Poking Around in Central Asia: May 2015

Poking Around in Central Asia: May 2015
Trip 3 - Part 4
Kyrgyzstan: Kaji Say to Tamga
by Craig Mains

Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Kaji Say to Tamga
After breakfast Ramil and Marat took us to a place called Skazka Canyon. It is an area of odd rock formations that reminded me of places in the western US.

Ramil became upset because as we arrived two men, probably father and grown son, were in the process of jerry-rigging a tollbooth and a gate from scrap wood. They wanted to collect a fee before they would let us enter. Ramil told the men that he knew it was government property and they replied that the government had leased the property to them. Rather than argue, Ramil paid them--it was about the equivalent of three US dollars. Ramil told us that the government had almost certainly only leased them the right to graze sheep or goats and not to build a toll station. He said he had brought people here many times before and there had never been a fee.

Skazka is the Russian world for fairy tale and the place was called Fairy Tale Canyon because some of the rock formations reminded people of animals, castles, or story characters.

It is not a canyon in the sense that most people think of a canyon. It is more of a wide slope that has been eroded over many years by wind, water, and ice. It is more of a collection of many shallow ravines. Sometimes they were parallel to each other and sometimes they weren't. The overall drainage pattern wasn't obvious.

This is the view looking north toward the lake and the Kungoy Alatau mountain range on the north side of the lake. This was the typical view of the mountains on the other side--you could see the snow-capped peaks but you could not make out the lower slopes. There was always a line of clouds just below the peaks, which gave the appearance of mountains floating on the tops of the clouds. We were along the shore of the lake at roughly its widest point so the north shore was about 32 miles away.

Other than the road in, one wide spot where you could park about three cars, and one bench, Skazka Canyon was undeveloped (aside from the toll station that was under construction). There were no marked trails but there was a network of paths from where people had walked in the past. We were the only people there.

It was not a big area but there was a lot of variety of colors and forms.

Ramil said this formation reminded him of Sumo wrestlers.

Marat didn't stick with us while we were exploring the area. He had a nice camera and a tripod and disappeared into the ravines to take some photos on his own.

Another view of the Skazka area with Issyk Kul in the background.

The recent rains had brought out the opportunistic wildflowers. You could see places on the ground here and there that were still wet. Following are photos of some of the many wildflowers that had opened up.

Corbin asked if he could take some pictures so I handed the camera off to him. Most of the plant photos were taken by him. I believe these had just emerged and were only about an inch or two high.

We felt lucky to happen to be there when so many different flowers were blooming simultaneously.

One of the ravines was loaded with wildflowers. They weren't distributed evenly but tended to be in clusters where the conditions must have been more suitable.

All of them appeared to be plants that were adapted to long dry spells. The soil was a mixture of small rocks and sand and didn't look as though it would retain moisture very well.

Ramil had a wildflower identification book but most of them had names that didn't translate into English very well. It included the scientific nomenclature, but since the guides where in Russian they were in the Cyrillic alphabet. In retrospect, I wish I would have jotted them down.

This particular plant was pleasantly fragrant.

Ramil had never seen these before and they weren't in his guidebooks. We saw about a dozen of them. After poking around later on the internet I'm pretty sure they are a plant called Cynomorium coccineum. It is a parasitic plant that derives its energy, carbon, and nutrients from a host plant. It has no chlorophyll, so it is incapable of photosynthesis. Most of the time it lives invisibly underground as a rhizome attached to the roots of its host, which is probably why Ramil hadn't seen it before. You could tell by the way the soil was freshly disturbed that they had emerged only within the last day or two.

Cynomorium is a genus with only one species although there are two subspecies. Cynomorium coccineum var. coccineum grows as far west as the Canary Islands, throughout the Mediterranean region, and as far east as Saudi Arabia and Iran. Cynomorium coccineum songaricum occurs in the higher elevations of Central Asia, Mongolia, and western China. Some botanists consider songaricum, which is likely what we were seeing, to be a separate species. Common names include desert thumb, red thumb, and suoyang.

They look mostly black in the photo but they were actually a deep dark purple. They looked spongy but felt dense. The rough surface of the club is composed of many tiny flowers. They are pollinated by flies that are said to be attracted to their "cabbage-like" odor. The ones we saw all had several flies buzzing or crawling around on them but we did not notice an odor. The plant has been used for centuries across Eurasia and northern Africa as a remedy for a variety of ailments. Recent research indicates that the plant does indeed contain multiple medically active compounds.

We spent probably about three hours exploring the area. There was a belt of vertical rock strata that extended through the area in a direction that was roughly perpendicular to the direction of surface water flow, which I think contributed to the somewhat maze-like topography of the area.

