Showing posts with label backpacking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backpacking. Show all posts

Sunday, July 7, 2019

Kyrgyzstan: Trekking Paradise

Karakol, July 7, 2019






Terri and I are in the small town of Karakol, in the northeastern corner of Kyrgyzstan, grateful to be typing on a real keyboard in an internet cafe rather than painfully tapping away on a smartphone screen. We've been in Kyrgyzstan for three weeks, and it's been a whirlwind of trekking and travel.  We have a couple of days off before our next trip, a ten-day trek up the mighty Inylchek Glacier, and so we finally have a chance to catch our breaths and recapitulate our two-footed adventures thus far.


Alameddin Introduction


We arrived in Kyrgyzstan's appealing capital Bishkek three weeks ago, on June 16, and after a day spent catching up on sleep after the inevitable overnight flight to get here from Tbilisi via Istanbul, we slung our packs into a taxi and headed off into the big mountains on the edge of town.  The Kyrgyzstan Range which runs east-west just south of the city is one of the less impressive mountain ranges that dissect this high-altitude country, but it still boasts a number of 4000-metre peaks and one over 5000 metres; these mountains, taller than the Alps, are just par for the course here in Central Asia.  We were dropped off at the end of the road at the northern end of the Alameddin valley, put on our packs and started hiking south.  The plan was just to test out our gear and our bodies; it had been the better part of a year since we carried heavy packs (during our trek from Omalo to Tusheti last August) and we needed to be sure that all equipment and body parts were working after a less active school year than usual.


The packs certainly felt heavy as we tottered off along the path, but we managed to make our way south for 4 hours.  It was pure joy to walk through the plentiful wildflowers, through patches of Tien Shan spruce and juniper scrub, and across grassy meadows full of horses and cows. We had no particular destination; there was a valley junction on the map that might have made a good campground, but before we got to that point, gathering black clouds made us decide to pitch our tent in a convenient meadow before rain set in.  No sooner had we done so than the first drops began to fall, and we spent an hour in the tent reading before the rain abated and we emerged to cook dinner.  The view from our campsite was dramatic, up to a nearby peak slightly higher than the Mont Blanc.  We dined, then sat outside in the gloaming sipping whisky as the light faded from the sky.  It felt good to be far from the classroom, only 4 days since the end of the school year.

The next morning we eyeballed the low clouds shrouding peaks to the south and decided not to hike any further south, but rather to head back to town.  It was easier heading downhill (although the previous day we had only gained about 400 metres), although we did manage to lose the trail once and ended up bashing our way through dense juniper to find it again.  We both enjoyed having the nomad's freedom to camp wherever practical (one of the joys of trekking in Kyrgyzstan), and we returned to the roadhead and its collection of weekend houses and holiday yurts in good spirits.

That afternoon we realized that our plan to trek along the Inylchek Glacier was not going to be served by staying in Bishkek any longer.  The glacier lies in a sensitive border area near the Chinese frontier, and Western travellers require a border travel permit that takes quite a long time to obtain (somewhere between two weeks and one month).  A bit of research convinced us that the best place to get our permits was in Karakol, so after talking to Ak-Sai Travel, who run a string of tented camps for trekkers along the glacier, we resolved to head to Karakol the next day.

A Rugged Introduction to the Terskey Ala-Too

A six-hour mashrutka ride the next day brought us to Karakol, the epicentre of tourism in northeastern Kyrgyzstan.  We drove out of the lowlands north of Bishkek, in which the land slopes gradually downhill into the vast Kazakh steppe, past a string of old Soviet-era industrial towns along the Chuy River, past the ancient Burana Tower (the ruined stump of a medieval minaret from the Karakhanid Silk Road town of Balasagun) and up the narrow gorge leading to the ethereal high-altitude basin of beautiful Lake Issyk-Kul.  We trundled around the north shore of the lake, marvelling at the expanse of azure water reflecting glaciated peaks beyond.  I had been to Karakol twice before, in 2004 and again in 2012, and I've always liked the place.  We settled into our hotel, the welcoming and comfortable Madanur, and then raced off to start the process of getting our border permits.  Ibrahim, the well-informed, enthusiastic young man running Visit Karakol, took our paperwork and promised to have the permits (not just for the Inylchek trek, but also for a possible later horse trek in Naryn district) ready in ten days.  



