Travel with Kevin and Ruth: Well that didn't go according to plan... stuck in a snowstorm?

High up in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, there is a gorgeous glacial lake surrounded by steep cliffs. It's become a bit of a tourist attraction despite the remote location about 20 kms from the China border.

It's early in the season still, so we had decided to drive up there and do the hike to the pretty lake.

This is what we had planned on seeing...

Köl-Suu Lake. Photo stolen from the internet!

As I described in yesterdays post, when we arrived at the yurt camp up there it was cold and raining. It was raining when we went to bed, and I remember waking up at one point around 6am and I couldn't hear any rain. "Oh good", I thought, figuring we would be able to do the hike to the lake without getting soaked.

I got up and went outside to go to the bathroom. And this is what I saw...

Whaaaat!!??

That is why we couldn't hear any rain on the roof!

Our yurt.

That German RV is looking pretty lonely in the distance.

We went and had breakfast and discussed our options. Doing the 5 km (3 mile) hike to the lake would be difficult, if not dangerous because there was no way to see the trail. And it was essentially whiteout conditions so we wouldn't see anything anyhow.

We could wait it out, but our host Aidai said that sometimes these June snowstorms can last for two days.

Or, we could simply cut our losses by attempting to drive back to lower elevations. But that in itself might be risky if the road becomes completely snow covered. Yes, we both have good four wheel drive vehicles, but if you can't see the road, you can't see the road. And there are no guardrails!

Ruth and I decided to go for a walk down the main road to see what conditions were like.

This part is not too bad.

We walked about two kms and it looked like the most difficult part was actually getting out of the yurt camp. The actual road was not bad because other vehicles had already left.

Ruth, pretending she's enjoying herself!

Regular readers know that we don't like cold and winter. But to be honest, experiencing it for a day or two doesn't bother us at all. It's actually kind of fun! But to have to have weather like that for weeks or months at a time... it's a firm no!

It doesn't seem to bother this fellow!

These two big friendly local dogs joined us for the walk.

Vladdy says "let's go, I can do it!"

Our host Aidai.

Despite the fact that we were disappointed we had driven all this way and didn't get to see the lake, we still enjoyed the experience. We got to see yaks, we saw some fabulous scenery, we met a really nice family running the yurt camp, we got to sleep in a yurt, and we did some fun 4 wheel driving!

Heading back to lower elevations.

We had to do about 50 kms (30 miles) of this!

Scenery along the way.

These yaks don't seem bothered either!

Eventually, we made it down to the greenery, and better weather. We stopped for lunch at the same spot where we had when we were going up. Temperatures were back to normal when we arrived back in the small city of Naryn.