Kyrgyzstan: days 1-5

It was hot and dusty; the situation was tense. We sat in the back of the taxi, crammed, trapped. He pressured us, but we would not give in.

Please, sir, we can’t. Please, take us to the hotel. We cannot do what you ask.”

“но вы должны попробовать ферментированное лошадиное молоко, это вкусно!”

“We are too weak. We are cowards. Please let us go.”

“чумыс – киргизский деликатес. вы должны попробовать некоторые! это сделает тебя сильным!”

“We cannot do it. We are pathetic, we are too weak. Please, sir, let us go!”

“Просто сделайте один глоток, и вы увидите, что это вкусно!”

Confused? We were too. I’ll translate the conversation for you – it’ll make more sense.

Please, sir, we can’t. Please, take us to the hotel. We cannot do what you ask.”

“You must try the fermented horse milk, it is delicious!”

“We are too weak. We are cowards. Please let us go.”

“Chumys [the drink] is a Kyrgyz delicacy. You must try some! It will make you strong!”

“We cannot do it. We are pathetic, we are too weak. Please, sir, let us go!”

“Just take one sip and you’ll see it is delicious!”

We relented and each took a sip of the thick white beverage. It was foul, like drinking vinegar that had been used to clean the floor of a barn. It was warm on the tongue and had a smoky aftertaste.

The taxi driver’s face lit up – he was so proud of us for tasting his national drink. He insisted we finish our glasses, but Anil politely gave them back. The driver paid for our drinks – 100 Kyrgyz som (about $1.5 CAD) a piece – and we took off for Bishkek.

This fermented horse milk debacle was just one of the many fascinating experiences that Anil and I have had so far on our trip to Kyrgyzstan. This blog post will cover our first five days in this unusual and amazing central Asian republic.

Anil and I have been friends since high school. We have entertained the idea of visiting a central Asian country for many years and, given the chance this summer, decided to jump on it.

When we told people we were going to Kyrgyzstan, two questions invariably popped up:

• Why?
• Where even is Kyrgyzstan?

I’ll answer these questions now.

“Why?” Because Kyrgyzstan is a (relatively) safe country with world-class hiking, fascinating food, and… is the only country in Central Asia with a lax visa policy – we are allowed to be in the country for 60 days without a visa.

“Where even is Kyrgyzstan?” Kyrgyzstan is a landlocked country with borders to Kazakhstan, China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the north, east, south, and west, respectively. It is about the size of South Dakota and is the place on earth that is the farthest away from any major ocean.

The main intention of our trip was to hike the famous “Ak-Suu Traverse” in the eastern part of the country. This would be a grueling 6-11 day affair over 96 kilometers of high alpine meadows and mountain passes. We would need time to acclimatize and prepare, so our plan was as follows:

Timeline: 20 days

Day 1: Arrive in Bishkek

Days 2-4: Ala-Archa National Park for a prep hike

Day 5: Return to Bishkek

Day 6: Travel to Karakol from Bishkek

Day 7: Travel to Jyrgalan (start of hike) from Karakol

Days 8-18: Hike the Ak-Suu Traverse

Day 19: Have a short beach holiday at Lake Issyk-Kul

Day 20: Return to Bishkek to fly home

Of course, many things have not gone as planned. That is the nature of this kind of “exotic” travel and we have embraced every unexpected turn. Here’s how it’s really gone:

Day one: June 6

We arrived at the Manas Airport in Bishkek at 4:45AM. (Side note: everything in Kyrgyzstan is named for Manas, a historical figure who fought off ancient enemies and united the 40 tribes of modern day Kyrgyzstan.)

Drowsy and jet-lagged to the max, we ambled through a very friendly and relaxed passport control. The customs agent asked us no questions – possibly because she knew no English. Most people in Kyrgyzstan speak little to no English.

With our passports stamped, we walked towards the exit. We were immediately accosted by taxi drivers and men selling SIM cards. We thought the SIM cards might be a scam, but they were no joke. For $20 CAD, we got SIM cards with unlimited high-speed data for a full month. They have worked brilliantly – I am writing this blog post with that data!

We exchanged some money ($150 CAD gets you about 10,000 Kyrgyz som), picked up a few 80 som cappuccinos, and called a “Yandex” to take us to the hotel. Yandex is the Kyrgyz version of Uber. It makes getting around the city and country incredibly easy and affordable; for context, the 30 minute drive from the airport cost us about $8 CAD.

