Kyrgyzstan
Arabel Plateau
Treeless tundra at 3,800 metres, dotted with fifty glacial lakes and retreating ice.
Nothing grows taller than your ankle. The Arabel is a treeless sweep of alpine tundra where dozens of glacial lakes catch the sky in turquoise, steel and grey, each shade set by depth and cloud. The wind is constant and unimpeded; it crosses the plateau like it owns it, because it does.
The Arabel is what the Kyrgyz call a syrt: an ancient peneplain lifted towards 4,000 metres and planed flat by a glacier that left its basins behind as lakes. More than fifty of them scatter the tundra, and as the Terskey glaciers retreat, new ones keep appearing. Only grass, mosses and lichens survive at this height, with edelweiss growing near Arabel Lake, and there is no signal, no settlement and no shelter anywhere on the plateau. The road in climbs through the Barskoon gorge over a high pass built for the Kumtor gold mine, and the circuit crosses the Suyok Pass at 4,022 metres; horse parties cross in summer and ski tourers in spring. You carry everything, and the emptiness is the point.
Solo
The Arabel demands that you carry everything and rely on no one. In return it offers fifty lakes, no people, and silence so complete the loudest thing is your own breathing at altitude.
Friends
Cross the plateau as a team with a 4x4, camp gear and provisions for days. The scale, lakes in every direction, ice on the horizon, is the kind of thing a group processes together around a camp stove.
- More than fifty glacial lakes scatter the plateau, left behind by the ancient glacier that planed it flat.
- As the Terskey glaciers retreat, new lakes keep forming on the tundra.
- The road in climbs through the Barskoon gorge over a pass built for the Kumtor mine, crossing the 4,022-metre Suyok Pass.
- Only grass, mosses and lichens survive at this altitude, and no phone signal reaches the plateau.
No food sources exist up here: bring everything, because the plateau's emptiness is exactly what you came for.
Tea from a thermos, drunk in silence with nothing but sky and distant ice for company.
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