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]]>We arrived in Moscow the next morning pretty well rested, but not very clean. We needed to shower! Problem: We were only in the city until our next train that evening. We had only the day, so we did not book any lodging. Unfortunately, the train station we arrived in in Moscow did not have showers. So we found a nearby hostel, maybe 10 minutes walk away, and asked if we could pay to use the showers. We offered to pay the price of a dorm bed, which you’d think they would be happy to accept, right? The money for a bed but without actually losing the bed? Just ten minutes of water? It was SO difficult to get through what we actually wanted. JUST A SHOWER. THAT’S IT. No room, no bed. OH my god we waited by the front desk for AGES while the very young very notsmart employees discussed what on earth was happening. Luckily someone finally got it and agreed so we showered, one at a time, the other guarding our luggage in a hallway. It was super awkward but better than being dirty. Of course our towels then had to be packed up wet which is gross but we didn’t really need them anymore!
Finally clean, finally ready to explore Moscow once again…except we didn’t really have anything left on our list! We had seen all the museums and important buildings and sights and stuff a few months ago! I know, months – can you believe it? It was kind of like coming home after all the crazy world we had seen, albeit a home where you don’t feel safe sooo. Anyway, what should we do? First order of business? GUM. Of course! Remember that’s ‘goom’, not like the stuff you chew, but the most famous Russian department store in Red Square. It’s super fancy with all the luxury stores but they do have the best, cheapest ice cream (for Husband) and that’s the first thing he wanted. And I was eager to go to the main floor’s fancy grocery store and pick up a few fun ingredients to bring home (we were at the point in our trip when we could buy and lug around souvenirs!!). Unfortunately, a televised event was happening on the main floor that day, so the grocery and well nigh everything on the main floor was cordoned off except for fancy people with VIP badges. Mad face.
My next order of business (my only real plan for Moscow) was to return to Fresh, the vegetarian cafe, for lunch. I was SO pumped for a big fun salad! Fresh wasn’t as good as I remembered, or as I had built up in my mind; after three months in central Asia I guess the dream of these amazing vegan salads had gotten too big to be matched by any reality. Still good, still good!
Across the street from Fresh is a fancy little grocery store that has a TON of vegan milks. They also have a bakery case and I saw that they had a vegan cannoli in there!
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]]>The post Nukus, Uzbekistan: I Finally Find Pretzels (And Also Interesting Art) appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.
]]>Our driver dropped us at the Nukus train station, where we stored our bags. The people looked at us like wtf are you guys doing here there is not a train until tonight (one train town) and we were like hayyy please don’t steal our stuffff. They didn’t give a receipt or anything for the bags but they said (without using words) ‘we’ll know this was yours, nerdy white people’. Then we went to the museum and it was pretty interesting. I thought it would be more political art, like on its face, but it was more regular art but by people who challenged authority. Or maybe it was challenging authority for its time, but nowadays we are used to much more blatant opposition and much more in-your-face offense so I couldn’t tell that these works were crossing a line since we are so far past where that line was 50 years ago. The line is a dot to you.
Pictures weren’t allowed in the museum and I don’t break worthwhile rules, so if you want to see some of the works on display you’ll have to go to Uzbekistan HA HA ARE YOU? There were guard ladies who were supes annoying, following us around the whole time. I didn’t notice if they followed others too but it was really uncomfortable. Maybe they chose us because we were the youngest and yoots usually cause trouble? There were lots of other visitors to the museum (a surprising fact, considering I thought we were the only people in the whole town) but they were all older and mostly in big tour groups. Anyway it was a pretty good museum, but oh my god we were so tired. This trip was catching up with us and we were getting a little delirious. We were still able to appreciate all the interesting art, but I was just laughing the entire time (not appropriate) as I do when I’m overtired.
After all the art, we walked around trying to find food. This was hard because Nukus is a tiny little desert town and there was not much happening. We passed a few important-looking buildings but no one was around for us to ask what they were, and I tried googling but to no avail. I’ll share the pictures of said buildings with you so you can also wonder forever what they are (or be better than I am at googling).
It was literally a plate of raw garlic, raw UNCUT spring onions, and lots of herbs. Oh and plus green bell pepper, the one vegetable I hate. COME ON UNIVERSE. I guess it was a companion piece to one of the Korean stews or something but like y’all should have SAID SOMETHING.
