I have to admit that I did not know about Kyiv. Not Kiev; I knew about Kiev. But that’s all I knew. Let me splain. As we planned our trip from Russia through Eastern Europe and back home to London, my husband said “we should go to Kyiv”- pronounced Keev. And I said “where is this ‘Keev’ I never heard of it” and he was like “Kyiv is the capital of Ukraine??” and I was like “no that’s Kiev and it is pronounced ‘Kee-ev'”and he was like “wat” and I was like “what is happening” and I learned that Kiev (‘Kee-ev’) is the Russian word for the city, and since gaining their independence, Ukrainians have been very serious about reclaiming their own word for their capital city, ‘Kyiv’ (Keev), the one syllable version that was unknown to me. Can we blame the Russian bots for my ignorance? Now I’m all smarted up and ready to talk about this great city, Kyiv. Or Kiev, if you wanted to I guess. I like the sound of the two-syllable evil version better, but my preferences as a non-Ukrainian don’t matter. Do as the people want us to. It’s Kyiv.  

Now that that’s sorted, let’s talk about this charming city. We were solidly back in Eastern Europe now, having left Mother Russia. Oh let’s talk about that leaving bit, shall we. After our less-than-a-day return to Moscow, we caught an overnight train – our second-to-last one of the trip!! – from Moscow to Kyiv. This train was the worst experience yet, isn’t that so fun??? I know some of you who kept up through all the China and Uzbek trains are like, what how on earth could it be worse? What about those 8 hour border stops where you had to sneak into the bathrooms to pee? What about the old Chinese lady in your bed? Well those were all terrible, yes, but hear me out. When we boarded, I thought we were soo lucky because the toilets were automated! Like Amtrak, with the lit-up flush buttons and stuff! They weren’t just holes opening up onto the track! Unfortunately, that luster was short-lived. Apparently the super-fancy (not fancy, basic technology) toilets very quickly broke, and since the conductor isn’t an engineer, he just duct-taped the toilet shut, rendering it unusable for the rest of the journey. I trekked down to the other end of the carriage with a sigh, which turned into a bigger, more horrified scream when I saw that that toilet was ALSO taped shut. The next cabin on was the restaurant car! No toilets in there! And the next one in the other direction was the overcrowded platzkart, packed full of people in bunk beds in the open plan, with lines for the toilet at all hours and so resentful of people from other carriages on their turf. Those toilets were basic open-the-bottom-onto-the-tracks; apparently only those passengers with doors were given the fancy easily breakable toilets. So every hour throughout the night, I had to clamber through the terrifying open section that connects carriages, stepping on the giant metal chain links that wrenched forward and back with the train’s movement and trying not to fall while jerking the heavy carriage doors open with all my might. Over and over again!

Thank all the lucky stars, I was okay. Pissed off and full of impotent rage that I couldn’t actually direct at anyone (I never saw the conductor people, and also what else could they have done), but okay. I was so excited to see Kyiv, which I know I am spelling in the progressive way but honestly I can’t stop saying Ki-ev in my head. Anyway, I didn’t know much about Ukraine going in, except that I had just recently started saying it without the ‘the’ that so many Americans seem to think is required – seriously why do we always call it The Ukraine?? it’s so weird! – and that Oksana Baiul was my favorite skater in 1994 and the only winner to come out of the whole Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan debacle. Well her and Margot Robbie. I was eager to learn more about the country through its well regarded capital city. 

Our Russian language skillz would come in handy to understand all the signs in Cyrillic and all the similar sounding vocab, but despite much of the population speaking and/or understanding Russian, it would not be very wise to lead with speaking Russian. Since their independence from the Mother Country, Ukrainians have some tension, to say the least, with Russia, as we all do. We assumed, now that we were back in Europe, that it would be easy to get by with English. Surely most of the people know English! Spoiler, they don’t! It was very rare that we encountered English speakers. So follow Scar’s advice (not the Boy Scouts)(the Boy Scouts suck) and Be Prepared. 

Our train arrived at about 7am, so we were exhausted and very much wanting to shower. Our last shower was in that random hostel in Moscow (was that the day before? Time had no meaning any longer). So we took a cab to our lodging. We were staying for the next few nights at the Theatre Boutique Apart-hotel, in a studio apartment situation that operated like a hotel, sort of, in that there was to be someone at a desk in the building of apartments to check us in. I initially liked how it sounded because theatre. The building was hard to find because it was set back in a kind of alley complex that was SUPER shady and graffitied and even at 7am just completely sketchy. I was skeptical. And unforch, because it was so early, no staffers were in yet. The maid was there, luckily, and was used to dealing with guests arriving at inopportune times, and she told us we could leave our stuff and come back in….six hours. I KNOW! I was soooo mad. Surely the main employee would be in at 9, right? And would call us and tell us that our room was ready before the godforsaken common check in time of 2pm? I could not wait six hours! But I had to! Ahhh! Anyway the ‘place’ we could leave our stuff was right there in the main hallway, reeeeeally not secure, so I was not feeling this place at all. Strike after strike. Z was like ‘who is going to steal our disgusting stuff tho’ and I was like ‘disgusting people tho’. I asked the maid if there was a bathroom we could use – we still needed to brush our teeth and stuff if we couldn’t shower yet! Well, this is an apartment hotel type jawn, not a hotel hotel with bathrooms on the main floor or anything, so no, the only bathrooms are in the rooms. Ahhhh! Luckily, the maid was super nice and showed us to one down the hall that was HER CLOSET. Like it had all her cleaning supplies in it and also all her snacks and changes of clothes and pictures and knick knacks and stuff and also a toilet and a tiny baby sink and it was sooooo awkward. I was so grumpy about this whole situation. But there’s no time to sulk when you are filthy and also in a new exciting city! We decided to go out and get food, and that story plus all related stories will come in a separate post about Kyiv food next. After that and some activities which I’ll talk about next, our room was ready, and it was GREAT. I was so happy because after how low my expectations had dropped since arriving, it was so much nicer than I hoped. It was clean and modern, all black and white and cool, with a nice bathroom and a big comfy bed with really good white sheets. I love white sheets. Anyway, so don’t judge a book by its cover or its lack of employees or main floor toilets and all that. I would highly recommend staying here. 

The most important activity for us to do in the city center was see the St. Sophia Cathedral, the oldest surviving church in Kyiv. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site and you know how we feel about them (loves it!) so off we went to see how the old broad looked after about 1000 years of hard living. The complex is lovely. Note, the Bell Tower costs extra to climb up, but I think it’s worth it. It’s right at the entrance to the whole complex and is nice to end your visit with after seeing the rest of St. Sophia. Also, the Bell Tower is the only spot in the whole place where you are allowed to take pictures so it was worth it just so I can break up all my nonsense with pictures. 

We had a nice time seeing all the interior churchiness and singing about how Jesus is an ocean, as one does. It’s said that in all the churches in Ukraine that ladies have to cover their heads because god hates seeing us evil-doers or whatever nonsense your religion teaches you to keep you down, but I don’t remember anyone telling me to do so here. I think they are more lenient with tourists. Anyway, we ended with the Bell Tower climb, because we like climbing this. I counted about 200 steps up before I stopped and lost track, which isn’t as bad as it could be buutttt the stairs were pretty, um, not reassuring as you could look through all the thin metal and exposed piping of the layout and see down forever and it was a little anxy. As you would expect of me because this is what I do when traveling in foreign lands and living my life, I banged my head super hard on a metal pipe despite there being a colored swatch on that section because it was low and apparently everyone hit their head on it before they decided to paint the cautionary alert on it but of course I am special and hit my head after they flagged it. It was really painful and we had to stop for a few minutes for the pain to subside and for me to run through the customary thoughts I have every time I hit my head which invariably have to do with Natasha Richardson. Luckily I was okay though, and it seems like Liam is now too. And the views from the top were nice. 

Our next sight to see was the Golden Gate in the middle of the city, standing like a fortress to remind us of all the fortifications they once needed (prob still need) against enemies. It was named after the Golden Gate of Constantinople, and although it was completely destroyed during the Middle Ages, it was rebuilt by the Soviets in the ’80s. It’s a tad controversial, because no images of the original gate actually exist, so the rebuilding process was under scrutiny from historians et al. who were like ‘no THIS is what it should look like’ ‘ no THIS is’ ‘no YOU’RE mother was a hamster’ and finally Vlad over at the Soviet Historical Society was like ‘no guys this is what we’re doing, you disagree I kill you’ or something probably close to that. 

