Asia's Wild West

Susannah: A tiny, mountainous country, isolated Kyrgyzstan is a unique and charming mix of traditional Сentral Asian and Russian culture. It was here that I saw my first babushkas, with wizened faces smiling under colorful scarves, and enjoyed my first authentic bowl of Russian borscht with flat, delicious bread (a miracle after weeks of Chinese steamed buns). The scenery is spectacular, and the lives of the people who make their living off the land are fascinating.
We actually saw more of Kyrgystan's ugly post-soviet capital, Bishkek, than the lovely countryside, since we were forced to wait for a week there for our Uzbek visa. Arriving from Almaty late in the day, we discovered that the cheap hotel we were looking for had closed. Exhausted and nearing despair, we spotted two guys ambling toward us who were definitely not Krygyz. Mike sidled up to them and asked if they knew a good place to stay. "No," the older guy replied in a thick Australian twang, "but I have a friend who would. Are you hungry? We're having dinner down the street."

So began our fortunate and pleasureable friendship with three oil company guys posted in Bishkek. Over several nights of pizza and beer with John, a thirty-something Canadian, I came to appreciate his surprisingly nuanced (to me) views on environmentalism, development and his own role in the world. It didn't hurt, either, that his Kyrgyz right-hand-man found us a luxurious apartment for less than the price of a cheap hotel.

Our next stop was the turquoise waters of Lake Issykol, ringed by mountains, and the tiny city of Karakol. Here, our improbable companions were a young Peace Corps volunteer, Kay, and her Kyrgyz boyfriend Arabek. His mother gave us a taste of Kyrgyz hospitality, over steaming bowls of black tea sweetened with homemade fruit preserves and honey. We met a beekeeper the next day on the road, who pulled us into his house and insisted on filling a plastic bag bag with creamy honey for us straight out of the honey-churn.

On Saturday we got up at dawn to see Karakol's teeming animal market. We had just set out on our long walk when a horse cart appeared, headed to the market, and the driver motioned for us to take a seat next to his trussed-up sheep in the back. We lumbered along through the city streets and showed up at the market in style, already smelling ripe.

The market was full of real cowboys and farmers checking out each others' livestock, getting their horses shod, and buying their feed.

These guys, who at 8 in the morning had just completed a tipsy deal on this cow, insisted we take their photo to commemorate the happy event and their new friendship. You can see how proud the Russian guy is of his new bovine companion.

The next day, we headed with our Peace Corps friends up to a high mountain plateau to see an eagle hunt. At first we had thought there was some linguistic miscommunication, and that the Kyrgyz meant falcon hunt. But when we pulled up in the van to pick up the hunter and his bird, we discovered there was no mistake. If you've never shared a minivan with an uncaged eagle, you'll have to take our word for it that it was disconcerting. Struggling to keep its balance, it continually smacked the back of our heads with its wings. At one point it actually fell headfirst into the trunk, then proudly pretended it had never happened.

We had brought along a sweet grey bunny, scuffling nervously in a cardboard box in the front seat. When we reached the plateau, the hunter hooded the eagle and Anabek set the bunny down five hundred yards away. When the hood was removed, the eagle took off like a streak. The bunny never saw it coming.

In a real hunt this would all have happened on horseback, and the hunter would only have allowed the eagle a slice of the meat. But it was sobering to see the food chain before us so vividly. Apparently, the eagles often take down fox and even wolves!

On the way back to Bishkek to pick up our Uzbek visas, we stopped in a mountain town west of Lake Issykol and headed up into the hills to see the "real nomad life." We couldn't help laughing when our host family's yurt came into view:

Tourism aside, they really did graze a huge herd of sheep, goats, and cows, and even a couple yaks. While they cooked a sheep they'd just slaughtered, we headed out for a ride. I had never been on horseback aside from trail-riding on ponies, and was continually kicking the horse in a vain effort to get it to at least trot. Not until the yurt again came into view did it break into a gallop, and I let out a wild yell as we hurtled down the hill. Mike had slightly less trouble controlling his noble beast.

Back at the trailer/yurt, dinner was ready: boiled sheep, flat bread, and bowls of hot fat. A vegetarian before the trip began, I was a little disturbed by the sight of the sheep's head in the middle of the table, but gamely began to gnaw on the leg tossed on my plate. As the bones piled up on the table, I turned to Mike and whispered, "At first I thought nomad life was quaint--but it's actually barbaric!" (Mike, with most of a leg bone in his mouth and a sharp knife in his hand, could only grunt in reply.)

Raised on legends of cowboys living free and wild in an American west that has largely faded into myth, we had found the real thing alive and well in Asia.