Sigh. What a disappointment. We had hours left before our train, to wander around and see all the sights (no more sights) and buy water for our 3 day train train (we’ll talk about that next post), so we wandered. It was very hot and dry and dusty, and the main road was destroyed with ongoing construction (as we expect everywhere in this country), so it was kind of harrowing to walk down it when like, suddenly there would be no more road and cars were coming. Luckily, there were lots of little convenience stores, and luckily, one had a nice babushka selling all kinds of baked goods in bulk – including hard pretzel sticks! I’d never seen pretzel sticks sold in bulk and I hadn’t seen pretzels in weeks so this was a dance dance dance moment. My pretzel babushka was the one nice person we came across in Nukus. Why is everyone there so mean? Is it because they are so bored and also had a real weird lunch?
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]]>So Khiva was originally full of Iranian people speaking an Iranian language. But then the Turks, those darn Turks, took over power in the 10th century. After the Turks got tired of all the mean people in the restaurants and all the French tourists, the Astrakhans had their turn. Then the Astrakhans went back to their preferred job of imprisoning wizards and Khiva fell into the hands of Russians, under General Konstantin von Kaufman in the 1800s. Russia was soooo nice though and let Khiva act in a quasi-independent manner, kind of like they are doing to the USA right now! I guess this is why you can get by speaking Russian in Khiva, although no that’s not it because it’s pretty regular all over Uzbekistan so maybe it filtered in otherwise; I’m sure they took over at various points in time and space. Anyway Khiva was part of the USSR in the 1900s and then it became part of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and now it is part of Uzbekistan and yes I am getting all of this from wikipedia but my husband donates to it (unlike the rest of us who see that message ‘we just need a dollar from you and then you can keep having access to all this knowledge that you regularly use just give us a dollar’ and we just click that black ‘x’ on the box and are like byeeees am I right up top) so I think it’s okay.
Right on the other side of the gate was our guest house, the Qosha Darvoza which no I don’t know how to say either but I do love u-less q words. I highly recommend this guest house for Khiva visits because the location is perfect – right outside that (north?) gate of the old town so it’s very close but not inside the ancient walls, which is important because inside is like an immediate uncomfortable trip back in time and you don’t want to sleep in that kind of place. Also who knows if there’s electricity? So the Qosha cabana is a great choice. The man working there was also one of three very kind Uzbeks we met during our time in the country so you will want to meet him because that’s like a unicorn in these parts. Also it had such a cool desert-chic vibe.
A few steps beyond the gate, we ran into construction on one of the major buildings, because we were in Uzbekistan and that’s what we learned to expect all over this country so why should this tiny protected town be any different.
After this point, the Ichan Kala land becomes a complete maze. It is full of winding little alleys and no street signs (they aren’t streets!) and buildings that all look the same, lather rinse repeat, so following a path or keeping hold of any sort of intention with your wandering is impossible. And filling all these alleys are children who have learned how to say ‘WHERE YOU FROM’ in the languages of the main groups of tourists who come here – English, French, German – and they will chase you and harass you and shout WHERE YOU FROM as long as they want. Kind of annoying! And they see how lost you look because who can follow directions in this sort of confusing sandy maze! So they will chase you and ask you if they can help you and ask for American money and we were like ‘we don’t have any American money we are in Uzbekistan!’ and they won’t care and will just keep repeatedly asking you for it and chasing you. If you persevere, you’ll make it through the shady part of the alleys and into the opening up of the tourist center.
Everything else was bullshit though, and we’d have even more rudeness in our next stop. We were so sick of this country and how badly it wanted to screw with it, apparently, so we were kind of dragging ourselves from place to place and going through the motions. What a shame to feel this way when traveling in such far away, seemingly cool places! Well not everything can be a winner, and at least we saw some nice mosques and minarets and other old things.
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]]>The Sher-Dor was the one place where we saw cops guarding the door, I think just because it is closest to the ticketed entrance. But true to what our guide book warned us about, one of the cops offered to take us into the closed minarets at the Ulugh Beg Madrassah across the square so we could climb up it, for a fee of course. We read about how the cops will offer to do this but ask for money, usually more than they first say, so we were not about to go with a stranger danger into a tower and then either pay him whatever he wants or risk having him lock us in. nah thanks. Corrupt cops are everywhere!
The Registan grounds were almost as gorgeous as the inside bits. I love loved this sea of flowers tipping out from the vase.
On to the next!
