Yurt Life Camp, Tash Rabat, Kyrgystan

We spent a night in the stunning valley of Tash Rabat in "Yurts" (pronounced Yurta in Russian). According to Wikipedia a Yurt for those of you that have not stepped inside Central Asia and seen one or heard of one either for that matter is a portable, felt-covered, wood framed dwelling structure used by the Nomadic people in the steppes (dry and arid areas) of Central Asia .

A Yurt is also known as a: ger in Mongolian, gher in Pakistani, boz üý in Kyrgys, kiyiz üy in Kazakh and Uyghur and last but not least kherga or Jirga in Pakistani.

In Kyrgys boz üý(боз үй), literally means "grey house", because of the colour of the felt. Which I think is a pretty good description except for the smell. It should be more like a "grey house that smells like farm animals" and it would be a more accurate description. Or even better still "grey house that smells like farm animals and will leave you and all your worldly possessions smelling like farm animals".

The family who ran the yurt camp had two boys (lucky them) who were about 4 and 7 years old, as soon as we got there the older boy had his ball out to play catch with us all. We had bought some Chinese kites at the Terracotta Warriors in Xian, these were a hit with the boys and made a pretty good sight with the kites flying against a background of mountains in the evening light.

Our Yurt accommodation was pretty basic but comfortable and in hindsight a lot better than hotels that we were to stay in in the future, we slept on mattresses on the carpeted floor, four people per yurt, we were nice and warm and toasty until all the peat or poo or what ever it was in our stove had all burnt away. We wanted to keep the Yurt camp family's puppy "Miro" cause he was so beautiful and so sooky and cold but I was a little worried that one of us would roll over crush him in our sleep, or he'd leave us a present in the night so we surrendered him to our drivers who thought he was just a cute as we did.

The toileting situation was pit toilets, two of which were full to the brim and particularly scary looking, one however was newly built and smelt of fresh paint, which in my mind makes for pretty good air freshener. Showers were non existent, but there was a mountain stream that I gave a miss and a portable sink for washing your face and brushing your teeth in. The women of the Yurt camp put on a pretty good dinner for us all, the highlight of which was the mashed potatoes and the vodka. Breakfast the next day was an equally good spread of pancakes, fabulous apricot jam, little fried dough bits and bottomless cups of regular black tea (finally).

After breakfast four of us decided to go horse riding for an hour, I still don't know if it was a great idea. No body got hurt or anything, but the horses either didn't understand English or they were just very disobedient and we would have covered more ground if we had of just walked for an hour instead! We were expecting a trail ride where the horses know where to go and for one of the local to come with us, but they literally just handed us four horses took our three dollars each and said see you in an hour. It was an experience none the less, especially for Jasmine who has never ridden a horse before. I led her around for a while until I got rope burn from dragging her horse along and realised that by riding one handed I could only ever go round in circles and had no chance of getting my horse to do anything I wanted. So then I ditched her and left her to work out how to drive herself. Brock's horse had a major flatulence problem accompanied by a hatred of all of us, so I guess you all know how that worked out.

While we were in Tash Rabat valley we also managed to look through the old stone ruins there. Tash Rabat means "stone walls" in Kyrgys. The ruins were an old Caravanserai used by the old Silk Road traders, or it also could have been a defensive structure, there are a few theories. The ruins were uncovered in Soviet times and make for some great photos in the morning light with the mountains as a backdrop (detecting a theme here?).

Tash Rabat was an awe inspiring place, it was the best of Kyrgystan all in one place, great food, vodka, friendly people and absolutely stunning scenery.