Intro: A Worrisome Encounter
I first saw them when we had just left Jyrgylan and started to climb. They were carrying huge backpacks and they were not doing well. The heat was coming on hard. Next time I saw this couple was 12 hours later in camp at 3300 meters. One of them stumbled into camp at the beginning of night darkness and sat down on a stone. I was exhausted myself. It had been a very hard day. 12 km climbing up, dealing with a new team member—the teenage horse Toru—and heavy weight. On top of that the pump to the petrol stove had broken. So we couldn’t cook and had to rely on kind farmers in the yurts along the route. I wasn’t happy. I walked over to the new arrival who sat down on a stone and asked me if they could camp here. Sure I said, and asked, “Where is your friend?”
“He stopped to pray,” he answered. “I told him this was not the right time to do it. We are from Saudi Arabia.”
Splitting up just before dark isn’t a good thing to do. Especially in a demanding mountain environment like this. With a river to cross before they reached this potential camping spot. I was concerned. And I didn’t worry less, when I saw him putting up the smallest tent I have seen in a while.
“Please tell me if I can be of any help. Maybe we should go looking for your friend?”
“I don’t know,” the young Saudi fella answered. I was tired, so I went into the tent and told the girls that we might have to go out looking for this guy later. They weren’t happy with that idea. An hour later the other guy arrived into camp, so I went out to see if all was well. He said yes, and I went to sleep immediately.
The Next Morning: A Sobering Reality
Next morning I went over to the new team. They were already up.
“How was your sleep?” I asked.
“We didn’t sleep anything,” this new fella answered.
He was sitting in front of his very little tent. Neither of them could properly stretch out in their tents, which were of the quality you get for 20 dollars at the gas station. One heavy moment of hard winds would break the tent poles immediately. As I was chatting to this fella, Mohammed from Riyadh, his morning food fell off his stove onto the ground. He started to spoon it up into his mouth immediately.
“The same happened to me with my drinking chocolate,” I told him.
I checked the stove and saw he hadn’t opened the legs of the stove where you put your pot. I was in a bit of a shock. I took his stove, a gas stove, and just pulled the legs out.
“I couldn’t do that,” he said.
“How much gas do you have with you for your 9-day hike?” I asked, pointing to the little canister which served as a stove base and would last a couple of days maximum. Since he didn’t cover it from the wind, even less.
“This and another one,” he answered.
“How much food?”
“AI told us we needed to bring 5 kgs of dried soups.”
“For 2 people?” I asked slightly in shock, and he nodded.
“AI!” I hissed. “You cannot trust AI! It just tells you what you want to hear!”
The other fella came up, Faisal from Jeddah, and they looked a bit embarrassed and didn’t want to give me their addresses so I could find out how things were going for them. They had planned a 7-9 days hike through some of the toughest mountain areas in the world using only AI as help. I had used, and do use, AI for certain things but had already discovered how many errors AI does and that it just gives info out of the blue to make you happy. But it is full of serious errors and should NOT be used by any hiker or anyone going into the wild!
Adventure, Marriage, and Miscalculations
It turns out Faisal and Mohammed were getting married on their return. They had done some day hikes before, but not like this. So before getting married they wanted to do a real adventure and go to one of the most spectacular but demanding mountain areas in the world. It is remote, often lacking any trails. Weather is hard and you need to be very experienced if you are going out there for over a week!
Just to give you an idea, we had like 20 kgs of food between us for 4 days. And 2 litres of petrol. And professional tents etcetera. And these guys were unhappy and not enjoying themselves. Which is the idea behind it all.
“Do you have any emergency tools like a Garmin InReach or sat phone in case things go wrong?”
“No,” they answered and asked me: “Can you take us over the river with the horse? It is very dangerous.”
I told them our horse was a bit iffy at crossings at the moment, but that it was such an easy crossing, my 12-year-old daughter Dana had led us over with ease. It turns out they both had been jumping from one big boulder to the next. And fallen several times. So I called Dana. She came over and we took them down to the crossing, and Dana showed them how to get over with ease. They promised me to rent a horse once they had crossed the pass and made it down the other side where there were locals working their horse farms. Problem was, they had trusted AI that the cost would be 2000 a day, so they had 6000, which would give them—according to AI—two nights at a yurt camp for tourists. That is all the local cash they had for 7-9 days. Because that is what AI told them the costs would be.
A Word of Caution: Don’t Trust AI in the Wild
I decided I had to write this story, because it is important for any person seeking adventure NOT to trust AI. It cannot access all details needed. It also wants to make you happy, so it just guesses half the time. And 90% of the coordinates it gave me, when I checked, were just totally wrong. I know a lot of people are using phone apps today, which I don’t like either, since you are battery-dependent. But good maps in Kyrgyzstan are very hard to come by, so buy them on the Internet before coming. I am talking the old Soviet maps. Geographically they are the best.
I just want to add, I like that they set off like this; you have to take chances. But do your research properly.
We are packing again, setting off for a new 4-day adventure with Toru. I am worried about the extreme heat, but look forward to sleeping in the tent. Since our budget is extremely low, we cannot afford to stay in a place with AC, which would have helped our recovery. But all well.
