Hiking in the dark from Ala Kul Lake to Altyn Arashan, Kyrgyzstan
The first sign was a woman’s hair.
At an altitude of 3,900 meters, her long, ruby locks were slowly lifting off her shoulders, as if someone above us were pulling them up on strings.
I had just lit my cigarette, but could only draw one puff.
Our bed for the night lay 11 kilometers, a river and a valley away, beneath a rapidly setting sun.
To explain how I got here though, I need to go back two days.
When professional hikers tell you that a trail is easy, let me let you in on a little secret — they are lying.
This summer, I finally fulfilled a travel goal of mine and travelled to Kyrgyzstan. Upon asking for recommendations, everybody had one clear answer: the Ala Kul Lake three-day trek, an absolute must I could not miss.
And here I should say up front: while I enjoy hiking, I had never actually been on a hike longer than 5–6 hours. However, my FOMO got the best of me and soon enough, my boyfriend and I were on our way to start this exciting little adventure.
What could possibly go wrong?
As it turns out, nothing could have prepared me for what followed — the most mentally and physically challenging journey home of my life.
Rewind to August: a shaky start
Our adventure starts on the wrong foot. We wake up late, we get ready too slowly, and we decide breakfast and an iced latte are non-negotiable, as the quaint town of Karakol comes alive in front of our sleepy eyes. Around noon, we’re finally on the path.
Day one goes by slowly — lush forest, then dry fields, then long rocky stretches — as we stop every hour to take in the landscape. We reach our first yurt camp around 9pm. The next day is supposed to be the longest: 15 km, or 10–12 hours of walking, 4 of them entirely uphill towards the Ala Kul Pass at over 3,900 meters.
A Bag Of Sand Rolling Through
After a steep morning climb, Ala Kul opens up below us and my heart swells up. The water is a deep blue that veers almost into green, in colours so solid and thick that it looks less like a lake than a drawing — made with crayons or permanent markers rather than pastels. And after about 4 hours, we are finally on the last uphill stretch to Ala Kul Pass.
Every step feels like moving a thousand bags of sand. Sticks in hand barely helping, legs tired, vision blurry, mouth dry from the lack of water, and losing hope, I am a walking mess. Or rather, a hiking mess.
The sand is so slippery every step feels like an invitation for death to come and collect me, and more than once I resort to crawling over rocks like a slug so I don’t trip and fall. At one point, I almost cry.
As I take one step at a time at a painfully slow pace, one thought keeps circling through my mind:
“I cannot wait to reward myself with a well-deserved cigarette once I get to the top.”
Non-smokers might not understand, but every smoker knows the exact feeling — and motivation — that comes from the promise of a cigarette once the task is done. So on I go, silently coveting my final reward, as my boyfriend waves at me from the top and urges me to keep going.
An Ec-static Chaos
When I eventually reach the peak, I am elated. Out of breath but reassured that no more uphill walking is waiting for me, I take out my tobacco pouch and start rolling, ready to revel in the scenery through a thin cloud of smoke.
However, the universe has other plans for us. As I sit down and light up my cigarette, I do not take more than a single puff before thunder starts ricocheting across the mountain walls, and the sky suddenly turns dark.
I look around to see the reaction of people around us, seeking reassurance in strange faces like a child lost in an unfamiliar crowd.
That’s when I see her: the beautiful Russian girl, with long, deep red hair floating around her, reminding me of the bedtime stories my mum would read to me as a child about mermaids luring men towards danger. And just in the same way, there is something wrong with this picture, but I can’t tell what until someone panics.
Her hair is up with static. A few seconds later, we hear the same static travelling through our hiking sticks. My beloved cigarette stands abandoned between my fingers after a single puff, and I am scrambling to get my stuff and run down, as hail starts to fall and the threat of lightning looms over us at 3,900 meters.
If you’ve ever hiked to Ala Kul Lake, you will know this: the way down is not for the weak — in fact, it is extremely dangerous. Both sides of the peak are slippery fine sand and loose rocks, where one wrong step can land you several meters down or start a landslide onto the people below. Our side is said to be the harder one, and my heart is pumping at three times its normal pace.
Someone out there saved my life
As I start my descent, I put my foot in the wrong spot and I am suddenly stuck — if I move the unstable one, there is a high chance I will slip, but if I move the more stable one, I will fall. I have ventured about a meter outside the main path, and no one is close enough to pull me back. As I start panicking, an angel sees me and goes out of his way to get closer — he manages to extend his arm, and I am able to regain my footing and get back on track.
Eventually, we make it down and reach a middle camp between the previous one and Altyn Arashan. As the hail turns into a downpour, we all hide in the yurts where — among the dimmed lights and warm stoves — a handful of strangers become our friends for the evening, swapping stories over hot tea while the rain drums on the felt roof.
A Case of Excessive Bravery
The rain lasts about 2 hours. Since we started the day’s hike quite late and arrived at the camp around 4pm, that leaves us at 6pm with about 5–6 hours of hiking left for the day.