In Bishkek we had invested in a series of trekking maps, and poring over the Karakol map that evening, we found an intriguing overnight trek marked as Alternate Arashan leaving from the Karakol ski area and emerging in the next major valley to the east, the Arashan.  We still wanted to start gently into our Kyrgyz trekking, so we packed up some of the impressive quantity of trekking food that we had managed to acquire during our short sojourn in the country, put much of our luggage into storage at our hotel, and set off on the morning of Friday, June 21, well fortified by the Madanur's breakfast buffet.  After a short taxi ride (too short; our driver dropped us short of where he should have), we shouldered backpacks and headed off uphill along the road to the ski resort.  We eventually branched off to the left and headed up a fairly idyllic valley dotted with the yurts of families who were spending the summer in high-altitude pastures (jailoos) with their flocks of sheep, cows and horses.  The views got grander as we made our way slowly uphill, feeling both the weight of our packs and the thinness of the air as we approached 3000 metres above sea level (we had slept at 1800 metres in Karakol).  We were making our way towards the north side of the Terim Tor massif, a glaciated group of mountains which attains an altitude 4273 metres at Przhevalsky Peak.  We were the only trekkers to be seen; the vast majority of Western trekkers in Karakol end up hiking south of the Terim Tor to Lake Ala Kol, out of our sight.  We found an idyllic campsite atop a small hill overlooking the tumbling river and spent the night very enjoyably around the camp stove and atop a rock, watching the last light of evening set the peaks alight and reflecting off the distant surface of Issyk Kol.  It was cold outside but we stayed warm in our beloved Big Agnes tent, cocooned in our sleeping bags.

The next day looked simple enough on our map.  We would make our way over the 3627-metre Kok Jar pass, down into the Arashan valley and then downstream to the town of Ak Suu.  We set off in good spirits and soon left the river behind where it emerged from the enormous terminal moraine of the glaciers tumbling down from Przhevalsky Peak.  We picked our way uphill, following the suggestions of the mapping app maps.me on my new smartphone; it wasn't as handy to use as my handheld Garmin GPS, but we had been unable to load Kyrgyz maps onto the Garmin, so we were using the phone instead.  It was hard to follow the trail as it ground steeply uphill, across patches of exquisitely coloured wildflowers and then through dispiriting stretches of scree that slid downhill almost as quickly as we tried to climb them.  There were larger and larger patches of residual snow that we had to cross, postholing our way up to mid-calf.  Eventually, gasping from lack of acclimatization, we reached the summit of the pass around noon.  The views back towards Przhevalsky Peak were stupendous, showing its intricate mass of glaciers and moraines.  

Looking forward, it was a bit hard to see where we needed to go, as an extensive cornice of snow still adorned the ridge.  We followed the cornice for hundreds of metres, past yet more unfamiliar hardy wildflowers clinging to the fractured rock, and finally found a place to get through.  We weren't sure which way to go, and there weren't a lot of tracks (two, to be precise) to guide us.  We ended up making the wrong choice of descent route and ended up on a very steep scree slope, punctuated by equally steep rocks, gingerly traversing and switchbacking our way downhill, trying not to fall over or twist an ankle.  It seemed to take an eternity to slither our way onto a slightly less precipitous grassy ridge that eventually led down to the floor of a verdant valley.  It was a much harder crossing than we had been led to believe, and we decided that it was because it was too early in the season; by August or September, with all the snow gone and the ground less saturated with moisture, it probably would have been a lot easier.  

We tramped along for a while, pausing for a picnic lunch, then made our way steeply down a narrow gorge lined with spruce forests to the Arashan Valley.  We turned left and started the long trudge out to a roadhead.  The valley was spectacular, with a raging mountain torrent tumbling relentlessly towards the Issyk Kol basin.  Our legs were much sorer and more tired than we had anticipated, and the 13-kilometre slog out to Ak Suu did nothing to improve how they felt.  The scenery was dramatic as we tramped along a jeep track that was, in places, almost undriveable.  By the time we made it to the town of Ak Suu, we were both tired and ready for a lift, provided by a village taxi driver. We drove to Karakol and went straight to dinner at a shashlyk restaurant to help our battered legs recover.  It had been an unexpectedly tough couple of days, but we had survived.

Five Days in June:  A Mountain Idyll

After a day off in Karakol, spent sleeping, eating and resupplying (and celebrating Terri's birthday), we headed off again with our backpacks on Monday, June 24.  This time our packs were full to overflowing with food as we planned to be away for five days.  We caught a taxi an hour out of town to the small former mining town of Jyrgalan, now reinventing itself as a centre for trekking and backcountry skiing.  We bought an immense loaf of bread, tied it to the outside of Terri's pack, and set off upstream along the Jyrgalan River.  The sky was blue, the valley was luxuriantly green and alive with flowers, butterflies and birds, and it felt a privilege to be out among the mountains of the Terskey Ala-Too, the branch of the Tien Shan that runs south of Lake Issyk Kul.  We made our way gradually up the valley to another campsite of bucolic perfection, set up our tent and set about brewing up tea and bouillon to rehydrate, and lentil stew to replenish our bodies.