Ramil felt a family photo was called for before we left Skazka. He then let out an impressively loud whistle to let Marat know we were ready to move on. After leaving, we headed east to the village of Tamga. We would be staying in a guesthouse there for the evening. After lunch at the guesthouse, Ramil and Marat would take us to Jeti Oguz valley for some more hiking around.

As we got closer to Tamga, there were some occasional bays and inlets along the coast.

This was the guesthouse where we would be staying in the village of Tamga. I believe it was just called Tamga Guesthouse. It reminded me of some Canadian hostels that I stayed in many years ago. These two buildings were where people slept. We stayed in the one on the right. There were about four rooms upstairs and four rooms downstairs, with about eight narrow beds in each room. There was one small bathroom for each floor.

The owners were a Russian couple, probably in their early 70s. The husband described himself as a "retired alpinist." They got a lot of business from mountain climbers from around the world. Because the climbing season hadn't started yet we were almost the only people staying here so we didn't have to share a room with anyone. There was one other guest, a woman who was apparently traveling alone. The owners told us she was also an American, but she avoided eye contact during the couple times we ran into her and did not speak when we said hello.

It was obviously not a fancy place, but we hadn't paid fancy prices for the tour and it suited us. This was sort of an inner courtyard just beyond the buildings with the sleeping rooms. Through the double doors was the dining hall. The kitchen is on the right. On the other side of the dining hall was a long, narrow flower garden.

This archway led to the garden, which was beautiful. The owners had planted a wide variety of flowers. They must have had about 12 different types of irises, which were all in bloom, plus many other types of flowers, herbs, and fruit trees.

These columbines were just one of dozens of flowering plants.

The skull on the right is from a Siberian Ibex (Capra sibirica). The genus Capra includes wild goats and ibexes. The Siberian Ibex is the largest of the ibexes--the males weigh between 130 and 290 pounds.

The skull on the left is from a Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii), so named because Marco Polo described them in his writings. Their horns spiral horizontally and can become huge. They are classified as "near threatened." The average male weighs about 275 pounds. Both animals live at high elevations, preferring to stay above the tree line even in winter. You would have to be an alpinist to find their skulls.

The inside of the dining hall. It was quite pleasant as it looked out onto the garden.

jpg">

After stowing away our stuff and having lunch we were off to the Jeti Oguz valley. Along the way we started to see more cultivated land. Ramil told us that it was because there were Dungans living in this area who were farmers. He told us that it was good that there were Dungans around to grow vegetables because if it were left up to the Kyrgyz all there would be to eat would be meat and cheese. (Ramil was, he told us, three-quarters Tatar and one-quarter Kyrgyz.) Marat, who was 100 percent Kyrgyz, laughed and said it was true.

I asked about the Dungans and Ramil said they were Chinese Muslims. I asked how they differed from Uighurs and he explained that Uighurs are also Muslims but are a Turkic people similar to Kazakhs and Kyrgyz. They speak a Turkic language and write in an Arabic script. In western China the Uighurs are discriminated against by the Han Chinese, who have traditionally considered them to be barbarians.

The Dungans are ethnically and linguistically Han Chinese who are Muslim. Dungan is the Russian term for these people who live in former Soviet Republics. There are about 60,000 Dungans living in Kyrgyzstan. In China they are referred to as Hui Chinese. Because they look like Han Chinese and speak Mandarin they are not discriminated against to the same extent that Uighurs in China are.

Some of the scenery on the way east to Jeti Oguz.

We turned off the main road to head south up the Jeti Oguz valley. We were almost to the eastern tip of the lake and this was the farthest east we would go. We were probably about 55 straight-line miles from the border between Kyrgyzstan and western China.

Jeti Oguz is known for its red sandstone cliffs and we started to see outcrops at the mouth of the valley.

The valley is also known for honey. The Jeti Oguz valley is the only place where a specific wild bush, which is known for producing flavorful honey, grows in abundance. Beekeepers bring their hives to the valley in the spring when the bush is in bloom.

One of the well-known rock formations is called Broken Heart Rock. There was a wide, flat area near the rock and about a dozen beekeepers had parked their wagons there.

What doesn't show so well in the photos is how many bees were buzzing around. One stung Ramil on his nose.

This friendly fellow came over to chat with us--and sell some honey.

This is a pretty good photo of Marat on the left. Marat's T-shirt refers to Lenin Peak, one of the highest mountains in Central Asia, on the border between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The numbers refer to the summit elevation, which is 7134 meters (23,406 feet). Asia Mountains provides support to mountain climbers who want to climb Lenin Peak.

The beekeeper made sure we understood that he was selling last year's honey since nothing had yet been produced this year.

A closer shot of Broken Heart Rock. To give an idea of the scale--those are mature trees growing on the surface, not shrubs.

