Juice Merchant: Main Line Philly's Awesome New Vegan Restaurantby Randi / November 24, 2017
After our terrifying border crossing experience from Kazakhstan, we arrived in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was blindingly sunny and dry. Like…really dry. Like Kashgar levels of dryness. I’m literally in a desert on a horse with no name or something I guess not literally but I was all a mess because my eyes are so dry! It may have been the climate (I mean it definitely was) but it also could have been due to the extensive construction projects happening all over town. Seriously was it just the season of construction works in this region? Everywhere we went we were stymied by drilling and jackhammering and dust flying errrwhere. So much dust and rubble! Despite all the dust and rubble, we had a decent time exploring Tashkent’s mosques, museums, markets, and other m words. But my strongest memory will always be of something that starts not with ‘m’ but with an upside down ‘m’, a ‘w’! (For watermelon.)
After our idiot driver from the border dropped us at the Sunshine Caravan Stay guest house, we waited a few more hours till our room was ready (I’m really soo over lodgings that make you wait until 2pm to check in, like, be ready in the morning or don’t be in this business okay) and planned our next few days of sightseeing on the wifi. The guest house had a communal dining/kitchen/breakfast area (I think it might have also been a restaurant) that we sat in while we waited for some much needed showers.
Our guesthouse’s communal dining area
The communal dining room had a water cooler, so +1 to them, but it was off a courtyard patio area that was always full of random Uzbeks smoking, so -1. The room, when we finally saw it, was pretty nice! As was the bathroom. The only real problem with this place, besides the smokiness and the random men everywhere (I’m not sure if they were workers or locals or what, they definitely weren’t fellow guests) was that the heat and the wifi both failed at night. My two favorite things, guys. And yeah, we needed the heat at night! It was getting to be fall!
the courtyard area I couldn’t enjoy because sigarettos exist
i love bed
The shared bathroom at the Caravan Stay featured the OG Uzbek Schuyler Sisters, if I had to guess?
and peggy
Aside from the Uzbek power trio (Elizaaaa), the vibe around the city was kind of hard for me to get a handle on. There was a sense of general nothingness, plus a bank here, a convenience store there, a milk cart on the corner that for some reason (I’m so tired) I thought might have vegan ice cream seriously I was losing my mind. But once we got out of the ‘center’ to see the sights, it felt more like the Uzbekistan I was ready for: full of mosques and dust aaaand space.
Pictured above is what I call Mosque Central, a square with like 8 mosques and madrassahs and more mosques and a few imams, which I thought were people but I guess can also be buildings. Like transformers can be people and cars? Anyway the pretty blue building is the Teleshayakh Mosque, which is home to the Osman Koran, or one of the versions of it. It’s hard to find believable information (#allreligion) but it seems like the Osman Cometh, a 7th century Muslim relic, was the first written Quran! There was no need for a written Quran before because first when Mohammed was around he just had it in his noggin, and anyone who had a question just like gave Mohammed a call. And then I guess he lived for a lot of hundos of years and then he had sons or baby prophets or whatever and they would be the ones you shouted out to if you had questions about the rules. But then baby prophets started to disagree with each other and you know how humans are, no one tells the truth or believes the truth so they were like, we gotta write this shit down! So they did, I guess they got a guy called Harry Osman (Donny?) to write it and thus we have the Osman Quran. Or Qurans, really, because we went to several places in Uzbekistan, heck even in Tashkent alone, that claimed to have the og OQ. I think there were several copies made by the caliphs and whose-nots in 650 a.d. since it was such an important creation. Smort. Noice.
We also saw one – I think the ‘realest’ one – at the Amir Temur Museum, a surprisingly great museum off the main garden-y square area called Amir Temur Khioboni, so pretty and green. It’s where the giant Soviet Hotel Uzbekistan stands. Pretty nice square.
this fucking hat’s back
Wait so Amir Temur – also known as Tamerlane, which you might be more familiar with (nerds) – let’s talk about him because HOO BOY, he’s big here and he’s gonna come up a lot in this country (we have like 5 more stops). Amir Temur was a Mongol warlord/conqueror guy in the 1300s who founded the Timurid empire in Persia and Central Asia and was the first ruler of said empire which like come on he better be, how much would it suck to found something and then NOT get to be the leader. According to wikipedia, “Timur’s background was Iranized and not steppe nomadic” and according to me, if you can explain to me wtf that means (comments below) then I will send you cookies. The Amir Temur museum was quiet (like everything here!) but full of fun information about Temur and Uzbekistan and stuff. The central hall was beautiful but no pictures were allowed because the Osman Quran (#201A?) was on display. So cool!