That trek stands out for the variety of valleys and landscapes that we traversed.  The second day saw us pop over the 3467-metre Terim Tor Pass, a much gentler proposition than the Kok Jar, and descend steeply to the Turgon Ak Suu River, along which a major road leads south towards the Inylchek Glacier.  We descended to the main river, then waded across at a shallow ford, guided by a ten-year-old boy on a horse.  We debated staying the night at lower altitude, but it was full of yurts and herds, while the lower slopes of our next pass looked invitingly empty.  An hour of stiff walking brought us into a grassland thickly carpeted with exuberant wildflowers, and we camped on their spongy, forgiving surface.  While deflating her air mattress that morning, Terri's air mattress had seen its air valve disintegrate, and despite some jury-rigged repairs, Terri was concerned that it wouldn't hold, so she was glad to have soft ground beneath the tent.  We cooked up some intriguing noodles and dehydrated soy pseudo-meat and had a surprisingly satisfying meal.


Our third day was a major scenic highlight.  Terri woke up to find that her air mattress valve had held, so we crossed our fingers that it would continue to work.  We made our way over our second pass, a broad gentle saddle at 3362 metres called the Boz Uchuk-Ashuu Pass.  We were starting to feel more acclimatized to altitude and found the climb much easier than on previous passes.  At the top we stopped to watch a herd of horses glide past at a canter, then chatted with a Kyrgyz herder on a magnificent horse who was keeping an eye on a flock of nearly a thousand sheep.  We descended slightly, then angled upstream towards a small glacial lake on whose shore we stopped for a very scenic picnic.  A couple of hours of traversing and climbing led us around into an adjacent valley and the lower of the two Boz Uchuk lakes, a small peanut-shaped glacial tarn at 3400 metres above sea level.  We put up our tent, then waited out an afternoon thunderstorm.  When we emerged, it was to a lake like polished glass, giving perfect reflections of the 4463-metre mountains behind.  It was a place of breathtaking natural beauty, and we felt lucky to have the place entirely to ourselves.
The next morning we breakfasted, packed up our camp and then set off carrying only daypacks for the upper Boz Uchuk lake, a few kilometres up the valley across a messy moraine.  When we got there, we were surprised to find it still frozen, although it was only 100 metres higher than where we had slept.  We found a small patch of open water and took more mirror photos of the peaks behind, then returned to our packs.

We had hoped to make our way across two different passes that day, but the combination of our morning sidetrip and late afternoon thunderstorms put paid to our plans.  We climbed over a steep spur, around and along a rock-strewn valley and then up over a 3516-metre pass, descending into the fourth major valley of the trek.  From the top of our pass, we could look ahead to another glacial tarn, our objective, but above it a mass of dark clouds threatened a huge thunderstorm, so it was time to change plans.  We descended to the Jergez Valley and put up our tent on a small island, surrounded by a herd of magnificent horses and foals.  After the rainstorm had passed, we spent an idyllic evening watching the horses slowly graze their way towards us in the magical late light.


The final day was spent on the obligatory trudge downstream towards a road under blazing sunshine.  The Jergez Valley ended up being our favourite valley as it was broad, surrounded by dramatic rock ramparts, full of horses and wildflowers and impassable to vehicles.  It took five and a half hours of strolling to reach tiny Kara Kyz (where there were no lifts to be found) and then out to the main road at Jergez, where a hitch-hike with a local Coca Cola sales rep, a marshrutka and a local taxi got us back to our base at the Madanur.  That evening we both felt out of sorts at dinner, and slept very poorly; I think we both had a touch of heat exhaustion from tramping all day under a hot sun.



