Figure 8 On A Bike

Karakol is a cute little town at the head of Issyk-Kul Lake. In the summer it is a bustling tourist spot, and in the winter it hosts a ski resort. Most of the tourists that we ran into were internal tourists mostly coming from Bishkek. The downside to Karakol is the smog. For such a small town it had worse air quality than Almaty and every evening it seemed to get really bad as many people seemed to heat their homes with coal or wood burning stoves. We also never did figure out the industry there but there were a few very short smoke stacks in town that would send some noxious fumes into neighboring apartment complexes in the evenings. Ah fresh mountain air! View of Karakol from the ski resort

Frozen Barskoon Falls high over the valley From Almaty in Kazakhstan we took a bus to Kyrgyzstan as we had read about a very cool ice climbing area there. The bus meandered slowly west to the border with Kyrgyzstan. Once there we had to get all of our stuff off the bus, waddle to the Kazakh border desk, stand in the wrong line, and waddle to another line. Once in the correct line, I was met with a border agent’s halting English and I didn’t recognize the name of Almaty’s airport so I got a few more questions, but eventually he allowed me to leave Kazakhstan. Ben benefited from my hard work and made it through with no questions.