Sary-Jaz Valley

Rusted barracks and collapsed weather instruments mark the entrance to a valley that swallowed its Soviet occupants and kept everything else. The Sary-Jaz in eastern Kyrgyzstan is wind, glacier rivers, and steppe — the air sharp with altitude and the silence sharp with abandonment. Beyond the ghost station, the valley opens into roadless terrain where the only tracks belong to yaks and the occasional horseman delivering provisions to a summer camp.

The Sary-Jaz Valley follows its river east toward the Chinese border through terrain above 3,000 metres that has no maintained road. The abandoned Soviet research station at its entrance — barracks, instruments, and storage buildings — was operational into the 1990s before being left in place. River crossings are necessary throughout the valley, making a capable 4x4 essential and sometimes insufficient. Nomad families graze the summer jailoos along the valley's upper reaches, occasionally delivering provisions by horseback to travellers who have planned ahead. Fewer than a few hundred non-mountaineering visitors reach the valley in an average year.