An Abortive Glacier Trip

This time we took two days off between treks, and we were glad that we did, as the first day was spent largely sleeping and rehydrating.  Monday, July 1, Canada Day on the other side of the world, found us in a taxi heading up the Karakol Valley for another planned five-day expedition.  This time the heavy pack felt much lighter as my body finally seemed to have adapted to trekking.  We caught a taxi out of town, then turned our faces upstream along the Karakol River.  This valley is much narrower and rockier and less bucolically perfect than the Jergez, and it didn't please our souls quite as much.  There were a lot of other trekkers along the road, including a group from Canada.  We made our way uphill beside a river that was running very high with glacial runoff, filling the valley with its clamorous descent.  After a roadside lunch, we crossed the river on a precarious footbridge and began the steep climb to Sirota Camp.  It took longer than anticipated to reach the camp, along a vertiginous path that crossed a rather tricky boulder field.  Sirota is one of the very few spots along the valley with both flat land and water.  The trek to Lake Ala Kol, 600 vertical metres above the camp, is the most popular trek out of Karakol, and the campsite was full of tents.  After five days on our previous trek without seeing another trekker, this was an unwelcome development.  No sooner had we put up our tent than a hailstorm hammered down and we waited it out inside our tent.


That evening we cooked up a pasta feast, and ended up in a long discussion with an Aussie couple who have worked in rural development in Kyrgyzstan for the past 15 years.  Both of them were full of insight into modern-day Kyrgyzstan, while Graham, the husband, also proved to be a big fan of medieval Silk Road history; he and I had a long conversation about Timur, Genghis Khan, the il-Khans of Iran, the Karakhanids, William of Rubruck and other historical minutiae.  The orange evening light on nearby peaks was particularly beautiful that evening as Terri and I sipped Ani brandy atop a convenient boulder.

We were up relatively early the next morning, woken by early risers in the closely packed tent city.  We left our wet tent standing to dry, ate quickly and then set off uphill towards Ala Kol lightly laden for a day trip.  It was a long, steep climb, but without heavy packs we made good time, taking two hours to get to the lake, up a dramatic river that gushed out from underneath giant neves.  Ala Kol was still largely frozen, so there were no mirror reflection pictures to be had, but it was magnificent nonetheless.  We ate delicious dried apricots overlooking the ice surface, then turned around and picked our way gingerly down the path back to camp, via another meeting with Graham, Beth and their children.  Knocking down our dry tent, we packed up quickly and headed down to the main Karakol Valley for a riverside lunch.  We turned upstream and spent a surprisingly long time walking a few kilometres up towards the source of the raging torrent at the Karakol Glacier.  It took us a while to find a good place to camp, but eventually Terri scouted out a spot atop a bluff that made a fine base.

The plan was to spend three nights camped there, with one day devoted to relaxation and another to be spent walking up towards the snout of the glacier 8 kilometres up the valley.  We managed to spend an intensely enjoyable day off on July 3rd, sketching wildflowers, bathing in the frigid river, cooking up delicious pancakes, reading and then sheltering in the tent with our books during an afternoon rainstorm.  The rain lasted for hours, but we managed eventually to get out to cook during a respite.  That night the rain continued off and on throughout the night, and we woke up to further rain and low-hanging clouds.  We decided that going upstream towards the glacier would be futile, as there would be no views, so instead we packed up our sodden tent in the rain and walked out.  Luckily we caught a lift just after lunch with Viktor, a genial Russian jeep driver who regaled us with tales as he wrestled his UAZ ex-Red Army jeep down some hair-raising stretches of track and eventually down to Karakol.  We were mildly disappointed not to have seen the glacier, but glad to have seen Ala Kol (and to have escaped from the crush of tourists and back into the solitude that we crave).

So far, Kyrgyzstan has been perfect for trekking:  expansive vistas, perfect spots to camp, dramatic peaks and glaciers and rivers, exquisite wildflowers and hospitable people.  On Tuesday we are off on another trek, this time not lugging our own tent, stove and food, to the foot of mighty Pik Pobedy and Khan Tengri.  I hope that we have as much fun as we've had trekking by ourselves so far!


Friday, June 14, 2019

Kyrgyzstan, Here We Come!

Tbilisi, June 15, 2019

It's a sunny, Saturday morning, the day after the last day of classes.  Our house here in northern Tbilisi is adorned with piles of luggage and full of cherries plucked from the branches of our trees last night in a last-minute megaharvest; we're trying to freeze as many as our freezer will hold.

It's been five months since I last posted, which is never a good sign.  I found this year's teaching to be hard work that left me tired and uninspired for blog writing.  I woke up many mornings feeling not substantially more rested than when I'd gone to bed the night before.  Partly this was due to the ski season in the Tbilisi area being dismally disappointing, with almost no new snowfall in January, February or early March.  Given that skiing was a big factor in choosing Tbilisi as a place to live, this did nothing for my state of mind.  My sister and her partner were supposed to come to Georgia this March for some ski touring, but we ended up bailing out on this plan and I flew to France instead to join them for some mountain adventures in the southern Alps.  There too it had been a warm, almost snowless winter, but my sister, through diligent research, was able to find remote north-facing slopes that made for amazing powder descents when we were was 20 degrees in the sunshine at the bottom.  I will write up a blog post about it when I get back to work in August, rested and refreshed after two months of trekking (I hope!!).


