Have you ever felt bored in a base camp in Kyrgyzstan?! These are things that happen to many and so we asked our ambassadors Alessandra and Camilla how they managed to overcome this problem. While you wait to open your first route in the Ak-Su valley the weather may not be the best: it can rain. The body may ask for a well-deserved rest and so can the mind. Some advice from those who have learned to know the life of the base camp!

Written by Alessandra Prato, Photos by Alessandra Prato and Camilla Reggio

It is true that we are not capable of resting . Apart from one or two days when I was either exhausted by gastroenteritis or it was raining, on our rest days we used our legs more than on all the other climbing days. I would say that our most significant walks are essentially three: the one with the shepherd calling the flock, the one in the Kara Su valley and the one to Bird Peak .

The first part is completely random: after going to check the precarious conditions of the bridge over the Aksu River, which we promised the Basques to fix to make it safe, we wander off to visit the shepherd on the other bank . After offering us a huge bowl of kefir, he takes a rifle and asks us to accompany him, we don't know if to gather his sheep or on a hunting trip. Communicating with gestures and drawings, we learn that for several years now Kamal has spent the summer looking after the sheep , cows and horses, together with his child and his ferocious sheepdogs (who wouldn't hurt a fly). He will leave in mid-September, when there will be no one left in the valley except a strong wind to sweep away what remains of the summer.

Then there is the walk in the Kara-Su valley, adjacent to the base camp, which we visited on a rainy day. We would have liked to climb a couple of days in this magnificent place but the weather and the limited time unfortunately did not allow us to do so: an excellent reason to return .

The valley is beautiful and wild. We had planned to spend a whole day exploring it but we went with a British couple with an extremely fast pace and we practically had to run to keep up with them. Running definitely helped us both in dodging the heavy rain in the afternoon and in our cardio workout (which we were not ready for). We almost reached the start of the Yellow Wall , an incredible and extremely vertical wall that enchanted us and that will definitely be worth a climb (a second good reason to return).

The third trek worthy of note is the one to Bird Peak , that severe black wall that stands out at the end of the Ak-Su Valley, marking the unchallenged border with neighboring (and not friendly) Tajikistan . Only 14 km separate us from the border, a barrier of rock, snow and ice that we wanted to see up close. Our companions on this adventure are the Mexicans, Lalo and Rudy, with whom we decide to take the tent and improvise a dinner and a night out , hoping to find a flat spot in the middle of the endless scree that awaits us. The two of them for the occasion (since we left our food at the bivouac where we were opening the route) give us spices, oil and shrimp (yes, Mexican shrimp in salt! A brilliant idea! ) so we can have dinner with a delicious risotto. So we set off, with our backpacks a little lighter than usual, but also carrying an ice axe and crampons because it is difficult to understand where the ice begins. In the end it will be impossible to reach that frozen tongue: the scree is a disaster to cross with all its ups and downs and unstable rocks (luckily we have excellent boots :) ). After a few hours we leave the tent in the middle of the scree (a real chore to prepare a "comfortable" pitch) and continue lightly for another few hours . Towards evening we return to our new base camp to prepare our luxury dinner: we also find a surprise, namely Misha, a very nice Russian boy who had heard about our journey in the morning and decided to look for us and join us for the night. So we all have dinner together, warmed by chatter and the stoves. We sleep in a place in the middle of nowhere where probably no one has ever stopped before, to wake up under a light but constant rain that will accompany us all the way "home".