Vladimir & Suzdal: Quaint, Charming Towns in Russia's Golden Ringby Randi / July 3, 2017
June 28-29, 2017
Middle of Russia
Middle of Russia
Dear Little Laptop Diary,
Well. The St. Petersburg-Moscow sleeper really spoiled me and set my expectations too high. Hell, 2003-era New Jersey Transit set my expectations too high. Our first superlong train, the 24 hour sleeper from Vladimir to Yekaterinburg, was a bit dismal. The cabin was fine, it really was, and we had a very nice older Russian lady in with us who helped us make our beds when we proved completely incompetent on that front (the mattress pad doesn’t go IN the duvet-cover looking thing, YOU do! Or nothing does! Still unclear!). But that first sleeper to Moscow was oh so special. They gave us slippers for crying out loud! Our beds were made for us! They were comfy! There were no slippers to be found on this one. And thank the lord I brought flip flops, because the toilets were the most disgusting I have seen since our non-sleeper train throughout the countryside of Bosnia. At least on that train I didn’t have to take my contacts out. On this one I did. It was horrific. The floor was wet and coated in sludge, the soap dispenser was dry, and the toilets were reminiscent of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor ones. I should have remembered Amtrak the first time I had to use the sink, because I wasted 10 minutes trying to get it to work by turning the spigots as you do normally before I finally asked a Russian lady to help. It was the kind of sink you had to push up with your palm to get a trickle of water out. My god. On the Moscow sleeper I accidentally brushed my teeth with the train water; I wasn’t thinking because it was all so clean and nice. We were definitely using bottled water for this one.
Scenery’s nice
The samovar, one in every carriage. So you can always get boiled water for instant meals and tea. |
Down the hallway of our carriage. Rooms to the right, samovar straight ahead, toilet after the samovar, my exercise barre to the left, cigarette smoke everywhere |
At about 9pm I realized that the lady had fallen asleep, which is like wow I wish I could fall asleep with all these Russian children shouting. And someone nearby is smoking, which is not allowed but I guess Russia goes in the way of Greece where smoking isn’t ‘legally’ allowed but it is culturally always allowed and just ugh smoking is disgusting.
It’s the rockiest train journey I’ve ever taken, the kind where you are tensing your whole body so you don’t fly off the seat. Of course I couldn’t sleep like that! I was being thrown around my little bed mat by every bump and turn. It also made a lot of overnight stops, and when the train stops it’s like the world is stopping. The huge brakes made the loudest banging noises like we were being attacked. At least 30 times during the night I thought the train was going off the rails, it was that bumpy and uneasy. At the 5:30am stop, our second stranger cabinmate arrived, for the bed above mine. She had to stand along the side of my bed in order to make hers. Needless to say I didn’t sleep until maybe 7am, until 9:45. What a great rest. The other woman, the older one who seemed so nice, had the attendant close our cabin’s window because it would blow on her neck on the top bunk. But like. We are four people in an enclosed closet and you’re shutting off our air supply? Nyet nyet nyet! Also, fresh cool air is the only thing that really helps my constant motion sickness, so taking that away from me meant a restless night of severe nausea, discomfort, strangers, and tears.
Also, the sun is still rising like it did in Helsinki and all through Russia so far — at 3am. At some point in the night I lost my eye mask.
When I gave up trying to sleep, I brushed my teeth and washed my face with bottled water (hard to do the latter). The stranger above me was ready to eat her food which means she had to sit on my bottom bunk and use the small table that Husband and I both banged our heads on repeatedly during the night. So I just kind of stood in the cramped hallway for a few hours by the open windows out there (yesss) as more people smoked illegally and I tried to relax. There’s a bar running along the hallway so I did some barre exercises which a small boy found HILARIOUS. I felt a lot better after doing them though. The nausea got a little better with the fresh air and I had an orange that I brought for breakfast. I reclaimed my table and wrote for a few hours before a lunch of dehydrated vegetable crackers I got at Veggie Bro in Vladimir. Interesting day, I must say. Happily, I didn’t realize that 2 of the 26 hours of this train journey were just time zone changes (we are going through so many time zones jesus this country is enormous) so we have only 6-7 hours left! Ugh I can’t believe this is only the first of its kind. Once we land in Yekaterinburg, we have a night in a nice hotel, which seemed like a really sweet idea at first, to pamper ourselves after all these hostels and immediately after this first gross train – and immediately before our big 3-day gross train – but I think it might just feel like when Lewis Black talked about how the government one year gave refunds of $350 to people with kids to help out with that and he said it would have been nicer to them to just knock on their doors and piss on their feet. What I’m saying is I think a hotel might just make me feel worse about going back to close proximity with strangers for 3 days and the grossest bathrooms ever. At least not using my contacts for that long will be good for my dry eyes. Man alive.