So the piles of luggage and the end of school mean that it's time to hit the road again.  This time it's not to a new country (at least not for me), but to a country that I've visited a couple of times and which I think still has a lot of new places to explore.  I first visited Kyrgyzstan by bicycle in 2004 during the second leg of my Silk Road Ride, and went back again in 2012 for some trekking and attempted mountaineering with my friend Eric.  On both occasions, I left thinking that there were still so many places to explore, and the Inylchek Glacier in particular has been on my to-explore list for years.  This time around, Terri (for whom the ex-Soviet Central Asian states are new territory) and I will spend the next six and a half weeks hiking to various remote valleys, high-altitude lakes and to the upper end of the Inylchek Glacier where mighty Peak Pobedy and Khan Tengri, both 7000-metre-high mountains, tower over the rest of the central Tien Shan range.

It will be good for my soul after a somewhat trying year of teaching to get out into the great outdoors and spend days walking, taking photos, looking at birds and flowers and butterflies, and sleeping at night under a canopy of stars surrounded by amphitheatres of mountains.  I can't wait!  

Thursday, December 20, 2018

A 2018 Retrospective



Tbilisi, December 20

The Earth has almost completed another lap of the sun, Christmas vacation is here and it's time once again to cast an eye back on the year that has just passed.  I like taking the opportunity to catch my breath and remember everything that happened in an eventful year.

Raja Ampat and Maluku

Manta flyby
Village children on Arborek at one of our Science Saturdays
A shadow puppet play about manta ray conservation
2018 began on Arborek Island, a small island in Raja Ampat, an archipelago of small islands off the western tip of New Guinea in far eastern Indonesia.  Terri was working as the project manager for a small group of volunteers, while I put my newly-earned PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor rating to use as an instructor.  Raja Ampat is a beautiful area with some of the best-preserved coral reefs and highest biodiversity anywhere in the tropical Indo-Pacific, and we were lucky to be located next to some of the local hotspots for manta rays.  The diving was fabulous, if a bit challenging thanks to raging currents, and we saw a career's worth of manta rays (both reef mantas, Mobula alfredi, and the much larger oceanic mantas, Mobula birostris).  The work, though, was frustrating, particularly for Terri, and within a week we had decided that we would leave after a month.  The Christmas period was particularly challenging, as many of our local Papuan staff disappeared without warning, leaving us short-staffed.  We also didn't get to do many of the community outreach programs that are a key part of the program, as local schools were closed for the holidays.  It was fun at times, but we were relieved when we finally put ourselves aboard a speedboat back to Waigeo in early January.  

At stunning Pianeymo
Ho-hum, another manta :-)
The crew bids us farewell on our departure
We spent a couple of days birdwatching once we were off Arborek, spotting both the Wilson's and the red birds of paradise in one action-packed morning of hiking with a local guide.  I had seen them before, in the summer of 2014, when I travelled through the region, but it was a first for Terri.  


Red bird of paradise

Wilson's bird of paradise
                                      
We then stopped off for three days of fabulous muck diving in Ambon, the capital of the province of Maluku.  The weather was awful, as the rainy season was at its height, but we still managed to spot lots of new species of tiny critters, although not the very rare psychadelic frogfish which we had hoped for.  Ambon is a treasure trove of rare species, and I would love to go back the next time I find myself in Indonesia, as well as venturing out to the Banda Islands (the sea was too rough and the weather too poor to contemplate doing that on this trip.)  On January 17th we flew back to Bali, glad to be back in our familiar, comfortable surroundings.



A beautifully tinted weedy scorpionfish (Rhinopias frondosa)
Coconut octopus (Amphioctopus marginatus) in Ambon
Striped bumblebee shrimp (Gnathophyllum americanum)

Bali

I spent three separate stints in Bali in 2018.  The first was a month in January and February, as the rainy season poured down on the island.  I spent a lot of time indoors, writing, but also ventured out diving now and then.  An American man whom we had met in Ambon, Austin, came to stay for two months in Terri's rental unit and he and I did some great muck diving in Tulamben while Terri was off to New Zealand in advance of me.  We spotted tons of new species of nudibranchs, thanks to the eagle eyes of Komang, our fabulous dive guide, who also gave us excellent photography tips.  I managed to finish the first draft of my book about cycling the Silk Road as well, which was a major accomplishment for me for the year.


