It’s Kyrgyzstan. The mountains are there, the trails are there, we have backpacks, jackets, sleeping bags, pads, and tents. Now all that remained was to climb one. Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

A little over a week ago, a bunch of us did a trek up a valley to an area called the Jiptik Pass, which is a spectacular valley that is great for first-time trekkers because there is a “road” that goes pretty much the entire way, so there’s not really any risk of becoming lost, and there’s plentiful water along the way. We set off midday after work on the Friday, and by about 7pm we had made a camp a few hours up the trail.

Getting there was a bit more trying than we had anticipated. Rather than the 1h bus ride we had been advised of, it took about 3 hours in a taxi, which neither us nor the driver knew, which meant that our driver demanded almost double the price we had agreed on initially (not entirely without reason). Oops.

But we made it there, we made it up, the tents went up without a problem, and the next morning, as soon as the light hit the tents, we were off to climb up, up, and up.

The village where we were dropped off is at an elevation of about 2000 meters. The pass we were shooting for was at 4000.

Up we walked, up for four hours on the winding valley road that never leveled out for more than two minutes. Up past snowcovered mountains, spectacular cliffs, and rockslides so spectacular that we questiond how such formations could come about naturally.

Past domesticated cows and wild yaks, past meadows with edelweiss and wildflowers. And up towards the pass.

As we were approaching the pass, my hiking buddy and I decided to turn around early because we were feeling the altitude and the cold, but also because it was beginning to snow. So we went back down to a lower altitude and hung out in a meadow waiting for the rest of the crew and ate a TON of chocolate instead.

That night after a great dinner and campfire, we had walked a total of 17 miles as the crow flies, plus vertical of about 1 mile up, and 1 mile back down.

Getting back to Osh, though, was where the big challenge happened. We had agreed with our taxi driver that we would pay him a little extra initially in exchange for him coming to pick us up on Sunday. This is pretty normal for when you visit little villages and other areas that don’t have regular car service.

But he didn’t come. We called him, and it turned out he was in Bishkek.  Classic.  He connected us to a friend who then tried to charge us far more than we had agreed, and after I had shamed him in Kyrgyz enough, he came down to the originally agreed price. But, him being 2.5 hours away was too long to wait for some in our group, who went and negotiated cars from locals… for twice the price. We had no choice but to go along with it, because either way it would now have cost us double, so we called the first cabbie a few minutes later and told him we didn’t need him to come anymore. He was displeased, but we knew he hadn’t left Osh, so he didn’t have much reason to be angry.

Well, two volunteers and I (there were 6 of us total) piled into this old guy’s Zhiguli and we began racing down the dirt roads. After a little over an hour and a half, though, he pulled into a taxi station in a town called Papan, which is nice enough and positioned on a hydroelectric reservoir. He said that he can’t take us all the way to the city, and that we should find a different taxi there, but oh, we should still pay him the price that we agreed on to go all the way to Osh. Did I mention I hate taxi drivers?

Well, if that weren’t enough, two mid-twenties guys saw us pull up, and stormed over to the car and looked inside, and began yelling forcefully in Kyrgyz and Russian.

Turns out they were the guys who we had called and said we didn’t need for them to drive us anymore.  Somehow, they had found us, or we had accidentally stumbled upon them, but “stalked” makes for better clickbait.

They came around and opened the doors and shoved phones in our faces, demanding whose number appeared on the screen (it was mine, but they were so angry that we all agreed we would say the person who called was in the other car). They demanded that we pay them for the full fare from the village that we had agreed on before we canceled, then demanded that we ride with them back to Osh.  This, without any assurance that they wouldn’t pull over in an area without cell service or traffic that we had to drive through, beat or kill us and then steal all our stuff.

Back and forth we went, until finally agreeing on a price that wouldn’t cost us too much more.  We theatrically took pictures of the license plates of the stalkers’ car, sent them to our security team, and got in.

As it turned out, they were pleasant enough to ride with. They just didn’t want to listen when we had cancelled the cab – the money they were going to make was too good. We made it back to Osh safely, if extremely bitter at the cascading cost increases. The “400-500 som” hiking trip had become more expensive than a trip from Osh to Bishkek.  By plane.

And this, children, is why:
a) I hate taxis (this actually extends to everywhere in the world, with the exception of New York City and Dushanbe’s shared taxi network)
b) You should ALWAYS inspect your vehicle to make sure it is in good enough condition to make it to your destination with one or fewer flat tyres.  Zhigulis and Ladas are fun but the wheels do occasionally fall off at less than ideal times (literally).
c) You should know in advance how far you’re going, preferably in km and time, to negotiate a good faith taxi fare and not irritate your driver.  It also helps to make sure that HE knows where he’s going.  To that end, Google Maps has a surprising number of one-lane dirt “roads” mapped in Kyrgyzstan as “highway”.
d) Leave flexibility time so that you’re not forced to pay double in order to make it to someone’s next engagement on time
e) 6 is a terrible group size for travel by taxi to areas without plentiful Stepwagons.  Go in multiples of 4 when possible.
f) If you’re a tourist, just have CBT make the arrangements for your transport, and consider paying to have your driver stay with you during your trip.  It’ll probably cost the same as what it wound up costing us when we did it ourselves, and generally not involve long fights over the phone in Kyrgyz or getting accosted by two angry men who stalked you to happened to run into you in a town called Papan.
g) None of this actually matters because LOOK AT ALL THOSE AMAZING MOUNTAINS!  Seriously, just come hike in Kyrgyzstan with me already.