here’s that fucking hat in front of the Amir Temur museum
But I had to sneak photos of one part of the museum. I just had to break the law. Because the best part of the museum – hell, the best part of maybe all of Uzbekistan, MAYBE the best thing I’ve ever seen in a museum ever anywhere – was the section that listed important historical figures and gave a paragraph of information about their lives and then ended with a short description of how they died. I know what you’re thinking, that that doesn’t sound as amazing as I’m making it out to be. JUST YOU LOOK:
DIED OF ARROW!!!!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
GUYS I CAN’T!!!! Do you see how Mirzo died? I almost got kicked out, I fell to the floor from laughing so hard. We were CRYING. So inappropriate. I’m so sorry to all the ghosts who were watching.
The museum was definitely a high point, restoring my ability to go to museums. Also it had a toilet, which was actually hard to find out and about in the city. I think it was one of the hardest places for me because there weren’t cafes or more museums I could pee in, it was all mosques that didn’t have bathrooms and madrassahs that I wasn’t allowed in. Darn. Luckily on one stretch of busy road from the Mosque Central Square back down to the regular center of the city, we chanced upon a sort of mall. It was DESERTED, but open and it had a bathroom. But like…it was deserted. We were the only people in there and every storefront was shuttered. Soooo weird.
The deserted mall-like building had weird freaky statues in small fountains, like the above. I was so sure we were in a movie. By far, the best part of it was the below sign I saw that made NO SENSE but of course put “All I Do Is Win” in my head for a good solid week.
“LIKE STRIPPERS’ BOOTIES GO”
(Possibly the best caption ever.)
Chorsu Bazaar
PUNKIN CHUNKIN
Our top experience in Tashkent, besides finding pretzels (they were a little stale but hey I found pretzels!), was our morning at the Chorsu Bazaar, the big central farmers market where all the locals and then some come to buy and sell their goods. I love all the local markets we visit when we travel, especially on this trip, but this bazaar experience was the most memorable yet. See, I really wanted watermelon. The beyond incredible watermelons of western China and Kyrgyzstan spoiled me for some serious quality watermelon and I was jonesing for it but good. I thought we’d definitely find some at the bazaar! As usual, we found an impressive array of spices that we couldn’t buy but wanted to, lots and lots of bread that we ate of course because fresh market bread is the best, and lots of gorgeous vegetables I wanted to bring to restaurants and say ‘cook these for me please!’ And of course there was a tonne of fruit, but no one was selling watermelon to eat immediately, like slices of it, like they sold in China markets, handing you a piece and watching you finish so they could collect the rind. We walked round and round the white buildings with the green domed roof and finally decided that our best bet was to just ask a regular watermelon seller if they could cut it up for us. Fun problem: the seller had no idea what we were asking. I kept making chopping motions with my hand, over and over like I was a nutcracker. The guy was just so confused. Finally his wife made a face like something clicked and she said the word for ‘now’, so we were like ‘da da yes for now! we want to eat it now can you make it so we can?” We didn’t know the word for cut, p.s. So the lady took a watermelon, one we had pointed to because it was the smallest one we could see, and took in onto a stump to cut. Note, the ‘smallest’ watermelon we could see was still the biggest one I’ve ever bought. It was a good 12 pounds, I’d say. So I’m all excited to finally eat some good fresh watermelon and the lady comes back with a bag…full of two giant halves. They looked so proud for doing what we ‘asked’ that we just couldn’t tell them that nooo, cutting it in half doesn’t reeeeally help that much, we wanted it cut into slices! So we smiled and thanked them and walked to a little grassy patch outside where we sat…with our two giant halves of watermelon, six pounds each. This would have been a good time to have one of our pocket knives on us, but of course the one time in our entire trip that we’d need them, they were back in the room. I tried diving headfirst into the cut side and trying to eat some like a wild f-ing animal. That didn’t work and my shirt got messy. So instead we both garnered all of our rage and anger in the world (#trump) and kind of just TORE THE WATERMELON APART with our bare hands, ripping the rind while screaming in order to make it work it doesn’t work if you don’t scream. We were A MESS. There was watermelon juice EVERYWHERE, all over the ground near us, the pavement, ourselves, Everyone was watching us, these two pasty white westerners trying to destroy and devour an entire uncut watermelon with pure brute strength. It was RIDICULOUS. We were clawing into the fruit like we were lions doing whatever it is lions do. Just a mess. We actually managed to finish an entire half. We felt simultaneously proud, strong, sticky, and kind of nauseous. There was no way we could finish another entire half, and this was morning, so we were stuck carrying the sticky other half in the sticky disgusting bag for the entire rest of the day.
