cryptids, yurts and wedding mobs

(Karakalpakistan Part 2)

The road to Ayaz-Qala fortress is quite unusual, in that it's both a highway and a dead end. The asphalt suddenly gives way to sand at the crest of a hill, and that's it: you've arrived at civilisation's outer limits. It's cool :-)

At this point, if you look right you'll see the fortress in all its lonesome splendour. If you look left, you'll see a little cluster of camel-brown yurta squatting in the desert, with a few assorted out-buildings gathered around them. This is the Ayaz-Qala yurta camp.

In case you're wondering, a yurta (anglicised as "yurt" for some reason) is one of those portable, tent-like dwellings made from wood and felt, most often associated with Mongolia* but also native to the traditional 'steppe folk' of Central Asia. Although very few people actually live in them nowadays, yurta occupy a significant place in the national psyche of Kazakh and Kyrgyz people. They also seem to be swimming around like bell-shaped croutons in the cultural soup of western Uzbekistan. Which was lucky for us, 'cause it meant there was somewhere for us to have lunch out here in the Kyzylkum.

The plan was basically to remain here for an hour or so, just long enough to eat and have coffee. But the woman who runs the yurt camp invited us to stay overnight and enjoy a whole evening (and morning) in the desert. Given the incredible location, the great price (a 70% off-season discount) and the fact that the owner was rumoured to make fantastic plov**, this was an offer to good to refuse.

So now that I've spent a night in a yurta (something I had to do at some point in Central Asia), here's what I can tell you about them:

First, inside they're incredibly plush, elegant and cosy. The interior is lined with traditional carpets and decorative cloths, with a stove in the middle, all topped by the impressive shangyrak (the centrepiece at the top, which often tends to have the status of a treasured family heirloom). They feel at once luxurious and homey ... great places to relax and chat, or read a book, or just shelter from the glare outside.

The second thing: as a focal point for Central Asian hospitality, the yurta fulfils its function admirably. When you're a guest in one, you're offered the best of everything ... from the blankets to the vodka!

And thirdly ... to wake up in the middle of the desert in a camel-skin tent, with the fire long since burned out and only a few inches of mattress between you and the ground, is to wake up cold. I don't care how often anyone repeats the phrase "warm in winter, cool in summer"; my stiff limbs and frozen toes remain unconvinced.

Still, I have to admit it was much chillier outside. Don't quite know how the camels survived out there without a comfy blanky to warm them up!

Anyway, when not luxuriating in the interior of our yurta, Yuliya and I spent most of our time getting to know our surrounds a little better. There are lots of things I could say in praise of the Kyzylkum, but I'll try to limit myself so as not to bore you all to death. I love the huge skies out here, for one thing, and when you get to a place of elevation (like the one in the pic below), they seem even more expansive. They also change colour constantly. The last time I felt so positively affected by the sky above my head was in Finland. Here, there's a similar sense of spaciousness, which brings a certain mental calm with it.

Meanwhile on the ground, it seems that the desert is completely ... well, y'know, deserted. Even the few birds living there have extremely quiet calls, almost inaudible while you're moving.

(Not that I imagine you're dying to know this, but the reason for their quietness is that they've evolved in an environment where there are almost no obstructions to the passage of sound waves. Generally speaking, you find the loudest birds in the thickest forests, 'cause they have to be heard through all those damn trees! And of course vice versa. So there you go ... another glimpse of the ridiculously irrelevant stuff I've managed to fill my brain with over the years.)

So where was I? Oh yeah: desert = quiet. Not exactly a revelation, but still quite striking when you're in it.

However, growing up in Australia trained me to examine the ground I walk on very closely, in case there's something nasty and poisonous down there that wants to bite you. So we hadn't been walking for long when I noticed that, in fact, we weren't alone out here after all. Far from it. The desert was pot-holed with burrows, and quite sizeable ones too.

A little while later, we got to meet one of the inhabitants of these burrows. We were heading to the salt lake when this little guy suddenly broke cover and bounced across the sand right next to us. He'd clearly emerged from one of the holes, and he stood around sniffing the air and checking us out for quite a while before carefully choosing another hole to disappear into.

The interesting thing about this furry little wanderer (apart from his general cuteness) is that all attempts to discover what species he is have so far failed. I've cross-referenced his pic with lots of sites about mustelids (the family of mammals that includes everyone from meerkats and otters to badgers) and peered hopefully at all manner of susliks (Eastern European/Asian ground squirrels), but without making a successful ID. And while pages that profile desert wildlife in Uzbekistan wax eloquent about gerbils and jerboas (both little hoppy mouse things with comically long hind legs), and tell you that you might be lucky enough to spot a polecat (sort of a cross between a ferret and a mongoose) in the Kyzylkum, nowhere can I find a reference to a kind of slender ratty squirrelly marmoty thing on any of them.

And so, what I seem to have here is kind of a mystery critter***. At least, he is so far, and to me. His face looks awfully familiar, and I keep thinking that I'll suddenly go "Hang on, wait a sec. Of course! He's a -------! Why did it take me so long to realise that?" But so far it hasn't happened.

Help me out if you can – I'm not planning to switch to my new career in cryptozoology**** for at least another four or five years ;-)

Leaving this little mystery behind us, we left the yurta camp some time around late morning, heading back in the direction of Khiva. Our driver suggested that we stop off along the way and take a look at one more fortress that we hadn't squeezed into the previous day's itinerary, to which we agreed. To get there, we had to drive down the main street of a dusty, poor village where some kind of commotion appeared to be going on.

We got to the entrance and found the fortress walled up and barred to visitors (possibly for some archaeological or restoration work ... though we never managed to find out). As we prepared to jump back in the car and go, inhabitants of the town – specifically, grubby little boys and a couple of men in tattered suits and forward-facing caps – came to meet our car, and told us that the fortress had recently been closed. They didn't say why.