People are still smoking, which is just like really cute for all of us. I love when people flout rules and common decency. At least some of the scenery is starting to get pretty. We just passed a big river which was nice. And we passed Chaykovskaya station, which is where the composer Tchaikovksy was born. It’s fun not having to worry about how to spell that in English anymore because it’s just made up transliteration. Like Chanukah! Spell it however you want when it’s not in its real language. Anyway, so Chaikoffskee was born near this station so they named it after him. Our guide book says that historians now believe that instead of dying from cholera, he was blackmailed into taking poison when his affair with a nobleman’s nephew came to light. So I guess that is worse than all these gross train journeys. As long as I don’t use the tap water. Oh also I figured out why the toilets get locked at every station besides trying to make me explode – because they ‘flush’ just onto the tracks so they don’t want the station tracks to be disgusting like the countryside tracks. Seriously the flush is a lever you step on that just opens the bottom of the toilet and you can see onto the tracks. I need to stop thinking of my clean bathrooms at home, my lovely clean bathrooms with potable water. I’m having a hard time remembering why any sane person would leave those bathrooms. Oh right to see the world.
We are at a longer stop right now called Perm, which is where they do fun curly hairdos that work on 9% of women, so most people disembarked to buy food from the babushkas selling all kinds of things on the platform. I am guarding our stuff. Outside my window right now, there is a babushka singing a traditional Russian folk song (I mean I’m guessing but come on it’s not like it’s a Nicki Minaj song) and intermittently she will stop singing to scream at someone who crossed her. I can’t see any of the babushkas with food, but I do see the ice cream cart (everywhere you go in Russia!) and it is swarmed, of course. Z money just came back and said the babushkas failed him and only had ice cream and soda and bags of chips and stuff, which is laaame. Luckily we brought tomatoes, cucumbers, and bread so we will make sandwiches. Sure to be better than my dinner last night of plain bread and cinnamon-y cookies I found at a supermarket (sure of their veganness this time because they also had English ingredients!!!) .
Overall, I’m grateful that the strangers are nicer than they could have been, I’m grateful that older lady allowed me to open the window for the daytime, I’m grateful to Iberia for our last flight when the soap dispenser wasn’t working and they showed me where they kept the single-serve liquid soap packs and I took a lot for this trip because we will DEFINITELY need them, and I’m grateful that I’m not being blackmailed into taking poison. I will keep repeating this to myself as a reminder that it’s not so bad, that we could smell worse, that I could be really sick and I’m not, that everything could be worse. As it is, I’m just on a kind of gross train through Russia and out of my comfort zone of silence and cleanliness. It’ll be okay.
Okay older lady just shut the window again goddammit.
Our cabin with two strangers. Would end up being one of the better/nicer experiences of its kind! Stay tuned.
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The Food of Bilbao: Set Menus & Bread Will Destroy You
Basque country is the land of pintxos, little bar food snacks which are kind of like tapas but are mostly on pieces of baguette with toothpicks sticking out of them. All the coolest places in Bilbao have bar tops covered in pintxos and rooms packed with people drinking and socializing and helping themselves to the various pieces of decorated bread. But you cannot be one of those people if you are vegan. No sir, you will miss out.
Okay, it’s not entirely true. If you can speak medium level Spanish and/or you did your HappyCow research more thoroughly than I did, you can probably find a place serving vegan pintxos. And hey, I tried. I really did. But unfortunate turns kept turning: bartenders and servers couldn’t understand my Spanish (or pretended not to understand, maybe trying to be more like the French?), or they didn’t know what I was talking about with my dietary restrictions (Sacre bleu! What do you mean no cheese!), or the places with supposedly vegan options were closed when I went while the sun was still sort of visible because ain’t nobody in Spain working while the sun is out! So, point is, I didn’t get pintxos.
That doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m sure you will have better luck and/or do better research and/or speak more coherent Spanish. But you know, I’m not even upset. I eat a lot of bread in my normal life so missing out on bread topped with this or that while pushing through people drinking alcohol isn’t that big a deal to me. The only thing is, if you aren’t eating pintxos in Bilbao, you are eating a set menu. Even for lunch! Even if you just wanted a light lunch somewhere, you will be greeted with a three course set menu. Sure you could probably order a la carte but who knows what that would bring you. Whereas, with a set menu in Bilbao, you know you are getting green salad (lettuce and onions, oh my!), grilled vegetables, and fruit. Now, I’m not knocking salad, veggies, and fruit. That’s pretty much my favorite stuff. It’s just that for the most part, their efforts to serve a vegan resulted in very uninspired food, and at various restaurants I was given nearly identical meals. Oh, and there will always be a basket of bread on the table, and you will eat too much of it because it’s bread on the table.
When we first set out in Bilbao, it was super late at night, like past normal bedtime, which means that all the restaurants were just starting to open. We struggled to pass through the streets overflowing with drunk yoots and went into several bars and restaurants trying to find a menu to decipher. But most of the places we entered were serving pintxos, not regular menus, and all of their little breads were topped with meat and cheese. After a few blocks of this, I started to get really anxious and nervous. And hungry. (There was a Subway, though, as there always is, so I found comfort knowing that if all else failed I would be able to get shredded lettuce and green peppers on their stanky bread.)
Finally, one bar serving pintxos said that they were serving their regular menu in the dining room, and that they could accommodate a vegetarian. (Advice: Always start by saying vegetarian. Most people don’t know the word vegan (even in English speaking countries, don’t assume that’s a household word) so figure out with the front of house staff if they can serve vegetarians and then make sure with your waitron that stuff doesn’t contain dairy and hipsters’ souls. That’s been the route to success for me.) This oasis of a restaurant, called Busterri, had a pretty fancy white tablecloth dining room that was empty when we entered but pretty full by the time we left (like after midnight, oh Europeans).