Looking up the valley. That's where we were headed. Ramil had a hike planned for us to visit a waterfall towards the head of the valley.

We passed through the village of Jeti Oguz where there is another rock formation that is famous in Central Asia. We would stop and view it on the way back. Beyond the village, the road was narrower and unpaved.

That's Marat on the right since his van had the steering wheel on the right.

Marat drove us until the road dead-ended and then dropped us off near this meadow.

Looking back down the valley.

Some people had moved their livestock to the meadow and had set up yurts and other shelters.

This little girl was very curious about us and probably would have followed after us if her mother hadn't stopped her.

We climbed out of the wide meadow area but there were occasional open areas on the side of the mountain as well. Those bigger leafy plants, Ramil told us, are bitter and toxic so the animals graze around them.

From the meadow we climbed until we were in a conifer forest.

Taking a short break before we got into the more forested part of the hike. Once we got up on the side of the mountains we curved around until we were in a steep-sided canyon and then the trail started going downhill again towards the falls.

The view to the east. Quite a contrast to the morning's hike.

The section of the hike towards the falls required us to pay attention in places. The narrow ravine we were hiking in was nearly vertical in spots and the trail bed sloped slightly towards the side with the abyss. The trail was also slightly muddy and slippery. It made me a little nervous because I had stepped in a marmot hole when we were exploring Suyab a couple days earlier and twisted my ankle. It still felt a little unreliable. Fortunately, it seemed like in the worst spots there was always a fortuituously wellplaced tree root on the uphill side that could be used for a handhold. As we approached the falls the trail got better.

The top part of the falls. I couldn't get the entirety of the falls in one photo.

Looking downstream from the falls. The stream immediately fell over another ledge. It was one steep, narrow canyon.

One of the views on the hike back out. The peak on the far right I think may be Karakol Peak, which has an elevation of 17,113 feet.

Ramil had brought a couple plastic bags to pick up litter on the way back. The litter was mostly plastic water and soda bottles and candy wrappers. I took one of his bags and between us we quickly filled two bags with garbage that was within a few feet of the trail. We found a couple more plastic bags that people had also littered and filled those as well. There were a lot of candy wrappers--not from candy bars but from small individually wrapped hard candies. I don't know why there was so much litter in this particular place. There was no litter at Skazka Canyon.

Heading back down. Someone had created a mess trying to drive where there was no road.

Looking down on the big meadow.

The stream in the upper Jeti Oguz valley. The stream from the waterfall flowed into this creek. After we got back down to the big meadow we rejoined Marat and headed back down the valley.

We stopped briefly at the village of Jeti Oguz, shown here. In the upper left are the buildings from one of the Soviet sanatoria/state-run spas. This one is similar to the one in Kaji Say in that they both had pools in which people could soak in mineral-rich water. In both cases the water had a high radon concentration, which the Russians at the time believed to be beneficial to one's health.

Ramil told us that immediately following the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union, then-Russian-president Boris Yeltsin and then-Kyrgyz-president Askara Akaev met at the spa in Jeti Oguz to commit to continued friendship and cooperation between the two countries. Marat laughed and muttered something, which Ramil translated as, "and it's been all downhill ever since," which Ramil said is the general consensus among the Kyrgyz.

The shrubs along the roadway are the ones that the beekeepers bring their bees to. Note the base of the cliffs in the upper right of the photo.

Here's a close up of the bee bush. The leaves were smooth and kind of waxy looking.

Here's the rock outcrop that the village of Jeti Oguz (and the valley) is named for. Jeti Oguz is Kyrgyz for Seven Bulls. There are a couple folktales about the origin of the rocks that both involve seven bulls being turned into stone. This is probably one of the most photographed sites in Kyrgyzstan because it is easy to get to.

Unfortunately, in our case, it was late in the afternoon and the rocks were mostly backlit. The sun wasn't completely down though and if I aimed the camera to include the entire formation, I didn't get a good result. This was the best of the several photos I took and only shows part of the outcrop. As Corbin put it, "You only got five bulls, Dad."

Here's an image from Globe Rovers Magazine showing a version of the postcard view that is frequently seen. The color of the rocks obviously stands out better under different light. I don't know how people decide which combination of rocks represents one bull. I've counted it various ways and get different numbers, but seven never seems to be one of them.

After spending some time admiring the rocks we headed back to the guesthouse at Tamga where the girls who worked in the kitchen had timed it to have food on the table shortly after we returned. Our shoes were so muddy after the hike that we left them outside the doorstep so that we didn't track mud all over the place. After dinner, we finished the card game that we had started last night in Kaji Say. Corbin managed to beat everyone by about 200 points.

Note: Tamga to Bishkek to Almaty to Morgantown

 

Back to TOP