If you're feeling Rousseauvian, you should go to Paris. I went instead to Kochkorka. I was probably the first American tourist ever to go there, the first customer of a new Kyrgyz travel agency whose name translates, I think, into "Holidays with Sheep." They offered to put me up with a typical Kyrgyz family in a typical Kyrgyz mountain village. How could I pass that up? I asked Jeanette, my UN volunteer, whether she was up for a mountain vacation. "We'll stay in a yurt in the jailoo (high summer pasture)," I said. "It'll be cheap." She liked that word. She'd go.

      Nothing in Kyrgyzstan is ever easy. We had to coordinate our trip with the agency's people in Kochkorka. We couldn't tell them when we were coming, because we couldn't call them. We tried every day for a week, but the phones never worked. Phones in Kochkorka only work for a few hours a day, and I could never figure out which hours they were. In fact, I still don't know whether those phones ever work at all, and I have no evidence that they do. I did finally get in touch with someone in Bishkek who had to go out to Kochkorka every once in a while to see if some Swiss agricultural volunteers were alive and well, and I sent a message with him to our travel contact there. A couple of days later, a woman who identified herself as the Kochkorka tourism coordinator called to tell me they were excited about our visit, and yes, we could spend a week at the jailoo. No, no! Not a week, I told her. Just a couple of days! She didn't speak very good Russian, I don't speak Kyrgyz, the line was bad, so we just yelled past each other for ten minutes. When I hung up I had no idea what we'd be doing in Kochkorka, nor even how long we'd be there.

      On Friday we headed down the valley and over the Tian Shan mountains (Chinese for "the mountains of heavenly beauty") to Kochkorka. My driver, Akram, was concerned about taking us to a place he seemed to consider at the ends of the Earth. "You don't know anything about these people. There's nothing there. What if you get there and want to leave? You won't be able to get in touch with me." The closer we got to Kochkorka, the more relentless became his drum-beat of worry. We arrived in late afternoon and found the "tourism coordinator's" house with no trouble (there weren't that many streets). Akram asked her immediately when he should come pick us up. "Why come all the way from Bishkek for that! We'll find them a ride here." Akram looked at me with alarm. "They'll bring you back in a Lada. Do you really want to drive all the way back to Bishkek in a Lada?" We'd come in a very nice Audi, and I didn't really want to go back in a Lada, but I also didn't want Akram coming all the way back to pick us up. "Don't worry, we'll be fine." He looked skeptical, but left without further comment.

      Allow me to jump ahead here. Nothing bad happened to us on this trip. I'm not trying to foreshadow catastrophe, only to convey something about Akram (you'll meet him again in another chapter) and to indicate the dismal view people like him take of a vacation in a place like Kochkorka. We did end up going home in a Lada, it really was uncomfortable, but then, that's Kyrgyzstan for you.

      The travel coordinator took us to meet our host family. On the way she told us it was certainly too late to go up to the jailoo, but we could go up there in the morning. The house she took us to was actually a group of small buildings surrounded by trees and a wall, a pleasant looking compound. Our host was a sixty-ish man, stocky, with very heavy eye-brows and a smoker's cough, Dzhargul. He ushered us into the dining room, and his daughters, daughters-in-law and grand-daughters immediately sprang into action. I rarely heard them speak while we were there, but they seemed to stand at attention throughout the house, ready to bring food and drink the instant one of us walked into the dining room. Now they put out a meal, and the first thing they brought was kumis.

      What's kumis, you ask? Mare's milk. I'm told that it was traditionally put in a leather bag which was pounded with sticks until the heat of the beating brought the milk to a simmer. Then it sat in the sun for a while, long enough to ferment. The result was a slightly thickened, somewhat sour drink that tastes like (forgive my crude comparison, but I want to be strictly accurate here) vomit. Oddly, the taste only hits you on the second or third sip. The first sip left me with the vague impression that I didn't like what I was drinking, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the reason. At the second sip it started to dawn on me, and at the third I was suddenly nauseated. On my travels I've eaten a lot of things I didn't like, and I'm pretty good at suppressing the gag reflex, but this was just too much. My entire upper GI tract stormed into rebellion, and at the same time I burst into a sweat. I imagine I blanched, too, or turned very red. Dzhargul had been watching me, and now he burst into laughter.

