Good Scouts - Logistics

Visas

Information about longer stay visas in Kyrgyzstan is not easy to come by. Tourist visas are for 1 month and last time we easily extended ours for an extra month in Bishkek. Obviously that's not going to cut it for this expedition. I think the answer is a “private” visa which we should be able to obtain through a travel agent, provided we can find one who is willing to make an application to the Department of Foreign Affairs (or Internal Affairs, every website I've found has a different opinion) on our behalf. If that fails we'll need to call on the help of our Kyrgyz friends. In the worst case scenario we'll need to punctuate our trip with short detours to Tashkent or Almaty (probably the latter) while we arrange new visas. I really hope that will not be necessary.

Tajik visas up to 30 days and GBAO permits are easy to arrange in Bishkek, last time it took us only 5 days to get one, so we'll be doing this as soon as we arrive in Kyrgyzstan, or possibly before we leave.

Food

As vegetarians, travel in Central Asia is extraordinarily difficult in terms of food. We're not going to let that dissuade us. Thankfully, we'll be mostly self-catering, and purchasing vegetarian food is less complicated than trying to explain vegetarianism to a Kyrgyz nomad. We will be taking a firmin that describes our dietary habits as best we can, which should hopefully avoid some awkward situations. Most of our preparation will involve working with the lists we've created of foods that we know are available fairly readily in Kyrgyzstan, and limited supplies of things we can take with us to create recipe books for one pot meals utilising the ingredients.

As this recipe book develops I'll be publishing the recipes here, so you can get some idea of just how limited we'll be! We're trying to put together a list of light-weight, low volume vitamin-rich dried foods we can take to supplement the diet. So far we know we'll be taking sheets of dried seaweed ( a life saver that can be added to almost anything or eaten as a snack), dried mushrooms & vegetable stock. If you have ideas for us please send them along, we'll be terrifically grateful, keeping in mind that it will all need to be carried by our horses.

Money

This will be our biggest logistical problem. There are only 3 places in Kyrgyzstan where we can withdraw cash (Bishkek, Osh & Karakol), and there'll be no credit cards or traveller's cheques accepted along our route! The only solution we've been able to think of is to carry the cash in small caches on ourselves and in our gear. Luckily Osh is an almost mid-way point on the journey, so initially we'll only need enough to get halfway. Our costs should remain low, but we'll need to carry emergency funds for guides and in case of trouble with the horses, authorities or thieves.

Buying Horses

There is a fabulous cooperative of horsemen in Karakol who will be assisting us with purchasing the horses. It may be that they can find candidates among the local population, but otherwise we'll need to attend the Sunday animal market until we find what we are looking for.

The horses will need to be between 6 & 15 years of age, 10 would be ideal. They'll need to be quiet and hopefully, they'll have all the experience we lack :)

Thanks to Long Rider Nicolas Ducret for helping us figure out how to obtain the required documentation for our horses.

Horse Shoeing

The health and comfort of the horses being our primary concern on this journey, the question of shoeing is a difficult one. We're not confident that even taking lessons we'd be able to perfectly shoe a horse, and even if we could, whether that's the best thing to do. Every man and his dog in Kyrgyzstan can shoe a horse but that's placing an awful lot of trust in a stranger's hands - one bad shoeing could ruin the horse. That also won't help us if we are halfway up a mountain pass and many kilometres from the nearest yurt.

In Kyrgyzstan most horses are left shoeless. There's a good chance that when we buy our horses, they will have been shoeless at least for the entire winter, if not their whole lives. They are known for having tough hooves and we're seriously considering trying them barefoot and seeing what comes of it. I've read an enormous amount on the subject of barefoot horses, and have even read the story of one long rider who left their horses unshod from Lesotho to Austria. At the first sign that the hooves are wearing too fast we would naturally need to switch to shoeing - but hopefully we would not be worse off for trying. In this case we'd be taking light emergency "shoofs" to get us through to the next shoeing.

Ideally we'd like to boot the horses. The serious problem this poses is that an ill-fitting boot is every bit as bad for the horse as an ill-fitting shoe. As the time gets closer we'll be contacting some of the boot manufacturers to see if it will be possible to get an express shipment to Bishkek once we've purchased the horses - then we can have them picked up by our Kyrgyz friends and ferried to Karakol to meet up with us. Of course, this will only be practical if they can arrive within 2-3 weeks of purchasing the horses - otherwise we'll run out of time and need to start our journey.

We need time to work out the best solution to shoeing - I only hope we find it! To read more about the shoeing problem, and another possible solution, please read the equipment pages of the Long Riders Guild website.

Health & Communications

We'll be taking a satellite phone which will allow us to call a vet or doctor in Australia, or make emergency calls if it becomes necessary. We'll also be able to blog our progress via email and twitter! I've got my senior first aid certificate, so I should be able to deal with any minor human injuries. Naturally we'll be carrying carefully packed medical and equine first aid kits and Doug and I will be getting thorough medical check ups before we go.