9. Art Caravan

We had our last breakfast with Rash, Sibel and Harry, packed our bags, and took a cab about an hour to Bokonbaevo. On route we passed a string of concrete yurts, colourfully painted that seemed to be surrounding a religious or government building. Bokonbaevo was a large town with lots of shops, people, and of course snow capped mountains in all directions. The CBT coordinator, Meerim, brought us to our home stay where we met Clara, our host. She had a young daughter with a small baby. We met Mir, our interpreter and shared bread and tea and talked about our next yurt building stay in a nearby village.We decided to stay one day and night in Bokonbaevo, and head to Kyzyl-Tuu the next day.

Meerim walked with us into town and recommended a few places to eat and invited us to her workshop called Art Caravan. From what we could understand (we didn’t have Mir, our interpreter with us) the Art Caravan was a travelling yurt that went into schools to teach youth about traditional Kyrgyz life and handicrafts. Her workshop employed one male designer and a few women making shyrdaks and embroidery. A partial yurt frame, painted red, was erected in the courtyard of the workshop. They brought out a circular shyrdak floor piece which was very impressive. We walked back into town and visited a women’s collective which also had a yurt erected. They were making exterior felt panels, by hand! To our surprise they were fairly thick and evenly felted.

We walked back to our homestay and played with the daughter of Clara. She made us a wonderful steaming dish of potato, mutton, cabbage, and carrot stew garnished with dill. Yara fell asleep and we watched Russian music videos!