      The daughters brought out another version of kumis, this time made from cow's milk and much milder. It was almost drinkable, but still ghastly. I forced some down out of politeness and to show that American men aren't wimps. They followed it with big flat loaves of bread (they slap the dough onto the sides of a brick oven to cook), bowls of preserved fruit, a bowl of thick, slightly sweet smetana (a sort of sour cream), and some very grainy butter. The food was delicious, and it helped settle my stomach after the kumis assault. One daughter stood at the samovar and made sure our bowls of tea were kept full. I decided the tea was the only thing they had to offer that I could drink safely, so that's all I drank in Kochkorka.

      After our meal Jeanette asked to be taken to the bathroom and toilet. The brochure we'd gotten from the travel agency had proudly proclaimed "clean outdoor toilets." Outhouses or trees? I raised an eyebrow when Jeanette got back, and she muttered "I've seen worse, but not in Kyrgyzstan." The outhouse was outside the wall of the compound in a small cow field, right by the road. There were wide gaps in its walls, the better to watch the neighbors go by and chat with the cows. The floor was made of planks with a hole cut in them and spots marked out for your feet. Outhouses at higher class places are usually treated with lime to reduce the smell; this one reeked with eye-watering ferocity. I contemplated it a minute, considered running up into the mountains before bed, then considered not eating or drinking for the next three days. In the end I decided that if Dzhargul's 90-year old mother could deal with it, so could I. Jeanette was worried about going out there at night, what with pushy cows in the pasture and the danger of a mis-step in the dark. She'd forgotten her flashlight and knew I wouldn't fish her out if she fell in the hole. I loaned her mine and warned her she'd have to retrieve it if she dropped it. In fairness, I walked all through that town while we were there, and I didn't see another outhouse as solid-looking as Dzhargul's; none smelled any sweeter.

      The complex consisted of the main house, a barn, an outdoor kitchen, a sauna next to the sheep-pen, and a seperate bedroom. The seperate room belonged to Dzhargul and his wife. I never got an accurate picture of who lived in the main house - Dzhargul's mother, some daughters and sons and grandkids, but there was always someone wandering in I hadn't seen before, always a different girl stationed in the dining room to serve tea. Jeanette and I slept in the main house that first night, on thick shyrdaks and sheep skins. It was comfortable, but we were looking forward to a yurt on the jailoo.

      The next day, Saturday, we went up to the jailoo. We had to stop every half mile or so to put water in the radiator. We'd be driving along, all of a sudden the inside of the "jeep" (actually a Zil that looked sort of jeepish) would get really hot, we'd stop and Dzhargul's son would put more water in the radiator. There wasn't always a road, sometimes the way was especially steep and rocky, and when it was we'd have to add water every quarter mile. At one stop Dzhargul just wandered over the hill with us in tow, and on the other side was a yurt, a herd of horses, and a small shack. It was the low pasture of some friends who invited us in for kumis and bread. I declined the kumis with an ostentatious show of regret, and the woman of the yurt sent her son out to milk the cow for me. We sat down on sheep-skins and shyrdaks to eat our bread, and the kids stared at us in fascination. When we'd eaten I said "rakhmat" (thank-you), looked at the ground and moved my hands across my face the way the Kyrgyz do, and the kids cheered and laughed at the unexpected display of good manners. Then it was back to the jeepoid Zil to go further up the mountain.

