Hiking 100km Across the Heights of Alay Mountains in Kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan started showing up on my social media feeds and honestly I'd never even heard of it before. But after a bit of research I found out it's a Central Asian country that shares borders with China as well as some other smaller countries such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Like a lot of the countries in the area, it was part of the Soviet Union until it broke apart in 1991. But now it's mostly known for its impressive mountains, horses, and koperu, their national sport which is also known to many as dead goat polo. Oh and let's not forget their nomadic yurt culture which is such a big part of who they are that the center of the flag actually represents the roof of a yurt. So in typical fashion I'm finding treks and hikes in the Kyrgyzstan region which really aren't too popular. Actually nothing in the Kyrgyzstan region is really popular. So after doing a little bit of research with the internet, doing some blog posts, some more Instagram, I finally found a company called Visit LA that kind of specialized in let's call it full service trekking. Not really my thing, I kind of like going a little bit on my own but they were going to help with booking the yurts or homestays, also some transportation inside of the country so we can get to the trailhead and whatnot. They were super affordable, so affordable that we hired a porter to carry our gear that we'd only need really at nighttime or in the mornings so that way we're only really carrying our day pack throughout the day. So once I had everything booked up in Kyrgyzstan, the biggest problem was actually getting to Kyrgyzstan and trying to do it in somewhat of a timely fashion. We had the opportunity to actually fly through Dubai which I'd never been to, so we had like a 24-hour layover there. Apparently our flight into Osh had been cancelled and it wasn't cancelled just for a night, it was cancelled for the next month and a half. So what should have been roughly 24 to 36 hours of travel time ended up being a full three days to get up there. On top of that what was supposed to be 24 to 36 hours coming back ended up being three days to come back. So our eight-day trekking plus six days of travel ended up being a full two weeks for the trip, at least coming from the east coast of the United States. Our on-the-ground itinerary was about eight days and included a pretty crazy drive from Osh to Seri Mogul which also had like a small little hike there and then our main trek was Heights of Ale trek. The 62-mile, 100-kilometer route takes roughly six days and covers a huge variety of terrain and is considered by many to be the best trek in Kyrgyzstan. After completing the main trek we spent our final day hiking up to Travelers Pass next to Lenin Peak and then driving back to Osh. For those who want to do this trip themselves, I put together a video with more of details telling you exactly how to do it, how we did it, what we would have changed, but in the meantime here's a hike. Osh here? Yes.