We were picked up by Tima, a friendly young man who was ecstatic to see some foreigners in his country. He spoke absolutely no English and we spoke no Russian or Kyrgyz. No problem – we began our first conversation of many using nothing but the Google translate app to communicate.

These conversations usually go something like this:

“здравствуйте, молодые люди, вам нравится Кыргызстан?”

“Sorry, we don’t speak Russian or Kyrgyz. Only English.”

“О чем ты говоришь?”

At this point, either Isaac or Anil types some question like “What is your name?” or “What is your favorite Kyrgyz food” into Google translate and shows the driver the translation.

“хахаха да меня зовут Тима! моя любимая еда бешбармак! 😄”

Then we start saying things like “I love Kyrgyzstan” and “We love Kyrgyz food” in broken Russian. The driver laughs, asks us some inaudible question: repeat for the rest of the taxi ride.

Tima dropped us at our hotel and gave us his phone number. “If you need anything in Kyrgyzstan,” he said via Google translate, “just give me a call.” We checked into our hotel, showered, and rushed to grab some breakfast.

It was a real Russian-Kyrgyz-Uzbek-Kazakh-etc. smorgasbord of dishes. Some of our favorites included pirozski (a fried dough filled with scrambled eggs and leeks), pieces of bread topped with butter, tuna, and cheese, crepes with condensed milk, and apple cake. At breakfast we met a few other tourists. Of note were two older French gentlemen who had ridden their motorcycles all the way from Switzerland to Bishkek.

Feeling reinvigorated, we were ready for some exploring. Bishkek has a very effective (if disorganized) public transit system that includes taxis, Yandex, electric tram busses, and our favourite: marshrutkas. Marshrutkas are ubiquitous in many post-Soviet countries and are essentially minibuses that drive specific routes continuously throughout the day. They are usually packed to the brim, with people standing in the aisles and between seats. Catching a marshrutkas is easy: you wave them down as you might a taxi. If there is physically enough space to cram you inside, they will stop.

Using a combination of buses and marshrutkas, we hit the main city sights:

• Osh Bazaar, a huge market selling fruits, nuts, clothes, electronics, building materials, live animals, etc. We tried kurut here, which is curdled, fermented milk dried into snack-size pellets. It tastes like pungent feta with the texture of chalk
• Ala-Too Square, a huge open plaza
• The Kyrgyz State Museum
• The Bishkek Ferris wheel

At the Osh Bazaar, we both bought kalpaks, traditional Kyrgyz felt hats worn by men all over the country. It is a considerable honor for Kyrgyz people to see foreigners wearing a kalpak, and people always smile and point at our hats when we wear them.

We then headed to Cafe Faiza, a restaurant renowned for its traditional Kyrgyz cuisine, and ordered a plate of plov (rice pilaf with meat, usually lamb, beef, or yak) and manti (dumplings filled with lamb or beef and onions). The meal was served with chalap (curdled milk diluted with water) and cost us about $12 CAD total for an obscene amount of food.

Lastly, we headed to an outdoor store to buy isobutane fuel for our prep hike the next day and to a grocery store to buy some more food for the hike (we bought Russian mayonnaise, a bottle of salt, some chocolate, a bottle of olive oil, and Kyrgyz instant coffee).

Exhausted and near-delirious from jet lag, we headed back to our hotel. Anil fell asleep as soon as he hit the bed while I (Isaac) was suddenly hit with an insane bout of stomach upset. It was a multi hour battle, but I came out victorious. I hit the bed and fell asleep in minutes.

Our general impressions from that first day were as follows:

• Bishkek feels like if a major Indian city was part of the Soviet Union
• Everything is very clean, almost spotless. There is absolutely no garbage on the streets or sidewalks
• Much of the infrastructure is in rough shape and probably 70% of the buildings are Soviet relics
• The city feels very safe; people either don’t seem to care about us or are very nice. There’s no haggling except for taxi drivers

With one Kyrgyz night in the books, we were ready for the mountains.

Day Two: June 7

The plan for today was to start our 3-day prep hike in the Ala Archa National park, just a 1-hour drive from our hotel in Bishkek.

We woke up at 5:30AM and headed down for breakfast. The spread today included crepes, buttered bread with various toppings, pigs in a blanket, instant coffee, French fries, cakes, fried eggs, pirozki, rice gruel, tea, jams, cheeses, sausages, and condensed milk.

