Making you jailoos?

From: Osh, Kyrgyzstan

After arriving back at Karakol, I headed to Kochkor, a town in the mountains of central Kyrgyzstan used as a jumping-off point to adventure tourism.

Kochkor is home to Community Based Tourism (CBT), one of the most impressive and innovative organizations I've come across in the developing world. The organization aims to build sustainable, grass-roots tourist infrastructure by linking independent travelers with families who follow local traditions (typically herders and nomads). The goal is to make tourist money flow directly to the people who need it most. CBT coordinates yurtstays, horse treks, hikes and
the opportunity to participate in traditional crafts such as carpet-weaving. CBT trains local families on how to meet tourists' needs, and structures the fees so that about 85% of revenues flow directly to local families -- brilliant. I'm not sure how well this would work in non-nomadic countries, although I could see a lot of potential in Southeast Asia and Andean South America.

In the CBT office, I met a group of Peace Corps volunteers from Kazakhstan and joined them on their trip to Song-Kol, a beautiful mountain lake with a yurt camp. They were a very fun bunch of kids and (as always with Peace Corps people) I was highly impressed by their language abilities; 3 spoke perfect Russian and 2 flawless Kazakh.

Lake Song-Kol is massive and remote, a three-hour drive from Kochkor. The road up had dozens of switchbacks and weaved through stunning alpine landscapes. On the way up, we crossed paths with some yaks (the first I've seen this trip):



The temperature difference between the lake and the valleys below is incredible; it could be well over 30 degrees in Kochkor but below 0 in the mountains. The lake is also home to a 'jailoo,' or summer pasture, where local nomads take their flocks from May to September. Along the shore were a number of yurt camps run by local families. The size of the jailoo is difficult to capture with digital photos, but it's beautiful and absolutely immense, with rolling fields for miles. The jailoo where I stayed was so large that it would take 2 hours to cross the width on foot and 7 hours to hike the length.





One of the most exciting things about staying at Song-Kol was sleeping in a yurt. The yurts are mushroom-shaped, semi-permanent tents used by the nomads on the jailoo. The yurt is made up of several layers of wool or yak felt lashed onto a sturdy wooden skeleton.



Inside, the ground is covered with large, rough felt mats (like pool-table felt, but coarser), which are then covered by softer and more elaborate mats and woven rugs. The woven mats also double as blankets if you're cold in the yurt; you can wrap one around yourself while you're hanging out, eating or drinking tea. My yurt was massive, and I had it pretty much to myself, since the group I was with decided to stay in tents. The temperature dropped below zero the second night we were there, but the yurt managed to keep me warm enough.

The Kyrgyz nomads are fantastic hosts. The mother of the host family, Jukun, made incredibly filling and tasty meals for me three times a day, which I ate inside the family yurt (next to "my" yurt). Meals almost always involved some sort of homemade dairy products. Every meal included kaimaq, a sort of buttery sour-cream product made from sheep's milk. They would serve big bowls of it every meal, and you can add it to anything -- homemade bread, rice porridge or stew -- or eat it on its own. Stranger dairy products included kymys, fermented
mare's milk and a Kyrgyz delicacy. If I'm being generous, I would say that kymys is an acquired taste: smoky, a bit leathery-tasting, sour, with yellowy floating bits in it (or was that just mine?) I managed to pack away one bowl of the stuff, but that was it for me. Every meal include multiple rounds of tea drunk while relaxing on the floor mats.





Outside of meals, I spent most of my time playing soccer with the nomad kids, walking around the field, and huddling inside my yurt with the rest of the group to keep warm. On the second day, a traveling salesman in a white felt hat drove up to the yurt camp in a Soviet Lada, peddling candy, preserves and (mostly) vodka. Hilarious, really.

But I can't forget the animals -- the jailoo is full of livestock. A typical nomad family has a herd of sheep, some cattle and a bunch of horses. Ours had mostly horses and a few hairy Kyrgyz sheep dogs. I hired one (a horse, not a dog) from our host family and rode it throughout the day. I don't ride horses often, but it's always a lot of fun. The last time I tried to ride, the horse didn't really follow my instructions, and I ended up looking like an idiot while the horse trotted around in circles. This time, my horse was pretty responsive; I could steer it around, make it stop, and go faster. I didn't really have to go alone, since all of the local kids (who each have their own
donkey) would ride near me to make sure everything was ok. If you've never been babysat by a 7-year-old and his friends, it's quite an experience.

I got back to Kochkor a couple of days ago and started what ended up being a grueling trip to Osh, where I am now. The Kochkor-Osh leg of the trip was supposed to take around 12 hours, mostly driving through stunning countryside. Sounds fun, but because of a major error in my
guidebook, I found myself stranded in the middle of the country and had to take a massive 25-hour detour around the mountains. So much for careful planning!

More about Osh coming up...