We arrived. Or rather we stopped. Across an embankment were some yurts – summer home on the jailoo for Kyrgyz nomads - and the driver and the man we had collected on the way got out and walked down the bank. After a while I followed and found them facing a log bridge partly twisted and partly submerged in a raging torrent. The bridge had several planks missing in crucial parts.
I surveyed the torrent.
If I had to cross the bridge – and that seemed highly likely though I'd not even been told that this was our destination– and did fall in then maybe, knowing something about rapids and eddies and stoppers from my canoeing days, I could get out about 100 metres down stream.
That is if I managed to navigate the huge rock at the point where I would most likely fall in. And provided also that I did have some breath left after what was sure to be a breath-taking submersion into icy water. This water was snow-melt.
I was not so confident that either of the men with me would survive such an event. It was unlikely their knowledge of rapids was as good as mine [however rudimentary that was] and, unlike me, one was wearing gumboots and both had on heavy clothes and coats.
However and as these thoughts were entertaining me, the man with gumboots walked confidently onto the bridge, paused for a moment at the most difficult area and then proceeded with feet splayed to balance himself on the three slender trunks that formed the bridge where he now was, and walked across.
It had taken two hours to travel the 25 km to get here in a Lada of indeterminate age. It had either received rough treatment over a short period of time or worn slowly over a long time and suggested to me what the Land Rover our family had had in the 1950s would be like now.
The Lada had arrived but - if our destination was those yurts over the torrent - it was unlikely we would. Or at least not until such time that we had taken on the appearance of the Lada.
On the way we had detoured to collect another man, some planks of wood and two bags of empty plastic drink bottles.
The reason for the planks - and to some extent the man - was now becoming clear but why the plastic drink bottles?
Somewhere there would be an answers though probably only if I could form the question or questions in Kyrgyz or Russian. Unlikely.
A man from the yurts came down and the two men collected rocks and together commenced both raising and twisting the bridge to make it reasonably straight. The third man, who until then had stayed on my side then marched easily across to help them.
Which left me, with no confidence at all about my ability to cross successfully, alone on the other side.
In deference to me I assumed, the three continued raising and twisting the bridge and after a while they started hammering in those planks that we had collected earlier. Much to their and my amusement at some point the hammerhead got separated from the hammer and was lost in the torrent.
They proceeded to replank the bridge with an axe until there were about 2 metres still unplanked. This seemed satisfactory enough for them and overall I had to admit the bridge was now much improved. It was straighter, higher and more planked [though in my view it still needed planks in the most crucial area].
They signalled for me to cross.
Again I did my mental recap about how I would manage when I fell in but proceeded to walk out reasonably confidently until I got to the area with no planks. I had no idea how slippery the logs were, no idea how strong the bridge actually was and no idea whether those rocks they'd used to straighten and raise the bridge would not slip.
After one very tentative step onto the logs I quickly dropped to my knees and crawled.
All done! The bridge had held and I was across.
To mangle a quote from a previous Australian Prime Minister if you are not living in a yurt you are camping out. And they are great places – for summer.
Whole families eat and sleep in one yurt. If you are a tourist you sleep alongside your fellow tourists and any members of the host family that can fit in with you. In one yurt I slept with a French woman on one side and the thirteen year old daughter of the host family on the other.
We walked to the yurts – there were two - where I was greeted warmly. It was as though I had played as much a part in the bridge fixing as they had though my only contributions were to take photos of their efforts and be the only one who had to crawl.
The two yurts were set on a relatively flat piece of ground amongst animal dung. These were nomad herders and animals – horses and sheep in particular – live very close. Cows are not uncommon and occasionally a goat appears among the sheep.
Relative to some yurts there were not very many animals close to these. The main corralling area was probably 50 metres away. Another yurt I had been to had been less than 20 metres from the corralling area, an area that was thick with dung and particularly smelly because it was damp.
Corralling the animals like this has a purpose. The huge amounts of dung are easily collected for drying and then used for heating and cooking.
Just prior to entering someone came with a jug of water and we washed our hands in an ritual manner. No soap was provided and we dried our hands on the common - and seemingly rarely laundered - towel.
We entered, took off our shoes and sat on cushions on a very low bench covering the remainder of the floor of the yurt.
For that morning we went into the yurt I thought of as the dining yurt. The other seemed to be where food was prepared so I thought of that as the kitchen yurt. Unlike other yurts I had been in this one had no table. Instead a plastic cloth was spread out on the floor and we sat cross-legged [for the most part] around it. I had to try very hard to make sure my feet did not creep onto the cloth. Though when they did no-one seemed to mind.
Kyrgyzstan hospitality means the guest is plied with food and drink. And I was.
On the cloth mare's cream, mare's butter, bread and blackcurrant jam appeared.
Someone tore the bread into lumps and sort of scattered some near everyone of us. Then kymmis, fermented mare's milk, was offered.
Kymmis looks like milk though has a fair few small black and brown specks floating in it. It tastes something like yoghurt that has gone sightly off and also has a faintly burnt taste. This burnt taste apparently comes from the lining or caulking of the vessel it is made in. The vessel is normally made of sheepskin though sometimes of wood and the caulking looks and tastes like pine resin. Prior to pouring the kymmis is stirred – or pumped - in this vessel and on stirring it sort of fizzes away for a while.
As we drank this we also ate the bread which we dipped as we liked in the cream, butter or jam. The occasional fly was brushed away or if they happened to get stuck in the cream, butter or jam were picked out and thrown away.
After that meal, which was at about 12:00 and was actually a snack, I went horse riding.
On my return the eating and drinking had been moved to the kitchen yurt. Here the same things were on offer again though in this case the kymmis had been replaced by chai.
This was a rest time in which one of the men practised English using a multilingual phrase book. He was amused by one such phrase, Does the toilet have an outside light? "Joke", he said,everywhere is a toilet and there is no electricity here.
He also told me how when he was young Kyrgyzstan and the Soviet Union were socialist and Stalin and Brezhnev were their great leaders. The USA, China and Europe were all bad. Now the USA, China and Europe are good but life has changed. There are for example no pensions.
I think his point was that while there had been lots of change there'd also been none.
While we men were resting the women were doing something elsewhere so I went off to investigate.
In the other yurt I found pasta being made. Outside and behind the kitchen yurt a big pan was on the boil. As I watched a lot of the liquid was scooped out and put into a smaller container. This was soup. Then water was added to the remaining liquid and then into that went the pasta.
This part of the cooking was the last part. I'd missed the early action but the result was in a large dish nearby.
That dish contained large bones, at least one sheep skull, a big heart, what looked like liver and some large intestine stuffed with something.
Once the pasta was cooked it was doled onto platters and along with the soup and meat taken to the yurt.
This dish is beshbarmak, the national food of Kyrgyzstan. Made in my honour and served in the same manner as the earlier meal.
That is to say, bread was scattered around, the meat was piled onto plates and the occasional fly was picked out as required. If it became necessary to cut the meat then a large knife was passed around. Otherwise you just tore the meat with your hands. And drank the soup with a spoon presumably washed and dried sometime earlier in its life.
I never did find out what the plastic bottles were for. But I can say "thank you" in Russian and Kyrgyz.
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