Luckily that wasn’t the only food I could eat in Tashkent. It was a decent city with a few options on HappyCow. We of course went to a Georgian restaurant, always a favorite and always great for vegans, although this place didn’t have the best service. My next HappyCow choice was the restaurant Jumanji, because the movie terrifies me and I had this theory that if I had a decent meal at the restaurant of the same name, I would conquer the movie’s terror. Or something.
Just in case you had gotten to Tashkent without noticing the vibrant copyright infringement trade in all of Asia, they made it very clear here that they were talking bout the Robin Williams’ movie by using the exact font from the film. (See the very end of this post for my favorite Tashkent copyright infringement.) Things are so weird. Luckily, the food was good and guess what, they had tofu. I missed tofu so much after always being able to get it in China! And vegetables ! And juice with vegetables in it!
TOFUUUUUS
BIG OLE PLATE OF BROCCOLI
BIG OLE PLATE OF CUCUMBER
It might look pretty basic but it was a great big satisfying meal. I even enjoyed the huge cucumber plate (that crap all over it was RG). Jumanji kind of represented what Tashkent was like in general – kind of boring but pretty satisfying, and while I’m not itching to go there again, I had a decent experience. I felt that Tashkent was such a mixed bag. It had areas that were really built up and somewhat modern, and then parts that were bare and dust and so old-fashioned it was like stepping back in time. Little did I know that it would be the most modern part of Uzbekistan, and our next stop would teach me what stepping back in time really looked like.
These looked like flowers we had at our wedding! I don’t know what they’re called but they were all over the country
yup this is a Hogwarts themed children’s center or daycare prob. I mean. ILLEGAL.
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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!
Seville, Spain: I Did Not Fall Madly in Love with Generalissimo Franco But I Still Had Fun
Recently, Husband and I spent a weekend in Madrid, and then two weeks later we returned to Spain for an extended trip through Andalusia, because whenever we go to Spain, we go back two weeks later. Not really on purpose, it’s just how our travels always fall and it’s weird but hey we like Spain. If we go to Spain once, we go twice, usually in the same month. But this part of Spain, the southern part, was new to us, although I did spend a weekend during college in Malaga at a resort I found on hostelworld.com for supercheap but I didn’t leave the resort the whole time so it doesn’t really count. Also I was alone at the resort, which was filled with Spanish families and lots of children and everyone stared me and it was the most awkward thing ever. Anyway, we’re not here to talk about that. We are here to talk about something that finally surpassed the awkwardness of that Malaga weekend: Easter week in Seville. See, we didn’t realize that Seville was the epicentre of Easter, not until we were smack dab in the center of the insane crowds and shocking costumes. I don’t know if you know this, but you know Jesus? Hoo boy, he’s big there. And Jesus Fever spreads at similar strengths throughout all of Andalusia, so while I’m just talking about Seville today, the rest of my Andalusia posts will feature similar levels of craycray bananapants.
