This was a CBT yurtstay. It turned out that it was only 35 miles from our house in Tokmok, but it took nearly 5 hours to drive there because there isn't a road over the Shamshy pass. We drove around the mountains to Balykchy to Kochkor and up to the jailoo.
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| Shamsy is the village below that supports the herding in the mountains. A few families live on the jailoo from about April to October to take care of the horses, sheep, cows, and yaks. All are used for meat and/or milk. |
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| Jyldyz studied music in Bishkek and sang a few songs for us after dinner. |
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| Feeding the sheep chip fire. Good fuel and it didn't smell. |
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| Sinister yaks. Acutally, it's just the lighting. They came off the mountain and posed neatly for us. |
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| The demented chicken looking for a way into the yurt. |
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| Jyldyz and her husband stay in the wagon and use the yurt for tourists. We met her father-in-law in the village below and I hoped that she got a least a little of the money we paid since she had to do most of the work for us while we were there. |
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| Cars aren't designed to get to places like this. |
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| The chicken yurt and the sheep chip pile. You can also see the little ditch that brings water down near the yurt. That's the only water source for the family. |
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| The neighbors. |
2 comments:
Wow, this is seriously roughing it. Is this a vacation? And did you get to try all the different kinds of milk?
I only saw Jyldyz milking the cows and I think that's all we drank. I was hoping for yak milk though.
I think it was more an experience than a vacation. My husband and I were joking that when my parents just visited one of my sisters, they took her to a well-equipped house on the ocean. We took them here.
For me though, it was a vacation because I didn't have to cook or deal with the water like I do at home, and those are the two hardest parts for an overnight stay. Pretty much everything else was the same for me. If I stayed longer, figuring out how to clean clothes and people would have become a problem.
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