The gate/fortress jawn is right at Zolotovoritsky Square, a lovely little square near a park and a nice row of restaurants and stuff. It’s a nice little city. 

Okay so I THINK there was a lil church at the top of the Golden Gate?? And this is me in it? 

This city is so nice, full of statues and greenery and beautiful buildings. I keep saying that, don’t I, that it was so ‘nice’ and I really hate that word. But there’s not much more I can think of to describe it, because I never really clicked with it. It was great to be back in Europe, and to see such lovely architecture and important monuments and relics of history and all, but I never really jived (jove?) with Kyiv. My husband liked it a lot more than I did, but I didn’t necessarily dislike it, not at all. I just didn’t connect with it. It was nice to look at, nice to be in, but I didn’t feel much for it. My heart wasn’t in it, despite its checking off all the proper points on my list like it was my Walter or my Frank in a Nora Ephron rom com before I met Tom Hanks. (Tom Hanks, btw, would be my Warsaw. Stay tuned for that, our next destination.) 

As always, I loved finding funny signs or product names in stores, and despite being back in Europe, we still found some, like this brand of milk that can probably only be enjoyed by blond boys named Chad who swim for just-sub-Ivies. 

Or this shop, which we made a LOT of very bad jokes about because Tories are the ones who would cut all arts funding in the UK you get? 

We had a great time exploring Kyiv. I know you’re probably thinking…you didn’t do that much, right? Well, that’s because our main activity warrants its own post (coming next, along with a food post). The main reason for our visit to Kyiv, besides logistics, was to visit Chernobyl. We took an all day (like seriously from dawn till nighttime) tour of the zone of the infamous, horrible nuclear disaster, and it was astounding. Devastating, heartbreaking, and we learned so much that is only now coming to light about the disaster. It’s a truly worthwhile trip to take if you are in Ukraine or in Kyiv, which, despite my not clicking with it whole-heartedly, I still do recommend visiting! 

After our lovely time in Volgograd, we had to return to Moscow in order to get into Eastern Europe (to Kyiv, Ukraine). If you look at a map (or the map above how bout), you’ll notice that it’s a sharp backwards turn to go Volgograd-Moscow-Kyiv (it’s the part of the map that is like an A) and kind of silly when Volgograd to Kyiv directly would save hours and hours and make a lot more sense. But guess what’s happening on that route? CRIMEA. Can’t go through there! Ever since the Russian Federation annexed Crimea (in March 2014), pro-Russian protests in the region escalated to armed conflict between the separatist forces and the Ukrainian government. Thousands of people are fighting still and it’s very dangerous. Russia is, as uzh, very cagey about everything bad it’s doing, and it deny its presence in the region almost as often as it confirms that ‘military specialists’ are there. Russia is real trouble and we didn’t want to reward its terribleness with more tourism money spent there, but we had no choice so back to Moscow we went. 

It was a pretty long train considering how close Volgograd and Moscow look to each other when you’re looking at the rest of the freaking inordinately enormous country. But the overnight train still was about 18 hours! Faaaack this country is TOO BIG. We didn’t get to buy out the other beds in our cabin this time because it was WAY too expensive to do that, like incredibly so, much more than we would ever consider and more than it cost to do it at other points in our trip. We found out soon enough why buying out the cabin was prohibitively expensive: IT WAS THE NICEST TRAIN EVER! omg! Just like when we trained to Moscow the first time, so I guess only the nicest trains go into Moscow. Holy crap, you can’t even. I couldn’t even! It was so nice I almost cried. I guess when you are on a train route named #001 you can expect it to be special. 

The seats/beds were a shiny, super clean red leather (assuming it was pleather), and everything was spotless. There was a very new TV over the window and we watched some SHIT that night! Like really really bad movies, the kinds whose rights are cheap enough to obtain for a Russian overnight train, that kind of bad. There were outlets by every bed, along with personal safes! Whaaaat! A meal was included in the ticket (nothing vegan but picked at the sides, but still, surprise free food!). There were toothbrush kits and slippers and WATER BOTTLES. It was heaven. Luckily, no one joined us in our cabin until the middle of the night. I mean not SO luckily considering we were already asleep but hey it’s better than having strangers around while we were hysterically laughing at the TV. 

I can’t remember the name of one particular terrible movie we watched, but I do remember how I felt watching it, because Z took a picture of me hysterically crying. From laughing. It’s the most embarrassing picture of me ever so I am not going to share that with you but I will share the picture of the thing I was crying at:

Yeah it’s a baby in a slightly too big snowsuit, and I thought it was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, apparently, because I cry-laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe, and for a while too. Z was flabbergasted, he (like most humans I am sure) just could NOT understand what I found so funny. I don’t know it was just amazing! Maybe I was just delirious from being on an actually nice, clean train. No it’s just adorable too.

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.

We watched the happenings from the second floor landings for a while, bemoaning the fact that our fancy store was being kept from us. Or vice versa, really. But it was all worth it when the f-ing Von Trapp family started singing Russian folk songs. 

IT WAS THE BEST! So much fun! I would have joined them if I knew the folksongs and if it didn’t look so g-d embarrassing. I’m surprised Putin lets such gaiety occur in public places. This happened to be Rosh Hashanah (which OF COURSE I said all day was ‘Russia shana’ not that you could tell when speaking but hey now you know!) so I pretended it was for that. Merry New Year! 

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! 

We were really hungry and who knows when we would ever get back to Fresh or Moscow so we over-ordered as we do. We got this awesome salad with marinated tofu, sweet potato, goji berries and a seed and sprout mix, plus two burgers. I got the avocado burger which didn’t say anything about being one-sided bun-wise, but came without a top half. I was kind of mad but our waiter sucked so I didn’t say anything. Who leaves off the top bun? It’s not even open-faced just lacking. It tasted really great though. The cheese sauce was RG. 

We also had the BBQ burger, which comes with garlic mayo, banana chilies, and best of all onion rings! On the burger! (And also a top half of the bun.) We also got a side order of onion rings because when do you ever seen vegan onion rings? 

We also had a few juices and smoothies, which are fine at Fresh but nothing special. Way too expensive for the amount you get and not cold enough. But overall, it was a great lunch, the best in ages, and almost worth the time and money spent for this necessary backtracking. 

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! 

As you can see, it says ‘raw vegan’ on the vegan desserts, including the cannoli. I was too excited in the prospect of an unexpected vegan dessert (and a cannoli at that!) that I momentarily lost my mind and forgot how disappointing raw desserts usually are. Ughhhhhh I mean it was fiiine but like, for a nut-and-date bar. I want to go to Philly, buy Vegan Treats cannolis (incredible), and go back to this shoppe and be like “I need to speak to the manager and the baker. Here, try these and learn from your terrible mistakes. Do not make them again. Also give me those cannolis back you only get a bite are you kidding me?”

After GUM and lunch were finished with, we honestly just walked around town all day! It was nice to not have to do anything in particular, although we felt a little weird not having a plan. And it was a lot colder than it was the last time we were in town! We had to wear all our clothes Joey-style. 

Well, we did have one thing on our list – buying souvenirs! Matryioshka, in particular – I had to get those Russian nesting dolls for everyone! This was indeed the best part of getting to return here, because this way we didn’t have to buy souvenirs at the start of our trip and carry them around for 3+ months! We did lots of location scouting, and there’s this tiny souvenir shoppe INSIDE a phone store right outside Red Square, and they have the cheapest matryioshka. There are tons of shoppes and tons of the dolls, but they are weirdly very expensive for how cheaply made they are. But they know everyone visiting Moscow wants them, I guess! 

I also bought hilarious chocolate that we found in a grocery store. Oh man it’s probably not that funny but we found it hilarious. It’s called ‘Plan B’ and I just love the idea of this getting confused with the abortion pill, oh my goodness. We picked the funniest one of the ones on display, because it was the funniest but also because it was accidentally vegan – the one with the picture of a working woman on it, and it’s TEQUILA flavored!  like to think they really meant to hammer home that working women who drink alcohol, ESPECIALLY tequila, should not have children. I also like the one with the woman searching for answers in the fridge, like ‘hmm maybe I shouldn’t procreate.’ Oh man this cracked me up. I bought the entire shelf to give to friends. I haven’t actually tried it yet but I will report back. 

I also got to enjoy my first ice cream of the entire summer! It was a Tutti Frutti (not sure if it was actually the same chain as we have all over the west or if Russia just was continuing its love of trademark infringement) do-it-yourself soft-serve kinda jawn and it was FRUIT SORBET so it doesn’t REALLY count, but still, it was a decent treat after months and months without ice cream. (Luckily, we were heading soon to the vegan ice cream capital of the world….) 

