The Vagabond Hiker

Hiking, trekking, and climbing the world

Hiking Uzbekistan’s Mountains

Visitors to Uzbekistan usually confine their travels to the Silk Road Cities of Bukhara, Samarkand, and Khiva, with a day spent in Tashkent where most international flights arrive. While our Mountain Kingdoms group did all that, for 7 days we also trekked around the Nuratau and Chimgan Mountains, visiting remote villages and staying in guesthouses in the former, and enjoying a lake-side resort in the latter.

Nuratau Mountains

A 4 to 5 hour drive from Bukhara are located the Nuratau Mountains. According to Wiki, the Nuratau Mountains are a range of mountains located in Uzbekistan constituting one of the western buttresses of the Gissar Range. They border Aydar Lake to the north, the town of Nurata to the west, the Kyzylkum Desert to the south, and the Sanzar river to the east.

Our four day, 3 night itinerary included 1) a village walk around Asraf village; 2) a hike from Asraf to Uhum village; 3) a hike to view petroglyphs, continuing to Hayat village; 4) and a local hike around Hayat village. Apart from the first walk (where we were nearly benighted due to an inexperienced guide), the walks of 7 to 13 km were rather easy, with no extended ascents and generally good trails. The two British couples that comprised the rest of our group were all very pleasant and interesting, though perhaps not the strongest hikers. Enjoy some hiking highlights along with a couple “city” photos at the end!

Asraf village view on the day 1 local walk. The impossibly late start to the day 1 walk, due to wasted time en-route, made photography difficult, so only this poor photo from my phone is included here.
Looking back at Asraf valley near the start of our day 2 trek. The geology is primarily sandstone and limestone.
View towards Lake Aydar, a large, brackish man-made reservoir from the Soviet era just visible in the distance
A shaded lane in Uhum village
A pleasant valley and stream outside of Uhum village on day 3. The riparian ecosystems were entirely different from the arid mountains.
The petroglyphs we saw on day 3. Although the walk up the valley was very pleasant, compared to those I’ve seen in southern Utah, this one panel of sheep was underwhelming,
Landscape on day 4 outside of Hayat village. Although we did spot a herd of endangered Severtsov’s wild sheep in the tiny nearby Nuratau-Kyzylkum Biosphere Reserve, they were only clear through binoculars.
Spot our group in the hills outside Hayat village
Some hooved locusts near Hayat village. Incidentally, the Hayat Guesthouse was easily the best of the three at which we stayed.

Chimgan Mountains

No question that the Chimgan Mountains were more inspiring that the Nuratau Mountains. They lie about 90 minutes’ drive north of Tashkent, and are mostly known for skiing in the winter, but they are also a popular escape from the summer heat for Tashkentians (?), who comprise about 10% of Uzbekistan’s population. We did 3 day hikes in this area dubbed by Uzbeks somewhat aspirationally as “little Switzerland.” With distances around 13 km and more than 500 m of elevation change, they were definitely in the moderate category, a whole step up from the easy hikes in the Nuratau mountains. Here are the highlights. . .

View from near our high pass trailhead on day 1. Greater Chimgan is on the right, featuring several climbing and mountaineering routes, and is definitely worth a visit on its own. Our much easier objective the following day was Lesser Chimgan, on the left here.
Vista with Lake Charvak on our long descent on day 1. Our hotel was on the lower right portion of the lake from this perspective. Glorious light and clouds make this my favorite photo of this post.
Balcony view from the Avenue Park Hotel across the man-made Lake Charvak reservoir
A zoom view of the mountains to the east as we ascended on our day 2 traverse of Lesser Chimgan. Farther to the east and north are the much higher Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, obscured by clouds on this day.
Greater Chimgan (right) from our ascent ridge. Admittedly almost identical to the previous photo, but I wanted to show another perspective of Greater Chimgan, at 3309 m the highest Uzbek peak in the Western Tian Shan. Please forgive me.
The Vagabond Hiker on the summit of Lesser Chimgan (2099 m). Charvak Lake is below.
Our scrambling descent route on the Lesser Chimgan traverse, the most interesting part of any of our hikes.
Our group on descent. None were really scramblers, but they all eventually made it down safely.
Charvak Lake view on descent. Shortly after this, the hike went off-piste, as our inexperienced guide led us traversing around an animal track rather than descending any one of a number of good paths.
Shuldak Village, at our day 3 trailhead in the Chimgan Mountains. From here we did a loop up a ridge, descending another valley.
Geology along the Shuldak Valley in the Chimgan Mtns, near the start of our hike. Marble has long been quarried from these valleys.
The obligatory flower photo. European Michaelmas daisy (Aster amellus), one of the few interesting flowers I saw blooming this late in the season.
Variegated landscape above the Shuldak Valley
Another landscape pic. Again, pardon the redundancy, but the clouds on all three days hiking in the Chimgans made photography so much more fun!
Like a scene from the Old West: a rail car, a remnant from the mining and quarrying days.

