The true measures of a guided ski tour are the memories it provides, the connections it creates, the moments of joy and the new things experienced. And of course there are the skiing, food, culture, history, laughter, banter, and all-round buffoonery. Pleased to say that the Ski Adventure Kyrgyzstan had all of that and more. A diverse bunch of participants from half a dozen countries provided all manner of fine humour, respect, patience and requisite piss-taking as required throughout the week - exactly what you want in a mixed group tour.

Starting in Bishkek, we briefly toured the main sights in the city centre and had an all too short amount of time checking out a local food market. I barely tasted my first samples of weird butter, scrumptious unidentifiable honey, various nuts and other assorted peculiarities before we had to depart. And just as they were freshly butchering a few more carcasses with an axe on a large wooden stump out the back of one of the open-air meat stalls! Will buy some steaks next time!

Led fearlessly by our intrepid local guide Vasily, the tour had many highlights:

• The food. With influences from India & China, it is way more diverse & flavoursome than we expected. A different Karakol restaurant is visited every night (except when cat skiing) and the most difficult task will be controlling one’s urge to eat more…… and more …… and more.
• Horse skiing. Eating them one night, then riding them the next is a thing! Such a unique experience, the hardy local horses are incredible, riding up with strength. Once up top with riders dismounted, they enjoyed a frolic and roll in the fresh snow like huge puppies. As they were led back down by the locals, we were lucky enough to ski the off-piste descent in powder, which for some in the group was their first time experiencing true backcountry freeride! Challenging for some, a hoot for others. It was a joy to see everybody get down in one piece and with jubilant smiles all-round at the bottom.
• Despite a difficult winter season in Kyrgyzstan, with very little snowfall, I was impressed with the snow quality during the last 3 ski days of the trip.
• And also relevant to the above, the ability of Vasily and the cat skiing guides to find decent windblown snow that was untracked in trying conditions was a testament to their local knowledge and professionalism. Added into that was the varied ability of the group members. A tough ask to keep everyone satisfied, but they largely succeeded.
• Cat skiing at Jyrgalan. After the horse skiing, two days of cat skiing was the best on-snow experience during the tour.
• The locals. Culturally, Kyrgyzstan is most certainly a fascinating place to visit, plus it is so very friendly & open for visitors. The nation’s nomadic herding roots are not always obvious but subtle signs are everywhere. Where else will you see horseshoes for sale in bulk at a local supermarket? English is not widely spoken, but it is reasonably well understood (if that makes sense to you!). Regardless, communicating with everyone is just like anywhere else in the world, and all the more easy in Kyrgyzstan due to the politeness, good humour and inquisitive nature of the locals. A smile, hand gestures and google translate works just fine! Learning a few local words is of course of great value. Wandering the streets of Karakol is easy due to the obliging locals. Street food, a bazaar, cheap haircuts (yes, I got one), historic sights and random stuff in a strange land all add to the montage of memories of this tour.
• Kyrgyzstan is observably one of the more ‘economically challenged’ of the central Asian stans, so it is of some comfort to know that one’s tourist dollars contribute to their future prosperity.

Accommodation wise, the base in Karakol for 5 nights was the MONGU ‘mini’ hotel. A quiet location, with comfortable rooms and fantastic ensuites. The breakfast was passable and taken on the covered rooftop terrace with requisite views across the city & mountains.

Other dibs and dobs on the tour included visiting a local outdoor hot spring pool. Rustic facilities were expected and experienced. The upper pool was so hot it could only be tolerated by the most hardy, of which I was not one! A fun distraction or sure.

Things worth knowing before you go.

