Hiking Sayram Su

I woke after 0500 with the early sunrise, despite having drawn the curtains.  I hadn’t been given a time for the pick-up for today’s hike.  After breakfast, I waited and waited.  Finally, after 0900, I messaged the driver Katya who told me it would around 0930.

It was a 45 min drive to the Sayram Su walking trail.  My guide looked really young (in her 20s) but was actually 38.  She had sneakers, tank-top and track-pants on. Her bag wasn’t big enough for the catering that been provisioned.

Then the driver had to point out the way at the start of the trail.  I reckon she was more a walking companion than a guide.  She spoke good English (an option which I hadn’t paid for).

Starting at 1040, we soon hit unpleasant territory with a muddy stretch and run-off along a fence.  Fortunately, it was less messy after that with an easy dry trail.  There were a couple of bridge crossings and some run-offs as well.

Around 1200, it started drizzling, then proper rain.  We tried to take shelter but there wasn’t much available apart from under some trees.  I tried to not choose the tallest tree to minimise being struck by lightning.

We continued for around 10 mins further into the valley and it didn’t look like things would clear up.  It was cold and wet, and it got colder whenever we approached the gushing river.

It felt like we had we had given this a good go, and decided to turn back around 1215.  In this weather, the end-point of the lower lake (blue on a good day) would not have been picturesque anyway.

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We got back to the trail head around 1330 and were pleased to tuck into the potato and meat dish that was still warm.

There’s no cellphone signal in this part of the park so we had to walk to the ticket office where we could get WiFi (again, no phone signal on our both our phone networks but available on some).

I had forgotten that it was quite a long walk to the ticket office but we found a secondary post staffed by a kind ranger.  He had signal and allowed us to ring Katya.  We then settled into his hut to warm up with the heater and tea, for about 2 hours.

Around 1500, I noticed that the sky had cleared up here but who knows what it could be like higher into the valley.  And we would have been miserable hiking until now in the wet, even if it was OK now.

Katya had been on another job and turned up at 1600, which is 2h before the agreed pick-up time if we had done the entire hike.  You could say we had waited 2h for her, or that we had saved 2h off the day.

Soon after we commenced the drive, I looked back to see that the mountain area had clouded over again.  I think we had made the right choice.

Back at the Sapar Budget Hotel, I grabbed dinner in the form of two lavash/doner and retired for an early night.