So we had a pretty fun, really random single day in Moscow. It was fun to know our way around and remember things from the real visit, and to treat this day like non-tourists, just in it for food and shopping. It still had that weird vibe that I felt before, like it’s nice and all but we’re super being watched and/or controlled by state police. Moscow is a strange city to like because of all its political issues, but we do sort of strangely like it. 

After our long, challenging train journey from Uzbekistan, we arrived in the city of Volgograd, in the southwest of Russia, I mean it’s roughly in that blobular section of the biggest most endless landmass that is  old country. That’s right, after almost three months, after traveling through Mongolia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan, we made our way back to Mother Russia. And we were overjoyed to be back in a place where we sort of knew the language, and where we could reunite with the trappings of modernity, and where I could eat at an actual vegan restaurant. But I didn’t realize how important a city Volgograd is, in critical and meaningful ways far beyond its current offerings of comfort for my spoiled behind, and I was and remain in awe of its history. I initially wanted to come here just to see the incredible, enormous statue pictured at left (or above if you’re on your phone), but there’s so, so much more to Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad. We had a lovely few days here, learning more than I ever learned in school about World War II, exploring what the city has to offer today, and finding all the vegan food for me to eat. 

 It’s not an accident that I’m choosing to lead with this picture of a tank on the Volga river. Volgograd needs you to know two things, right off the bat: It was the site of one of the most important battles in history, and the most tragic, and also it is on the Volga river get it that’s what its name means (bye Stalin!) So I knew one of these. I’m sorry, universe. If you are like my husband, you are horrified that I didn’t know about Volgograd’s role in World War II. I mean I knew about the Battle of Stalingrad, in the sense that I knew it was a thing that happened, but I didn’t know the details: that it was the largest and bloodiest (almost two million casualties) battle in the history of warfare. I didn’t know how essential it was to the war, how crucial it was to what came next. And this is because I was educated in American public school, where you learn that America is the best and without us everyone in Europe would be speaking German. And as much as we want to believe that the Americans saved WW2, it really was the Russians who won it and lost the most. They sacrificed so much, so many of their people and so much of their world, and this is the truth in Volgograd.

In 1942, Stalin et al. assumed that the Nazis would focus their efforts on Moscow but then they surprised everyone (those tricky Nazis) by attacking the south of the Soviet Union. The Battle of Stalingrad lasted more than five months, as the Soviet Union fought the Nazis for control of the city. Armies fought in the streets, at extremely close range, facing the challenge of urban warfare.  A main objective was to destroy the city’s industrial capacity, but they pretty much just destroyed the city full stop. Well, except for the Stalingrad Tractor company, which continued making tanks until the Germans actually physically entered the factory. Air bombings added to the onslaught, killing many civilians and nearly leveling the entire city. Stalin refused to evacuate the civilians (did anyone ask him why) (well someone said he wanted the civilians to stay so that people would fight harder to protect them, which is super f-ed up) so 400,000 regular joes (/ivans) were trapped in the city during the offensive. Some were taken to Germany as slave workers, some fled, a few ended up being evacuated, but many were killed, and only 10,000-60,000 were left out of that original 400K after the battle ended in February 1943. All civilians in the city during the battle were put to work building fortifications and whatever else they could contribute. And the Soviets famously ordered anyone strong enough to hold a rifle to fight. In fact, the initial defense of the city fell to a group of young female volunteers making up the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment. When they found out they had been fighting a group of girls, the Nazis were pisssssed! They hate girls! ​

So you can see it was terrible. It’s one thing when war is waged in fields like in movies making it seem all heroic. It’s completely different in a city, even more chaotic and hideous than usual. Fighting filled every street, every building and every house. Even the sewers were filled with fighting. And remember how many civilians were here. No wonder old Russian ladies are stereotyped as being tough as nails. They were! And while it’s true that the Russians deserve a lot of credit for their helping to win WWII and all they sacrificed, Stalin was, well, Stalin, and there was a great deal of ‘trimming the ranks’ – executing any Red Army soldiers who defected or fell out of line – like, even literally, falling out of formation. Scary times. Let’s not having another world war guys. 

​

To learn all about this battle and what it meant for the war, your first order of business in Volgs is to go to the Museum Panorama about the Battle of Stalingrad – official name, I am finding, the State Historical and Memorial Preserve the Battle of Stalingrad. I feel like some punctuation would be good there but here we are. The museum was wonderful, sad but wonderful. The worst part about it was that they checked my water bottle EYE ROLL. It’s worth it to do the audio tour, not because the audio is that great but because the signage is lacking. It was actually kind of hard to find the numbers on the exhibits, but it became like a scavenger hunt! Fun! Note that the last audioguide clues are all the way at the top of the museum, up stairs, and not marked with like ‘exhibit continues up here’ signs or anything. I had no idea about it but husband did, luckily, so we made our way up and were rewarded with these gorgeous murals depicting the battle. That’s why it’s called the panorama museum – this last incredible part was the panorama. 

I also really enjoyed this sculpture of Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill, the three amigos! The three musketeers! The three…tenors. 

My favorite part, of course, was the amazing anti-Nazi posters that were all over the museum and seemingly all over Russia (they REALS hate Nazis, good job Ruskies) that we all need to print out and post all over America. And England. And everywhere apparently! What a time! 

THIS ONE BELOW OH MY GOD IT TRANSLATES AS ‘PARTISANS: RETALIATE WITHOUT MERCY’ WHAAAAAAAT. 

Because the war defines so much of the city, there are memorials everywhere. I don’t know all the details for them, but they all looked appropriately serious.  

There are also lots of statues around the city not directly tied to the war. As I mentioned above in the caption for the Flour Mill picture, they love seeing children dance around a crocodile – the so-called Barmaley fountain is also found in front of the train station, which was a very fun first sight for us when we disembarked! Crocodiles and children, the best dancing pair since Fred and Ginger. And of course, because we were in a town east of Poland, we found the requisite Lenin statue. 

But like I said in the beginning, we had originally come for one purpose – to see the gigantic The Motherland Calls statue. We had to see the big fucking thing! I knew it was big and I knew it was a fucking thing, but when we spotted it from our train window, we realized oh, it’s really forking big. 

The Motherland Calls is a statue commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad (what else would it be for!). It was designed by two men, named Yevgeny Vuchetich and Nikolai Nikitin (Tommy Thomas), which I like because they designed the largest statue of a woman in the world which means maybe they are two of the few men who aren’t scared of women. It was once the largest statue in the world period (haha) (get it) (it’s funny because women get periods) but now it’s just the largest statute in Europe (*just*) which is still pretty much the world that matters, can’t count Dubai and stuff because all they do with their time is literally try to build the tallest things. Regardless of how its size measures up to the rest of the world’s big ass statues, TMC is BY FAR the most badass statue ever and I’m obsessed with it. SO BAD ASS. (By the way, if you haven’t watched this Finnish comedian’s take on the word ass yet, you should. He points out the very interesting fact that when you add ‘ass’ after a word like ‘stupid’, it is a bad thing, but when you add it after ‘bad’ like I just did, it makes it a great thing. whaaaat.) 

The statue was modeled after a real person, named Valetina Izotova, which is SO cool. I hope she was cool. 

There are 200 steps leading up the hill to the monument itself, representing each day of the horrific Battle. They are lined with walls featuring pretty remarkable reliefs. 

On the hill beneath the statue are lots of gravestones for various military personnel, and next to it is a hall with the Eternal Flame, another thing every Russian town has in addition to the bust of Lenin. The walls are covered with the lists of names of those who were lost in the war, I assume. When we arrived, they were having a moment of silence and it was quite moving. Many armed soldiers were guarding the flame, more than usual because this was a really important place, an entire hall of a war memorial, but how much must it suck to get assigned to this kind of position, just standing there at attention all day and watching all the doofy tourists take selfies. 

The Volgs had already won me over before we got to the Badass Mother, but considering this is all I originally (thought I) wanted to see, I was not disappointed. We need more gigantic statues of women. Maybe that’s what can take the place of all the confederate ones.

Volgograd had incredible history and sights and some pretty good food too! I was so eager to get to the all vegan restaurant and shop Mirnaya Eda (Peaceful Meal), and while it was a little tricky to find, it was worth it. Even if the food sucked it would have been worth it – my first all vegan place in so long! – but luckily it did not suck. 

