Today we drove to Karakol, firstly to visit the animal market. Without too much imagination, you can picture hoards of cows, sheep, goats, horses, people and other things. Cute baby goats though were the real winner. One of the girls commented that the toilets smelt worse than the hoards of animals, thus the toilet was far from the cleanest in Central Asia.
Goat for sale
After the animal markets we headed to the main food and stuff markets. When I entered the markets my first thought was how am I’m going to get out of here. I wandered around keeping track of where I was until I recognized I could escape the maze of ladies shoes, stationary and hardware products. After escaping I was told the markets sold delicious food products. However the real drama was the cook group who got lost for 50 minutes. After a quick toilet stop for those holding their bladders waiting for the mythical lost cook group of Karakol, we visited a lovely old Russian wood church.
Russian Wood Church
Finally we checked into our first hotel for a while, everyone used the Internet and hot water up and we all went for dinner at a local persons house who was somehow related to our guide although I didn’t catch it all as I was trying to not eat too much, which was quite difficult, as there was more food than our typically over catered for Christmas family lunches!
Ok so probably no Internet for a week. I’m off in Russian armored vehicles today into the mountains, then to a valley of unicorns, some yurt camps by another lake before returning to Bishkek to end the tour.