The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘I squeezed a mini gap year into 18 days’
Crippled by inflation and hefty new mortgage rates, Laura Powell shelved her sabbatical dreams to go on a three-week adventure with fellow itchy-footed midlifers
Really, I should have been in the Hamptons. But then my friends and I couldn’t find a date that worked, and around the same time my mortgage interest rate tripled, hammering my finances and putting paid to my other vague plan: to apply for a sabbatical. Meanwhile my 20-something sister was off having a jolly sabbatical of her own in Bali, and my parents were midway through some sort of pre-retirement travel binge.
And so, feeling envious and desperate to do something memorable, I booked a rail trip from Beijing to Tibet, which has been top of my bucket list for years; my dream holiday. A no-brainer.
Only that fell through too, owing to visa issues. Which is how, in the most roundabout of ways, I ended up on a group trip, backpacking through Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, ex-Soviet nations sandwiched between Russia and China.
“Why on earth are you going there?” friends asked. I’d shrug and mutter something about a beautiful Kyrgyz lake called Song-Kul. But the truth was, I wasn’t sure either. The idea of an organised tour reminded me of bad hen parties – and I certainly didn’t want to be stuck on one with a bunch of excitable Gen Zs – but neither had I time to plan my own solo adventure at short notice, so I’d turned to a tour company for help.
“What’s your most middle-aged destination?” I’d asked hopefully. “I’m sorry?” “Where do older people travel?” (Sure, I’m only 37 but I wanted calming sorts, fellow jaded midlifers.)
“Central Asia,” the nice lady at Intrepid Travel replied immediately. “54 per cent of our UK customers travelling there this year are midlifers.” Then she sent data from Uzbekistan’s tourism board, showing that the country’s UK visitors are mainly over-50.
So, on a whim, I booked: a 17-day tour (plus one extra day to acclimatise), starting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan’s Soviet-era time warp capital, then driving in a minibus to two vast lakes and Osh in the south, then across the border into Uzbekistan where I’d interrail between cities, Samarkand, Bukhara and Tashkent.
The age prediction was correct. Of the six in our group, I was the youngest; the three other solo travellers (Britons and Germans) were in their late 30s and 40s, and the jolly Australian couple, Bettina and Mike, were 68 and 77 respectively, but with more vim than any Gen Z, having spent years travelling since Mike sold his lucrative water-bed business.
Only I quickly discovered that, unlike them, I’m not a seasoned backpacker. In my early 20s I’d schlepped around India and Thailand, but most holidays since have been “flop-anddrops” at increasingly bougie beach hotels. Here, though, I’d move constantly: sleep in yurts, climb minarets, scale two small mountains. I’d cram in wildly different landscapes, several microclimates too – from icy nights in Song-Kul (9,895ft above sea level) where we huddled around a fire, through to Samarkand, where some days it was 42C.
The week before I was due to leave, panic set in. I’m sometimes mildly anxious before holidays, but this time I ended up deep in a black hole of Google, researching every possible danger: poisonous snakes, brown bears, what to do if I got bitten by a camel spider… And the more frazzled I became, the more I shopped, buying every possible gadget to keep me alive: mini electric fans, emergency power packs, pulse oximeters, water filtration tablets, sleeping bags that zip up to your face, ugly cargo trousers with removable legs. I bought my bodyweight in protein cookies too, elite low-sugar ones. Next I hunted for bear spray but not even Amazon stocked it, so I panicked some more. Then I put my purchases onto a spreadsheet because I usually find the order of Excel weirdly soothing, only this time it wasn’t. I was spinning. And neurotic. And entirely ridiculous.
Finally, after cramming all my purchases into a backpack and trying to lift it, it struck me that I’d once slipped two discs and now was at risk of slipping a third. So I took all of it out again and tried to return most of it – apart from the protein bars, which were obviously nonreturnable. And obviously utterly foul.
At the airport I looked longingly at people with nifty little wheelies as I lugged around my enormous rucksack that was about as comfortable as strapping a Doberman to my back, and Googled “pilates retreat in Formentera” but then it was the final call so I boarded and hoped for the best.
Twenty-four hours later I was in a restaurant in Bishkek, at a table laden with Kyrgyz delicacies: mutton soup and horsemeat and borsok (fried dough). I was painting on my best smile, but I couldn’t stomach the horsemeat and the others in my group weren’t talking much.
I forced down a little soup, then went to bed early in my strange Soviet-y hotel room with a broken chandelier, feeling all at sea. I was still anxious, inexplicably so, and eventually I fell asleep listening to Desert Island Discs reruns because I had nothing left to put on my spreadsheet and the only other soothing thing I could think of was Kirsty Young’s voice.
