The couloir was steeper than it had looked from the other side. Standing at the top, boards and skis pointed downhill into the chute, we exchanged the kind of glance that needs no words. Someone laughed. Someone checked a binding again. Then the first of us dropped in.
But this story didn’t start here. It started in another remote place.
The idea for Kyrgyzstan was planted during our first trip to Svalbard, when Ryan from 40 Tribes told us about his time in that faraway corner of Central Asia. Back then, we filed it under someday. The kind of plan that lives quietly in the background.
Until suddenly, someday had a date.
And a crew. Rene, Salomon and Stefan from the freshies.ch crew, plus Mischa, Pascal, and Xander. Six friends. Four splitboards. Two pairs of skis. One idea that had been sitting with us for years and was about to come true – riding the Tian Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan.
Kyrgyzstan sits in the heart of Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, China to the east, Tajikistan to the south and Uzbekistan to the west. It’s one of the least visited countries in the world, and one of the most mountainous. More than 90% of its territory lies above 1,500 meters. Nearly 40% is covered by glaciers and permanent snow. There are no flat horizons here.
The country gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and today has around seven million inhabitants. The majority of whom are Kyrgyz – a Turkic people with a rich nomadic heritage stretching back centuries and is still alive today. In summer, families move their herds to high alpine pastures, living in traditional yurts. Hospitality is not a gesture here, it’s a principle. You are welcomed with tea, bread, and whatever is available.
The capital, Bishkek, is relaxed and still carries traces of its Soviet past. But for anyone drawn to mountains, it’s what lies beyond the city that matters and makes Kyrgyzstan truly unforgettable.
Plane, Marshrutka, Bukhanka, horses – from Zurich to the Tian Shan
Our trip started at a check-in desk in Zurich. Arriving first and being the friendly person he is, Rene struck up a conversation with the check-in agent. Within minutes we learned that she prefers camel riding over splitboarding, along with several other things we had not asked for. Rene just has a gift for these kinds of airport conversations and stories, as we would learn on this trip.
The flight to Istanbul was smooth. On the plane, we ran into a friend flying there just for the weekend, the kind of casual travel that made our two-day journey to a remote yurt in the Tian Shan mountains feel briefly excessive.
At transfer security in Istanbul, Rene’s run of airport stories continued when the scanner flagged his backpack. It took several scans to identify the issue: a Swiss army knife. Rene was surprised. Not because he thought it was allowed, but because he had completely forgotten it was there. It had apparently been living in his backpack for quite some time. Zurich security had waved him through without a word. Istanbul did not. Long story short: the knife did not make it to Kyrgyzstan.
With five hours to kill, we did what any reasonable travelers would do. We went for a beer and quickly understood why Istanbul is considered one of the most expensive airports in the world. 18 euros for a beer felt slightly above market rate. We were looking forward to cheaper drinks in Kyrgyzstan.
Eventually we boarded our second flight and landed in Bishkek a few hours later.
Passport control was smooth. For five of us.
Rene, who by this point had some experience with airport security, was selected to test a newly installed biometric system. The light turned red. A moment of concern. Then relief. The machine, it turned out, simply wasn’t working.
After a short conversation, he made it through and joined us at the baggage belt, where we were busy counting bags. Six people, a small mountain of equipment, but one ski bag short. Mischa’s skis had apparently decided to stay in Istanbul.
There was nothing to be done but fill out the paperwork. Our marshrutka (minibus) was already waiting outside.
The road out of Bishkek starts confidently. Then, quietly, it changes its mind.
About an hour east of the city, the asphalt begins to lose conviction. We stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant that seemed surprised to have customers. It was colder inside than outside. The menu was a surprise to everyone, including the kitchen. We ate well anyway.
Six hours after leaving Bishkek, we rolled into Karakol. A short but important stop at the Globus supermarket for a last-minute wine and beer run that felt less like a luxury and more like a survival measure. And then, we transferred ourselves and our bags into the UAZ-452. The Bukhanka – named after the Russian word for loaf of bread, which is exactly what it looks like, and, as we were about to discover, exactly how it handles on a mountain road.
Watching our bags being loading into this boxy metal belly, we looked at each other and knew: this is getting serious now.
The road from Karakol into the mountains made everything up to here feel like a Swiss motorway. The Bukhanka didn’t care. It was built for this.
We arrived in the village as the light faded, stepped into Nurbek’s guesthouse, military-style beds but a warm welcome and a hearty meal. We did some repacking of our bags and shortly thereafter fall asleep like people who had been awake for more than 24 hours. Because we had been.
In the morning, the horses were ready to take us up to the yurt camp.
Tian Shan
The Tian Shan – meaning Heavenly Mountains in Chinese – is one of the great mountain ranges of the world. It stretches more than 2,500 kilometers across Central Asia, running east to west through Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China and Tajikistan. At its core lies some of the most dramatic high-altitude terrain on the planet.