Breakfasted and ready to go, we packed our hiking bags. They were overflowing due to the amount of food we were carrying (enough to last us both 13 days of really intense hiking). Each of our bags likely weighed 45-50 pounds.

We ordered a Yandex; within minutes, an elderly man driving a Neolithic Mazda pulled up the hotel. The car had a cracked windshield and no seatbelts for the driver or passengers. With a smile, he took our bags, exclaimed “альпинист!” (alpinists!), and we were off. It was 800 som for over an hour’s ride to the National Park.

We noticed that the road to the park was dotted with hundreds of policemen. We thought this was unusual, but ignored it because we had heard that the Kyrgyz police are very strict about motorists driving above the speed limit.

After a gorgeous drive, we arrived at the park gates. The whole area was covered by police vehicles and officers; our taxi was promptly pulled to the side of the road.

Our driver made an “X” 🙅‍♂️symbol with his hands, and said (via Google translate) that we would need to wait for 3 hours to enter the park. No reason was given – he told us he had no idea why.

We soon met another group of tourists who had similarly been denied entry to the park. Their guide informed us that the park would be closed for the entire day because the President of Kyrgyzstan and the Emir of Qatar would be visiting.

Embracing the change of plans, we made the decision to start our hike right from the taxi. Technically, it is legal to wild camp basically anywhere in Kyrgyzstan, and so as long as we avoided Ala-Archa park, we could go wherever we desired.

We gave our driver his money and started walking off into god-knows-where rural Kyrgyzstan. We had no final destination in mind; mountains surrounded us, there was no wrong way to go (except towards the park).

The foothills of Ala-Archa were gorgeous. The steep grassy mounds were dotted with summer wildflowers, poppies, and extremely poisonous Aconitum soongaricum (wolfsbane) flowers. We could see Bishkek on the one side and the colossal, snow-capped peaks of Ala-Archa on the other.

Though the scenery was spectacular, the walking was horrendous. We were whacking through thorny bushes, mud, and sand and it was nearly 40 degrees Celsius. There was no “path,” rather many paths made by horses, sheep, and cows that had been led through the region by shepherds. Our backs hurt, our feet ached, and our shoulders were chafing against the straps of our mammoth backpacks. The cardio exercise was also a shock to our systems; we stopped frequently, panting, sweating bullets, cursing. We had certainly not developed our “trail legs” yet – the first day of real walking is always the toughest (so we thought).

After about 3 hours of walking, we stopped at a stream to filter water. All water in Kyrgyzstan should be filtered or purified before drinking due to the presence of livestock everywhere. We had a quick lunch of 2 packets of instant noodles each and continued our walk.

We came to an unnamed village with unnamed streets. Many of the houses were in poor condition and there were many abandoned buildings. We saw cows freely roaming and horses being milked to produce chumys, the famous fermented mare’s milk beverage. The few locals we met were incredibly happy to see us and many encouraged us to try the local “форель” (rainbow trout) that was on offer at a few restaurant shacks.

With 15 or so kilometers on our poor knees, we decided it was time to call it for the day. Rather than wild camp, we thought we might stay in a nice hotel/lodge we had passed earlier in the day, so we made our way there.

The manager informed me, once again via Google translate, that although they had no rooms available for the night, she would be happy to offer us a horseback riding tour of the region the following day for 2,000 som. I politely declined and instead found a guesthouse on Google Maps that looked like it might have a room. I gave them a call which went something like this:

“Hi, do you have any rooms available tonight?”

“No room.”

“It says online that you have a free room in the guesthouse?”

“No room. Privyet bye-bye.”

“Please, my friend and I need a room to stay in tonight in your guesthouse.”

“Ok. There is room. $30.”

We made our way to the guesthouse, which was smack in the middle of the village. We waited at the front gate for 30 minutes until a disgruntled older lady let us in. She led us to our room, a simple twin room with an attached toilet and sink.

The guesthouse was perfectly nice, and was an example of the incredible value for money in Kyrgyzstan. Finding rooms is quick and easy, too, and almost all of them include breakfast. Reading Google maps reviews for hotels and guesthouses in Kyrgyzstan is hilarious and is a good way to choose a place to stay. One review for this guesthouse said “the shower was not in the room, but it was.” They were absolutely correct – the shower was not in the room, but it did exist (in a separate part of the house).