That doesn’t mean you won’t. I’m sure you will have better luck and/or do better research and/or speak more coherent Spanish. But you know, I’m not even upset. I eat a lot of bread in my normal life so missing out on bread topped with this or that while pushing through people drinking alcohol isn’t that big a deal to me. The only thing is, if you aren’t eating pintxos in Bilbao, you are eating a set menu. Even for lunch! Even if you just wanted a light lunch somewhere, you will be greeted with a three course set menu. Sure you could probably order a la carte but who knows what that would bring you. Whereas, with a set menu in Bilbao, you know you are getting green salad (lettuce and onions, oh my!), grilled vegetables, and fruit. Now, I’m not knocking salad, veggies, and fruit. That’s pretty much my favorite stuff. It’s just that for the most part, their efforts to serve a vegan resulted in very uninspired food, and at various restaurants I was given nearly identical meals. Oh, and there will always be a basket of bread on the table, and you will eat too much of it because it’s bread on the table.
When we first set out in Bilbao, it was super late at night, like past normal bedtime, which means that all the restaurants were just starting to open. We struggled to pass through the streets overflowing with drunk yoots and went into several bars and restaurants trying to find a menu to decipher. But most of the places we entered were serving pintxos, not regular menus, and all of their little breads were topped with meat and cheese. After a few blocks of this, I started to get really anxious and nervous. And hungry. (There was a Subway, though, as there always is, so I found comfort knowing that if all else failed I would be able to get shredded lettuce and green peppers on their stanky bread.)
Finally, one bar serving pintxos said that they were serving their regular menu in the dining room, and that they could accommodate a vegetarian. (Advice: Always start by saying vegetarian. Most people don’t know the word vegan (even in English speaking countries, don’t assume that’s a household word) so figure out with the front of house staff if they can serve vegetarians and then make sure with your waitron that stuff doesn’t contain dairy and hipsters’ souls. That’s been the route to success for me.) This oasis of a restaurant, called Busterri, had a pretty fancy white tablecloth dining room that was empty when we entered but pretty full by the time we left (like after midnight, oh Europeans).
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First of all, how hilarious is that image on the water bottle? Oh, that’s another thing we encountered here – lots of bringing you bottled water even if you ask for tap. Blergh. I hate paying for water but I guess it doesn’t hurt to sometimes give my body a break from all the fracking chemicals. Also, I tried a Basque specialty white wine called Txakoli. It was one of the only alcohols I’ve ever had that I didn’t despise. I don’t know whether it was the tiredness or the Spanish air or whether Busterri actually had the greatest house wine ever, but it was very nice.
The food isn’t very pretty, but hot damn it was yummy. This was my first of the ‘hot oily veggies’ meals, so I really enjoyed it. These sauteed mushrooms were possibly the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten! No joke! Even better than at the fancy pants Michelin restaurant this whole trip was based around (separate post on that wondrousness tomorrow).
The food isn’t very pretty, but hot damn it was yummy. This was my first of the ‘hot oily veggies’ meals, so I really enjoyed it. These sauteed mushrooms were possibly the most delicious mushrooms I’ve ever eaten! No joke! Even better than at the fancy pants Michelin restaurant this whole trip was based around (separate post on that wondrousness tomorrow).
Mushrooms swimming in oil from Busterri
Seriously delicious, these mushrooms. They were positively swimming in salty olive oil and were just perfect. I could have returned to Busterri and had these a few more times. My next course was similarly oily, similarly warm and comforting, but featuring some fry!
More hot oily veg mashups
Although nothing could top those hot oily mushrooms, the next plate of hot vegetables was still quite delicious. Along with more mushrooms, carrots, peas, green beans? potatoes? what’s in there?, came unbelievably perfect fried cauliflower AND fried artichokes. The fried artichokes definitely would convert anyone who ever said they didn’t like fried food, not that those people exist. They melted apart and were amazing. Nice mash of mush here I say!
The wait staff was really nice and helpful, and the food was good, if on the expensive side. Also, there was bread. Always bread.
The next day (a Saturday), we tried to hit up some HappyCow recs for lunch, but they were closed! Whaaat are these schedules?! We ended up at a cider hall (or sidreria) in the casco viejo (old town!) called Arriaga, which was full of big parties of Spanish families having their weekend meal together as well as an assumed stag do (bachelor party) full of superlatively wasted young men (of course seated at the table next to us). Being a sidreria, the set menu on offer was called a cider menu, meaning you got your meat, other meat, and cheese for dessert along with unlimited cider that you pour yourself from the enormous barrels in the walls. That was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures but I had a decent green salad (lettuce and onion only, naturally) that was quite enormous (I think I was supposed to share with Husband but I love lettuce) and a grilled vegetable plate with really good asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and more. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing to sneeze at. Also, when the risk of not finding any vegetables while traveling is so high, I’d take veggie overload any day. Oh and of course there was never-ending table bread.