I was really excited to go to Seville, not just because I thought Andalusia was the fairytale land from “Enchanted” (it’s seriously ONE letter off) so I thought I was getting into some kind of Neverland situation. but also, I always wanted to go to Seville, well, since 1998, when “You’ve Got Mail” came out. That’s where Birdie fell madly in love!! But it wasn’t meant to be. I’m sure you know the unparalleled genius of “You’ve Got Mail” as well as I do but it’s always fun to watch (best at the end):
AHHHHHHHH oh no you’re fine i guess
Despite not meeting any fascist dictators (my trip to the USA was a month later), I enjoyed the sights of Seville very much, although the timing of our trip made things…interesting. Going during Easter week is not necessarily a bad idea; in fact, Husband loved all the Easter hubbub. I got a little tired of it but I’m still glad I saw things I would not believe if you told me. You have to be prepared to deal with endless crowds that could very well block you from doing what you planned to do that day. Numerous parades happened all day long, all week long, because instead of a measly Monday off to celebrate, Spanish people take the entire week off and probably the one after it too. During the parades and marches, people would cram into the streets like sardines to catch a glimpse of people dressed up…like Klan members. I kid you not. The traditional Spanish Easter costumes that even little children wore look eerily like what white supremacists play dress-up in. They came in ALL COLORS though, not just white. There was black, there was purple and magenta and green and lots of other colors I can easily name but can hardly get over. There’s nothing tying this traditional hey-zeus garb to the worst of American culture, and I’m pretty sure that Jesus, and Spain, came first before neo-Nazis and the American south, so it’s just an unfortunate coincidence if you’re familiar with the latter. As far as I know, the Spanish have no idea that their special costumes remind us of dirty diaper people so there’s no reason to tell them and tarnish what’s clearly their favorite time of year. Because lordy, do they LOVE them some hey-zeus. As Americans, we never got over the shock of seeing these costumes everywhere we looked, but it’s nice to see the pointy hats and not run in fear for your life so like let’s not bother them about it.
CRUUUUUCIFIIIIXUUUUUS REEEEX COELEEEESTISSSS
There were other costumes too, like these, um, executioner? outfits. In the rest of Andalusia we saw even more variation, including a Teenage Widow costume that I look forward to sharing with you in future posts. Seville had some of the densest crowds though, and the most participants, as you would expect since this was the center of it all. Like I said, we had no idea that Seville was Easter Capital of the World – can you imagine going on vacation and seeing these scenes the entire time? So nuts! It’s a good thing we expected Easter to be big in a hugely Catholic country; we just didn’t know it would be the entire week. Incredible!
In addition to the costumes, there were parade floats, gilded beyond belief with giant nativity scenes but for Easter, whatever you’d call those. These were some serious floats, and in the tiny, ancient alleyways of Seville, we often wondered how in god’s name they would make it through the narrow passages. I guess with god’s grace. Or by? I don’t know I wasn’t carrying the floats. The one pictured below was what we encountered one evening on our way to dinner. Needless to say, we had to pick a different restaurant.
this was precarious
But like I said, there’s plenty of Easter treats in all the other towns we saw in Andalusia, so let’s talk about what makes Seville particularly special. Its history as the cultural and financial capital of southern Spain means it has very important stuff to see. The river, which is either called Guadalajara or LaGuardia, divides it into Sevilla and Triana, and I wish we had more time to spend in Triana because it looked really nice. And crossing the bridge in the evening from one side to the other was so beautiful, and as in most European cities it was my favorite sight.
we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it oh we’re there |
I forget what this statue is but ME GUSTA MUCHOOO |
REAL ALCAZAR
In every city, there’s the big thing to see. Oh I gotta SEE the big f-ing thing! In Seville, it’s the Real Alcazar, not to be confused with the fake one because you say it ‘ray-al’ and it means royal. It’s the old Moorish palace with endless rooms and courtyards and gardens and fountains and really purdy tiled walls and it is really cool. Now this is the pinnacle of that Moorish architecture in Seville I was talking about. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site (I mean what isn’t these days) and the royal family still uses parts of it when they are in town, which is super weird considering there are hundreds of tourists at all times. The gigantic palace has lots of smaller palaces within it and lots of patios and special historical rooms, and I learned all about them from my audioguide but then forgot everything about them. But pictures!
oh look this is a courtyard a what a courtyard 
beautiful tile! 
this might be the Courtyard of the Dolls – or the Courtyard of the Maidens. It could be one of those. But can anyone really ever know |
this ceiling is INCRED 
Oh I remember the audioguide about this facade, the Facade of the Mudejar Palace! It’s clearly an example of Islamic art but its actual existence is a Christian thing |
And just when you think you’ve seen all there is to see while you’re inside, you find out that there are like acres and acres of outside gardens and maze-like paths and fountains and it’s so wonderful.
I think that is a statue of Mercury which would make this the Mercury pond!