1. The MONGU hotel in Karakol is a no alcohol establishment (not a big deal as ‘The Hut’ bar is just across the road), and before entering one needs to take off and leave outside shoes in an extremely cold entryway. Definitely pack some slippers in your bag and carry ski boots into your room to dry and warm up!
2. The air quality in Karakol city can be quite poor in winter.
3. Spending in a cosy yurt is part of the trip. Incredible warm (hot even!), be prepared to share with up to 7 others. A downside was the unnecessarily ‘rustic’ toilet ‘facility’, something that we would expect to be improved in the future when they move this part of the tour to a new location.
4. The horse & cat skiing requires some decent off-piste skiing/snowboarding ability & experience to get the most out of this tour.
5. Bring some bathers for the hot spring pool.
6. eSims worked well at all locations visited on the tour, but perhaps not having one will allow more time to soak it all in and disconnect from your other world.
7. The drives from Bishkek to Karakol and back, whilst broken up with a few stops are quite long (over 6hr).
8. You can get local cash easily along the way from Bishkek or later in Karakol. About 200euro equivalent should last a week. Effectively it is spent on snacks, some lunches and alcohol. Everything is covered.

I could rabbit on more about this tour but perhaps it’s easier to just look at the 38 photos (if they all got past the blog moderator that is!) I added to this review and decide on that basis if it might be for you. I had 60 photos originally to cover all the bases but whittled it down to 38 as a compromise to myself! If there are less, you know who to blame…. 😊

This tour to Kyrgyzstan is a ‘soft’ adventure, but an adventure nonetheless. The softness is in that you don’t have to organise anything yourself. The experiences can be anything but soft. A rewarding week with a great bunch that has provided stories and memories for the rest of my days - and that is not easily accomplished. If you decide to go, embrace it all, bring your happy face, banter with the other participants & locals, be brave & silly as well.

GENERAL REVIEW
Pros
- The Ski Adventure Kyrgyzstan offers a ski or snowboard holiday with a difference, far away from the mainstream ski resorts of Europe and North America. You can feed your adventurous spirit and experience the culture of this charming country.
- Riding a horse up the hill and skiing or snowboarding down is a rather unique experience.
- Similarly, staying in a yurt probably isn’t something you do very often and it’s more like glamping than having to rough it.
- It’s an inexpensive ski trip, especially considering it includes snowcat skiing, lodging, half-board and all transportation.
- Having the support of a host makes the trip completely stress-free, including interpreting services at restaurants and transport to the various activities.
- You’re likely to meet other like-minded people with an adventurous spirit.

Pro or Con Depending On Your Perspective
- Even though you have a driver and can just sit back and relax, it’s a long trip between Bishkek and Karakol (and then a shorter drive to and from Jyrgalan). Some of the views of the lake, mountains and desert landscapes are nice, and as you pass through towns you can do some good people watching. Nevertheless, it’s a long time to sit in a van (which was made longer for us with extensive roadworks). The upside of the many roadworks is that drive times in the future should be shorter.

OUR EXPERIENCE
It was hard to my put finger on it and how it happened, but Kyrgyzstan captured my heart. I’d been on the Ski Adventure Kazakhstan the week prior and arrived in Kyrgyzstan via the remote Karkyra – Kegen border crossing after cat skiing near Karkara. What an experience! From that moment of crossing the border, the feeling of being in a beautiful distant land hit. We passed through little towns with simple housing and big mountain scenes ever present in the background, and livestock just wandered around freely. There seemed to be more people riding horses along the side of the road than cars on the road. The pace and simplicity of life in rural Kyrgyzstan felt delightfully peaceful.

DAY EXPERIENCES
Like much of regional Kyrgyzstan there was nothing too fancy about the town of Karakol or the Karakol Ski Resort, and this was a nice warm-up for the tour. The ski area had some good freeriding terrain that would be fun on a powder day. The snow was just OK off-piste and the grooming on-piste was sub-par, although naturally we weren’t expecting swanky manicured slopes or high speed lifts. One day we had lunch at the newish base lodge which was ideal to people watch the out-of-control beginners careening down the slope, Russians enjoying a hookah, and a DJ pumping out loud tunes on a repeat playlist (so the presence of a DJ was superfluous). It was a restaurant bar trying to emulate an Austrian après ski bar minus the alcoholic beverages, so it felt peculiar, but I guess that’s sort of the point of travelling to foreign lands. See review of Karakol here.

The horse accessed skiing/riding was fantastic and a classic activity for a country where horses form part of the national identify. Perhaps there are as many horses in Kyrgyzstan as there are sheep in New Zealand? The 2 to 2.5 hour horse ride up the hill was enjoyable yet appropriately sedate considering the knee deep snow and that not everyone in the group was adept at horse riding. The ski down had a little pitch initially along with some vegetation and not all group members managed this proficiently. In the absence of a tail guide, it was thankful that there was plenty of teamwork to get everyone down the hill safely. Overall, it was a great experience – you can checkout the video.