We discuss the options with the yurt camp leader. Staying would be safer: we could wake up at 5 the next morning and reach Altyn Arashan before noon. But we would lose the reservation we’ve already paid for, and an extremely early wake up call is not our style.
If we leave now, he warns us, we’ll have about 1.5 hours of daylight. We’ll reach the river after sunset, swollen from the rain, and have to wade through it in freezing cold. Then we’ll walk the rest of the 11 kilometers in the dark, through mud, on trails the rain has washed away, some of which lead to completely different places.
A lovely scenario — said no one, ever.
We look at the guy.
We look at each other.
We look at the sky.
Okay, let’s do it.
A Path To Survival
What follows is about 6 hours of hiking which — I won’t lie to you — tested every bit of willpower I had in me. We power through at a speed I’ve never walked before. For the first time in the entire hike, I am going faster than my boyfriend, striding several meters ahead.
It isn’t a sudden burst of energy.
It is fear.
The idea of walking through a river in the dark at freezing temperatures is the biggest motivator I have ever had, and I sift through mud and cow feces like I am rolling through a field of flowers. I simply do not care anymore. The rain has left the whole valley smelling of wet grass, and the smell gets into me like a natural booster.
Slowly, the sun starts to set. The fields are golden in the late light, and little by little they give way to blue. That’s when we notice a girl walking ahead of us with a tiny backpack and rain boots.
“I saw a girl,” my boyfriend says. At first, I think he is either joking or having a mirage. Who would be out here, alone, at this time?
And yet, a few minutes later I see her too. She is real. Or we are both hallucinating — to this day, I am unsure which. Without thinking, we start following the mystery girl for a while, until my boyfriend stops — wait. We’re going off track.
Suddenly I remember the yurt camp lead warning us we might get lost among the trails, and I feel a chill running down my spine. I feel like the main character in one of those horror movies where the protagonists follow a spirit through the fields and mysteriously die at the end of it. Luckily, we get back on track before this gory ending, and we reach the river just as the fields are growing dark.
It isn’t too cold yet, and while the size of the river has increased significantly, I cannot accept the idea of wading through it barefoot. True to the “problem-solver” on my CV, I look for a spot along the stream where the rocks are exposed enough to skip across, and eventually we find an opening.
For some reason, my brain has associated the river crossing — the part of the hike that was scaring me the most — with the finish line, when in fact, it is pretty much the beginning. We have at least another 4–5 hours to go and my cigarette is tucked back in my pouch, alone and unfinished.
My Childhood Nightmares Were Real
Picture this: two foreigners, alone in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan, in the dark and deep in mud, with no trail, no human presence for miles, and only an offline map and a tiny torch.
Meanwhile, the hills around us are completely silent. Above us, a sky full of stars keeps us company the whole way, and when the map isn’t clear, we look for the moon to orient ourselves.
At times, I look around and have to focus on what I am feeling — elation or dread? The silence scares me, while at the same time giving my mind a place to rest. I am anxious about finding our way home, but I am also somehow at peace as the stillness of the mountains envelops us in its embrace.
After navigating the open, wet fields for hours, and slowing down in the forest where the rain has turned most trails into a slippery death trap, we finally get to what we think is the closing lap. The camp is supposed to be next to another river, so when we reach it we think we are close. Spoiler alert — we are not.
But this isn’t the worst part. Because the rain has washed away the trails, and the darkness makes it impossible to see them anyway, we are left blindly heading in the direction of the camp, regardless of where we’re walking. In practice, this means walking next to a river across swamps, where one wrong step can suck you into the ground at any moment. Every step into the mud feels like gently collapsing into a deathly cloud — soft, but extremely dangerous.
Remember how scared we used to be of quicksand as kids? Well, I am now finally living my childhood nightmare. When both my feet get stuck one after the other, I start to think — “This is it. This is how I will go down.” In the dark, covered in mud, drowning in a swamp in Kyrgyzstan. Who would have thought?
My body is also getting weaker. We finally see the lights of the camp but, like a mirage, no matter how much we walk, they always look equally distant. We are, mentally and literally, treading on dangerous ground, and I begin to lose hope and consider I might not make it.
Home — in this case, a yurt camp I am starting to doubt even exists — feels like a faraway dream that I might never reach.
Eventually though, we do. Ours turns out to be the last camp on the trail (of course), but finally we see it, overlooking the valley, its lights promising safety, warmth and a meal we are desperately craving.
It’s 11:30pm when the camp leader finally opens the door. Someone puts a bowl of soup in front of me.
I roll a new cigarette and smoke it outside, slowly, all the way down this time.
It feels like a dream, but it’s reality.
We are home.
I used to think of home as somewhere I lived. That night, it felt much simpler — a lit doorway, a hot meal, my boyfriend next to me, and a bed I’d already paid for.
That cigarette also made me realise that the goals we set for ourselves aren’t always what’s in the cards: things change, situations evolve, and you can end up somewhere completely different from where you initially planned to be.
What I thought would be my reward was only the start of something bigger, and what I thought was a bump in the road turned out to be one of the wildest experiences of my life.
I guess sometimes, the wait is worth it.
Until the next one,
Elena