Exhausted, we enjoyed some well-earned showers and headed for dinner. The hostess made us each a bowl of dill-carrot-onion soup with pelmenyi, a sort of boiled beef dumpling. We drank some sweetened tea, discussed our plans for the next day, and headed to bed. Sleeping with the cool mountain breeze was lovely.

Day Three: June 8

Today was attempt number 2 of getting into Ala-Archa park. Again, it wasn’t so easy.

We enjoyed a breakfast of freeze-dried oatmeal and tried to call a Yandex to take us from the village to the start of our hike, a 20 kilometer drive into the park. No Yandexes were available, so we asked our host to call us a taxi.

A beast of a man named Besha pulled up in his pimped out Mazda Miata (again, with a cracked windshield and no seatbelts) and took our bags. Our bags would not both fit in the trunk, so Isaac had to sit up front with Besha. At what felt like the speed of light, he took off and we were soon in the mountainous beauty of Ala-Archa.

After a hair-raising 20 minutes of speeding down mountain roads, we arrived at the trailhead. The plan for our 3 days in the park were as follows:

• Day one: walk to Ratsek station (a high alpine base camp) from the trailhead, about 7 kilometers distance and 1,500m of elevation gain.
• Day two: summit Uchitel Peak, a 4,540m mountain that was 3.4 kilometers from the Ratsek station
• Day three: hike back down to the trailhead and catch a taxi back to Bishkek

Excited, we started phase 1 of our plan. The path to Ratsek station had acceptable terrain, but it was extremely hot and we were aerobically exhausted within minutes. We thought that the previous day’s hike would be the worst – we quickly learned how naive we had been.

Over about 5 hours, we stopped at a number of streams and a gorgeous waterfall. We grew exponentially more tired as the day progressed, but the scenery more than compensated.

On our (literal) last legs, we arrived at the Ratsek station basecamp. We were astonished by the beauty of the high alpine meadow surrounded by 5,000m+ peaks and glaciers. We dropped our bags on a tent spot and began to explore.

There were a number of other people present; a group of 3 Austrians in their thirties (two BMW engineers and one orthopedic surgeon), 2 German rock climbers, 2 Russian rock climbers, a Canadian family of 4 from Kelowna, and a few others like Kyrgyz mountain guides.

The Ratsek station featured a namesake mountain hut that offered meals, cigarettes, and vodka for insanely low prices. Dinner was 800 som, 1-liter bottles of Coke and Fanta were 250 some, and 1-liter bottles of premium vodka were just 1000 som. All of these products had to be brought up by foot – there is no road or cable car to the hut.

An exceptional feature of the base camp was the outhouse. This was a toilet to make all other toilets jealous. The walk towards it required climbing up a ridge of loose scree and sand that essentially required boots and hiking poles. I was terrified to make the walk every time – falling off the side of the ridge would have been as easy as taking one wrong step.

The “toilet” itself was perched on the side of the ridge overlooking a huge glacier; it was a metal structure with wooden slats and a rectangular hole in the ground where you could squat and do your business. It creaked and shook when you stepped onto the platform. Below the structure was a mountain of excrement almost as impressive as the 5,000m peaks that surrounded us – it was horrendous. Usually, my greatest fear in using a drop toilet is that I will fall through the hole and into the void below. This time, my fear was that I would fall through the hole and slide down the mountain.

After setting up our tent, we enjoyed a dinner of freeze dried rice and vacuum-sealed paneer curries. With millions of stars above and the wind howling between the peaks, we retreated into the tent and slept like babies.

Day 4: June 9

We woke up bright and early when the sun turned our tent into a sauna. It is easy to forget how intense mountain sunshine can be.

We wolfed down a hearty breakfast of tortillas with tuna paste and mayonnaise and freeze-dried granola with blueberries. Today would be a big one – the summit day for Uchitel Peak – and we needed serious calories.

We filtered 6 liters of water and packed our bags with enough snacks to feed a small Amazonian tribe. We donned our hats, sunscreen, trekking poles, and we were off. We had big smiles on our faces – these did not last.

After a 5-minute gentle walk away from the campsite, we began the hardest trek of our lives. The ascent was absolutely horrendous, unspeakably steep. There was no path for most of the way; we had to follow stone cairns and our intuition to find the best way up.

