“Lucas, Lucas, stop here,” Myrza, the local guide, instructs Lucas, the client and, since about 20 minutes ago, the unexpected but enforced driver. “Here?” Lucas responds quizzically. Even in the desolate country of Kyrgyzstan, where 94% of the terrain is mountainous, this is remote, barren and, in these temperatures of -20, pretty inhospitable. “But here?” Lucas protests, confusion etched across his face. “There’s nothing here.”

“No, no, where this bridge is,” Myrza responds. “Stop there. We walk there.” He spins his sleepy head, clears a hole in the condensed window of the people carrier, and points to a rusting blue bridge that crosses a small but fast-flowing river, the ancient wood creaking under a metre or more of windswept snow.

Across the bridge and over the mound, Myrza attempts to convince us, is our yurt camp, our home for the following five nights. Currently, it’s beyond visibility, but he’s promising the five of us a powder hunter’s paradise. We cross said bridge, lug ourselves, skis and bags over a crest, and there it is: two traditional white tents at the foot of an endless possibility of adventures. 

It’s day two of our 17-day ski touring trip in the Tian Shan mountains of Kyrgyzstan, a faraway, little-known and at times bewildering Central Asian country, and already this is a different ski holiday to anything we’ve experienced before. There are no boutique shops, fancy restaurants or chairlifts around here – heck, there’s not even a proper car park – there’s just mountains on all sides, all nameless and most unclaimed, each rising above 3,000m, some of them several hundred metres more, and all packed in with deep, fluffy snow. “This is insane,” Lucas enthuses, no longer perplexed as to why he was asked to drive the last part. We all nod in agreement.

This article was published in Wired for Adventure in December 2024.