The second stint in Bali happened in April and May, after New Zealand and before Namibia.  Again diving was the order of the day, although I started my stay with a four-day bicycle mini-tour all around Bali.  When Terri got back (a few days after me), we did lots of diving, and I started reworking the first draft of my manuscript.  We had some great days of diving in Tulamben, as well as just across the street in Lipah, where we found tiny Costasiella sp. sapsucking slugs that we had never spotted before; once we knew they were there, we saw them everywhere.



I spent a final two frantic days in Bali in early July, packing up my life after our Namibia trip before heading to Ottawa and on to a new life in Tbilisi; it had been 11 months since I moved to Bali, and they were amazing, life-affirming months that were good for the soul and for my writing.


Lake Buyan

Seahorse

Taringa halgerda

Eubranchus sp.

Thecacera sp.

Ornate ghost pipefish (Solenostomus paradoxus)

Hypselodoris infucata

Paddleflap scorpionfish (Rhinopias eschmeyeri)

Emperor shrimp (Periclimenes imperator) riding atop a Tyrannodoris luteolineata

Maree in Lipah Bay, our local dive spot

Halgerda willeyi

Doto greenamyeri laying eggs

Costasiella sp. sapsucking slug

Carminodoris estrelyado

Discodoris boholiensis

Wunderpus photogenicus, the wunderpus

Chelinodura hirundina

Dasycaris zanzibarica, the Zanzibar whip coral shrimp

Costasiella sp. sapsucking slug

A big gathering of Stylocheilus striatus sea hares

Costasiella kuroshimae, the "Shawn the Sheep" sapsucking slug

New Zealand

Terri is from New Zealand, and as long as we had been together (eight years and counting!) we had been tossing around the idea of visiting New Zealand.  Finally, in February and March of this year, we made it happen.  We restricted ourselves to the North Island, but even so we had difficulty fitting in all the places we wanted to see, and all of Terri's friends and family whom we wanted to meet.  It was eye-wateringly expensive, but well worth it.  We hiked, biked, paddled and drove all over the North Island, seeking out rare native birds, wild beaches and campsites.  We circled the island, up to the Northland, then down south along the east coast and back north along the west coast.  It was great fun, but the best way to follow what we did is to read these blog posts:




For more photos from our NZ travels, click here

While we were hiking along Ninety Mile Beach, I received a job offer from an international school in Tbilisi, Georgia.  Terri and I spent two days talking it over as we hiked, and I decided to accept the job, putting an end to three years of footloose freedom but helping restock depleted financial reserves.

Terri and 4 of her 5 grandkids on the farm near Wellsford

Hiking the Mangawhai Heads trail

Hiking Bream Heads

A lost little blue penguin

Ninety Mile Beach

Kayaking with Gavin and Michelle

Terri's sister's family in Upper Hutt

A takahe, one of the world's most endangered birds

Kakas

A prehistoric looking tuatara

Paddling the Whanganui River
Hiking the Tongariro Crossing


Looking down on the crater lakes of Tongariro
Terri cycling the Timber Trail


Mount Taranaki

Terri and Jess, her friend from Leysin days

Terri and her good friend Ross and Debbie in Hamilton

Namibia

In early May, Terri flew to Zambia to visit her school there, the Olive Tree Learning Centre, and to help out a party of volunteers from Canada and Australia who were spending time there.  We rendezvoused in Johannesburg airport and flew together to Windhoek, Namibia, to pick up our beloved Stanley, who had spent the year in storage there.  We had to move Stanley to South Africa for complicated reasons related to customs duties, and we had been regretting not being able to spend more time in everyone's favourite country in southern Africa back in 2017.  