The terrain included sand, scree, jagged exposed rock, huge boulders, and ice and snow. The hardest terrain by far was the jagged exposed rock; we often had to put down our trekking poles and use our hands to climb from boulder to boulder. Isaac hated every second of this but Anil was having a blast. Both of us were aerobically exhausted after just a few minutes of walking and the increasing altitude did not help with this.

I take altitude sickness very seriously – if either Anil or I had started showing symptoms of HACE or HAPE, we would turn back immediately. On this day, however, we just felt like rubbish because we were so tired from hours of intense exercise.

We neared the summit after 4 hours of pure suffering; it was a constant uphill battle. There were no switchbacks or “nice” sections of the trail. Every step was (in my opinion) hair-raising and offered no chance for respite.

The final ridge to the summit required us to don our “microspikes,” which are strap-on crampons that allow surprisingly good grip on snow and ice. This ice/snow walking was comparatively very pleasant, and we were at the summit in minutes.

The peak was marked with with a rusty shovel and sign indicating that the summit was 1,000 meters lower than we expected. In any case it was a thrilling view and was freezing due to the wind and altitude. 5,000+ meter peaks surrounded us in every direction, with untouched glaciers and shimmering mountain streams. Every few minutes we could hear a deep rumble, similar to that of a jet taking off, which we realized was the thunderous sound of avalanches occurring on faraway peaks. It was surreal.

Although excited to be at the peak, we weren’t feeling very good. I lost my appetite but forced down an entire chocolate bar while Anil enjoyed a packet of instant noodles. Rather than feeling the effects of the altitude, I was just nervous about the route down – the way up was horrifying enough.

Cold, tired, but still in awe of the beauty of the summit, we started the route down. We expected it to be fast, with gravity on our team this time. This was not the case – the descent took longer than the ascent. We had to take it extremely slow because the route was so treacherous.

While it took us more than 4 hours to get down, it felt like minutes because of the near-constant adrenaline rush.

We made the walk back into camp like two very happy, very relieved zombies. After a congratulatory hug, we laid down our packs and enjoyed a humongous dinner of freeze-dried lasagna and spaghetti. I was so tired that I don’t even remember falling asleep.

Day 5: June 10

Day 5 was so crazy that it almost warrants its own blog post. Rather, I’ll jump right into it.

We woke up at 8:00 but needed to wait until 11:00 to descend. A forecast showed thunderstorms in the valley until 11:00, so we were better off at the mountain camp until after that time.

We made the knee-busting hike back down to the trailhead. Still, this was a comparatively easy hike because it was downhill and we had already experienced the full spectrum of hiking pain over the past three days.

In just 3 hours we made it back to the trailhead. We used a paid washroom (10 som per person) and headed to a shashlik (grilled, skewered meat served with raw onions and vinegar) restaurant at the entrance of the park. For just $10 we devoured a grilled feast of chicken, beef, lamb, and local bread, all washed down with a cold Макси-чаи grapefruit iced tea.

We tried to call a Yandex to take us back to Bishkek; no luck. We found a taxi who agreed to a 1500 som ride, which was undeniably a ripoff but still pretty good value. Taxi drivers and shopkeepers usually type numbers into the calculator apps of their phones here to agree on prices; this fine gentleman did just that with “1500.”

We hesitantly hopped into the car. It reeked of smoke and no windows other than the driver’s were openable. The driver was gruff and did not want to chat; he drove incredibly fast and just had a poor vibe about him. He gave us the creeps.

He asked to see the address of our hotel; we gave it to him, and he aggressively typed “1500 + 500” into his calculator app, implying that we had to pay extra (for absolutely no reason). This is a common scam in taxis and we repeatedly said “no.” He insisted on the extra charge, but eventually acquiesced.

Soon after this he called someone on his phone – this is never a good sign in a taxi and was the tipping point for me and Anil. We asked him if we could get out the car immediately – he aggressively stopped on the side of the road, about 5 kilometers deep into the National Park’s mountain road, and kicked us out. He shouted that we owed him 500 som for wasting his time – he was furious – and we decided to just give the poor soul the money so that we would never have to see him again.

He drove off, and we were stranded in a random parking lot many kilometers away from either of the park gates. We were a little shaken but relieved that we followed our intuition and removed ourselves from an uncomfortable situation. Here was us, happy to be stuck on the road:

We once again tried to call a Yandex; we were unsuccessful. Within minutes, though, a Kyrgyz lady and her family walked over to us. They spoke very little English but were able to understand our predicament. The entire family of 8 or 9 adults all engaged in a heated discussion about how they could best help us. After a few minutes, the obvious Big Papa of the family (wearing a cowboy hat) decreed that his son and daughter would drive us 15 kilometers to the front gate of the park, where we could catch a taxi or Yandex back to Bishkek.