The wait staff was really nice and helpful, and the food was good, if on the expensive side. Also, there was bread. Always bread.
The next day (a Saturday), we tried to hit up some HappyCow recs for lunch, but they were closed! Whaaat are these schedules?! We ended up at a cider hall (or sidreria) in the casco viejo (old town!) called Arriaga, which was full of big parties of Spanish families having their weekend meal together as well as an assumed stag do (bachelor party) full of superlatively wasted young men (of course seated at the table next to us). Being a sidreria, the set menu on offer was called a cider menu, meaning you got your meat, other meat, and cheese for dessert along with unlimited cider that you pour yourself from the enormous barrels in the walls. That was pretty cool. I didn’t take pictures but I had a decent green salad (lettuce and onion only, naturally) that was quite enormous (I think I was supposed to share with Husband but I love lettuce) and a grilled vegetable plate with really good asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and more. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing to sneeze at. Also, when the risk of not finding any vegetables while traveling is so high, I’d take veggie overload any day. Oh and of course there was never-ending table bread.
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In the picture above right, you can see how one is supposed to get cider from the wall barrel. It’s pretty cool! The buckets are perfectly placed to catch what you can’t, but even so the staff had to regularly mop the floors because of all the spillage and drippage. It was really fun! I even tried it a few times just for the collection fun. Above left, you can see a picture of the restaurant exterior. Why am I including this? Well do you notice the graffiti at the bottom? Like…what?!?! Strong statement, sir!
So Arriaga was a pretty nice restaurant, but again it was crazy expensive for the set menu and convinced us that Bilbao is just on the pricey side. Oh the best part was what came with dessert (fruit for me):
So Arriaga was a pretty nice restaurant, but again it was crazy expensive for the set menu and convinced us that Bilbao is just on the pricey side. Oh the best part was what came with dessert (fruit for me):
A bowl of walnuts and a nutcracker!!!! Ahhh! My oh my, I had way too much fun with this. Have you ever actually cracked your own nuts? It is difficult! I failed a few times before getting the hang of it. It mostly took me 4 cracks to fully demolish one, but there were a few times I was able to open it right on the seam. So proud! But not as proud as when I full on pulled a “Pretty Woman” with the escargot and let a walnut slip right out of the cracker and across the restaurant. Ohhhmigod, sorry people. One also went under our neighboring table. It was amazing. Seriously, this was so entertaining.
One of the vegetarian-friendly places we couldn’t get into on Saturday we went back to on Sunday, and it was kind of disappointing. It’s probably my own fault for ordering the wrong thing, though. The super hip, super popular restaurant in the casco viejo called Kasko is a restaurant recommendation in several mainstream guides. We had to make a reservation because it’s always really busy. Everything I read said they were vegan friendly, but several staff members had to come talk to me to figure out what I was after. Finally someone came over and told me, in Spanish, what their 4-5 vegan options were and that I was to pick two. I didn’t really understand most of what was said or that the first two weren’t necessarily appetizers and the second two weren’t necessarily entrees and that I could pick any two, so I kind of failed. I did pick a fantastic first course, the stuffed peppers with corn, beans, lettuce, and pine nuts in a wonderful red sauce that felt like a true Italian gravy.
One of the vegetarian-friendly places we couldn’t get into on Saturday we went back to on Sunday, and it was kind of disappointing. It’s probably my own fault for ordering the wrong thing, though. The super hip, super popular restaurant in the casco viejo called Kasko is a restaurant recommendation in several mainstream guides. We had to make a reservation because it’s always really busy. Everything I read said they were vegan friendly, but several staff members had to come talk to me to figure out what I was after. Finally someone came over and told me, in Spanish, what their 4-5 vegan options were and that I was to pick two. I didn’t really understand most of what was said or that the first two weren’t necessarily appetizers and the second two weren’t necessarily entrees and that I could pick any two, so I kind of failed. I did pick a fantastic first course, the stuffed peppers with corn, beans, lettuce, and pine nuts in a wonderful red sauce that felt like a true Italian gravy.
But my second course was a shambles. The lady had said something like green salad, asparagus, or pasta for the other options and I stupidly thought well, I’ve had a lot of green salad, and I’ve had a lot of asparagus, so why not pasta. Why not pasta? Because this isn’t Italy or a vegan restaurant so you aren’t going to be happy because:
Right, because it was just pasta. In oil. With no salt. (I got some from the bar but yeesh.) It was first brought to me covered in parmesan, and when I told the waitress who knew I was vegan she looked horrified and brought me a different plate. But still, that made me question whether these were egg noodles. And still, I’m not a fan of just a bowl of tasteless noodle. I chose POORLY, MAN.
My dessert was pretty hilarious.
My dessert was pretty hilarious.
Yes, sirree, that is a hunk of pineapple, uncut. I can’t really complain because it was good pineapple. I just find it kind of funny. I also do find it kind of sad.
