Setting off to see the Barskoon waterfalls, we inexplicably missed them and carried on up the road which, although unmetalled, was of reasonably good quality. We came to a checkpoint and, after filling in details about ourselves and the van, carried on up the very high and steep pass together with dozens of oil tankers supplying the Kumtor gold mine. Not many tourists go this far and many of the tanker drivers waved to us. The road was rather scary with frequent warnings about avalanches, rock falls, mudslides etc with no assistance available in the event of breakdowns or accidents. At nearly 4,000 metres, the road emerged onto a wide and long icy plain ringed by snowcovered peaks. Eventually we could see the opencast gold mine in the distance with the hillsides scarred by mine workings. It is the world’s eighth largest gold mine and visitors are not welcome for obvious reasons. So we turned back. Bit of a shame really because the map shows the road continuing through the peaks of the Tian Shan range to Kara-Say on the northern shore of the Naryn reservoir. I would have liked to have driven that.
The entrance to the side valley in which the Barskoon waterfalls are situated is marked by a huge bust of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, who for some reason seems to have been particularly popular in Kyrgyzstan. Every town has a street named after him. We started to climb the hill (on foot!) towards the waterfall but, with the mist coming down and the temperature dropping below freezing we decided to knock the idea on the head.
We then continued driving to some lakeside pastureland shortly before the large village of Kara-Talaa and found a nice place to camp on the edge of a field of mown barley where we were visited in the morning by a herd of cows.