The 2 days of cat skiing was plenty of fun, and many of our group were newbies to cat skiing, so that added to the enjoyment. You can see our review of the cat skiing for more info.

After skiing one day we visited some lovely hot springs near Karakol in a quiet valley. Unlike some hot springs I visited in Kazakhstan which were more akin to swimming pools, the rock pools fit in with the natural environment next to a snow covered stream. In addition to being aesthetically lovely, the hot soak was welcomed by tired bodies.

On the return trip to Bishkek, we stopped in at the FairyTale Canyon. For some reason our host didn’t join us on the return trip and with a pretty crappy map at the base area and unmarked trails that broke off in lots of directions, not all in the group saw the best of the area. Nevertheless it was striking and a nice way to stretch the legs on the road trip.

For the city of Bishkek, see the Bishkek reviews here.

GUIDING
It takes a little time to get used to the style of guiding or hosting in Central Asia where things might be more laidback than you’re used to, or where guides have a laissez-faire approach to communication. We got into the groove and knew that if we wanted more information then we needed to ask questions. Sometimes things got lost in translation, such as some disorganisation associated with trying to plan and communicate the horse riding day, but that’s to be expected in a foreign land where we don’t speak the language. Having a local guide to provide cultural insights and someone to interpret for us was invaluable, especially at dinner, and having the guide coordinate many aspects of the trip was instrumental in an easy trip.

At the ski resort the guiding was more like “hosting” which was ideal. Those who wanted to ski around with the guide could, and others peeled off to explore further afield. This was necessary as we had a lot of ability disparity in the group, ranging from experts to intermediates with possibly no off-piste experience. Kudos to the adventurous spirits of the latter who gave it a good crack.

As mentioned above, the guiding with the horse riding would have been improved with a tail guide and thankfully group cohesion was excellent.

For the cat skiing, there was a combination of our trip guide/host plus the cat skiing guides, which worked really well.

All pre-trip communication was very professional and organised, and the establishment of the WhatsApp group was key for group communication.

ACCOMMODATION
The main lodging for the tour was the Mongu Hotel in Karakol. This was a relatively new hotel so the rooms were modern, had adequate space and a decent ensuite bathroom. Upstairs on the enclosed terrace was the breakfast room which offered nice views of the mountains. The small breakfast buffet included cereal, yoghurt, meat, cheese, crepes, simple pastries, tea and instant coffee. This was a nice space to congregate and there were also 2 other small lounges, although it wasn’t possible to chill with an après ski beverage as alcohol was not permitted onsite. Luckily the best bar in town, The Hut, was just 40 metres away.

We spent one night in a yurt in Jyrgalan for the 2 days of cat skiing. The communal yurts were located on a property with a guesthouse where meals were served. Overall the experience was very enjoyable and more on this is outlined on the cat skiing review.

The Bishkek hotel was perfect for a pitstop. Modern rooms, good wifi, and a comprehensive buffet breakfast covered all our needs.

FOOD
I’d been a little apprehensive about the food in Kyrgyzstan after preliminary research on what to expect and was worried about the potential for lack of flavour and too much emphasis on horse. I’m not a foodie but rather I’ve been told that I’m a “fussatarian”. Anyhow I needn’t have worried as I was able to eat like a horse without actually eating horse (others quite enjoyed it!). The food was a thousand times better than I expected. In Karakol our guide took us to a variety of restaurants where typically he ordered bread and lovely salads for the group, and then each of us ordered a main. The choice of cuisine was extensive and very flavoursome, although sometimes trying to get a decent alcoholic drink was more of a challenge.

At the cat skiing guesthouse the fare was more traditional Kyrg, which was nice to experience rather than just eating the gentrified or touristified cuisine of Karakol.


Overall the trip was fantastic and it brought together a great crew from different parts of the world that added to the fun. That the tour enabled my heart to be captured by Kyrgyzstan speaks volumes.