I was a little overwhelmed with all the choice, when I had to read everything in Russian and then by the time I deciphered one and moved on to the next I forgot what came before so I couldn’t compare and contrast and it was very stressful! I chose a salad and a wrap, and they were both good but a little weird! The salad was covered in chia goop, a little strange, no? It was herby chia goop like a thick dressing but chia goop nonetheless. I love chia seeds and pudding but it was weird as a salad dressing. I was still psyched for veggies though! Likewise, the wrap was a little of because it was full of all hot cooked soupy veggies, which is not the usual either. But still good and yay veggies. 

The best part of Mirnaya Eda is that it’s an entirely vegan shoppe too! They have tons of fun sounding products, from milks and granolas to cheeses and faux meats. They have a big case of desserts too. I would have bought stuff but I didn’t want to be carrying stuff until home, and I didn’t need emergency supplies any longer now that we were back in European cities. 

Honestly my favorite food in Volgograd was this cafeteria-style place in a very cool, cosmopolitan area. There’s a bunch of dishes behind a glass case and you just point to which things you want. Because there’s so much choice, there’s bound to be a lot of vegan-friendly options. And it’s so super cheap. We were eager to try a lot of dishes too, so these types of places are the best for that. We chose a nice one called Chaste Est, which we entered even though the guy pictured outside on the window looked just like the devil incarnate Paul Ryan. Yeesh.

To celebrate getting through central Asia and all these insane train journeys, we stayed at the Hotel Volgograd, which was super lovely. It’s a great location for walking everywhere and for catching the bus to the Motherland Calls monument. It was built in 1890 and used for a variety of historic purposes. And the room was beautiful, clean, with a comfortable bed. The staff was great too. I called down when we checked in for an extra robe (fluffy white terrycloth hotel robes are my favorite) but they had no idea what I was saying so soon a maid arrived with an extra of every single bathroom amenity just to cover all the bases –  shower towel, handtowel, bathmat, toothbrush, combs, soap, shampoos, slippers, and a bathrobe. It was really funny. 

So Volgograd was a great stop and I’m so glad we fit a few days into our schedule. It has such important history that could have destroyed it forever but it has come a long way to be a pleasant, modern city with great sight and a great vibe. 

After our time in Khiva, we decided to stop in the tiny town of Nukus, Uzbekistan for one purpose: to see its art museum. Now, you might be wondering what kind of art a museum in the middle of nowhere might have to bring a person so out of their way. A rare Picasso? A beautiful Monet? (I know only the most famous artmakers apparently.) You crazy if you thought that; this is the middle of nowhere Uzbekistan. No, the Nukus Museum of Art houses the second largest collection of Russian avant-garde art in the world. I know it doesn’t sound great, but it’s a very cool thing and I’ll tell you why. 

So once upon a time there was this man Igor Savitsky (“accordion genius, plays weddings at 7-years-old” anyone?), who was a Russian painter and archaeologist. Igor visited the Karakalpakstan region of Uzbekistan (where Nukus is located) in 1950, and somehow was like hey this place rocks/is dust I’m gonna stay. He moved to Nukus and started collecting all kinds of crap. After he amassed quite a collection of jewelry and artifacts and carpets and such, he convinced the place that they needed a museum to house all of it. They were like why don’t you keep all your crap in your attic like normal people and he was like just trust me on this and they were like I guess man. So the authorities established a museum and made Igor the curator, and once he had that sweet sweet position locked down, he started focusing on collecting the art of Central Asian artists and those whose work had been banned in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Igor specifically directed his efforts at finding these artists and displaying them in his museum in order to give them the representation and acclaim they never got to enjoy because Stalin was such a buzzkill at art too. Because the museum houses such politically important work, and so much of it (only St. Petersburg has a larger collection of Russian avant-garde), the Nukus Museum of Art – actually called “The State Art Museum of the Republic of Karakalpakstan, named after I.V. Savitsky” (yes the ‘named after’ is part of the full legit name omg) (and then also like is it named after him or not because it looks like the real name is The State Art Museum of the R of K right and if it was actually named after him it would be The Savitsky Museum am I right like you can’t just say ‘named after’ if it’s not actually named after??? how do words work) – has become a must-see attraction for tourists in Uzbekistan. And that is why we went. 

To get there from Khiva, though, there’s not really good transit. We had to hire another car and driver through Sultan at Avantour tour company. He told us that the ride would take about 4-5 hours. So on our last morning in Khiva, we woke up at 6am, planning to leave about 7am, arrive in Nukus by noon, have lunch, and then have a few hours in the museum before our train that evening. Ahem. We left at 7am and got there at 9:45. JFC I could have slept for two more hours. JFC even more, we had to WAIT for the museum to open! Man alive. I guess it’s better than being in a car for longer but like come on guys get your facts straight. He didn’t even speed. 

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.

The museum is actually in two buildings (second largest collection n the world and all that) and you have to check your bags, even wee purses, which is kind of lame. So much art! 

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). 

Finally we found a place that sold non-fast food that was open. This very random Uzbek restaurant with a separate small Korean food menu (?) was called Sheraton but was unrelated to the hotel chain. It was full of those older tourists we saw earlier, I guess because it was ostensibly the only decent restaurant open. I was so excited to see that the menu had a variety of vegetable dishes! Also, one was translated as Pine Forest, which was the name of my camp, so that seemed like a good sign. 

Unfortunately, most of the salads were dairy-based and/or covered in mayo, but I found one that seemed safe for vegans, translating roughly as garlic and greens. I was so excited to get what I expected was a plate of garlicky sauteed greens. I hadn’t had greens cooked like that in so long! I was so pumped. 

Alas. 

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 that was our day in Nukus! I know right. The Savitsky (I’m going for it) Museum was pretty cool and I’m glad we got to see such an important museum. But I was a little jealous of those old tourists who got off a big bus, saw the museum, and then got right back on the bus. If you go, make sure you don’t have too much time to spend wandering the town. After our too-much-time, we boarded our longest train in months – two nights from Nukus, Uzbekistan to Volgograd, Russia. It’s a doozy so look out for the next post! 

After our lovely time in Samarkand, we ventured to our next Uzbek stop of Khiva. Khiva would resemble Bukhara more than the others, in that it’s a contained little ancient town full of minarets and mosques and the whole damn thing is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Also, it was similarly dusty and dry and boring for modern travelers but interesting to see for history purposes. It’s unclear when exactly Khiva was established, but historians say it probably came about after Jesus was born like as a birthday present for him maybe. (Not that last part.) But in the past thousand or so years, the town has gone through several different ruling classes from various cultures. I guess they all kept thinking like I did, going ‘hmm this place seems interesting let’s rule it up oh wait everyone here is mean and it’s kind of blah let’s bounce.’ 

But before we bounce, we have to get there. From Samarkand, we had a midnight-ish train to Khiva. The lovely staff at L’Argamak Hotel in Samarkand let us hang out until we had to leave, even though that meant we were keeping everyone up. They were so nice I missed them immediately upon leaving. Our train was actually to Urgench, a city large enough to have a train station, because Khiva is a little wee sandy baby that is not and does not. Once at Urgench, we had a car waiting for us, arranged through Sultan at the Advantour tour company, who arranged all our Uzbek transit (recommended; you don’t want to deal with Uzbek train tickets or taxi drivers). I honestly don’t remember this overnight train, which means it had to be okay, right? Or I just was so traumatized that I blocked out all memories? No I think this one was uneventful, and uneventful is good. 

The next morning, we met our driver for the ride to Khiva, and he was the best driver and communicator yet so I wished we had him for more than just a 30 minute ride (‘whether bright or melancholyyyyy rough and ready finely spun’ anyone??). He told us about Urgench and how many people live there and what they do and grow and it was nice! I think there’s cotton there. 

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. 

Khiva exists in two parts – the ‘modern’ part of town where people live and where there are like roads (barely) and markets (found one) and stuff, and the ancient inner town completely surrounded by walls. The inside walled part is the historical center, the important part for tourists, the World Heritage area. It’s called Ichan Kala, the walled inner town, and it contained more than 50 monuments of historical importance that honestly are like heavily unmarked so I don’t really know what I’m going to be sharing pictures of, just know that they are the historic important things. Luckily, wiki tells me that the most important parts of Ichan Kala are the walls and the gates, and I can’t mess up identifying those! Above is a gate! Wheee! 

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. 

