Scary Roads and Even Scarier Roads

Scary Roads and Even Scarier Roads

What makes a road scary? I grant you, I am being very generous with my use of the 'road' but the answer lies in a steep drop, too many rocks and a truck without suspension that is bigger than the small incline it is trying to navigate down. Coupled with devilish maniacal look of glee on Steve's face through the side mirror while he is insulated from our screams (the cabin is conveniently separate from the main body of the truck).  

This followed the announcement as we all piled into the truck, "Good morning, you may have noticed we are going the wrong way, but we have heard that this road goes through another gorge and joins up with the main road again".  There was a very spirited debate in the back about the merits of a particularly dainty bridge and the look of queasy horror at the thought of going back up.

The view was worth it, green forested mountains, cut through with river gorges and the looks of confusion on the locals as they consider the stupidity of it all.  But let's see how long it takes for mountain fatigue to set in. 

After getting through the mountains, we hit Karakol, more specifically Karakol Coffee where the universal traveller's cry of "WIFI" went up, which quickly subsided when too  many people piled on too and it went down. The misery was soothed by coffee and cheesecake. Then after a mad alcohol dash and frolic under a lizard porch, we got to the relatively unimpressive from the outside at least home stay, and sat out in the shade for about 45 minutes waiting for central Asian logistics to click in to place. The Struggle Is Real.

Then something happened.

We were heading up to Altyn Arashan, way up in the mountains, with the promise of hot springs, walking and horse riding. We needed a new truck, as our home truck would not be able to handle the journey. An excited 'ohhh' escaped the group as what appeared to be a  Soviet Army truck ambled into sight. Then after a whirlwind of packing, intense sitting arrangements negotiations and confident assertions that we had everything,  we all clambered over the watermelon, washing up bowls and bottles of water.    

The truck was about half the size of our normal truck, with fewer Windows, no head or leg room and some exotic tiger print seats haphazardly scattered around. As we drove off, realization dawned, we were going to cook slowly and not in a sexy way. As we left civilization, the road dropped from concrete to dirt to a mix of dirt and surprise stones. We started to ascend, and the ride got bumpier and bumpier, the low light was an hour slowly going along the river where the only joy was speculation on a graffiti artist's motivations (answer dependent on assumed direction of travel). 

We eventually crossed into a national park where we stopped off for a pee break where we discovered:

* The truck driver's name was probably Victor,

* The truck was from 1966 and had seen hard times during the Cold War,

* Mysteriously it had Libya and America in Arabic on either side

* The truck was actually made in 1992 and had a hard life

* Victor was probably born in 1966 and had a pretty good life.

* Or all of our dates are wrong as we couldn't understand a thing this tiny man said

Then the full on ascent began, lurching towards the cliff's edge with a 30 degree incline mixed with various traffic jams. The boulders we drove over grew larger and larger as the vehicle`s wheels took them on one by one. Eventually some houses, yurts, dropped into site, we managed to drive past all the slightly nicer ones to arrive a relatively run-down blue building, we wearily stumbled out of the van feeling like a goat's body after the end of a vigorous round of goat polo.

*Guest written with Claire!