      We kept going long after the road had vanished for good. The son finally stopped and declared that the Zil could go no further, and anyway, we were out of water for the radiator and were well past the last stream. So we hiked, up hill and down, mostly up and sometimes sharply so. After a couple of hours we made it to a big, almost treeless flat area between two peaks. There was a herd of horses, a small sod shack, and a yurt. We were finally at the high summer pasture used by Dzhargul and his family. At least that's what my legs and lungs told me, but Dzhargul told me that it was only the medium pasture; they'd move to the high summer pasture in a couple of weeks. We were ushered into the shack for another snack of milk, bread, and smetana. Alas, Dzhargul had no cow - they served us mare's milk. Ugh. I think the nasty taste of kumis is partly due to the flavor of mare's milk. Kumis is worse to the nth degree, but nothing made from mare's milk tastes good in my opinion. The bread was excellent.

      After lunch we sat outside and enjoyed the view. Jeanette decided she wanted to milk a horse. One of the kids there demonstrated how to do it and was promptly kicked for his effort. Jeanette decided she'd rather not milk a horse. She'd rather go riding. She was offered the horse with a saddle; I'd have to go bareback. Dzhargul jumped into the saddle to show her how good the horse was. The cinch broke when he did and he landed on the other side of the horse on his rear. I thought about how long it would take to get down the mountain, back to Kochkorka, from there to Bishkek, then to Almaty in Kazakhstan to the international airport to catch a plane to Germany and get to a hospital, then decided I'd really rather walk than ride. Jeanette suddenly remembered that her back goes out when she sits too long on a horse. I could see in everyone's eyes, even the toddler's, the snide suspicion that these Americans were wimps. They smiled and agreed that it was really a nice day for a walk. One of the little kids (about 12?) vaulted onto a horse and took off, followed by his sister. Dzhargul asked where in America I'm from. "California," this humiliated Texan replied.

      If you're waiting for something interesting to happen, forget it. Nothing interesting happens in the jailoo. Not much happens at all. You make bread, milk the horses, check on the sheep, milk the horses, ride a horse, milk the horses. It's a place to just be, just to experience. As it had to, the time came for Jeanette to experience the toilet facilities. "Where is it?" she asked. Her answer was a hand waved vaguely in the direction of some bushes. We were in a large, bowl shaped, treeless pasture, and the slightest privacy was a half-mile away. Kyrgyz, like Americans, have a sense of personal privacy, but over different things and expressed in different ways than in America. If you're squatting to relieve yourself on the side of a hill, you're invisible as far as they're concerned. Any embarassment inherent in the situation falls on the person who's careless or rude enough to notice you. Jeanette is really quite remarkable - a 55-year old American woman who got rid of all her posessions and moved to central Asia as a UN volunteer for four years - but this really exceeded the limits of her cultural flexibility. She looked at those scrubby little bushes with loathing.

      By the end of the afternoon we were sunburned and dirty, and now it was getting cold. This felt like camping, but worse - wilderness camping surrounded by horses and sheep. Dzhargul pointed at the yurt and said we were welcome to it, but he'd be heading back to town. We didn't even stop to consult each other when we both said we'd prefer to go with him. We hiked back to the Zil (Dzhargul rode and nearly went over a cliff - one of those things they never show you in National Geographic), gave it a push to get it going, piled in and coasted to the nearest stream, watered the radiator, and were back in town in time for dinner.

      The next day we went to a livestock bazaar. It's the place to pick up a horse or a sheep or whatever it is you want to milk, ride, or eat. Jeanette thought it would be nice to buy Dzhargul a sheep as a thank-you for the weekend. I gave her a that's-the-most-ridiculous-idea-I've-heard-this-year look and suggested a box of chocolates instead. Jeanette is really a smart, good-hearted woman, but she came up with ideas like that far too often. Dzhargul took us to an ash-khana run by his brother, and his sister-in-law served us some manti with hot sauce. Then it was home for another meal. A son I hadn't met yet was there and offered to take us back to Bishkek. We'd only been gone two nights, but I was burned and dirty and tired, and home sounded great. Also, I was planning to go to Moscow in a couple of days and wanted to relax a little before going. More on that trip in another chapter.