I loved the Qosha’s location because as soon as you left those front doors, you were surrounded by the sights. First, across the street was a beautiful garden that we enjoyed walking through as we went back and forth to the old town. It was the only pretty thing in Khiva!

I’m sharing this super embarrassing picture (where’s that PPK thread when you need it) because it’s so cool how you can see the ancient gate and walls of the city in the background! Once you enter those gates, it really is a whole other world, and Uzbekistan itself is a whole nother world too so when you’re in the Ichan Kala it’s like so many worlds removed from earth know what I’m saying. Once you enter the gates, it’s like a little bit of Mars or maybe Tatooine right? Here’s that same girl in the same dumb hat on the other side (I’m on the east side, I’m on the west side, I’m on the one side, I’m on the other side). 

Note to people who like to not be broken, climbing these walls is a bit treacherous! You can pretty much scramble your way up to this first level and take a few steps, but don’t go too far because it is like from the 8th century and is not exactly a ‘path’. Also climbing up to the higher levels would require more than just the willingness to scamper; I think you’d need rope. Kinda skir kinda skir! 

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. 

According to the signs around the construction site (this they sign well but of course none of the historic sites have plaques or any info eye roll), a Chinese company was overseeing this work. We seriously considered going in without hardhats and seeing if they could feed us (god we missed Chinese food/non-Uzbek food). 

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. 

And if you make it into the tourist center of the old town, you make it to all the minarets and mosques and unmarked other buildings and LOTS of French people. This is the one place on earth I’ve been where the touts don’t lead with English, guessing that regardless of where you are from as a white person, you probably speak English, playing the odds that English will work. Here the odds are higher that French will work! They lead with French because the tourists here are mostly French! It was kind of cool to notice that difference. And to not be bombarded with nonstop shouts of ‘where you from’ and ‘here buy this souvenir’ in English was fun. 

Strangely, despite how barren this section of the country seemed, the very center of the center of the old town was full of tourists and LINED with touts and souvenir stands, which was quite surprising. And kind of blew the whole ancient historical vibe that is the purpose of a visit to Khiva. And if you didn’t catch what I was saying before, everyone was kind of mean, except for our guest house man and like one guy at one restaurant we ate at. Over three days! It still is cool to see this old town center and all the buildings, but you could honestly get your fill in a few hours, not a few days, and preserve some of your sanity, patience, and good will towards men (although that’s no longer necessary, haven’t you heard, men are over). 

Some of the buildings are pretty cool! As you can see! But we’ve been looking at similarly blue tiled mosques for like yeeeeears now. They all have names and stories but they weren’t well marked and we were kind of over it, I’m sorry to say. But it happens with long-term travel! Or even short-term travel! Don’t feel bad! 

We mainly wandered around the old town, got lost, got hot, got thirsty, and looked on with appreciation at all the old structures. We were planning to climb the minaret but the random lady who came out of nowhere and approached us as the guardian of the minaret (a suspicious thing that happened at least five times a day so far since arriving in Uzbekistan) gave us a price for the climb that just wasn’t worth it. But it was super hot anyway so pictures will suffice. 

My favorite thing in the old town was honestly this map of the Silk Road. It was exciting to see how far we’ve come, how much we’ve seen. And it gave us some much needed boosting in terms of morale to remember how epic this trip was. 

I also liked this statue, of Al Khorezmi. Khorezm is the name of the region surrounding Khiva, and Al Khorezmi was a scholar who I’m gonna guess is the same as Al Khwarizmi, the famous Persian mathematician who is considered the founder of algebra. He does indeed look like he’s thinking hmm why on earth am I foisting this shit upon the world. No just kidding algebra is great. 

Oh I want to say that this is the Jame Mosque, a) because I know that the Jame mosque has over 200 columns and this looks like it could be it and b) I just want to be able to name something in this post considering what a shit job I did of recognizing what anything was in the first place. The Jame mosque’s pillars date back to the 10th century, and you can walk among them while enjoying the one single space in town that provides respite from the heat and sun. Apparently there’s a carriage in here that was a gift from Tsar Nicholas (old friend!) to the khan but I don’t see it, do you. 

As for food, I was able to navigate the same-old same-old menus in the old town’s tourist-friendly (but not actually friendly, as we’ve established) restaurants. The place I was excited for turned out to be the world because of the staff. I think it was called Cafe Kheizem, right at the main central toilets (yes there are toilets in the center!). It was disappointing because the waitress didn’t write down our order and so my most-wanted dish of stewed cabbage never came, and when I asked the staff about it (she was long gone by then) there was no receipt or anything to point to. UGH. Listen, if you are in the restaurant business, it is not impressive at all if the waitstaff can remember your order without writing it down. It’s literally the stupidest thing to try to do to impress us, because if it works it’s keeping things at base level competence, and if it doesn’t work well then your customers don’t get their food. JUST WRITE IT DOWN. I really wanted that cabbage too. I did have a salad of course and a cold noodle salad thing that we shared and they were fine but like so boring. 

Khorezem Art restaurant, on the other hand, is the only one I can recommend because like I said before, the guy working wasn’t outright mean to us. And it was fine. And they have beans! I got all the little accidentally vegan dishes on the menu and it made a very satisfying meal. 

So, we basically saw everything there is to see and then another three more times in one day. The next day, we slept super late and didn’t go back to go see the same things again till late in the day, which was nice. We spent some time enjoying Uzbek television in our room. The only thing we could understand was a children’s program that was teaching English. And yet we watched it. 

We were set to leave super early in the morning, in another car booked with Sultan, to take us to Nukus (we will talk about that in the next post!). We checked out the night before since it would be so early, and told the Qosha Darvoza guys that we wouldn’t need breakfast that early since it would be too early for humans to eat. They were so nice that they wouldn’t let us skip breakfast, and instead they packed us a giant wine box full of an insane amount of dumplings (not for me but still, nice), water bottles (def for me!), bread, cucumbers and tomatoes (I know), pears, and cake. How sweet is that?! Yay for nice people! And it saved us from having to buy stuff for our train that night. 

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. 

In case you couldn’t tell, we weren’t totally loving Uzbekistan. The history was objectively impressive, but the country in general felt a little bit like Tobias and we were his hair plugs: a little like we were not supposed to be there, a little unwelcoming, a little like our presence risked grave medical danger. Okay so maybe not that last part and maybe it’s not the most effective analogy but anyway, that feeling changed with the much more accessible and welcoming Samarkand. Maybe it’s because we had just left Bukhara, which challenged us to love it while doing whatever it could to stop us from loving it, but Samarkand stood out as the one place in Uzbekistan that felt enjoyable, comfortable, and welcoming, at least by Uzbek standards. 

A city that may date back to the 8th century BC (I mean we all may date back to the 8th century BC but a lot of historians believe that’s how old it is), Samarkand was once the capital of the Sogdian empire, during some time between 6th century BC to 11th century AD. The Sogdians, you’d learn if you went to Uzbekistan or the recent exhibit at the British Museum, were an ancient Iranian civilization around Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Some Sogdians also lived in China during the Tang dynasty, while others ventured throughout the Byzantine Empire, fulfilling important trade roles on the Silk Route. The Muslim conquering of Transoxiana in the 8th century catalysed the gradual conversion of all Sogdians to Islam. This also led to the decline of the Sogdian language, as many adopted Persian or other Turkic languages instead. We also got by with Russian in Uzbekistan. For some reason, whenever I hear ‘the Sogdians’ my brain thinks of Cher talking about ‘the Haiti-ans’. So if we just went back into the kitchen, rearranged a few things, we could certainly party with the Sogdians. 

Anyway, I don’t know why but I was much more amenable to partying with the Sogdians in Samarkand than in the rest of the country. Samarkand, I think, is more tourist-friendly. Or just me-friendly. There were modern buildings and restaurants and stuff, which I was ready for at this point. And the big f-ing things to see were easy to find and see and enjoy. The biggest f-ing thing, the Registan, was as impressive and beautiful as I could have wished, really living up to expectations. 

The Registan was once the public square, the main piazza, of the ancient city. All the big news was announced here, all the big executions happened here, things like that. The square is composed of three madrassahs forming a square (the last side is formed by YOU! or whatever): the Ulugh Beg Madrassah, the Tilya-Kori Madrassah, and the Sher-Dor Madrassah. That’s them from left to right, but we went right to left, so that’s how I’ll talk about them. The Sher-Dor Madrassah was built in the 1600s and depicts tigers in mosaics (I think they are supposed to be lions because Sher-Dor means lion-bearing, so I hear so I hear, but come on they look like tigers if they’re a day) which I noticed were cool but I didn’t even realize till later how crazy that really is given that Muslims aren’t supposed to have pictures of living things in religious buildings and stuff. That Yalangtush, the ruler who ordered Sher-Dor to be built, must have been some kind of bad ass, which is easy to believe considering his name has the word tush in it. 

