?Are you insane"?. Friends weren?t reacting to me climbing Everest or swimming the Bosphorus, but to the decision to take seven teenagers riding and camping in Kyrgyzstan this summer.
Words: Alexandra Tolstoy
I?ve been running trips for intrepid travellers in this beautiful nomadic country for 25 years but until this point, my clients had all been sensible, rule-abiding adults.
In 1999, I rode 5,000 miles of the Silk Road on horse and camel with three girlfriends. Starting on horses in the mostly featureless Karakum Desert of Turkmenistan, we then passed through the exotic and historic Silk Road cities of Uzbekistan, I became more enamoured, but it was only upon ascending into the valleys of the Tien Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan that I truly fell in love with our adventure. I?d never encountered such natural beauty: alpine meadows of wild poppies, tulips, marigolds and peonies. The snow-tipped mountains, sparkling rivers, yurts pitched on the remotest of plateaus and enchanting villages of adobe houses were just heavenly. And so my business was born: I decided to bring others here, riding and camping for a week at a time in my favourite part of the country, Sary-Chelek ? a special destination, even for the Kyrgyz. I run the trips in term time, to fit around my children but this year my middle son started begging to join me. We all know how unwilling teenagers can be to do things, so I couldn?t resist this opportunity.
The group loved watching the guides play ulak again...