Rocking it. Stan No 2

What was I expecting?

• A route march
• Bus loads of selfie obsessed pouting instasnappergram wasters clogging up the scenery.

What a peasant surprise pulling into the parking area to find a distinct lack of people; other than us the only thing moving was the occasional ball of tumble weed caught on the wind.

What to do in a natural disaster? Poop in ones lederhosen is noticeably missing from the ever so helpful nanny state safety board.

An amazing natural wonder I was able to enjoy alone, it felt like I had the entire place to myself: almost but not quite, I let my fellow travellers, wander off into the distance.

The Charyn Gorge, close to the Chinese border, lies within the Charyn Canyon National Park and stretches just under 100 miles along the river of the same name which is one of the deepest rivers of the Northern Tien Shan mountains. But our little stroll was only about 2 miles in, doable with just slight perspiration and 2 miles out. The return trip could be done in the back of an old bus, we were all lazy arses and went for that option.

No street art here

The canyon began to form some 12 million years ago, when the river started slowly eroding the stone around it. The power of a mighty river eroding the landscape. Striations clearly visible, the signs of different time periods of the earth's formation. Think it took longer than six days, don't you?

The Charyn Canyon itself if you remember (pay attention at the back!)is some 100 miles from end to end and actually consists of different canyons, each given their own individual identifying name: the Valley of Castles, the Temirlik Canyon, the Yellow Canyon, the Red Canyon and the Bestamak Canyon.

Our little stroll, I later found out, as I missed all the blah blah blah, was through the valley of the castles, said name given because of the similarity to castle like structures.

To be quite honest it could quite easily be called the cock canyon

Poly to Mono

Legends abound as one would expect; it was once believed that the canyon was the gate to hell, with witches ruling the land and at their whim driving any one found after dark into the abyss.

It was not a place that attracted human settlers, there are virtually no traces of civilisation, folk believed that it was a haunted place, the spirit world didn’t like to be disturbed by the living.

To keep people away, these evil spirits drove animals to the cliffs forcing them to jump down on anyone walking through the canyon.

In reality, packs of red wolves thrived here, they are very cunning and ferocious, hunting in packs they would form a semi circle around the herds they were watching, closing in on, driving the scared prey to the cliff edges, falling to their death, allowing said wolf pack to nonchalantly stroll down into the canyon and enjoy the gory mess at will and well if there was some tacky tourist being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess it brought variety to the diet of the wolf

Ahwoooooooool! Wuhhhl wuhhhl wuhhhhlllll!