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! 

As for the big guy in the center, the Tilya Kori Madrassah was born only a little after the Sher-Dor and operated as a mosque as well, which is why it’s so big I guess. The facade features two stories of the dormitory cells of the madrassah students. But inside is really where it’s at. There’s a hidden courtyard after you enter the Tilya and that and the interior halls are supes gorge. The name ‘Tilya Kori’ means ‘decorated with gold’ I would have guessed ‘see you later’ from the sound of it but that makes more sense I guess. Till ya kori alligator! 

Some people, I don’t know who but they sound like very little fun, are upset about how the restoration inside the Tilya Kori has actually, ya know, restored it to such an extent. But look how gorgeous it is now! Who would rather have crumbling cement holes and colors so faded you can’t even see them than this gloriousness? Who on earth really thinks the original artists and architects would prefer to see their work falling apart and disintegrating to preserve ‘authenticity’ rather than having amazing modern people restore it so it remains beautiful? Y’all tripping. 

The Registan grounds were almost as gorgeous as the inside bits. I love loved this sea of flowers tipping out from the vase. 

The secret courtyard of the Tilya was also really lovely. I bet by now you are getting the hint that the Registan is completely awesome. Well except for one thing which I’ll mention in a minute. 

As for the Ulugh Beg Madrassah, it was named after – you guessed it – the famed Ulugh Beg, the 14th century Timurid ruler. That’s not his real name – the real one has some Muhammeds and some bins in there – but a moniker he garnered because it basically means ‘great ruler’. So, fun fact, Beg is the part that means ruler or chief, from the old Turkic ‘bey’ which means chief in that way. So we see, Beyonce is Queen Bey for a reason. Names are powerful. Not just a ruler, Ulugh Beg was also an astronomer and mathematician, specializing in spherical geometry (I mean), which is why the inside of his namesake madrassah was decorated with constellations galore. It was really cool to follow all the stars and see which ones I recognized (zero) or knew the names of before (six).

The Ulugh Beg is the oldest of the three buildings, and according to our book is ‘considered the best of the three’ which just seems like unnecessary favoritism that threatens to spark infighting among the buildings. 

Okay I know I said there was just one thing to complain about here at the Registan but come on it’s me. There are three. The biggest annoyance was that, despite how sacred and important this place is, there are touts everywhere, covering every inch of space selling their crappy knickknacks which okay fine you’re trying to make a living but no they hound you and it takes most of your energy to get them to stop and that’s energy you should be using to gaze upon the sights and not harrumph irritably. Harrumph I said HARRUMPH. 

Numbers two and three have to do with money, not that anything here was expensive but it’s just the principle of the thing. Our not-so-old book says that the ticket into the Registan costs 4000 Uzbeki som, but they charged us 30,000 each! That’s some crazy markup! And they only charged the Uzbek people who went in before us 1000. I get charging foreigners more, it happens, but damn that’s a lot more. It’s still stupid cheap for being the most important site in the area but stilllll. Even more annoying, though, was that after paying all that som, the bathrooms inside the Registan grounds were still another 1000 som. Like after you pay 30,000 to enter the place you still have to pay for the toilet? Bitch please. 

Other than those grievances, the Registan was spectacular. 

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. 

Luckily, after falling apart for hundos of years and then collapsing even more in an earthquake, they restored the Bibi Khanum in the ’70s so now we can visit and be safe. 

Our next and final stop on the historical sites tour is the Gur Emir Mausoleum, which we could see from our hotel. The mausoleum is home(?) to several important members of the Timur family, including Amir Timur himself, better known as Tamerlane. In case you forget from past blog posts, Tamerlane was a big f-ing deal, a Turco-Mongol conqueror in the 1300s. He founded the Timurid Empire in Persia and Central Asia, leading military campaigns across most of Asia, the Caucasus (‘Dolokhov was in the Caucasus and he killed the shah’s brother. Now all the Moscow ladies are MAD about him!’ anyone??) and southern Russia. He was the most powerful ruler of his time in the Muslim world after he defeated some super biggies like Egypt and the Ottoman Empire. He was responsible for apparently 17 million deaths! That’s a lot! Why do humans revere people like this! 

This mausoleum wasn’t actually supposed to contain Tamerlane’s remains – it was originally built for his favorite grandson, Mohammed Sultan (an ungoogleable name now) (also what a creepy gift for anyone! here i built you a big coffin for when you die! jesus christ I wanted a bicycle), but then Tamerlane died unexpectedly in 1405 (do they really not think he was murdered I can name a million possible suspects and I wasn’t even there) and his mausoleum wasn’t done yet, so he was like ‘well I’m dead and my place is unfinished so just put me in here I guess’. His other grandson, Ulugh Beg, is in there too. Yep that was his grandson! Such nepotism, so wow. 

The giant slab of jade on Amir Timur’s coffin was stolen by Persian invaders, but they returned it because it had brought them bad luck, which I find HILARIOUS. There’s a giant bowl in this morbid room too, which I don’t think the picture shows, but anyway Tamerlane would always fill the bowl with pomegranate juice and make his troops drink from it pre-battle to symbolize drinking the blood of the enemy, which is enough to put me off pomegranate juice for good. 

But it wasn’t all fun and games. I mean death and mosques. We also had fun food experiences! As I now expect in these Silk Road cities, there was a kickin bazaar overflowing with produce and bread and people, and Samarkand’s was pretty great. As usual, we stuffed ourselves with amazing bread and stocked up on fruit for our travels. But Samarkand’s bazaar stood out for me because it also had fantastic halvah, which is a favorite of mine and all people with good taste. 

As you can see, there was plenty of food, as was the case for most of the cities we visited on this trip, but finding restaurants with vegan menu items was harder. We had a rough time in Samarkand due pretty much just to bad luck in choosing crappy places, but one restaurant was great. Platan, which I found via HappyCow (the only entry for Samarkand, and for dern good reason), was a nice quiet restaurant inside a hotel on the fancier end of things. The food on offer was like classic Russian stuff I had on the Trans-Siberian – cabbage salads and beans and stuff. It was decent and I liked it and I loved it. The only annoying thing about Platan was that to pay with credit card, you have to go into the bar in the hotel, which is not very civilized at all and was a great mess and super uncomfortable and time consuming. But hey, they took credit card. Not common. 

Of course, I ordered the vitaminka salad, because I always do. This one had actual lettuce (and a lottt of cilantro), which I enjoyed because I love lettuce and that’s usually all I ever put in my salads. I was thrilled to see lobio on the menu despite this not being a Georgian restaurant! Yay beans! I love you beans! 

I also got a dish of hot cabbage and root vegetables because I love me some hot cabbage and root vegetables. Yum! 

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. 

Oh and I did indeed eat all of that watermelon and honeydew because this was the spread just for the two of us. Okay I shared with Husband but my point is, they did all this just for the two of us. Ahhhhh they were the best! And breakfast was served on the gorgeous patio amid the gorgeous fruit trees and omg it was like you weren’t even in Uzbekistan. 

So Samarkand was pretty great, and not just because of L’Argamak. The sites were impressive and imposing and interesting. (And I found halvah and I had a good bed!) So much greatness. Of course, this was still Uzbekistan, so it was still full of some weird. Like how all the streets were lined with deep gutters that were f-ing dangerous as hell if you didn’t stare at the ground every time you were walking outside. 

And public transit leaves something to be desired. We didn’t even try using the buses after we saw this: 

But aside from my minor quibbles, Samarkand was by far my favorite place in Uzbekistan. (We still have several stops to talk about, but you’ll see.) The historic sights really were awesome and worth seeing. And if you for some reason are going to Uzbekistan, you’ll have to go to Samarkand and stay at L’Argamak. My favorite thing, okay one of many favorites as is expected with me, was our view of the Gur Emir Mausoleum from our balcony, especially at night. It captures that kind of ancient magic you feel in this place, all in the comfort of a clean hotel with a working new toilet so you know that makes me happy. 

That’s all, Samarkand! You’re a nice town thanks for letting us enjoy ourselves. 

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. 

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 shared bathroom at the Caravan Stay featured the OG Uzbek Schuyler Sisters, if I had to guess?

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. 

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! 