Across the range, peaks rise well above 7,000 meters. The highest peak. Jengish Chokusu, also known as Peak Pobeda. reaches 7,439 meters on the border between Kyrgyzstan and China. Between these giants lies a vast network of valleys, ridgelines, and glaciated basins.
From November through April, the mountains receive consistent snowfall. Combined with continental cold and dry air, this often produces exceptional conditions. Deep, light powder settling on stable, wind-shaped faces.
As nomads have done for centuries
The horses knew the way. For two hours we climbed steadily through the snow, the valley narrowing around us, the air getting colder and thinner with every step.
And then, around a bend in the valley, there they were. Three yurts, round and white against the snow, smoke rising from the stovepipe of the largest one. At 2,560 meters, in the middle of the Tian Shan, someone had put a kettle on. We climbed down from our horses with the particular stiffness of people who do not ride horses regularly, and looked around.
We were greeted by Aziz, who would be cooking for us in the first few days and whose food, as we were about to discover, was going to become one of the highlights of the week.
We had been traveling for almost two days. We had lost a ski bag, had a few conversations with airport security, eaten lunch in a frozen restaurant and crossed a mountain road in a Soviet bread loaf.
And now we were here – exactly where we had wanted to be since the moment we started planning this trip several months ago.
“It took two days to get here. It only took ten minutes to feel at home!”
The yurts were warmer than we had any right to expect – at least as long as the fire was going. Each one a round wooden frame covered in thick felt, a small iron stove in the center radiating heat that you could feel the moment you ducked through the low doorway.
Kyrgyz nomads have been assembling and living in yurts like these for centuries, moving with their herds between the valleys and the high pastures. We were doing something similar, just with splitboards and skis instead of sheep, and a slightly different idea of what counts as a good day in the mountains.
When we entered our yurt, it was clean and ordered, filled with nothing but the smell of wood smoke from the stove.
Six guys, one shared space. That did not last.
Over the following days, order gave way to function. Jackets, boots, skins and sleeping bags spread out to dry, gear shifting constantly depending on what was needed next. The wood smoke never left. It just stopped being the only thing you noticed. Sweaty uphills, damp gear, and a week without showers did the rest. By day three, the yurt had developed a fragrance that was entirely its own.
The Epic of Manas
Long before the mountains of Kyrgyzstan appeared on any map, they were part of stories. The greatest of these is the Epic of Manas, a vast oral poem that follows the life and battles of the hero Manas, his son Semetei, and his grandson Seitek across three generations. It is one of the longest epic poems in the world, often said to be around twenty times the length of Homer’s Odyssey, and for centuries it existed entirely without being written down. It lived in the memories of the people who told it.
Those who carry it forward are called Manaschi, the reciters of Manas. A true Manaschi does not simply read the epic. They enter a trance-like state, often reciting for hours, drawing the story from memory. The tradition is so central to Kyrgyz culture that UNESCO recognized it as Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2013.
Manas himself is a figure of mythic scale. A warrior, a leader, a unifier. Brave to the point of recklessness, fiercely loyal to his companions, and deeply tied to the landscape around him. In the epic, the mountains and the steppe are not just a setting. They are part of the story.
For the Kyrgyz people, Manas is more than a literary figure. He is a symbol of national identity, resilience and continuity. His image appears on banknotes, monuments and in schoolbooks. Even the main airport in Bishkek carries his name.
And out in the mountains beyond Karakol, where we came to ride, the spirit of the epic feels close.
Karakol
Karakol is a small city of around 70,000 people tucked between the vast shoreline of Issyk-Kul, the second largest alpine lake in the world, and the rising peaks of the Tian Shan. At just under 1,800 meters above sea level, the town sits at the threshold between steppe and high alpine terrain, making it one of the main access points to the eastern ranges.
Founded in 1869 as a Russian military outpost, Karakol still carries visible traces of its past. Wide streets, low wooden houses, and pockets of Soviet-era infrastructure shape much of the town. Yet what makes the town distinctive is not its size or architecture, but its cultural layering. Over time, Dungan, Uyghur, and other Central Asian communities settled here, creating a place where traditions coexist rather than compete.
Two landmarks capture this particularly well. The brightly painted Dungan Mosque, built without nails in the early 20th century, reflects Chinese architectural influences brought by Muslim Dungan communities. A few streets away, the Holy Trinity Cathedral stands as a reminder of Orthodox Russian roots. The contrast is striking, yet entirely natural within the fabric of the town.
For travelers, Karakol’s significance is practical as much as cultural. It is the logistical hub for expeditions into the surrounding mountains, whether for trekking, horseback journeys, or backcountry skiing. Markets are stocked with essentials, guides and drivers can be arranged, and the last signals of urban life fade quickly once you leave its edges.
