How is it September already? It’s our birthday month! So what treats are in store for thetwinsontour today? Spoiler alert, we did not see a snow leopard.

We are in Karakol, which is a very international city. People from everywhere live here.  We started the morning by visiting the Russian Orthodox Church–a beautiful wooden church with gorgeous flowers outside.  The inside is rather unremarkable, and they don’t allow photos. Women are required to cover their heads, which we have never experienced in an Orthodox Church before. Today is Sunday, so the place was swarming with people, and the service was taking place. I don’t know how old the actual building is because, of course, it was destroyed by fire a couple of times. During the Soviet Union times, it was used as a school or sports club or something.

Next up was the Dungan Mosque. The Dungans may be the most interesting group of people here.  Long ago, Arab traders in China married local Chinese women. They kept their Muslim religion, but everything else is Chinese. They speak Dungan, which is Chinese with some Arabic words. I guess it is like speaking Spanglish.

Anyways, in about the 1870s, the Dungans started fleeing China through the mountains and they ended up in Karakol, Kyrgyzstan.  So the mosque that we went to actually just looks like a Chinese temple with a curved wooden roof, bright colors, and intricately carved wooden details.  It was built in 1905. The people that built it would have never seen an actual mosque, so they just built what they knew. So there you have it, a concise and extremely accurate history of the Dungan people. 

While I am on the subject, we also ate dinner at a Dungan house.  Obviously, the food was a variation of Chinese food with steamed dumplings and hot pot. Also mushroom soup, which anyone who knows thetwinsontour, knows that we did not eat. thetwinsontour avoid eating fungus!

Next up was the Przhevalsky museum.  Apparently, lots of people know all about him. thetwinsontour can now count themselves amongst these people. Most people know him for his “discovery” of the Przhevalsky horse, a wild horse that can not be tamed. There are very few left in the wild, but Mongolia is working on releasing some into the wild.  More importantly, Przhevalsky mapped most of South Central Asia during the 1860s and 1870s. His goal was always to get to Tibet, but the Dali Lama would not give permission for a non-Buddhist to enter the holy city.  At the beginning of his 5th and final tour, he drank some mountain water and got a stomach ache. I think you can see where this is going.  He thought it was just a stomach bug, so he did not go to the doctor. He died shortly thereafter of typhoid and wanted to be buried on the shore of Issyk Kul Lake. Hence, the museum in Karakol next to his tomb on the shore of the lake. Aren’t you astounded by our newly acquired knowledge of Przhevalsky?

This is a really busy day because we also went to a farm for lunch. Need to keep this brief, so I will just say that we saw some giant sheep with big, floppy tumor looking things growing out their rumps that I don’t remember the name of. They are raised for meat, so bigger is better. The most expensive of these sheep sold for $200,000 USD. That’s an expensive sheep! The regular ones can sell for $30k USD. Since they are so valuable as breeding sheep, I’m not sure which ones they eat.  Luckily, we did not have any mutton for lunch.

Also, while we were there, we watched the farm staff play some traditional Kyrgz horse games. Basically, it was polo, but with a “sheep carcass” that they tried to keep away from each other and drop it in a goal. It was pretty fun to watch, but there was so much dust flying around that at times it was hard to see anything.

I think that pretty much sums up the day.

Love,

thetwinsontour