I did feel significantly better in the morning; the blessed Pepto-Bismol seemed to have done the trick. But I wasn’t well by any stretch of the imagination, and I was still weak and woozy. Still, I was glad that Michael had agreed to get my departure delayed, as this allowed me to stay in bed for a while longer.

I rose at eight, and had a long shower in the cockroach infested bathroom. The shower head had broken off, and there was no shower curtain, so I managed to spray all the cockroaches while I cleaned off. But the water was warm, and I felt much better after I had dried off and brushed my teeth.

Before heading down for breakfast, I tried to call the trekking agency, but got a busy signal, so I decided to try again later, and went downstairs to hunt for the dining room.

It was tucked away at the end of a long corridor around the corner from the reception, but I found an empty table and got the waitress’ attention. She brought over a plate of cheese slices, and some sort of cottage-cheese looking thing. Dairy products, I decided, were not the best thing for me at that time, so the next time she swung through I asked her for tea and bread. “No eggs?” she asked. “Nyet” I told her, “Chai y chleb, bolshe nichyvo.” (Tea and bread, nothing else) So she brought me a small cup of tea and two slices of flat bread. The bread would probably be enough, I thought, but I’d need more tea. So once again, I got her attention and asked for more tea. I could tell from her expression that all this was all highly irregular, but she did as requested, and I finally got my pot of tea.

When I had finished my bread, and the waitress was somewhere hiding in the kitchen, I ducked out of the dining room and headed back to my room to try the trekking agency again. Still busy. And when I tried every ten minutes or so after that, the line was busy every time. So I took the number and walked down to the floor warden at the end of the hall, and tried with fractured Russian and sign language to determine if there was some secret to dialing out on a phone here. But she made it clear that I was doing the right thing. So, I settled down to read my guidebook, trying the number every 15 minutes or so. And got a busy signal every time. Something was clearly wrong here, I thought, and briefly considered wandering out in an effort to find the agency myself. But I figured that I’d be smarter to stay put and let them find me.

Which they finally did at about eleven, when a knock came on my door. Victoria and Denis were outside, and apologized, saying that Michael had told them that I was staying at a different hotel. And their phone hadn’t been working since… Tsar Nicholas’ time, I mused. Ah well, no problem. It gave me more time to relax and recover.

They loaded up my stuff into their car, and we drove over to the agency. It turned out to be in a house on some back alley that I would never have been able to find, had I followed my first inclination to seek them out. They invited me in and asked me to wait for an hour or so while they got all their gear together. And while I waited, I was to be entertained with some of the worst produced videos I had ever seen, which I assumed were to entice potential visitors to come to Kyrgyzstan. But I think if these things ever got beyond the border, they’d do more harm than good. Nevertheless, I watched them from start to finish, marveling at the scenery and the incredible ineptitude of the cameramen and production staff.

Then it was time to go. Denis tossed my pack into the back of a fairly new-looking Land Rover, and showed me the front seat, while Victoria took the back. We were quickly past the outskirts of Bishkek, and Victoria gave me the guidebook spiel on the history of the town, which I had already read while waiting for them at the hotel. So whenever she paused, I asked her questions about life in Kyrgyzstan, and how many times she had made this trip, what the expected weather might be; anything but the story of Michael Frunze, the man who conquered Central Asia for the Bolsheviks.

We drove south, toward the snowcapped peaks of the Ala-Tau Mountains. On our left was the Chuy river, and beyond it, Kazakstan. Victoria told me that many people came here for the white-water rafting, but that by this time of the year, the water level was too low.

The road wound its way up through the river gorge, and within an hour we had reached a broad plateau. We turned toward the east, and within minutes, I could see the waters of Lake Issykul to the south.

Lake Issykul is the second largest alpine lake in the world, behind Lake Titicaca, and the word Issykul means “warm lake” in Kyrgyz. It is called that because it never freezes in the winter, mainly because of its high salt content (it has no outlet), but also because it is warmed by submarine volcanic activity. During Soviet times, it was a favorite vacation spot for workers and their families, and its northern shore is still dotted with holiday camps and sanitoria. It used to be off-limits to foreigners because the Soviet navy used to conduct sensitive torpedo tests at a military base near the east shore, but these days, we dollar-carrying foreigners are more than welcome.