Leaving the mountains
Coming down from the mountains felt different from going up. The upper part of the valley still held enough snow to ski and snowboard. A final reminder of why we had come to this remote place. Lower down, the snow thinned, then disappeared entirely. Spring had already made its way into the valley.
The last two kilometers we had to walk, boards and skis on our backs, boots squelching through the kind of mud that only exists at the junction of snowmelt and mountain track. In the village, Nurbek was waiting with one of his daughters, an English teacher at a school in Karakol, whose English put our Kyrgyz to shame. We stood in the sun and talked while the horses arrived with our bags.
Our ride back to Karakol turned out to be another Bukhanka. Not the same one as the week before, but a more styled version. Someone had clearly put some effort into this one. It still took several minutes to start. We climbed in, bags piled around us, and eventually rattled back down the valley towards town.
Aigülü’s guesthouse in Karakol was everything the yurt camp was not. And we mean that as the highest possible compliment to both places. Modern, warm, western-style, and, most importantly, equipped with hot showers. After the days in the mountains, we needed them. And we took them. Only then did we feel ready to go outside and face civilisation.
Karakol on foot is a pleasant surprise. The wide streets the Soviet planners left behind are generous and unhurried, lined with trees just beginning to bud in the early spring. We wandered without much of a plan, past the Holy Trinity Cathedral with its almost impossibly photogenic onion domes, and on to the Dungan Mosque, its pagoda-like roofline entirely at odds with everything around it and entirely at home at the same time.
What stood out most, though, were the people. Several times we were stopped by teenagers and young adults who wanted to say hello, practice a few words of English, or simply find out where we were from. It felt genuinely open and curious.
We eventually ended up at a bar near the guesthouse. English pub style, dark wood. The bartender started chatting and, somewhere in the conversation, switched to German. Fluent German. We were, briefly, surprised. He told us about the German-speaking community in Kyrgyzstan, a legacy of World War II, when Soviet authorities deported thousands of ethnic Germans from western Russia to Central Asia. Some stayed. Some of their descendants are still here, as we learned.
He also arranged taxis for dinner. Two cars, a few minutes’ ride, and a fare of 140 Som each. Less than two Swiss francs. Possibly the cheapest taxi ride of our lives.
Dinner was large, local, and excellent. The waiter spoke no English. This turned out not to matter at all. He took one look at six hungry people who had spent a good week in the mountains and understood exactly what was required. Dishes arrived. We ate. More dishes arrived.
On the way back, we stopped at the bar again. Another round felt earned. After that evening, we slept like people who had not been in a proper bed for a week.
Because we had not.
The next morning brought an early start and a good breakfast, though after the previous night’s dinner, our enthusiasm was moderate. By eight o’clock we were heading to the Mal Bazaar, Karakol’s Sunday animal market, held a few kilometers north of the town center.
Locals come from across the region to buy, sell, and catch up with people they might not see from one Sunday to the next. Horses and sheep are the main business, traded in separate enclosures. Men negotiated over horses while others bundled sheep into the back seats of Lada cars with a matter-of-factness that suggested this was entirely normal.
Which, here, it is.
The backdrop of snow-covered peaks above the old mill buildings surrounding the market grounds gave the whole scene a slightly unreal quality. Part tradition, part routine, part something that has been happening in exactly this way for a long time.
Then it was time for us to leave. We loaded into the marshrutka, and Karakol slipped behind us as we made our way back to Bishkek.
Bishkek
Set at the northern edge of the Tian Shan, Bishkek is the capital and largest city of Kyrgyzstan, as well as its political and economic center. The city sits on a broad plain, with the mountains rising to the south, a constant presence on the horizon.
Bishkek’s roots trace back to early Silk Road settlements, but the modern city began with the fortress of Pishpek in 1825 and was formally established as a town in 1878, later shaped by Soviet urban planning. Much of this structure remains visible today, giving the city a spacious, almost oversized feel. Wide boulevards, a grid layout, and an abundance of parks and trees define the city. Its architecture is largely functional, with Soviet-era apartment blocks and public buildings dominating the urban landscape. It is a place built for function rather than spectacle, and home to around 1.3 million people.
At the heart of the city lies Ala-Too Square, the main public square and political center of Kyrgyzstan. The parliament building stands at one end, and in front of it flies the Kyrgyz national flag – deep red with a yellow sun symbol representing the tunduk, the circular crown of a traditional yurt.
Despite being the country’s largest city, Bishkek feels relatively open and unhurried. Daily life unfolds at street level, in small cafés, local markets, and public squares. At Osh Bazaar, the second largest and oldest markets in the country, the city offers a glimpse into the diversity of the region – spices, dried fruits, bread and meat, and the constant flow of trade and conversation that has defined this place for generations.