The next mosque on our list was the Bibi Khanum Mosque, which was built to house 10,000 people. That’s a lot of praying going on. Luckily there were not that many people inside when we visited, although I did see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Uzbek doppelganger. When the Bibi (HABIBI!) was first built, it didn’t last long before it started falling apart at the seams (not seams) (not a robot). Maybe it was too big, maybe it was built too fast, maybe it was seismic activity, maybe Tamerlane (remember we have learned about him in past posts but don’t worry we will talk about him again in a few minutes) was just too pissed at the architect for kissing his wife and so he cursed the place — all of these reasons have been put forward to explain the collapse. Yes even that last one. Apparently the architect fell in love with Tamerlane’s wife, whose name was Bibi Khanum so yeah not hard to believe since the mosque just happens to be named after her. So legend goes, Archie kissed Bibi and it permanently scarred her lips, so Tamerlane was suitably pissed and called for the executioner, but Archie climbed to the top of a minaret, sprouted wings, and flew to Persia. I don’t believe it, but I am not surprised that yet another ancient tale has only the woman, the one who didn’t do anything but get victimized, be the only one who actually suffers punishment. Cool story bros.
Honestly the best meal in Samarkand was our hotel breakfast. And our hotel was the best place in town. I’m so obsessed. L’Argamak was brand spanking new, so everything was super clean and fresh and lovely. And the staff was the nicest, most accommodating I’ve ever encountered. They bent over backward to make sure we had everything to our liking, which can get really uncomfortable but they were just so goddamn kind that it was great. And the breakfast was gorgeous. They have all these fruits and jams made from fruit growing in their garden. Loves it.
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]]>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.
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.
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]]>The post Traveling through Kyrgyzstan Part 3: Do I Prefer Wilderness Now? appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.
]]>For a few hours we drove along (and across!) the most beautiful somehow jade-colored rapids, up and around the rockiest of paths (I almost didn’t care because it was so beautiful but man alive that was some shaking) and hills and the scariest little bridges across the river rapids. Those bridges, man alive, I saw the first and was like ‘who would be dumb enough to walk across that little plank of a bridge!’ and then we DROVE across it, across ALL of them, in an SUV.
Finally, after lots of treacherous rocky crossings and tree branches that gave way when I tried to grasp them, we found the waterfall. IT WAS FINE.
Luckily Sacha has been to every restaurant in town and knew good ones with vegetarian options. If I’m reading my blursula picture of the menu correctly, it was Dastorkan restaurant, a good restaurant and an amazing name for a JK Rowling character. The menu even had 3 green-tipped pages that were all the vegetarian options.
So, I just slept the whole evening and night. Luckily I had some saltines from China in my pack and had those in the morning. Saltines are amazing. You watching The Good Place (also amazing)? You know when Ted Danson is like “I wish I could have tried a saltine”? I feel him.
DAY 6
“Suuuuunday morning TIME FOR CHURCH!”
The mean old lady and the mean old Sacha made me drink tea for breakfast even though I HATE tea especially strong black tea and, guess what, tea makes me nauseous, because they both thought that my drinking bottled water instead of tea was what made me sick. This is the kind of ‘bullshit science’ that republicans can only DREAM of taking hold in America. FFS. It’s funny, actually – our Trans Siberian guidebook mentioned offhand that old Russians in Siberia had a weird rampant distrust of ‘dangerous’ cold water, warning against its consumption for no reason other than that it had become a rural myth. But now in Kyrgs we actually meet the old (ethnic) Russians who believe this! Ahhhhh! Shut UP!
We had a busy morning planned with lots of activities and somehow we still had to end the day at our guest house in Chon Kemin – more than 300 kilometers away! First we had a visit to Karakol’s mosque, called the Dungan Mosque, which is really cool because it was built like a Chinese Buddhist temple! We haven’t seen nearly enough of those! No it was really cool to see how the roof had dragons and other traditional Chinese symbols carved all over, and the structure as a whole was very China.
After all the gods and everything, we were to see a local museum in the town of Cholpon Ata, which is a really satisfying name to say. Unfortunately, the museum was closed, despite the sign on the door with the museum’s schedule clearly stating that they should be open right now. Guyssss. Sacha made a few calls and we amused ourselves in the small grocery store next door. GUESS WHAT I FOUND.
When we returned to Sacha, he had bad news: The museum people said it was closed today because they had no electricity. Sacha didn’t buy their excuse and said “I think it’s really because they are sleeping.”
We still had more to do though, so no harm no foul. Next up was the Open Air Museum of Petroglyphs – a whole field of rocks and boulders with ancient drawings made from carving or scraping and such. Some had miraculously retained their clarity, but most had faded in the like thousands of years.
The best part was the saddest part – our last gorgeous communal dinner in a yurt with the traditional set up. How wonderful is this kind of meal!
We made some small talk with the other tourists and met some that didn’t make us too angry or annoyed (progress) but then, as is our wont, spent most of the night trying to get the weak wifi to connect. We heart wifi. Then we enjoyed our last night’s sleep in a shared space! We hate sharing! From here on out – hotels! (Well and hostels but private rooms!) Tomorrow we leave for Bishkek!