And so it was: the incredibly nice son and daughter drove us to the gate in their little Mazda and seemed thrilled to be helping us out. They asked us questions about Canada and how we enjoyed Kyrgyzstan so far. They dropped us off at the front gate, and we thanked them profusely for helping us out. In true Kyrgyz fashion, they drove away with a smile, asking nothing more of us. This was a heartwarming experience and is just one of many examples of the incredible hospitality and kindness we’ve experienced here.

It took only a few minutes to find a legit taxi driver at the park gates. We agreed to a 1000 som fee for the ride, and we were off.

This driver was an absolute pleasure – his name was Mischa – and he was thrilled to have some foreigners in his car. He chatted with us nonstop, apparently not realizing that we had no idea what he was saying, and was laughing raucously. We used our Google translate tactics to express to him how much we love Kyrgyzstan and how passionate we are about Kyrgyz food. He smiled and laughed, though we soon realized that we had flown too close to the sun.

Isaac, in a naive bout of stupidity, told the driver that he “хочу попробовать чумыс”, or that he “wanted to taste the Kyrgyz delicacy of chumys,” which is fermented horse milk. (Side note: this is a drink that is famously disliked by foreign tourists, who complain of serious stomach upset after even the smallest tastes.) Upon hearing this, the driver became elated, almost ecstatic. We thought he was just happy to hear about our embracement of Kyrgyz culture. Really, he had other plans.

The driver took a sudden detour down a true country road, the type where there’s only one lane but two directions of moving cars. We thought it might be a time-saving detour, a sort of local’s shortcut, but this was wrong.

We pulled up to side of the road in front of a yurt surrounded by little children and an elderly women dressed in colorful robes. A healthy female horse was happily munching on grass next to the yurt.

Perched on a small plastic table was a Fanta bottle filled with a silvery-white liquid. There were glasses on the table and a small money box. Our hearts were beating out of our chests; we knew what was coming. We knew we had no escape. We would be tasting the legendary chumys whether we liked it or not.

Mischa waltzed out of the car and ordered us each a tall glass of drink. We stayed firmly in the car, with no intention of drinking the drink. We did not want travelers diarrhea this early into our trip, and we certainly didn’t want anything more pernicious like an intestinal worm. We stayed glued to our seats.

The driver, obviously having the time of his life, pulled open Anil’s door. He gave us each a cup and began a long campaign of trying to get us to drink. He smiled in front of our terrified faces – the local children and grandmother seemed to find this hilarious too. We also found it hilarious, deep down. We had secretly been hoping for an experience like this, one which is apparently guaranteed for every real visitor to Kyrgyzstan, so we had smiles on our faces too.

Via Google translate, we kept making excuses to the driver as to why we could not have the drink. We said things like “he cannot drink milk” and “we are too weak” and “we are cowards”; we made retching sounds upon showing the driver pictures of milk; we said we are deathly allergic. None of this worked – we realized we were in too deep – and finally took our sips.

Rarely are things as foul as we expect them to be – this is true for life in general. This chumys, however, was even worse than expected. It was warm and had particulates of either sawdust or soot. It was extremely sour and had a supremely smoky aftertaste. As we sipped, we pretended to enjoy, giving the driver a thumbs up. He knew we hated every second, he knew we were suffering, and damn, was he proud of us.

Though he encouraged us to drink the whole glass, everyone involved knew that would never happened. Anil eventually got out the car and physically placed our cups back on the plastic table. No one was upset, no one was offended. We did what we were asked and we had become truly respectful visitors of Kyrgyzstan because of it.

Mischa returned to his seat and drove us back to Bishkek. We felt a little bit sick in the car, almost as if we had taken a few sips of vodka, but we were A-okay. Overall, trying chumys was absolutely worth it.

Mischa dropped us off, we thanked him for our induction into Kyrgyz culture, and he was off. We checked into our hotel, showered, cranked up the AC, and passed out.

We had no idea that the following day would be the craziest yet!

Thank you for reading this first blog post about our trip to Kyrgyzstan. There will be a few more – stay tuned!