I love maze-y gardens
From the Gallery of the Grotesques (!) you get a great view of a lot of the palace and gardens
THE CATHEDRAL OF SEVILLE
this is a great picture
The other big f-ing thing you have to see in Seville is the Cathedral, which is the third largest church in the world, unless you are going by volume and then it’s the biggest, but like, what. Weird fact, Spain. Once you have seen Saint Peter’s, it is hard to get excited about other cathedrals, no matter how much water they can hold. But this was indeed a nice one. I had an audioguide here too but literally not one word stuck around. I believe it was built by the Spanish. OH and Christopher Columbus is buried there so you can spit on him.
THE JEWISH QUARTER
old timey map of the jewish quarter don’t mind the flash
OH YEAH now we’re talking! Well, we’ve been talking, because the Jewish Quarter is the main touristy section of Seville and includes the Real Alcazar and the Cathedral so you’re in it allatimes. This was actually the Jewish quarter during medieval times, in both senses of the word (the era and the slang of describing something as so stupid as to be archaic). Ferdinand III (not the one with Isabella) concentrated all the city’s jews in this area because he was so scared of their big strong bodies (lol just kidding) so he thought it would be easier to watch them out of the corner of his eye if they were all in one spot, and then he went to hell. It remained the Jewish Quarter until 1492, when the Alhambra Decree kicked all the Jews out of Spain. This decree came from the later Ferdinand, the one with Isabella, who by the way the Sevillanos ABSOLUTELY ADOOOORE, who were dicks. But Seville loves them, and seriously everywhere we turned there would be some monument or at least sign (and street name) for The Catholic Kings, as they called them. I really like calling them both kings but that’s where any good feeling ends. So the jews were expelled from their homeland as the universe decrees must happen every century, or they converted to Catholicism with their fingers crossed behind their backs so they could stay in their home. People are crappy. Anyway, you can learn all about the long, extended history of hatred for jews in the Centro de Interpretacion Juderia de Sevilla, the small museum in the Jewish Quarter that recounts all the horrid events. It’s not a great museum, as it is mostly lots of writing on walls so you just read and then walk to the next wall section and read more, but the information is put forward nicely. The staff will give you a map of the important parts of the ancient Jewish Quarter so you can walk around the neighborhood and see what happened to the synagogue (it’s a parking lot), the school (it’s a parking lot), the famous jeweler’s (parking lot).
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OH THIS IS FUN. In the 15th century, you had to prove that you had no Jewish blood in your system in order to hold public office or be a member of an organization. It doesn’t say what kind of organization. Is that ALL organizations? That seems overbroad. Anyway, people are horrendous.
A much more fun thing to do in this area is to see a flamenco show! A popular place to go – for free! – is Carboneria, mostly because it’s free. You pay your dues by buying food (which is very much not good) or drink (same) but it’s all in good faith, no one watches or forces you to. Anyway, it’s a big cafeteria looking place that gets packed to the gills and a lady dances for a minute and then people play guitar, and then someone sings, and then maybe the lady will dance for another minute. If you can see anything, that’s great, but odds are you can’t see anything. It’s worth it to pay for a really good flamenco show if you have never seen it before. We have, so we kind of just popped in for 30-45 minutes and then said we came, we saw, we tired.
This was our view — after we moved seats to get a better view. Somebody somewhere is dancing.
PLAZA DE ESPANA
Plaza de Espana is without a doubt my favorite part of Seville. I guess I don’t love it enough to figure out how to get an accented ‘n’ up in there, but I do really love it. It’s a huge, gorgeous (slightly dilapidated but that’s part of it’s charm?) pavilion that houses government offices both in Spain AND the newer/subpar/NatPo Star Wars movies! Look I was standing where R2 was!
Despite the various joggers, strollers, and government workers present, the plaza feels sort of serene and special. It’s a beautiful place and I cannot imagine what it’s like for those people who go there every day to work. They probably hate being cooped up inside a boring office even more than most people because they know this lovely spot is just outside the door. We went early our last morning before we walked to the train station to go to (camp) Granada.