What they did say was that they'd really like us to stick around for a while, because today was a big occasion: there was a wedding in the village. At the very least, they said, we should come and have a look at their kazani (enormous, round-bottomed metal pots, placed inside the rim of an outdoor tandyr***** oven), where the plov was being prepared.

We chewed over this proposition for a while and decided to accept. I'm glad we did – and not only because of the impressive size of their kazani.

First, of course, we inspected the plov ... but it was no great surprise when our sudden hosts insisted that we try some, and heaped three mammoth servings onto plates (one for me, one for Yuliya, and one for the driver).

We were next shown into a low-ceilinged, gun-barrel shaped house, where we removed our shoes and were led down a hallway jammed with people and noise, until we reached the final room. In this large space, decked out with cloths and carpets, we dined with an ever-expanding circle of men and teenaged boys, seemingly delighted at their new Ukrainian and Australian guests. The plov was accompanied by three separate toasts in a matter of ten minutes, and at each toast we were encouraged to swallow a rather manly amount of Karakalpak vodka, poured into Asian-style teacups.

Emerging a few minutes later, somewhat less sober than before, we were ... let's see, how to explain: something happened to us that wasn't exactly like being mobbed, but wasn't too far short of it, either. The wedding guests appeared to be growing in number by the minute, and a sizeable portion of them were right here in the house with us, lining every inch of wallspace and filling the air with raucous cheerful noise. (It later transpired that, in a Karakalpak village, there are no such things as "wedding invitations" – you just make the date known, and anyone in the village who wants to come just turns up. Which means basically the entire local population.)

Part of the reason for this attention was our inherent novelty value, I guess, accompanied by the general exuberance which characterised the occasion. But there was also another factor: the camera. It was a magnet for these people, and everyone wanted to be in at least one photo. As luck would have it, Yuliya had the photo-making apparatus around her neck at that point, so she basically became the unofficial wedding photographer.

Whisked out of the building, past more enormous kazani, we were taken around the village to other houses of a similar style, and in every house the story was the same: large rooms with carpets in the centre and people (mostly women) sitting around the walls chatting, generous amounts of food being offered, curious kids and big welcoming smiles all round. We must have seen at least four or five hundred guests, and Yuliya took pictures of most of them! (We have almost 100 wedding photos, which we've promised to make prints of and send ... and of which I've reproduced just a few favourites here.)

Then it was outside, where a band was playing over a PA system. I asked if I could sit and record them for a while (I've recently bought some sound equipment to do field recordings, and I'm taking it everywhere with me). Not only did they allow me to do this, but one of our hosts (a guy who bore an eerie resemblance to Robert de Niro when he had his hat on) managed to go one further by getting me on the stage. Which was great, except that I had no idea what I was supposed to do there! Did they want me to sing, or was I just supposed to point the microphone? I really couldn't tell. Still, it was cool to see the dutar (metal-stringed Uzbek guitar, with a body shaped oddly like a marmot) being played up close.

Finally, having ingested as much plov and as much vodka as we could possibly handle without exploding, we took our leave and went to the car, feeling shell-shocked but kinda privileged to have had this – albeit rather brief and superficial – glimpse into Karakalpak village life. While drifting off to sleep in the back seat, I thought of all the times I'd heard people talk about the 'legendary hospitality' of Central Asian peoples. If we'd been seeking to confirm or debunk the claim, this morning would've been absolute, resounding confirmation. The welcome we got in the village was huge, it was overwhelming and it was extended without reservation. In other words, we'd been lucky little campers )))

About two hours later we arrived back in Khiva, stumbled into our hotel room, crawled into bed and slept for the rest of the afternoon. Meanwhile, if we'd had a webcam set up back in the village, we would no doubt have seen the wedding party continuing unabated ... in fact, it was barely half-way through Day One, which meant that the part we'd participated in had been mere preamble. There were more than two days of celebration still to come!

Exhausted, stuffed with rice and carrots, and experiencing something not entirely unlike a hangover, I could only wonder how it was possible for anyone to have so much stamina. As I was thinking about this and other Karakalpakistan-related stuff, my eyes gave up and my brain shut down ... which, at that point, was exactly how I wanted this little adventure to end )))

Good night!

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ...

* In the Mongol tongue, they're called ger, gyr, or one of several other alternate spellings.

** The national dish of Uzbekistan. It's basically pilaf: a big plate of spiced rice with meat, carrots, onion and sometimes other stuff like chickpeas or golden raisins. I love it!

** American slang for "animal". I'm guessing, but I think it probably originated as a tender form of the word  "creature".

**** Cryptozoology is one of my all-time favourite words. It means "the search for creatures whose existence is unproved". The Loch Ness Monster and the Yeti are two famous cryptids (unproven animals), but there are loads of others. I like the word so much that I've even taught it to students, so that we can pretend to be cryptozoologists together and interview some weird creatures. I think my current teen class are probably the only group of 16-year-olds in Kazakhstan who know what kind of beast 'El Chupa Cabra' is, and where he comes from )))

***** One more irrrelevant fact for you: I think a lot of people reading this will be familiar with tandoor ovens, commonly used in preparing Indian cuisine, or at least with the adjective "tandoori" (as in "tandoori chicken"). But what I didn't know until this week was that these ovens actually originated in Central Asia, where they're called "tandyr". Likewise, the wonderful round loaves called "non" became "naan" in India, while the triangular-shaped pastries known as "samsa" or "somsa" here were adopted (and, it must be said, vastly improved) by the Indians to give the world the much-more-famous "samosa". Just another random example of how Central Asian influences have permeated out into the world over the centuries :-)