A number of volunteers live in and around this city, so it’s to Karakol I traveled with other Naryn volunteers for Christmas. Unfortunately, as Brooke and I discovered once we’d already spent half of the day just getting out of our villages and our oblast (province), there are two routes to Karakol from Balykchy, the city at the opposite end of the lake. Of course, we accidentally took the marshrutka along the longest (southern) shore of the second largest alpine lake in the world. Five hours later, after a good conversation explaining our work as volunteers to some of our fellow passengers and later an annoying 45 minutes ignoring 20-something drunk men who kept trying to get our attention in Russian, we arrived, and I unsuspectingly hopped off the bus into a 3-foot snowdrift. Turns out Karakol, though much warmer than Naryn, gets twice the snow.
For the holiday festivities, we gathered in a volunteer’s apartment for a “Southern” Christmas, complete with fried chicken, baked mac’n’cheese, creamed spinach, meatballs, and plenty of cookies (someone’s family had sent them molasses and brown sugar to cook with, bless them). Back at our hosts, we concluded the evening with homemade eggnog. (I was staying with two good volunteer friends, a young married couple from Washington, who graciously let us take as many hot showers we liked—but when you’re in the habit of bathing only once a week, a shower more than any other day seems truly excessive.)
The next day, we drove just out of town to hit Karakol’s beautiful slopes for a day of skiing. As it turned out, the runs were limited (2), but long, nicely groomed, and offered breath-taking, jaw-dropping views of the Lake one side, and the gorges of Karakol valley on the other. (The picture, at right, doesn’t do it justice.) To my delight, I found that my fellow volunteers were as competent skiers as myself, and we spent the day racing down the slopes. It was also remarkably uncrowded for the day after Christmas, the ski rentals were surprisingly top of the line, and there were very few beginners to contend with. (I imagine its too expensive for the average Kyrgyz person to spend money to learn how to ski. The ticket and rentals came to 1300 som—$25 US—or about a seventh of my monthly salary.) For lunch, we hit the lodge, and despite its relatively outrageous prices (to our budgets), I greatly enjoyed a caprese salad (tomatoes in December!!) and cheesecake. I admit, I skipped the main courses, which were all very meaty, but my friends ordered steak, a meat as hard to find in Kyrgyzstan as tomatoes in December.
I would say my eating experience—and the pounds I gained—pretty much sums up the remainder of my holidays. Dinner that night was homemade individual chicken-pot-pies, which I must admit, Brooke and I outdid ourselves on; they were incredible. The next night Mark cooked his homemade lasagna, making the ricotta cheese from scratch. (I hadn’t imagined learning to make Italian food from scratch would go on my “learned-in-Kyrgyzstan” list, but there you have it.) Brooke made cheesy garlic bread to complete the meal, and again, we ate until we could no more. The last night, we headed over to another volunteer’s apartment, singing carols all the way (this really completely my Christmas). He had all the makings for sushi and had found a coconut in the Karakol bazaar! While he rolled the sushi (all veggie and all delicious), I cracked and scraped a coconut to make Papua New Guinea coconut rice. Brooke fried bananas to complete my dessert, and we all left with very full stomachs.
If you can’t have family for the holidays, friends and fantastic food make a pretty good substitute.
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