So, if you are heading to Bilbao and you aren’t going to be eating the many, many hunks of meat served all over the city (it’s pretty jarring and gross), be prepared for a lot of grilled oily veggies. Try to figure out what the heck kind of schedule the (supposedly existing) vegan pintxos places have. Prepare some Spanish in advance, but if you get tripped up, don’t get so nervous that you rush into bad decisions like I did. Just take a deep breath and remember, no, I will probably not be happy with a big bowl of noodle to go alongside my table bread. Relax and be grateful that there are so many vegetables, even if they aren’t served in super interesting ways. And, most importantly, if you can swing it, plan a meal at Asador Extebarri, the fancypants restaurant that will be the subject of tomorrow’s Very Important Post.
So, if you are heading to Bilbao and you aren’t going to be eating the many, many hunks of meat served all over the city (it’s pretty jarring and gross), be prepared for a lot of grilled oily veggies. Try to figure out what the heck kind of schedule the (supposedly existing) vegan pintxos places have. Prepare some Spanish in advance, but if you get tripped up, don’t get so nervous that you rush into bad decisions like I did. Just take a deep breath and remember, no, I will probably not be happy with a big bowl of noodle to go alongside my table bread. Relax and be grateful that there are so many vegetables, even if they aren’t served in super interesting ways. And, most importantly, if you can swing it, plan a meal at Asador Extebarri, the fancypants restaurant that will be the subject of tomorrow’s Very Important Post.
Traveling Through Kyrgyzstan, Part 1: The Return to the Yurt Camps
If you’ve been a devoted reader of this here website, then you know that I ABSOLUTELY ADORE sleeping outside in the countryside and worrying 24/7 about bathroom access. Readers familiar with my simply outstanding time in Mongolia will be happy to know that there’s more of that coming. That’s right, our first night in Kyrgyzstan, discussed in the previous post about our entry into this country, was the first night of several back in the yurt camps of my youth. In addition to our first night booked with Kubat Tours, we had an eight-day tour of the country booked with the company NoviNomad, and I was so nervous that it would mirror our Mongolian adventure in more ways than the structure of our sleeping shelters. And while it did – it really did in a few ways – this experience was roughly 100 times better than that in Mongolia, so much so that we said many times “Kyrgyzstan is what Mongolia wishes it could be.” Such a catchy catchphrase right?
Hold on though, because we still had some serious trials and tribulations, especially in the early days. And I’ll be sharing all of them because as expected I wrote diary entries every day. To keep track of all the many things we did and so I don’t get confused with my notes, I’m going to keep the diary entries numbered according to the day of the tour – 1 to 8 – even though it started on our second day in Kyrgyzstan. Don’t be confused it’s okay.
DAY 1
“Maybe this time…I’ll be lucky”
After our night in Tash Rabat, we drove two hours to Naryn, the main city (town) in the Naryn region of Kyrgyzstan. I mean, if another town claimed the title from Naryn when the region is named after it I bet there’d be some dramaaaa. The driver dropped us at a guest house used by the NoviNomad tour company, where we were to meet our driver for the week, Alexandr. I’m spelling it like that because it’s the Russian version and they do that e-less business and it helps you do the accent right. A very Russian (gruff, imposing…not huggable) man came out and said his name was Sacha and he would be our driver for the next 8 days. We were like no our driver is named Alexandr I’m getting so good at saying it in a Russian accent don’t take that away from me! (It was important that we got our right driver because we didn’t pay the (exorbitant) extra price for a guide but were promised an English-speaking driver who could generally do both jobs.) Sacha was not amused and was like, ‘yeah, Sacha, Alexandr, same thing’. Both of us said ohhh riiiiight because we forgot that Sacha is the diminutive/informal/cutesey nickname for Alexandr. I DON’T GET IT EITHER BUT IT’S TRUE. (I then sang the relevant part from “The Great Comet” in my head literally the entire rest of the day: “Countess Natalya Ilyinichna Rostova” “You must call me Natasha”…”Sofia Alexandrovna Rostova” “You must call me Sonia”.) So Mr. I-Won’t-Make-Small-Talk-Or-Be-Warm-And-Jovial-But-It’s-Just-Because-I’m-Like-So-Russian-Not-Because-I’m-Rude packed our stuff in his SUV, where he had a case of water bottles (amazing already), and drove us the far, far distance of…across the street. Our first stop was the Naryn Museum – not wasting any time, just gasoline.
The Naryn museum had this reproduction of a yurt’s dining area, which really looks like all the dining yurt setups at every camp we’d see in Kyrgs except the table settings in real life are gorgeous and abundant
The staff at the museum was HELLA excited for our arrival, and the main lady brought us around and described every item of Kyrgyz history and culture in that small museum in Russian, and had Sacha translate (roughly). The rest of the staff – wayyy too many ladies considering how small and not busy it was – followed us around and offered us bowls of traditional Kyrgyz things that we’d seen on the yurt dinner table (like, weird dried cheese bits, and those Chinese restaurant crunchy noodles which are everywhere). Our own little private awkward tour. It was really nice though, and I could tell it was a very nice museum even if I was too distracted by how much I wanted to tell the ladies ‘you don’t have to be on your best behavior for me!’
