Mud House with Yak Dung Fire, Bathroom Beneath the Stars

Our first night in China, all in all, under the Full Moon, was quite a memorable treat. After our Hunza angel, Ahsan, helped us transition to a new driver and cross the Pakistani border...no easy thing...when we arrived to Sost one of the jeep's tires was a bit flat. The system of remedying this was to attach a hose from the engine exhaust pipe to the tire, with one person revving the engine, the exhaust would then flow through the plastic pipe into the tire; ingenious!! We had to have our names put on a manifest with the travel monopoly before going through immigration, the process of which I believe I already wrote about....okay, so moving along...we drove through khunjerab national park, to the tippy top of the pass with the awful sickening smell, and then arranged a new driver who spoke neither English nor Urdu, but fortunately a language quite similar to Turkish, called Ughyur, so at least I could count to ten with him! As we got onto the road the 100 word dictionary in the lonely planet travel guide our savior, still couldn't get us to an internet cafe. We drove about an hour and a half through a slow sunset on a deserted highway (the only highway in the province, I think)through chinese ghosttowns and dusty yellow plains with snow-topped mountains rising off in the distance.
Arriving at 'the lake' and the only restaurant thoroughly locked up and closed down for tourist season, we ventured to check out one of the yurts beside the lake. I stayed in the car and Margret went on the mission to see if it would be our home for the night. She came back dismayed, there was a strange man staying there and the owner wanted about $15 a person for us to also stay in there. The taxi driver made a swooping yelp to indicate he wanted to stay way across the other side of the lake, and off we went. We drove onto a rocky dirt path that shook his mini-van every which way, when mud houses started appearing the driver beeped his horn until finally someone appeared outside one of the houses. It wasn't a yurt, and there was no toilet, but it would do. The owners had run to the neighbors to borrow a stove which got assembled on our side of the house, meanwhile the very sweet girl (maybe 10 or 12 years old), Muneera, showed me across the lane to a pile of rocks where we could pee under the full moon. What a lovely bonding experience. (reminded me of other such bonding experiences, like in india as the ladies held up shawls for each other stopped at the side of the road so the truck drivers wouldn't stare us down, and then the 2am post-Happy Noodle Shop in Chungju, Korea with Becky and Rae, squat in the grass in front of the police station)
Inside, with yak dung burning and finally being able to take off my down jacket, we were offered some hard naan bread and lumpy yak yoghurt. The chai tasted like butter, and I couldn't bear to drink it. Margret brought out some treasures - a Swiss fruit cake which the locals didn't dare take two bites of, and Miso soup mix. Then it was time for bed, and the Khirgiz family brought down silk embroidered comforter after comforter to pile on top of us (the dung fire would inevitably die out). The driver was looking mighty uncomfortable about sleeping in the same room as us, but slipped his pants off nonetheless and pretended to snore after two seconds. I think I actually slept. We were woken for seheri, Ramadan breakfast before sunrise, but expecting them to bring food to us we missed the chance to eat. A couple hours later we were offered the same piece of stale bread from the night before. Before leaving, the lady of the house tried to pawn off her necklace and then her ring and earrings. We refused, but left some moisturizing creams and a pen for Muneera, who was still asleep. The sun was rising over the yellow plains and snow-capped peaks, the yaks' breaths misting in the full moon air...we were back on the Silk Road.