Wake up. Breakfast was simply bliny (Russian crepes) with strawberry varenie, which is like pureed strawberry jam. We hopped on the bus, drove for an hour along dirt roads that kept getting worse, through Kyrgyz villages that stored horse manure for future cooking and heating. The roads kept getting worse. We stopped and switched into other vehicles, one of which was a Mistubishi SUV, and then we got to the really bad roads. Holy crap. Steams, rocks, inclines that I thought would flip us over. Our driver didn't bat an eye. Uncle Harry and my brother might have liked this road, but me, I thought it was insane.

As we drove along, the brown scrub land began to yield to grass-covered slopes, and suddenly everything was beautiful. It reminded me of nothing so much as the landscape in Brokeback Mountain; down below were the dry scrub lands, then you have these beautiful mountain slopes covered with short grass and multitudinous tiny flowers. Nearby is another snow-fed stream. The granite rocks and boulders are flecked with mica and covered with golden-orange lichen. Son of a geologist that I am, I look closer and see white and gray and black lichen as well. And there one the slopes are the horses.

We have come to ride horses. The driver and his family live here during the summer with their horses, and they take people on horse-back rides and backwoods camping. I literally haven't ridden a horse in forty years. The guides know their business. We have been trained in advance by video, and we have signed the wavers saying that we understand the basics. The ride is made fairly simple, really, criss-crossing mountain slopes. We learn that чу (choo) means ‘giddyup’ and дррр (drrr) means ‘whoa.’

I go with the third and final group. I remember reading in "The Horse and His Boy" that one should press in strongly with one's thighs to maintain one's seat, but not to dig in with the heels. I make sure to practice this. At first my body is tight as can be, but as the minutes pass I slowly learn which parts can relax and which should stay active. The scenery is stunning. Snowy mountain peaks in the distance. Fresh grass. Dramatic peaks and slopes. The sounds are the clop of the horses' hoooves, the lowing of the cattle, the occasional bray of the donkeys.

Then we have lunch prepared by the local family, after which we have a little yurt-building workshop.

Old technology does not mean simplistic technology. The main wall construction is a wooden trellis, collapsible in accordion fashion, and each joint is completed not with a metal or plastic axle, but with a carefully made leather connector. Expanded out and wrapped tight with hand-woven woolen belts, the trellis achieves structural stability. Then someone stands in the middle to hold up the crown of the yurt, and wooden side supports are added in and bound with rope. Then a windscreen made of local grasses sewn together is added on the outside. Decorations are hung on the frame with the beautiful side facing inward, along with a chandelier from the crown of the yurt. Then hand-made felt coverings are hung over the whole thing and bound with ropes. Our building is complete. We enter to admire our handiwork. It's amazing. The whole process included aesthetics the whole way, so when you enter the yurt, it is actually rather pretty inside.

The locals tell us that when you enter a yurt, you must sing. Yeah, that sounds like the kind of bunkum one feeds to tourists, but of course these things also form group identity. The students are too timid to start. This is where the glorious group leader again chimes in, singing an old Appalachian song called "Some have fathers bound for glory," a tune almost no one has heard, unless they went to Silver Dollar City in Missouri and heard John Corbin sing it. It's an odd, haunting melody, well-suited to strange abodes and lands. Some others contribute as well. Jon presents a riddle, "A cowboy, a yogi and a gentleman enter a bar and sit down. How many feet are on the floor?" (Nope, I'm not going to tell you the answer.) I tell the story of the pig with the wooden leg. And finally the group realizes they all know all the words to one particular song. The song is "Bohemian Rhapsody." "You have got to be kidding," I think to myself. Sure enough, every word, every inflection. And our Kyrgyz guides follow that little gem up with Kyrgyz songs as well.

Eventually we are tired of sitting in the yurt and get out. Our language coaches decide we need to learn a game called День и ночь "Day and night," which turns out be the same thing as duck-duck-goose. Hmph, I have too much dignity for this. I head to the river and bask in the sound and the last minutes of beautfy before we depart.

Back home in the States I have an indoor job. I have just spent most of two days in the sun. It has been years since I have done that, embarrasingly enough. I think I have some heat exhaustion, which is pretty damn embarrassing for an Arizona boy. When my head hurts, I get particularly sensitive to smells, and now the presence of horse manure and cow dung become oppressive to me, so I get back in the SUV with a sense of relief. It will be along, hot, air-conditioning-less 90° ride back to Bishkek, but I'm ready for it.