Skiing in Uzbekistan Q&A

[offonawander]

I've read a bit about the mountains, but everyone who has written about the place seems to have gone in the summer, only talking about hiking and the biodome and the like. Has anyone got any experience of the winter side of the Chatkal mountains? Is anyone there at the moment? Any recommendations for what to do, other than skiing, the best places to stay/park benches to sleep on?

I'm hoping to go up for a few days tomorrow, tips or not, but any advice would be most welcome.

Thanks


Alex

[steven]

Hi Alex,

I would love to know more, I haven't been myself in winter. Here is a long article on heliskiing in Uzbekistan that mentions Chimgan: http://caravanistan.com/trip-reports/he ... zbekistan/

Scroll down half-way for the bit about Chimgan.

Do let us know how it was.

[offonawander]

As soon as I find a hotel for under $40 a night I will head over and report back fully! Thanks for the link, I'll give it a read

[offonawander]

Right, so I made it there and I made it back in one piece.

The best way to get to Chimgan is probably via the Electrishka, the train system which is somewhere between the metro system and the actual national/international rail service that you get from the main Vaksal. Head to Salar, near Pushkin metro station and catch the electrishka to Khujakent. It'll cost you 3200 Som.

From there get a taxi to Chimgan. My friend and I paid 30,000 total, but we probably could have haggled more. Unfortunately it was cold and cloudy and tipping it down with rain, so we weren't too inclined to faff around.

There are a few hotels around - Sky City, Asia Hotel, all that jazz. We decided to check out a few of the smalled hostels and guesthouses that were shown on Maps.Me. Turns out that none of them exist. We ended up wandering around in the dark at 7.30pm in a miniature blizzard unsure of where to stay. Fortunately while asking for directions two guys pointed at a nearby house and told us that it was a guesthouse we could stay at. It cost us 60,000 Som each ($9), and it had a sauna, swimming pool, and billiards table. The price also included dinner and breakfast.
The one downside is that they wouldn't register us, but we didn't find that out until the next day. I'm covered for every other day of my stay so I'm not too fussed about it, but it writes it off as a place to visit.

The weather today was beautiful; the sun shone and the snow was great. I hitched a lift to the slopes, rented some skis (~40,000 for the day, haggling dependent), and then tried to remember how to ski. There aren't many lifts or slopes, and it's still early in the season, so there aren't that many people around. Moving between slopes is a faff, so I didn't really do it, sticking to either dropping off the T-bar lift half way to practice on the baby slope, or taking the T-bar all the way to the top and then bricking it as I tried to go down a slope that was more bushes and fresh snow than real piste. I managed it just about, with lots of tumbles.

There are chances to ride horses, ride 4x4s, get lifts in snowmobiles. A horserider also offered to tow me around on my skis, but that seemed like a quick way to get a faceful of horse bottom, or to have my head forcibly removed from my shoulders by way of one of the horse's hooves. So I devlined that one.

There is a chairlift just for pedestrians to look around, but not much else that's walkable in the snow. Lots of cars to hitch lifts from, a few buses heading up and down to Charvak, a few taxis, and I was also overtaken by some horses that might have been rentable.

Was a fun day, but I don't think I'd stay for more than one or two. It's all a bit DIY organisational wise, which means you miss some of the fun just trying to work out what you're doing.

Would definitely recommend the trip though!