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]]>We woke up on Day 3 in our gross antsy yurt in the Kelemche Jailoo, after a night banging into the anchor swinging over my mattress pad. After a plate of kasha for breakfast (dudes I really love kasha!), I had to say goodbye to my little floofer ball o’ bear workshop, pictured above. This pupster was such a bad little baby but so flinging flanging adorable! It was hard to leave, but we had a long trek in front of us. 18 kilometers, actually, to our next sleeping destination of Kyzart village. For another day, we would follow Melis as he rode his horse and we walked like chumps behind him in the heat and up the endless hills. Still better than riding a horse though.
We had a lovely lunch with the hosts at their dining room table, set up in the traditional plentiful manner we’ve grown to love (so much melon!), and relaxed in indoor glory. I ate so much watermelon. And then we realized that no one was going to get up from the table until we did, which was super awks, and we didn’t feel comfortable taking such responsibility in someone else’s house, so finally after a long time of sitting in silence playing with our forks, I finally asked if we were allowed to shower. Z said, “I think they would prefer it.” We smelt. So we got to shower! This was the longest I’d ever gone without washing my hair ewwww. But it’s clean now! After we got clean, we just laid around on our single beds (we had three in our room!). My hip was stupid frozen from walking on it when it hurt so I literally couldn’t get up from the bed all afternoon. I tried to find a reading position that didn’t make it throb but I failed. But at least I won’t freeze tonight!
Dinner was a nice veg stirfry mixture kind of thing and – you guessed it – a GIANT plate of cucumber and tomato salad. I had a lot of bread too because, like the watermelon in this region, the bread was RG too. Also we hiked like 30 kilometers in 27 hours and my hip was wrecked AF! I get to eat all the bread!
I had the best night’s sleep in a week.
After such good warm sleep, I had a plate of melon for breakfast – the fruits of my labors from the previous evening, when Sacha and the family asked me what I would want for breakfast and I said ‘just fruit please’ and they spent 10 minutes trying to convince me to have a plate of shredded potato instead and I was like please just fruit is fine I’ll grab an apple from the basket and they were like ‘but potato though’. I guess no one has just fruit for breakfast in these parts.
At about 9:30am we left for Kochkor village, for a quick stop to get water and whatever groceries we needed and then for the main morning event – a traditional carpet factory.
So, a traditional Kyrgyz (or any, really) carpet factory meant that they use wool and felt. Despite knowing for several days that this traditional cultural art tour was on the agenda, I didn’t even think about the wool aspect before we arrived and they explained it all to us, which I guess was pretty stupid. But despite a decade of veganism, I guess I spent all my worry and attention on making sure the food would be taken care of rather than ensuring that the activities would be vegan. Getting out of horse-riding was enough, I assumed! Once I realized oh this is all wool, it was way too late to say anything. And I’m not sure I would have said anything anyway – this was our one hands-on cultural art exposure in the whole country, and my opposition to their use of wool would literally have accomplished nothing besides cutting our activities and limiting our learning about the culture.
That’s right – they made us do art. The lady instructing us on how to make the main type of carpet showed us every step of the process and then made us create the design and then physically make the carpet. It was embarrassing! Neither of us are artistic, and when put on the spot we are almost anti-artistic. Also, it’s a very physical process that I imagine takes a lot of practice to get the hang of, so our first attempts at dancing and stomping on the rolled up bamboo holder to squeeze the water out was, well, not graceful.
First, you take metal rods and beat the tufts of felt so they are soft, I guess, as in the picture above. Then, you arrange your design on a bamboo frame, pictured below with the lady laying out the base brown square.
After we were hailed and celebrated as Kyrgyzstan’s most acclaimed artistes, they feted us with a lovely lunch in the yurt-for-show in the backyard. We had so much nice food and guess what the main event (for me) was? LENTIL SOUP! What a happy day!
Anyway, here are some pretty pictures of the parts that didn’t make us lose even more faith in humanity.
Like I said before, Issyk-Kul is the second largest saline lake in the world. Sacha told us some facts about it, and said that “the lake is a little salty” because 260 rivers flow into it and none flow out of it. And then he said it’s also salty because of all the tourists. And we laughed and he kept going, saying “and tourists and no toilets!” and we laughed and then he said to himself (but I heard!) in his thick Russian accent “this is a joke” and I almost threw up trying not to throw up laughing at this without him knowing I heard.
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]]>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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Part 2 soon!
The post Traveling Through Kyrgyzstan, Part 1: The Return to the Yurt Camps appeared first on Laughfrodisiac.
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