Our guest blogger is Caroline Eden, a renowned journalist and travel writer from the U.K. specializing in Central Asia aToday’s Traveler’s Tale is from Caroline Eden, a renowned journalist and travel writer from the U.K. specializing in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Caroline’s travel stories have appeared in Conde Nast, Wanderlust and National Geographic Traveler, among other publications. She also is an author, publishing Samarkand, a gorgeous book of recipes and travel stories inspired by her time on the Silk Road.
She traveled with MIR on a portion of The Pamir Highway: From the Tien Shan to the High Pamirs. Here she recalls a stay in a traditional Kyrgyz yurt.
Sound Sleeping in a Yurt
Late-summer rain thundered off the roof of the yurt, splashing bottle-cap-sized holes into the dirt outside. Inside it was warm and cozy. Thick felt, tightly wrapped around the wooden ribs of the yurt, muffled the sound of the falling drops. Mild wood-smoke hung in the air, its escape-route at the top of the yurt temporarily covered up against the deluge.
Sleep comes easy in a setting like this and I leaned into the yurt’s juk (a pile of blankets traditionally placed opposite the entrance), keeping my eyes just open enough to flip through a paperback book while refueling on black tea. Earlier that day, I had travelled on precarious high-altitude roads to the tiny town of Sary Tash from Osh, Kyrgyzstan’s second city. It had been a hair-raising – but exhilarating – half-day journey through thick morning fog with multi-colored bunting marking the eye-popping drops at the side of the roads.
My host family at the yurt homestay had retreated inside their modern brick house, leaving me to my book and romantic notions of yurt living. Beyond the padded walls of the yurt, horses blew steam from their noses and Kyrgyz men tended to their sheep in the damp. Aside from the house and two other yurts there were no other man-made markers on the surrounding landscape.