Naryn city center
After the tour, we went to the city center for an art museum that was managed by an 8-year-old boy who let us in and turned the lights on. Not weird. It was a good museum, actually, which is quite something considering how sick of museums I am. We went to a cafe for lunch after, and I had my first tomato-cucumber salad of many because of course that’s all I’m going to be able to eat in Central Asia; why should that tradition of my Asian travels ever have to end? I also had a plate of grilled vegetables, the other thing I would come to have pretty much every day for the next month. But hey, it’s veggies!
After lunch, we saw the Naryn mosque, which is covered with pretty blue tiles. It’s a very quick stop because you generally just look from the front and that’s that.
Then we went to the marketplace in Naryn. We thought we’d have to buy our food for the next few days, until the next market stop, as we did on the tour of Mongolia. But it wasn’t clear how long we had to account for and what sorts of things we needed to get; Sacha was like ‘you should get fruit’ (to me) and then kind of told Z he wouldn’t need anything, just whatever he wanted. So confusing! We bought some fruit and Sacha bought a watermelon, and then we figured out from him that that night’s yurt camp would provide our dinner. We didn’t figure out for a few days that ALL our yurt camps and lodging would account for our food (except the meals in restaurants and stuff obviously) in big communal meals so we didn’t actually have to worry about anything! Already so different!
Sacha bought a watermelon and I was sooo excited to see if Kyrgyz watermelon was as good as Xinjiang watermelon. Spoiler: It was. We began our first long drive of the week, towards Song Kul Lake, way up in the mountains at 3000+ meters (almost 10000 feet!). Yes, our first night at Tash Rabat was just slightly higher, but we drove down to get to Naryn and now had to go back up. I’m so into elevation now. Song Kul is right smack in the middle of Kyrgyzstan, so we were already covering some serious ground. Fun fact: Song Kul is covered in snow 200 days of the year, and the SUMMER average temperature is 50 degrees. FAHRENHEIT. Shit’s cold. First, we would stop at a beautiful waterfall on the way. We parked at a random spot halfway up a mountain and hiked to the waterfall and it was beautiful! I was so happy: we had broken up a long drive with a hike, and I had fruit. Already better than I feared.
THERE IT IS I SEE IT
After we saw the waterfall, Sacha cut the watermelon and kept giving us piece after piece. It was amazing, probably because all the aspects of this excursion included my favorite thing (water, get it). I was so giddy on Day 1 being so much better than the last Day 1 of a country tour that the next half of the drive to Song Kul was like a punch to the gut. Like, it really was, considering it was full of watermelon and the roads starting getting scary. They were really windy, winding up and up around the mountain like those cliffside terrors in Italy (I did not look out the window) and then they started getting Mongolian – as in, no roads, just rocky terrain. It was really rough for a few hours as we maneuvered over rocks as we went higher and higher up a mountain, so that was something else. Don’t look down! Finally we got to a clearing and got out so Sacha could show us the small hills that were ancient gravesites, the likes of which are all over the country. It was interesting but not as great as the fact that the field was covered in edelweiss, and when Sacha informed us of this fact, he started singing “Edelweiss” to himself for like, a long time. Maybe we will get along, Gruff Russian, maybe we will become best friends indeed.
winding mountain roads
SUPER winding mountain roads
No roads, yes animals
Finally we got to our camp on Song Kul, although it wasn’t so much ‘on’ or ‘near’ Song Kul as it was ‘closer to that lake than any other lake in the world’. You couldn’t see it from the camp but we got a picture from the drive. The camp was pretty decent otherwise – there are REAL TOILETS in little wooden shacks! And there’s a sink – not a bucket sink, but a real sink piping out freezing cold water. The wooden toilet shack is actually two toilet stalls and two ‘shower’ stalls, which have basins and buckets of various sizes for doing bathing via buckets but hey if it works! Luxury!
Dinner was mix of the same vegetables as always now, plus a plate of kasha and rice. I was super pumped to get kasha; it’s actually a good protein source. It was an awkward as ass dinner though, because it was communal, as all future ones would be, and they tell you where to sit, and I was seated in the very center of a semi-circle. Z wasn’t feeling well so skipped it, so here I was in the middle of 30 some people just being weird and awkward and silent. The two groups on either side of me were both big tour groups, so they were very talkative among themselves but also very curious about me and just staring like hey what’s your deal? To get to my position I had to step on everyone already seated (you sit on the floor in the yurts) because the table was around the edge of the yurt. I also left early because hell if I was going to sit and be stared at any longer than I needed to and so upon leaving I also stepped on 15 people. Fun times.
