Traverse of Turkestan range ― South-West Kyrgyzstan (2011)
The Turkestan range lies at the remote south-western end of Kyrgyzstan,
on its border with Tajikistan. It boasts a wide diversity of spectacular
sceneries, including sharp peaks rising above 5000m, large glaciers, huge
granite walls, green lush valleys, and deep gorges. I had made two previous
trips to this range, in 2004 (Aksu peak and Karavshin areas) and 2005 (Matcha area). My goal in 2011
was to ″connect these dots″ and traverse the entire range from its
western end near the village of Andarak (located a
dozen kilometers south-west of the small town of Isfana)
to its western end at the village of Zardaly (located on the Sokh
river, south of the Uzbek Sokh
enclave). I did this traverse with Maksim and Slava, two Russians
who live in Tashkent. I had already traveled with Maksim
in 2005 and 2010, and with both Maksim and Slava in 2008. They are terrific companions and guides, and have become
good friends over the years. The logistics for this trip was organized with the
help of Boris Karpov in Tashkent (Boris had helped me
on all my previous trips to Central Asia) and Aksai
Travel in Bishkek. All the topographic maps shown below were provided to me
by Boris Karpov.
Slava, left, and Maksim, right, on Minteke glacier.
Location of the Turkestan range, in red box:
Approximate itinerary below: on foot in red, by car in blue (more
detailed maps will be shown for each ″leg″ of the traverse, see links
below). The distance between two vertical black lines in this map is 42.5 km.
We did the traverse in 23 days. We had initially arranged two
food deliveries by horses, one below Aksu peak and
the other in Kshermish valley. Amazingly, both
deliveries were done right on time.
The description of the traverse is divided below into 7 ″legs″.
This break-down is quite arbitrary and mainly determined by the size of the
files.
Leg
1: From Andarak to
Sarkat valley and back to Sary-Kyngoy
valley (July 9-12).
Leg
2: From Sary-Kyngoy
valley to Aksu valley (July 13-17).
Leg
3: From Aksu valley
to Karasu pass (July 18-20).
Leg
4: From Karasu
pass to Djaupaya valley (July 20-22).
Leg
5: From Djaupaya
valley to Shirovsky glacier (July 22-25).
Leg
6: From Shirovsky
glacier to Kshermish valley (July 26-28).
Leg
7: From Kshermish
valley to Kan village (July 29-31).