Today the holiday camps are decrepit, and the Kyrgyz “navy” consists of a few launches used to take tourists around the lake. We stopped at one of these holiday camps, and found it nearly deserted and weedy. It had clearly seen better days. I asked Victoria if her family had ever vacationed here. “Oh no,” she said “we went to a much better one.” I wondered how much better that might be, but she didn’t elaborate.

I was originally supposed to be staying at the “Cholpon Ata Yacht Club” near the center of the northern shore, and I could only imagine how closely the place lived up to its name. But before leaving Bishkek, Victoria suggested that I might be happier at a home-stay, because “the Yacht Club is very cold.” Well, I didn’t know how much truth there was to that, but I decided to take a chance and go with the new program. So after we left the holiday camp, we headed back into a town at the lake’s western end, and drove to a small cottage near its center.

We were warmly greeted by an old woman and I was shown my room, the by now standard, two twin bed spartan accommodations. It was certainly no worse than the usual, and I settled in and began to update my journal, while the woman’s grandchildren and the house cat peeked in on me from time to time.

At about six, Victoria asked me if I wanted to take a shower before or after dinner, and I asked her if it was possible for me to take one in the morning instead. She grimaced and explained that this was a Russian banya, and about how good it is to take a little sauna before dinner, and that it’s a tradition, etc. etc. Which I took to be a polite way of saying, no.

Well, I wasn’t in the mood for a sauna, so I told her I’d take one after dinner, and would she please explain to the lady of the house, who had come home by then, and turned out to be Denis’ aunt (aha!) that I was still recovering from my intestinal disaster, and I’d appreciate a light meal with little or no fat, please. Some boiled rice, bread and water would suit me just fine. Victoria said she’d pass that along.

So we sat down for dinner, and were served chicken soup with rice and potatoes. Perfect, I thought. But then came a plate of mashed potatoes absolutely awash in butter. I asked if I might have some potatoes without butter, and was assured by the lady of the house that this was butter, not fat, and would be good for my stomach. Well, it was a surprising theory, this non-fat butter idea, but I decided there was no point in trying to argue with her about it. So I just tried to eat the parts that weren’t dripping in it, and claimed that I was then full. Which I pretty much was anyway.

She then brought me a cup of “very strong tea, good for the stomach” which I thinned with some water from my glass when she turned her back. No wonder Russian men have a life expectancy of 58 years, I said to myself, if this is an example of their idea of health food. Somebody needs to get the American Heart Association to open a branch office over here.

After dinner it was time for my shower, and we all paraded out to the banya house, where the mechanism that heats the water had been boiling away for hours. I was asked to wait outside while the lady entered the steaming room to adjust the temperature. Victoria told me that the water was far too hot, and that I’d have to wait for it to cool. “Couldn’t I just turn on the cold water and mix them to the proper temperature?” I asked. Well yes, but there seemed to be some sort of problem with that approach, which the lady of the house was attempting to rectify.

So the whole clan parked outside the banya, while much hissing and clanking went on inside; all the children trying at once to explain the intricacies of taking a shower here. I was about to say that I didn’t really need a shower, when the lady emerged and told one of her sons to instruct me on the correct way to adjust the valves. The very secret and complex method involved turning on the hot water and then the cold water, and adjusting the flow until I liked the temperature. Imagine my surprise! Why that’s just the way we do it back home. Amazement all around.

They prepared to leave me to wrestle with this newfangled and highly dangerous plumbing, but just before parting, they made a very big deal about telling me NOT to turn anything off when I was done. Otherwise, they pantomimed, BOOM!

So I took my shower, all the time wondering if I might suddenly be the victim of a boiler explosion. But nothing untoward happened, and I emerged unscathed, unscalded, and cleaner. But more than a little confused about what went on behind the wall of that banya. Maybe it had something to do with those secret torpedo tests.