After dinner, I asked if I could shower – I hadn’t since China, remember. The yurt people boiled some water and brought it into the stall for me. So inside this wooden stall is a basin of the boiled water, a tub of cold water, and various buckets and utensils for mixing the two and pouring over yourself. So, maybe in my eagerness to be ‘clean’ I didn’t think this through all the way. See, it was freezing outside. Remember I said last night that it was the coldest I’d ever been? Well, now let’s travel into an even colder region and then VOLUNTARILY BE WET. I was shaking-shivering even before I poured the water over myself the first time. I tried to shave my legs but they were so be-goosebumped that it was extremely painful and I couldn’t do it, it would have just resulted in the little bumps bleeding. I knowww! I used mostly boiling water and just didn’t stop shivering. The sink was outside the stalls, in the freezing wind, so I had to use that when I was done to brush my teeth and stuff. I have never been that cold in my life. As soon as I could, I ran back the 220 paces to our yurt (that’s right, the toilets were better here but farther! 220 paces!!) and flopped on my mattress with literally 15 blankets and quilts over me. We were luckily in what appeared to be a storage yurt, so the sides were filled with stacks of extra mattress pads, quilts, and blankets. I used everything I could carry. Getting in and out of that contraption for my nighttime peeing (right outside the yurt that’s right) required all my strength to lift it off of me, it was so hilarious, like a reverse princess and the pea. I could make another pee joke with that but I won’t. Anyway it barely worked. See, blankets and stuff keep warmth in, but they don’t generate warmth; you have to do that yourself with your body. So if one’s body, say, refuses to generate any heat to begin with, you’re just a cold fool under 4 mattress pads, 9 blankets, and 6 quilts. I shook all night. Man alive.
Day 2
“Into the woods and who can tell what’s waiting on the journey”
The next morning, I was in no mood. The car was locked and I was out of water, and the yurt owner people didn’t have any, and Sacha was nowhere to be found. Finally one of his guide friends told us he was still sleeping. LUCKY HIM. I was so tired and thirsty and miserableh. Someone got Sacha and he opened the car and I drank 2 liters right there in front of him. So, why were we up and he wasn’t? Well, today, Day 2, we would hike 10 kilometers (pretty long!) to our next yurt camp with a local Kyrgyz guide, giving Sacha the day off, plus most of tomorrow off while we did another long hike with the local guide to the next-next camp, where Sacha would be waiting. There were no roads or paths or anything so navigating around the mountains required local expertise, from someone born in this area. The local guide didn’t speak English, which really pissed me off at NoviNomad because they never told us this part. Luckily he spoke Russian (everyone does here) so we personally were fine but no one at NoviNomad knew that we knew any Russian (they don’t know that we know they know we know!) so they were okay with their tourists just not being able to communicate? FIE.
Luckily there was a dog.
The yurt people had him tied up (cryface) but I was told it’s because he’s a baby and there’s like not a fence or any sort of boundary because we are just out in the open so it’s until he learns not to run away? I wanted to take him. Oh but wait till tonight’s camp!
So we left our Song Kul yurt camp (bye toilets) and began our 10K trek to our next yurt camp in the jailoo of Kelemche. Jailoo is the name of the type of landscape, these sprawling summer pastures in the mountains that are used for cattle and all kinds of pasture activities, I don’t know. I know you’re probably like 10 kilometers is nothing hush your face, but it was mostly uphill! Ahhh! But it was pretty. OH so, this was supposed to be a horse trek to Kelemche jailoo, following by another even longer horse trek tomorrow from Kelemche to Kyzart village, our next destination. But after Mongolia we emailed NoviNomad and we were like NOPE CUT THE HORSES NO MORE HORSE RIDING WE WILL JUST WALK XOXO gossip girl. Luckily the very helpful Madina, who helped us plan everything, said that it was doable by foot, even though she didn’t really understand why we were so vehemently anti-horse riding all of a sudden. (Horse riding sucks.)
Our local guide was named Melis, I’m definitely not spelling it right but it sounded like that. He was pretty great except he was clearly amused by how slow we were compared to him. We didn’t grow up climbing these mountains like you did, MELIS! He rode a horse because he had no problem with them and put our day packs and water in the saddle bags (sorry horsie I’ll drink fast). And we just trudged behind him. Kind of hilarious.
Hiking uphill, the whole first half of the trek, was really difficult at this altitude, which made it harder than it would have been otherwise. At a particularly pretty stretch, we stopped for a picnic that Melis had packed us. It was nice but so funny: whole cucumbers, whole tomatoes, and boiled potatoes, plus bread and fruit. If I didn’t hate raw tomatoes beforehand, having to bite into them like handfruit (THEY’RE NOT FRUIT FOR HUMAN PURPOSES) did the trick. The nectarines and peaches he brought were superb. What is it about the fruit in this region! I’ve never really noticed a difference, even in tropical places, with quality of fruit before. While we ate, we saw our first other hikers of the entire day! We had seen a decent amount of horseback riders (not a ton – we were still in the middle of Kyrgyzstan – but a decent amount taking that into consideration) but here were our first fellow walkers. They were trudging with even more difficulty than we were, so I joked to Melis, “See we are not the slowest people out here!” Melis responded, “but they have their packs on.” Duuuuuude you’re not supposed to burn your clients like that! Gonna pretend the Russian was something else and I misunderstood.
i was planning to pee behind this rock but then this horseback tourist decided to sit on it for some deep thinking ughhhh white boys
i fucking hate this hat why does it refuse to reform into ANY other shape that doesn’t make me look like a cartoon rancher. ps i’m wearing like 4 shirts
The second half was slightly downhill, which was easier on the lungs but harder for me. Why? Because the path was all tiny little pebbles and rocks, and for some reason (seriously if anyone knows please tell me), whenever I step on little pebbles and rocks, I skid. Badly! I despise gravel paths! No matter how I walk or what shoes I wear or how I balance or how much I brace my core, I skid on all gravelly paths. It’s RIDICULOUS. I nearly fell every few steps and Z was like SERIOUSLY WHAT IS HAPPENING? Am I missing something very obvious about how to walk on these things? Did I fake illness that day in Necessary Human Skills school? Damn my love of sleep!
