but we passed to 200 soms for two of us referring to Nastya’s Kyrgyz roots 🙂 It takes 8 kilometers to get from the gates to the lake, half of this is climbing up the hills through the bushes, yet, enjoying the scenery.
At some point of time, the locals offered to give us a ride and treated to smoked fish and water melon. Everyone we met tried to invite us to seat at their table. Nevertheless, we finally made it to the lake.
There were a lot of young boys throwing each other to the water.
The water was quite cold and clean. It is also possible to go up the hill and take pictures from there.
After walking around the lake, we went down and met three cars of very well-known Estonians: they travel by their 4WDs to the places which are hard to access and broadcast it to Estonian TV.
Yet, we did not have a chance to talk a lot: the forester jumped out of the woods and started to chase them away: it turned out that parking was prohibited in this place, but one could read it only in Kyrgyz language.
We turned back home and soon met Estonians again: they offered us a ride. We wanted to walk a bit more, but asked them to give a ride to a girl who accompanied us and was quite tired. After about 10 kilometers we got tired too and started hitchhiking.
Coming back, we got a bit scared: Victor got sick, probably because of the heat stroke. Our hosts made tea with forest raspberries for him, and in the morning he was fine. We moved further, to the next lake Issyk-Kul.
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