The hike started by leaving Jyrgalan village, going through some fields, and then up a dirt road for a while. The hike got gorgeous when we made it to the actual valley part. After we were through a boulder field and around a corner, the hike followed animal paths alongside a river at the bottom of the valley. There were mountains in the background and so many herds of horses. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere, which we loved to see. I was struggling; my legs were so sore from all the days of hiking in a row. We went slow and steady on the uphill for me.

Once we made it to camp we settled in to our yurt before having some tea. Nick and I later climbed to a nice high spot behind camp to enjoy the views. It was stunning, unsurprisingly. On our way back down to camp the ground started to rumble. A herd of cows came down from the other side of the hill, through camp, and then crossed the river for grazing. At one point they all seemed very interested in the toilet. So much so that the person inside later told me they were afraid that the whole thing was going to tip over.

Dinner was a soup with fish, meat, and vegetables, followed by pasta with the same ingredients. The pasta was so delicious I was sad the portion wasn’t as big as the other meals we had had while trekking. That camp had the most people staying there at one time that we’d seen. There was us, our guide, and 4 additional people. This campsite has many trails that go from it so we were the only ones doing the lake hike. After dinner we enjoyed a brief and chilly last view of the valley before getting cosy in our yurt. That campsite was absolutely freezing; there was snow in the distance and we had to use double sleeping bags.

Day 2 was to get to the Bulak-Ashuu Lakes. In total our day was about 9.2 miles, took less than 5 hours including our break at the lake, and had a total elevation gain of 2789ft. The day started by continuing along the animal paths and finding our own way deeper into the valley towards the distant mountains. As usual, we passed many herds of horses; these ones had many babies too. There were some of the same wildflowers we’d seen lots of from the day before as well.

The hike felt much easier than the day before, luckily for me. It was raining on and off and pretty cold. The push to the top went quickly, and we got to spend over an hour hanging out at the two lakes. They were (you guessed it) gorgeous. They both reflected the stone cliffs that surrounded them and had bright flowers all around. It was the perfect spot to eat lunch and take it all in. We were so happy we added this hike last minute to our itinerary. The best part was that no one was on the trail or at the lakes all day. Just incredible! The sky even cleared for a short time and we got to enjoy the lakes with no rain.

During the hike back we went a slightly different route, following where the horses go instead of climbing down boulders like we had come up. There was a nice view of the valley from up there. It got freezing cold soon after we started our descent. It was raining and hailing pretty hard on us. I was thankful to get back to camp to warm up with some tea.

Our last day was again around 11 miles and took us 4.5 hours to get back to the village. It was almost the exact route we had taken to get in to camp, except we followed more of a road instead of the field. It was slightly longer than the first day, but much easier due to it all being downhill or flat. The weather was wet, cold, and slightly miserable. There was even more snow on the mountains than previous days. I was happy we didn’t have that weather on our lake day. Luckily for us we took lots of pictures on the hike in so we didn’t have to take our phones out of our rain jackets for the hike out. I did manage to get a few photos. One notable one was of the fermented horses milk that farmers were selling from big containers on the side of the road. Once we got back to the village we got dropped off back at our guesthouse in Karakol (about a 1 hour drive away).

The final day in Kyrgyzstan was a big travel day. We packed up our belongings and headed to the bus station to catch the marshrutka to Bishkek. This journey took about 7 hours. Our marshrutka stopped at a cafeteria style restaurant where everyone got some lunch. We split some kompot and plov. Nick tried a burger/omelette and I had a pastry stuffed with mashed potatoes. We saw similar views as we did on the bus ride from Bishkek to Karakol on our night bus, but this was much more pleasant after a full night of sleep.