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:

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. 

(Possibly the best caption ever.) 
​

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! 

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. 

Now that our time in yurts is over (forever?!), I could fully relax (well I still had to worry about bathroom breaks) and enjoy the rest of our journey around Kyrgyzstan. This country kept surprising me! The people were nice, the food was plentiful, the watermelon was given to me, the roads were in existence. Most of all, the landscape kept enthralling us with its extremely varied beauty. We still had a few more days driving with Sacha around Lake Issyk Kul and in small villages and towns before we landed in Bishkek, the big city capital. I liked the activities almost as much as I liked the fact that we had activities, but I started to get sick of the little villages. (Literally.) Hence my completely shocking personal revelation mentioned in the title.

Catch up on the previous Kyrgyzstan posts!
Crossing the Torugart Pass; Tash Rabat
Part 1: Back in the Yurt Camps
Part 2: Issyk Kul and Kyzart Village

Day 5
“Everything’s coming up (roses?)”
​
Our lovely be-gardened guest house in Tamga village continued delighting us on this new day, with a lovely breakfast in the lovely little dining space surrounded by the beautiful flowers and tons and tons of…bees. Bees? Bees. I guess with flowers come bees. We had forgotten this since bees are super endangered everywhere else in the world save for this garden, apparently. I had oatmeal and watermelon and apples for breakfast so it was a great start, aside from the bees.

We set off on our drive, stopping shortly again at the lake shore for a few minutes just to take more pictures and enjoy the view for a little longer and so I could pee in the most picturesque outdoor pop-a-squat location yet. You’re welcome.

We drove through a valley called Jeti Oguz, which is famous for its enormous cliff-face stretch of the same name, which means Seven Bulls. The cliff face is of dark reddish brown bumpies that symbolize “furious bulls” standing together. I am a taurus; is that the bull one? If so I would like to be called Furious Bull from now on. If not I don’t care astrology is dumb as a trump.

The plan was to continue our eventual complete loop around Issyk Kul Lake by heading to our next stop of Karakol, but we had a surprise stop at the most amazing geo park (eco park? both). Seriously, it was a surprise to us at least, because the itinerary for today pretty much just said ‘drive to karakol’. So unforch that means I don’t know what this geopark was called (I’ve been trying to find it online! Maybe it existed just for us like a Brigadoon situation OMG IS KELLI O’HARA GOING TO SING WHEN I’M THERE??? oh no chill out this already happened and she didn’t, time doesn’t work like that no matter what McConaughey says (just kidding I totally believe him). The whole big area is Jeti Oguz and it might just be the resort or park or the same name but I can’t confirm.

​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.

This valleypark was enormous! There’s security at the entrance (I guess it works because the whole thing is surrounded by mountains that sneakers can’t drive down so) and then you can just drive and hike for miles and miles and hours and hours like we did, all along this insane colored water. I know it doesn’t look amazing in the pictures (no filters!) but it was like pure jade and so incredibly beeyoot.

After we drove through most of this amazing valley, Sacha parked the car in a clearing and was like ‘there’s a waterfall about 40 minutes hike that way’ he literally just nodded his head upwards. That way just meant ‘up’ the mountain. And he said we should go check it out. We were hey so how do we find it exactly, like how much upping and in what part of the ENDLESS MOUNTAINS AROUND US ARE WE TALKING. He pointed to a person on a horse about halfway up the mountain and was like ‘they’re going to the waterfall so you can follow the path they are taking.’ Guys this was not helpful. The horse was like already a kilometer up the mountain and we couldn’t tell how he got to that point or what came next. We started up the mountain and the ‘trail’ was pretty much ‘do you see a way you can go that will let you continue your journey? does it seem a little ridiculous but less ridiculous than the other options you observe? follow that one!’ It was scary! Thank god Z was a boy scout because he could tell MUCH better than I could which fork prongs (tines?) were probably the right ones. The scary trail (or lack thereof) put me in a mood something terrible. AND of course I kept skidding the whole time because it was gravelly!

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.

Because we had to enter (with tickets I think) at the entry point (you don’t say), we had to drive allll the way back through the valley and across the rapids and over the bridges and through the woods in order to leave. Haha ‘had to’ like it wasn’t such a treat to see it all again. We continued our drive towards Karakol in order to reach that town by lunchtime. I was sooo pumped for lunch because, are you ready for this? You know the website (and super useful app) HappyCow that I talk about all the time? If you don’t know, it tells you what restaurants near you (everywhere in the world) have vegan options. It’s magic (no it’s crowdsourced so if you find something incorrect it’s on you to fix it). Well, the ONLY HappyCow listing for ALL of Kyrgyzstan that wasn’t in Bishkek (the big fancy capital) was in Karakol! I was so so excited. We found the place, called The Fat Cat Cafe, sat down and looked at the menus and…there was not one thing veg on it. Well there was a grilled cheese for vegetarians CAN YOU SEE HOW HARD I’M ROLLING MY EYES? I asked the worker ‘hey so I was told that you had vegan food?’ and the woman said “Oh yes I can make you lentil soup if you give me like a half hour, 45 minutes? I haven’t been to the market yet today so I would need to buy vegetables and lentils.” THA FUCK? I reread the only other HappyCow review of the place (there’s a second on on there now with the TRUTH you’re welcome) and it said there was vegan food ‘on request’. So, first of all, no way in hell this place should be on HC if it doesn’t have any regular menu items that are veg. Second of all, WHAT KIND OF RESTAURANT ISN’T PREPARED FOR THE DAY AT 2PM ON A SATURDAY? Isn’t that your busiest time, all restaurants in the world? What kind of place is run like that? And I don’t just mean for the vegan request. Like, she hadn’t been to the store yet, at all, on a Saturday afternoon. And she had other employees just sitting around. What kind of fuckery I can’t even. I reported them to HC hoping to get them deleted but they are still on there. Le sigh.

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.

This place was great! We also got the requisite basket of fluffy lavash bread. It was great…except, I don’t know if it was the food here, or the food the night before, or the spring water from a few days ago, or who knows how many endless factors, but I started to feel sick soon. We were staying in Karakol that night, at a nice little guest house about 10 minutes drive from the restaurant. We arrived and relaxed for a little and I had a little of the Travelers’ (TM(i)) but thought nothing of it. Z and I soon walked to a cafe to use their wifi (yay!) and after a little while I Traveled (TM(i)) again. I started to feel worse so I said let’s walk back to the house, I don’t feel so good. We had made it about 2/3 of the way when I vomited the hardest I ever have right on the sidewalk. Well in a grass patch but still. It was very violent and horrible and so painful that I thought I was choking. LUCKILY it happened, if you can even believe it, in front of what can only be called “Apteka Row” (the russian word for pharmacy) – a whole string of pharmacies. Z ran into one and I think just pointed out the window to me and was given anti vomit and anti nausea pills. It seemed to help a little, despite the fear of taking unmarked Kyrgyz pills (I still have some if anyone wants to try! or examine). When we returned, I told Sacha I wasn’t going to eat dinner and he was SO mad because the owner lady had already started making it and I was like okay if you really want me to try I will happily vom again on her little white tablecloth. I didn’t say that but I should have. But like come on dude.

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.

What was not cool, was that this mosque made women wear these RIDONK heavy coverups like f-ing WIZARD robes. So smelly and so extra hot in this weather and just ugh annoying. I try to be chill about all religions but I can’t get behind any of the parts that require women to cover up so the mens don’t get too excited. Control YOURSELF, Aaron.

After the mosque, we went to the Holy Trinity Orthodox Church. So much religion! The church was built in 1894 in the ‘six-pillared’ fashion but it has only 4 pillars! Fan thyself!

I really dig the whole decaying wood thing they have going on here. Very wool.

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.

MANNER!!! Why didn’t I get more than one? (Ed. note: Don’t cry for me. Have you seen my instagram? Thanks Emmeline & Josh!)

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.

After we burned in the dry sun to a sufficient crispiness, we had lunch at a terrible cafe on the side of the road that was giant and full of tourists and had wifi but had a terrible waitress. She brought me my vinaigrette salad with fish on it even after Sacha made sure she knew no fish! Who puts fish on a vinaigrette anyway! Also people were smoking in the bathroom. It was an OUTDOOR restaurant. I don’t understand. I ate some vegetarian borscht instead (soup is always a good idea) and then we continued the drive to Chon Kemin and our last guest house, one run by the popular tour agency CBT (we were looking at CBT and NoviNomad when we were deciding who to go with, but CBT was terrible at answering emails and our questions so NoviNomad luckily won out. If you like loud hostels with giant dorms full of yoots, CBT seems the choice for you.) Because it was a CBT house, it was full of the most tourists we’d seen in weeks! It was a nice enough place and it had wifi! It was just a shock to have all the noise and PEOPLE when we’d been mostly in isolation for so long. I love isolation from other tourists.