Our trip through Namibia this time was absolutely fantastic, the culmination of Stanley's Travels.  We had finally worked out the optimum way to camp wild, completely off the grid, and so we did as much of that as we could.  We drove out to Swakopmund, then turned inland to Damaraland, an area we had briefly touched on in 2017.  This time we stopped and camped wild in a fantastic, unpopulated landscape, sparsely inhabited by springbok, gemsbok and giraffe.  Every night we had a campfire under the stars, cooked over the coals and stared up at the stars.  I tried my hand at some astrophotography, and loved learning an entirely new type of photography.  I had found an old macro lens while cleaning out my father's house, and spent a lot of time taking photos of tiny, colourful wildflowers.  The coastal desert of Namibia, too dry to support permanent human habitation, is one of the great outdoor wildlife adventure spots of Africa, free of the pressure of exploding human populations everywhere else on the continent.  Terri and I felt unbelievably free and close to the spirit of the San hunter-gatherers from whom all humans are ultimately descended, between our campsites in the middle of nowhere and our visits to San painting galleries in the middle of nowhere.  Our drive up to the Marienflusse, right on the Angolan border, was the highlight of the trip for me.  One day, in a couple of years' time, we will be back, this time to cross the border and drive north, all the way to Europe, before returning south to South Africa along the east side of Africa.  When we do, we will be ready, after our experiences camping and driving in the middle of absolutely nowhere Namibia.

After the Marienfluss, we returned south, via the wonderful Hoanib River and its legendary desert elephants and a return visit to amazing Etosha National Park, eventually passing south through Windhoek and heading regretfully south, via the epic Fish River Canyon and the lovely Richtersveld, into South Africa.  We left Stanley at a storage place outside Cape Town, ready for his next adventures whenever we leave Georgia.  Africa is definitely in our blood now, and we will be back again and again, between Stanley and the Olive Tree Learning Centre.

We flew out of cold, rainy Cape Town on the last day of June, bound for Bali and new adventures afterwards.  





Somehow I seem to have neglected to write a blog post about Namibia; I shall have to remedy this grave omission soon!  Namibia really is one of the great travel destinations on earth, and we loved our time in this astounding country.



Sunset colours on the Brandberg
Half moon


Hartmann's mountain zebras near the Brandberg

Ruppell's korhaans

Another delicious roadside picnic lunch


This is what the road ahead should look like!

Golden grasslands of Damaraland
Wildflower colours


Outback pancakes
The best way to spend an evening:  campfire and starlight


In the shallow waters of the Hoanib River


Giraffes wandering past our campsite

More golden grasslands

Wildflowers

Passing motorists trying to fix Stanley, who wouldn't start

Outback campfire fare in our beloved potjie

Namaqua chameleon

The track along the Marienfluss

Looking across the Cunene River into Angola

Braaing boerwors over a campfire

The Hoanib River flowing through the Khowarib Gorge

Dancing from pure joy in the Khowarib Gorge

One-hour exposure of the night sky near the South Pole

Stanley and the Milky Way
Desert elephant in the Hoanib River


An attempt to capture the Milky Way

Secretarybirds in Etosha

Wisdom

Play-fighting elephants

Finally got the Milky Way!

Black rhino and gembsbok

Me and Stanley on the Etosha Pan


The best astrophoto of the trip!


A Damara dik-dik, an elusive creature spotted at last by Terri
Sunset heron near Etosha
Terri's birthday on the Orange River
Wildflowers in the Richtersveld

Ottawa

I spent most of July in Ottawa, visiting my mother and catching my breath after a whirlwind few months of travel.  I didn't do much other than read, sort through gear in preparation for my move to Tbilisi, rewrite my manuscript (an almost complete third draft), play cribbage with my mother and go out to various cultural events like the Ottawa Bluesfest (where we saw Blue Rodeo, Colin James and a number of lesser-known but equally talented acts), Shakespeare in the Park, Chamberfest and Music and Beyond).  It was great to catch up with my mother, a wonderful person who did so much to make me who I am today.  At the end of July I flew off to Tbilisi to start a new chapter in my life.


Georgia

I arrived in Tbilisi, dumped my gear in my new house and then flew to Leysin for a flying visit.  I picked up winter gear that had been sitting in my sister Audie's basement for three years, visited a few friends, then headed back to Tbilisi.  Terri arrived a day later and I dragged her, sick and jet-lagged, off for a four-day hike in Tusheti, a magical mountain region in northeastern Georgia.  It was a tough but rewarding hike over the high Atsunta Pass into the Khevsureti region, past ancient stone villages studded with high defensive towers, past meadows of wildflowers and beautiful mountain vistas.

After that I was at work.  It was certainly a shock to the system, returning to the classroom after three sabbatical years.  I am teaching physical science, geometry and physics.  The workload is certainly lighter than I had in Leysin (for one thing it's not a boarding school, so there are no residential duties), but it's still mentally tiring to return to the discipline of work after so long.  

We got away for a couple of great weekend trips in September, first hiking from Juta to Roshka (linking the Kazbegi region to Khevsureti and thus joining up with August's hike), then going back to Juta on my birthday weekend for more hiking around the spectacular Chaukhi massif.  