Hiking in these two wildly different mountain ranges added immeasurably to the Silk Road Cities on our 2 week trip to Uzbekistan. To whet your appetite for the Silk Road, here are a couple of the many city photos I took. . .

Evening light on the Islam Khoja Minaret, Khiva
Registan Square, Samarkand, featuring a trio of madrasas: Ulugh Beg (l), Tilya-Kori (c), and Sherdor (r).

To save money, my return flight from Tashkent to London was by way of Tunis, where I enjoyed two action-packed days exploring ancient Roman and Phoenician sites, as well as admiring mosaics at the Bardo museum and wandering around both the beautiful town of Sidi Bou Said and the thankfully quiet (this was a Sunday) Medina of Tunis. If I get ambitious I will post on my cultural wanderings in Tunisia, including the Roman ruins of Bulla Regia and Dougga.

Last week was spent in Portugal’s Algarve, and featured 3 dramatic coastal hikes, the subject of another (shortish) blog post. Meanwhile, tomorrow I am returning to Cornwall to hike another week-long section of the Southwest Coast Path, from St Ives to Padstow.

No worries, though. I will eventually post some photos from these adventures!

The Vagabond Hiker

Thoughts on Ueli Steck and my upcoming climb of Pik Lenin

As I plan and train for my next alpine climb, I reflect on the recent sad passing of one of the mountaineering greats of this – or any – generation, Ueli Steck.  Known as the “Swiss Machine,” Ueli became famous to the public with his record-setting solo climbs of the Eiger Nordwand.  When he fell to his death on April 30th, Ueli was acclimatizing to climb Everest by the West Ridge, followed by traversing to summit Lhotse, something that has never been accomplished.  All solo and without oxygen, of course.  Ueli’s passion, dedication, fantastic physical condition, and technical excellence on different terrain put him head and shoulders above most other mountaineers.  But beyond his mountaineering accomplishments (recently he summited all 82 4,000 m Alpine peaks in one season, for example), he embodied the humility of how one should approach the mountains.

Although me going on a guided climb up Pik Lenin in the Pamir Mountains of Kyrgyzstan cannot be compared to any of Ueli’s elite mountaineering accomplishments, he recently said:

“There are many peaks in this world and everyone can find their own mountain – depending on what they are looking for. Eventually everyone will find their own Everest.”

Pik Lenin will be a first for me in more ways than one.  In the Pamir Mountains between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, Pik Lenin is one of five 7,000 meter mountains in the former Soviet Union, the summitting of all of which completes the Snow Leopard Challenge.  Although not technical, it is a long, physically challenging alpine climb, with three or four camps established above base camp.  At 7,134 meters, it will be far higher than any mountains I have climbed in the Andes.  To successfully acclimatize will require more than two weeks on the mountain, a true expedition peak.  Bad weather at some point is inevitable.  So much so, in fact, that few have summitted the past two years.

That said, I am going with the British company Adventure Peaks (https://www.adventurepeaks.com), who in the past have had good team success reaching the summit, partly because of an option for an extra camp (at 6,400 meters) to help shorten the very long summit day.  This year they have added two more contingency days for weather, giving the team many as six days to reach the top.  I’ll be leaving for Osh on August 11, returning from Kyrgyzstan on or before September 5th.  I have updated my Calendar in this blog to reflect this trip.  (I also changed the width of the content, removing the side bar, to better allow viewing the photos).

Until then, my blog posts will diminish both in length and frequency as my focus will be on training.  While there are many reasons that I might not be able to reach the summit, I certainly don’t want lack of conditioning to be among them.  In the mean time, here’s a photo of me last September on the lower summit of Huayna Potosi (6,087m)  in Bolivia:

“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow” – Ueli Steck, 1976-2017

Happy trails, wherever they may take you,

The Vagabond Hiker

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