After what seemed like weeks of travel, we made it to Tamchy for rest. After a few days on the beach, we climbed back into the car and made our way toward a village called Taldy-Suu near the city of Tup, which is where one of my host family members is from. But, naturally, before we could get there, we had to stop and rest, and we chose a beautiful hot spring to stop at. I didn’t take photos of the spring, but it was crowded with Russian and Kyrgyz tourists alike, all starting in the cool pool, moving up to the warm pool, before slowly inching their sunburns fully beneath a waterfall of scalding hot water. Every so often, they’d get out and plunge into an ice bath nearby. There was a juice stand (like the ones in New York), a raptor trainer, and even a restaurant.

After getting our fill, we headed down to the beach again for more relaxation, this time in much more peace and solitude.  I know I used these photos yesterday too, but this is the ACTUAL place they fit into my story:

On the beach there was a small hut, which had somehow managed to get itself electricity through a series of perilously strung wires across half a kilometer of farmland, and after resting on the beach, we stopped in for another bowl of Ashlyam-Fu (I ended up eating this dish every day that I was in Issyk-Kul oblast, gladly and willingly).

After a few more hours, we pulled into Taldy-Suu, and managed to find my host’s relatives. They live in a rather large house with a few additions, with a large guesting room, a shed with an even larger kitchen, and a large barn with a variety of farm animals. Their friends and relatives had come from around the village to welcome us, and it was a warm welcome indeed, for they had killed a sheep to celebrate our arrival.

Sheep is a big diet staple here, and for special occasions people will kill a sheep in what is called a koi soi. They clean out the sheep, and prepare the edible organs and meat for cooking. Mostly it is boiled, but the head is cooked by blowtorch or fire. After cooking, it is served over noodles in the sheep broth, in the national dish of Kyrgyzstan, Besh Barmak (literally, five thumbs, because it is traditionally eaten with the hands).

We spent the afternoon lounging while the food cooked, and later went on a village walk to meet some other neighbors that my host knew. Some of the children took me on a tour and played games with me.

After sunset, we ate another small meal, which I naively assumed was dinner. Then, more and more people came over, and I realized that this was my first time experiencing formal Kyrgyz guesting as the guest (my host family in Chui had hosted a few people, but I had not gone with them to another house). The children came around and poured water over our hands over a basin, then a tablecloth was laid, plates were placed, and out came a massive platter of sheep meat, organs, and head. The elder men divided up the meat, the organs, and the head was given to the 9-year-old son to open up and divide. I managed to escape with just a little bit of organ and one of the eyes, but I know that over the course of two years, I’ll probably have to eat the whole thing at some point. This was followed by bread, noodles, and the broth in which the sheep had been cooked.

As generally happens with guestings, many people then found places on the floor to sleep for the night, putting down sheets, tyshyks (thin mattresses), and pillows before passing out.

I spoke with so many people that day that I’m hard pressed to remember any individual conversations, but I do remember one rather vividly. I went over to one of the neighbor’s houses for tea with some of the children during the afternoon, and the man was very excited to meet me, both because I am American but also because I speak Kyrgyz and Dari. He excitedly ran into the house while we were sipping tea, and came out with his old Soviet military uniform. It turned out that he had fought for the Soviet Union during the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980’s. That war is now long gone, but it was interesting to think that 35 years ago, someone in the US might have called him my mortal enemy, even as he welcomed me into his home with open arms.

After spending the night and morning in Taldy-Suu, I made my way to Karakol to connect with other volunteers for the weekend. Because of some last-minute changes in our August training, my trip, which was originally scheduled to end August 6th, was extended to August 9th, so I made plans to spend the weekend with some of my good friends that I hadn’t seen in almost two months. It was definitely a good decision.

They introduced me to a wonderful coffee shop in Karakol, some of the very best Ashlyam-Fu in all of Kyrgyzstan (shoutout to my friend Timur, whose family runs that restaurant!), and when I got to my friend’s house, we cooked the most delicious pasta and cookies that tasted exactly like those rolls of frozen cookie dough in the US. It was exactly what I needed after almost two months of eating almost exclusively Kyrgyz food.

After Karakol, we began to make our way back to Bishkek, heading first to Balykchy to meet other volunteers (and watch the Republican Presidential Debate for laughs), before climbing onto a classic Soviet mode of transportation:

We thought that taking the train from Balkychy back to Bishkek would be a fun, very idiosyncratic adventure that would save us a few bucks and would be a most very cultural experience. In that, we were not wrong. We just didn’t appreciate just how crowded the train would be.

Russian and former-USSR trains have several levels of service, and this train offered only one: platzkart, which is the equivalent of third class. Each car has maybe 10-15 “compartments” which are open to the aisle. On one side, there are multi-person benches and a table, and on the other, single-person “seats” and a table. The benches are long enough for one person to lay down, and the two-seater side’s table folds down to turn it into a berth as well. Then, above those, were another trio of berths (one above each bench and one above the two seater). Thus, each compartment could sleep about 6 people. But you could fit quite a few more in, as we learned.

 

As the train filled, people decided to occupy the berths, and despite our pleas not to, not only did people push us over (we already had 6-8 people in each of our compartments), but they climbed up to the berths above us. Once we were moving, our most crowded compartment had four children on the overhead berths, 6 of us sitting, and two additional Russian people at the edge, with four Russians crammed into the two-seater across the aisle and another lounging on the berth above it.

It was crowded, and a bit uncomfortable, but it was such a jolly experience. Vendors walked up and down the aisle selling homemade pastries and smoked fish, while we sat and attempted conversation in our rudimentary Russian with our compartment-mates. We all laughed at our inability to communicate, and yet still managed to forge a mutual bond that we enjoyed throughout our trip. And of course the views were spectacular.

We pulled into the train station at our destination at about 9:00, and after wandering for a bit to find our way to the marshrutka home, we managed to get ourselves back, and by 10:00 I was chatting once again with my wonderful host mother in Chui, showing her pictures of the five oblasts I had traveled across to get there.

Catch up on the rest of this story by reading Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3!

Check out the full gallery of photos from my trip here!