My 50th birthday came as a bit of a shock, but Terri did her best to soften the blow with amazing food, a lovely weekend in Juta and (best of all) a present of a unicycle.  I can now ride it reasonably well, but it was a long, tough learning curve.  I can't believe I'm a half century old now; I don't feel like it (at least not most of the time!).

In October we headed off to enchanting Svaneti for a week of hiking; you can read about it in more detail here.  

When we returned from this trip, we at long last were able to buy a Mitsubishi Delica van after more than two months of searching, allowing us to explore more of rural Georgia on weekends.  We have visited Uplistsikhe, Tbilisi National Park, Tianeti and other areas close to Tbilisi.  As well, on our long weekend in November we drove down to Armenia to poke around the Debed Canyon, an area full of very old, very impressive stone churches.  All this has whetted our appetite for further exploration of this ancient, historic, culturally fascinating country.

Last Friday school let out, and we have been out skiing, first in Gudauri (the best-known Georgian ski area, just north of Tbilisi), and (starting tomorrow) in Goderdzi (near Batumi and the Black Sea) and also in Tetnuldi (up in Svaneti).  We can't wait!!





What 2018 brought, and what 2019 promises

We are here for at least another 18 months, with summer 2019 having Kyrgyzstan pencilled in for some serious hiking, along with more hiking here in Georgia.  I can't wait to see what else 2019 brings (including, I hope, a publishing contract for my Silk Road book!).  Terri and I would love to welcome some of you to Georgia to explore this intriguing mountain nation.

2018 was a wonderful year, and a year of two contrasting halves:  frenetic movement in the first half, then a more steady, measured pace through the second half.  Freedom in the first seven months, then wage servitude for the last five months.  Tropical heat for much of the first half of the year, then a return to the seasonal rhythm of the temperate latitudes.

I enjoyed crossing paths with so many friends and relatives over the course of the year.  In no particular order, we met up with our new diving friend Austin; my friend Eileen; Terri's daughter Selena and her husband and grandkids; Terri's dear friends Gavin and Michelle; her cousins Steven and Toni, Mark and Gary; her delightful Aunt Lois and Uncle Phil; her brother Trevor; her childhood neighbour and friend; Terri's sister and most of her nieces and nephews; her Leysin colleague Jess; Terri's dear friends Ross and Debbie; our Leysin friend Thomas; my former student Ardak; Terri's friends (and epic travellers) Lilian and John; my Yangon friends Reid and Beth; and our new friend Brian.  There are many more who have slipped my mind, but as I get older, meeting up with friends and family becomes steadily more important.  

May 2019 bring all of you, my dear readers, peace and tailwinds and as much adventure as you want.  

Tusheti wildflower

Tusheti defensive towers

Tusheti wildflower

Butterfly and thistle


Tusheti mountain scenery


Thistle and beetle

Tusheti wildflower

Tired but elated atop the Atsunta Pass

On the descent into Khevsureti

Wildflower near Juta

Crossing the Sedzele Pass to Roshka

Camped beneath the Chaukhi Massif

Roshka wildflower

The green, green hills of the Caucasus

Chaukhi Massif

More wildflower and beetle action near Roshka

Barbecued mtsvadi, the best food in Georgia!

Yours truly at 50

Part of the wonderful half-century celebrations

My new unicycle!

Gergeti Trinity Church

Birthday weekend above Juta

Chaukhi Massif yet again

Terri hiking up to the Chaukhi Pass

Autumn colours in Svaneti

Looking down on Mestia

Me in Svaneti

The iconic peak of Ushba

Svan tower and fall foliage

Typical Svan defensive tower

Lamaria Church in Ushguli, Svaneti

Enchanting Ushguli

Hiking near Zhabeshi, Svaneti

Fall colours near Zhabeshi

Terri and I below Mt. Ushba


Becho waterfalls, Svaneti

Cycling through an ancient oak forest in Tbilisi National Park

Armazi Fortress

Ancient Uplistsikhe, near Gori

Me in Uplistsikhe

Georgia-Samoa rugby match
Birtvisi
Drying persimmons, Debed Canyon

Me with beautiful khachkars, Debed Canyon

Odzun church, Debed Canyon, Armenia

Odzun church, Armenia

Haghpat church, Armenia

Haghpat

Me with a MiG-21, Mikoyan Brothers Museum, Sanahin

Interior of Akhtala Church, Armenia

Terri and I in Gudauri

Terri ripping up the pow in Gudauri

Ski tour in Gudauri

The turns that we earned by skinning