The next morning, our guide Sergei whisked us around Bishkek, past statues of Lenin and the war memorials of Victory Square, describing as we went the network of nuclear bunkers beneath the city – fascinating, only my back was twinging and I was in a fug. I was also painfully aware that it would only get worse tomorrow, as we were due to take a five-hour bus journey to Issyk-Kul, a mountain lake.
The journey there passed in a blur too; my back throbbed and I drifted in and out of an altitude sickness-induced
Turkish Airlines (020 3991 1993; turkishairlines. com) flies from London to Bishkek and out of Tashkent; from £560. sleep, catching bits of Sergei’s next history class; how Kyrgyzstan was conquered by Mongols and invaded by the Dzhungars before becoming part of the Russian Empire.
It was dusk when we arrived. The lake was enormous; at 37 miles wide it looked more like a sea. I’d forgotten my bathing costume so I zipped off the legs of my stupid trouser-shorts and waded in up to my knees, then my thighs, then – sod it – up to my waist, not minding that my knickers were soaking; the icy water felt too good on my sore back.
It was only then that I breathed. That I looked around properly… And I was stunned. How could I not have noticed the beauty of this place before now? Nothing as far as the eye could see but water and the white-tipped Northern Tian Shan mountains.
I stood there until, on the shore, my fellow backpackers cracked open bottles of Kyrgyz beer. I smiled and joined them. For the first time in ages, my shoulders dropped a little. That, I suppose, was when the trip began; when I really arrived on it.
The next day we crammed more into 24 hours than I usually would into an entire holiday: we zipped through the mountains past nomads on horseback; we visited a family who trained eagles to become hunters – one eagle hunter can feed an entire village; we learnt archery; and visited a man who builds yurts, whittling down the sticks that form a framework. As he demonstrated, a deep sense of calm set in. We all felt it; the frantic pace of our lives back home was suddenly forgotten. I’d barely checked my phone in days – nor did I want to.
Later that night I realised I’d forgotten to do my ridiculous pre-bedtime ritual of zipping up my sleeping bag with anti-bug face netting, and dousing myself in deet. On the other side of the shared yurt, Bettina had just doused herself in a spray of her own: Chanel. She threw me a wink. “Just because we’re camping, standards don’t have to slip,” she giggled. Her carefree attitude was infectious. So I put away my bug spray and my silly netting and thought: maybe I will like group trips.
Then, just as I was hitting my stride came a setback. On our way to Osh, a Kyrgyz city near the border, we stopped in a village for the night – a single dusty road, stray dogs asleep in bushes and a teeny shop selling warm Coca-Cola.
Sergei suggested that we climb the small mountain, just beyond. It was scorching, pushing 40C, so we waited until 5pm.
The air was still hot and I was exhausted. As we started climbing up and up, I was breathless sooner than I expected. Worse, my legs were jelly, like they’d been hollowed out. Ahead of me, Mike, the 78-year-old, shimmied on up, barely breaking a sweat. Ashamed, I mumbled, “I’m turning back,” not meeting anyone’s eye. I felt weak; a failure.
Looking back, I hadn’t been eating properly; a hangover of my pre-trip anxiety. I’d picked around the bowls of meaty stew and only nibbled at the tomato-dill salads that came with every course. I hadn’t touched my protein cookies either. So, after that, I ate everything – starting with the cauldron of “plov”, a lamb and ricebased dish, popular in Uzbekistan.
Days later, another mountain to climb; a holy pilgrimage called Sulaiman-Too Sacred. I braced myself for failure – but this time I managed it.
There’s a slippery rock near the top where, legend has it, if you slide down it lying down, it cures back ailments. I kicked off my shoes and threw my arms in the air and slid down. I’m not convinced it was the magic of the rock but I did feel looser; I felt free.
Later that night my Whatsapp pinged; my friend. “Great news,” she wrote. “The Hamptons house is now available next week! Can you make it?” For a second I panicked at missing out. Should I cut this trip short?
A week earlier maybe I’d have done that. But as quickly as the thought came, it passed. Maybe it was ditching my phone, but this place had instilled a peacefulness in me, and a complete absence of FOMO, too.
Had someone asked me where I wanted to be right then: The Hamptons, China, a Formentera pilates retreat, or this strange, fascinating pocket of Central Asia where I’d crammed a gap years’ worth of exploration into 18 days? There was no question.
Against the odds, in that moment, there was nowhere I’d rather be.
A deep sense of calm set in. We all felt it; the frantic pace of our lives back home was suddenly forgotten