After a bone-jarring drive through more canyons, we started to climb up to the alpine plateau, heading for 3,000m. First there was a lunch stop, by the road (picnic style), with lovely views over a coal mine.
As you can see from the jumpers and coats, the weather was turning chilly and windy.
That's the #2 van bringing up the rear, after a flat tyre, way back ...
We'd be pretty thankful for the coal by the time the night was over!
Eventually, at last, the lake came into view, with many yurts along the way and near it. Again, the folks here tend their sheep, cattle and horses up here in the summer, in yurts, and then head down into the valleys for winter, in about a month.
This is a commercial yurt camp, like one we would be staying at. Lake Son-Kul is 29x18km, and holds 2.6 cubic km of water. Its only really accessible from about June to September, so we were coming in at the end of the season (the last Exodus tour was following us, a week behind).
And this is our camp. Two to a yurt; there's a new shower and western toilet block, a kitchen complex, dining yurts ... and lots of space. You might notice that its a bit blowy! It was cold!
Inside a yurt. pretty comfy - power, of course (although the generator was only on until 11pm)
The luxury were these little coal fired stoves. The 'fire man' would light it up at 9pm to warm the yurt up for bed, and then he would re-appear between 5 and 6am to light it up again for morning - basically a handful of kindling, a generous squirt or three of kero or parrafin, and some lumps of coal!!
And the shower side of the shower/toilet block, with doors blown open (and nearly off!!). the trick, in the early hours of morning, was to make it to the actual toilets ...