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FOOD AND LODGING
As for food, I had a long list of places but few worked out, either because they were closed for Easter or we literally just could not get to them because of parades. We pretty much just ate a lot of tapas in the tapas bars – the famous Seville-style gazpacho called Salmorejo was vegan-friendly as far as I could tell. Just like tomatoes and bread and oil pureed. Thinking about it now, I’m actually starting to gag because I had so much of it and got so sick of it, but it’s pretty decent. What is not vegan-friendly at most traditional places, that I was so upset about because I counted on it being my main source of food all week, is espinacas con garbanzos, or spinach and chickpeas. I KNOW. My fave thing. I had it once or twice and it seemed fine, but the third place we had it it was CLEARLY cooked in hot ham water. It was too good to be true to think that it was vegetarian at the super old traditional bars. Oh blergh. My favorite meal was the vegetable paella (pictured) I scored at a restaurant right outside our hotel on a sort of main drag. It was really delicious and I’m so glad I got to have paella!
One of the HappyCow places that did work out was the ridiculously named Coq and Roll Market. The man working was super nice and helpful, and I immediately ordered a great green juice. The best when traveling! Then we had a nice arugula and pecan salad and a hummus sandwich. We kind of got our wires crossed because we (thought we) asked for hummus with crudite, but the sandwich was good and bread is good and everything was good so no complaints.
One night, when we crossed the bridge into Triana, we chanced upon what I am guessing must be the Mercado de Triana, an upscale food market that was packed with cool people and blasting live music. They had all kinds of stalls, including one preparing vegetable-focused food like this delicious veggie pie. It had really olive oil-y (in a great way) tomatoes and eggplant and stuff on a crumbly crust and it was really good!
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But nothing beats the gelateria (I’m sorry, ‘heladeria’) we found close to that same bridge, a place called Giolatto! They had a whole section of dairy-free ice cream! And everything was perfectly labeled and they said on the sign that there was no cross-contamination, so that way they could advertise to those with allergies. Most importantly, the ice cream I had – dark chocolate and strawberry – was amazing.
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Yumm I wish I could have that ice cream (and the paella, if we’re wishing) right now!
Seville was full of chance food encounters that turned out to be brilliant, like how a lot of the regular gelaterias in town also had horchata, a sweetened rice milk kind of thing. Horchata is usually vegan, and amazing. I love it so much!
We also happened upon these absolutely stellar freshly made potato chips! I’m not a potato chip person at all – I would take tortilla chips over potato chips any day, all day, for as long as I can remember. Just not my thing. However, I would permanently change teams for these hot fresh amazing potato chips. Man aliiive.
Seville was full of chance food encounters that turned out to be brilliant, like how a lot of the regular gelaterias in town also had horchata, a sweetened rice milk kind of thing. Horchata is usually vegan, and amazing. I love it so much!
We also happened upon these absolutely stellar freshly made potato chips! I’m not a potato chip person at all – I would take tortilla chips over potato chips any day, all day, for as long as I can remember. Just not my thing. However, I would permanently change teams for these hot fresh amazing potato chips. Man aliiive.
freshly chipped potatoes!!! |
dance emoji! |
Probably our most favoritest fortuitous food experience was when we randomly found the Ines Rosales store. Ines Rosales is the famous brand of Spanish tortas – thin, crispy, super flaky pastry cracker things made with olive oil and usually sugar and cinnamon or other flavorings and they are addictive beyond belief. You can find them in London in Selfridge’s or a place in Borough Market, with a considerable markup. We are indeed addicted to them so finding their actual store was super exciting for us. And they had flavors we never saw before, from orange to cinnamon to savory thyme and rosemary ones! We haven’t tried the savory ones yet, I don’t know why. Since Seville was the start of our Andalusian adventure, this meant we were carrying around tons of fragile tortas the whole week! We took really good care of them though!
This is what the hotel looked like inside! So cool! But so hard to navigate correctly!
As for lodging, we stayed in the heart of the Jewish Quarter at the Las Casas de la Juderia, which was gorgeous if super confusing. From the front, it looks like a regular hotel off a main street, but it’s like 15 different buildings on this somehow huge piece of land in the middle of the city, and it’s hard to go through the winding little inner-hotel paths to find your correct building but it’s SO cool. It’s such a beautiful place, and they had a pool! I mean it was the coldest pool I have ever ever tried to go in but still, yay for pools! The wifi did not reach the rooms, which sucked, but that’s the only drawback. It’s a really cool place and it was nice to be right smack in the middle of everything in such a great city. I really enjoyed it and would definitely be willing to go back. I’m curious about how different it is when it is not Easter!
did not see Antonio no no too sexy too sexy!