We got to our next camp a little after noon. It was, how do you say, ah yes, not nice. It was actually probably the most dilapidated and whack camp yet. We had nothing to do the rest of the day, no activities or anything, so I spent a lot of time taking inventory of our yurt. There were holes in the shelter covered over with clear plastic bags. There were ants everywhere because there wasn’t a real floor covering, just a bit of carpet but then mostly grass. A weird, heavy anchor swung down from the center hole, I’m sure to keep it standing but we’d never seen that in any of the previous yurts. It was a small yurt and the mattresses on the floor were positioned right around the anchor so I hit it A LOT, and it was f-ing heavy. Like, an anchor.
So I was complaining a lot about how gross this camp was, and Z got quiet and said, “Hey…were you a Girl Scout?” Um have we met? Hell no I wasn’t a Girl Scout, I wasn’t even a Brownie! I just went to all the Disney on Ice shows with the Brownie troop because I was friends with the leader’s kid! I have such great Disney souvenir cups from my Icees. Anyway, so no, not a Girl Scout. He then asked, “Wait, have you ever camped before?” Again, nice to meet you! No I haven’t camped, like in tents and stuff? With the ELEMENTS? f that noise! I never even had to go on the obligatory one-night-in-the-woods camping trip at overnight camp! Z got even quieter and then said, “I wish I knew that before this trip.”
Apparently the picnic wasn’t our actual lunch, because soon we were called to lunch in the food yurt with the family who lived there and a bunch of random shepherds. It was AWK. They were all speaking Kyrgyz to each other and we just kinda sat there. The food was good, some kind of yummy cabbage and potato filled crepe-y thing. I liked that everyone was given the same meal, like because of my veganism I made everyone skip meat for a meal. Yay! I think I heard them say that I eat a lot of watermelon though.
I was excited that the outhouse area, despite being up THE STEEPEST HILL EVER, had a real toilet inside. Unfortunately, the toilet was broken, so we were to use the regular out shithouse farther up the steep af hill. This hellshack was tied for first with worst campsite toilet I’d ever seen, so THAT wasn’t great! Luckily our yurt was at the end of the camp so I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me out there. Except a cow and a few dogs at night who were REALLY unhappy that I was in their space. Dudes.
But it was all okay, because my little Bearnutfriend was there.
DO YOU SEE THE ABSOLUTE BEAR NUTTERY OF THIS LITTLE BOY BEAR BUTTER??? OH MY GOD!!! I played with him the rest of the night. Little guy omg! One of the other tourists tied him up (MEAN!) because he was a biter – and I mean a real biter. He had little baby butter teeth so it didn’t really hurt but he didn’t really stop DID you you little nutter butter bear baby you! I LOVED HIM. I really wanted to take him home, so badly. But the little kids who lived there took good care of him.
Here I am saying, “Little bear baby! I thought we talked about biting! No biting silly button butter! We talked about this!”
And then here I am saying, “Oh I can’t stay mad at you little boopily bear baby you’re too cute here’s my hand again you can bite it”
Of course I untied this little bugger. And of course then he started biting my ankles, right through my HeatTech leggings (which don’t work anyway UNIQLO).
Near the camp was a natural spring that we could fill our water bottles with! We were really hesitant about whether it was actually safe to drink; Melis said it was but our soft Western tumnuses require different levels of safety than hardier folk. But despite actually seeing horses drinking from the same place, we did not get sick! Yippee! The water poured out superfast from a little spot above a creek and it was a fun adventure to try to fill the jugs without falling in the creek.
Dinner was another communal affair but with a more friendly tourist group tonight, a group of Swiss and Israelis. The Swiss girl closest to us who we chatted with called Israelis ‘Israelian’. LOVES IT! Dinner for me was the vegetable filling from lunch, plus – you know it – a cucumber-tomato salad. Do we ever expect anything different? I love the traditional Kyrgyz table setting, though. They have all been so lovely, with baskets of bread, baskets of the Chinese noodle jawns, plates of the Chinese noodle jawns but fried in sugar, bowls of apples, bowls of wrapped candies, plates upon plates of melons, and fancy little glass containers filled with assorted jams for tea (or bread, I guess, but I definitely became a convert to the whole putting-jam-in-your-tea thing. Well, I hate tea, but when I was forced to drink it. We’ll get there).
Guess what! I actually slept that night! It was still freezing, but we had a fire, and because the yurt was smaller than our storage yurt the night before, the fire actually heated the little space. Also we were like 1000 meters lower now. The stars were GLORIOUS. Not as incredible as that one night in Mongolia on the lake was, but still the second best I’ve ever seen. I noticed that every night I pee while looking at Orion’s belt; I’m just always oriented that way. WEIRD. Z told me I talk about peeing too much. Lol gurl please. I share literally every detail of what we do (mostly for me when my memory goes) and I just happen to spend most of my time peeing. You’d rather NOT read about a person’s bodily functions? HA!
Part 2 soon!