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!

There were many plates of tomato salad (course) and vermicelli and carrot salads all over, and then the main event was plov, the main dish of Kyrgyzstan (and Uzbekistan and like the entire region I think). Plov is a rice pilaf usually with giant hunks of mutton or other gross meat (spoiler all meat is gross) on top. It’s a lot of rice. Mine was rice with bits of carrot. It was a lot of rice – the vegetarian platter was almost as big as the meat version but the meat plate was for like 11 people and the veg was just for me! How much rice do you think I can eat! I have to save room for watermelon!

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!

After too many nights in freezing cold yurt camps, we started the next section of our Kyrgyzstan country tour, which would take us a little more towards civilization and, even better, into guest houses! We packed so much activity into these extremely active days and got to see so much of the country, which we grew to love. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have to pee outside anymore, maybe because I finally got to wash my hair, but I started having a swell old time. 

• Catch up on Part 1!
  
• Catch up on our entry into Kyrgyzstan!

 
Day 3
“Put your mind to it go for it…get down and break a sweat!”

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. 

The first few kilometers were pretty decent, although it was super dry and my eyes started going really fast. Luckily we had a lovely little stop by Melis’s favorite spot, a grassy shady treelined area by a big creek (small river?). So nice. I was going to pee behind one of the trees but Z exclaimed “You can’t pee on Melis’s favorite spot!” True. 

I enjoy activity and exercise but 18 kilometers across mountains added up to a lil too much but fast! ​There were some really steep hills in the second half that damn near knocked us out, with Melis of course amused, watching from the top of the hills from atop his noble steed. (She called me a steed!) Unfortunately, my left hip started throbbing, which is funny because my right hip is usually the one that gives me trouble. (Not funny ‘haha’, I guess.) But we had many more miles to go, trekking over rocks and hills and up and up and down those bullshitty gravel paths. So when we finally arrived in Kyzart Village, my hip was completely frozen. Nooooope.  

Finally we saw VILLAGE! and PEOPLE! you could say we saw Village People! And not just any, but little children who RAN up the road to meet us when we entered the village bounds. Melis went ahead to meet their little scampering feet and gave them big hugs. GUYS, they were his kids! He lives in the village with his family! It was the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. They were so cute and so happy to see their dad. Almost as happy as I was to be done walking for the day. 

Melis told his kids he’d see them at home (I mean I imagine) and finished leading us to our guest house in the village, where we would be staying for the night. Despite knowing that ‘guest house’ was on our itinerary for tonight, I had refused to get my hopes up that it would be anything more than a little shack in a camp where I’d still have to pee outside. Remember in that amazing (terrible) (no amazing) Meg Ryan-Tim Robbins movie “I.Q.” about Einstein (such great nonsense) when Walter Matthau (RIP <3) as Einstein said “I’d rather be an optimist and a fool than a pessimist and right”? I think about that quote at least every day (since 1994) because well I don’t wanna be a fool! Mama didn’t raise no fool. And I didn’t want to optimistically imagine that that night I wouldn’t have to walk outside an actual house to get to an outhouse and then arrive and be proved wrong like a fool like a FOOL. That would be not so fun. But luckily I was wrong because we were led into a nice little REGULAR house! With a bedroom with BEDS near A REGULAR BATHROOM! With a toilet and a sink and a shower! Dance dance dance!

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! 

Before dinner, we took a short walk around the village, finding a nice little mosque (above) and lotssss of children who chased us while screaming “HELLO! HELLO!” I know it sounds adorable but after three months of children AND adults shouting HELLO at you it gets beyond annoying. 

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. 

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Day 4
“Things are looking up…in DULOC!”

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. 

See how pretty the woman’s creations are? Keep that in mind for when I reveal what we made.

​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. 

Admittedly, I’m glad I didn’t have the foresight to cancel this activity, because it was actually really fun. Unlike other factory tours that get added to tourist itineraries as boring ways to try to force souvenir-buying, we actually learned a lot here, and the private instruction made us appreciate Kyrgyz art more than any other visit in the country did. The people were nice and accommodating and didn’t laugh at us too hard when they had us make our own little carpet out of scraps.

​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.

Then we added bits of colored felt on top of the brown square to make our gorgeous design, after which the lady rolled it up in the bamboo, tied the rolled up tube with rope, poured boiling water over the rolled up tube, and used the rope to squeeze it, DANCED on the tube, then made US dance on it and jump up and down on it for 10-15 minutes to get the water out, lather rinse repeat, and then unroll the tube and marvel at your beautiful art as you wash it with cold water and soap. 

Are you guys ready to see the art we created? Are you? Remember than everyone on my mom’s side of the family (EVERYONE) is like a professional artist. I did not inherit those genes. 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. It’s BARELY our initials. (Ed. note: this is now framed and hanging in our living room.)

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! 

After lunch, we packed up our gorgeous piece of wet wool and started the drive around Issyk-Kul lake, which we would eventually go completely around. We drove along the southern side, going counterclockwise (or anti-clockwise as they say in the UK, one of the things I fully approve of). Issyk-Kul lake is the largest lake in Kyrgs and second largest saltwater lake in the world (after the Caspian). The name means ‘warm lake’ because, despite being in the Tian Shan mountains which are all snow capped in these parts, it never freezes. Well aren’t you lucky! The drive for the few hours to the Fairytale Canyon was so beautiful! Yay water! I love water! And it was regular summer warm now! The view from the car was so fun – beautiful lake and beach and swimmers on the left, desert and mountains on the right. Kyrgyzstan had ALL the climates and environments all at the same time! 

We hiked around Fairytale Canyon and saw how the gorgeous peaks and cliff faces really did look like something out of a fairy tale! From a magical elephant to a castle in the sky, everywhere we turned had a spellbinding view. We barely made a dent in this huge place. Despite all the wonderful sights, the clearest memory we took away with us of Fairytale Canyon was the white man standing outside the entrance wearing a Ben Carson for President t-shirt. We COULD NOT. 

Anyway, here are some pretty pictures of the parts that didn’t make us lose even more faith in humanity. 

After we explored this spectacular canyon, we drove back to the lake shore for a swim! Yayyyy it was time to swim! We changed into our suits in the car (this is MUCH HARDER to do than Jennifer Grey made it look in Dirty Dancing. I was cursing that movie for days afterward) and relaxed in the beautiful blue water. I know what you’re thinking – wait, this is all the same day? All these varied and fun activities in one day? I know! In one day we’re doing more than we did in a week on the Mongolia country tour. (Ok one day I will be done bashing that.) You know how much I love water – in drinking form, melon form, and looking at form, so it should be no surprise that swimming in form also makes me sublimely happy. 

The water was cold but it was so fun to be swimming again. We had a great time, except for the CRAZY lady with her family nearby who splashed us and wouldn’t leave us alone. She was a lunatic and we tried to say please leave us alone and she just kept saying (in Russian) GO UNDER GO UNDER AHHAHAH I’M A LUNATIC! It was infuriating but luckily didn’t ruin our time. 

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. 

After our swim, we drove the rest of the way to the village of Tamga, where we were staying in a LOVELY little guest house run by a LOVELY older couple. It was such a nice place. There were other tourists there but none staying on our floor of the one house (there were two houses) so it was like we were alone in a house! I had my own bathroom! Dance emoji dance emoji! The husband and wife running things used to be serious mountain climbers and so the dining area was decorated with absolutely incredible photos of their most impressive treks and climbs up the snowiest and tallets of peaks. The house had an exquisite garden that made us really jealous as we have not been able to keep a plant alive on our patio as of yet. Our room was the standard little basic with the single beds but it was clean and nice. All the vegetables and fruit came straight from the garden, and you could tell. I almost didn’t even care about having more cucumber and tomato and eggplant and tomato and peppers and tomato when they were that fresh. I cared a little. They also grew apricots and made delicious apricot jam. Best of all, they had wifi! It was super weak but enough that I could send a few texts to my fam and send a few angry tweets to Trump defenders. What a great day! Will day 5 continue the fun? Find out soon on the next episode of “how many times will she pee today, Johnny!” Byeees. 

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 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!’ 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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!