10/25 – Sunday – The Banya (Russian baths)

Today 2 other girls and I ventured to the local Russian baths – they’d been excited about it all week and I’m more along for the cultural ride. The description of the baths did put me pretty far outside my comfort zone. Apparently, at the baths all the women are stark naked together and then you go into a sauna where you whack each other with Birch branches. Ummmm….okay.

So we walked a good ways to get there and somehow they nominated me to buy the tickets (and no one here speaks English). So I stumbled along and we somehow got in (and the tickets only cost a little over $2!). We also stumbled through how to get a locker and towels (luckily one of the girls always brings a small dictionary along). We were clearly the idiot Westerner’s in the baths – for everyone else this was a regular activity.

Banya building:

So we all got naked and learned you are not allowed to use your towel in the baths – good gracious, I can barely change in a gym locker room and now I have to walk around and shower in the open in my birthday suit?! But I tell ya, it actually became easy pretty quickly and after a few minutes we all stopped noticing that we were without clothes.

Ok, so first you shower, then you go into the sauna which is incredibly hot and then you take these birch branches and either hit yourself all over or someone does it for you. It is supposed to be for exfoliation. Then you go back out to the showers and repeat. We used the birch branches for a few times before this really nice lady informed us that you have to bring your own and that we were actually using hers! Oops! Then there is also a cold pool in the next room that you go swimming in to cool your body off between saunas and showers. It was absolutely freezing, but became pretty fun to swim in.

We got really into the whole experience and I have to say that I’m really glad I did it and broke down a comfort barrier. Also – my skin was glowing and felt great afterwards! A $2 spa experience! Incredible. We definitely have plans to go again a few times before we all leave Kyrgyzstan. And next time we will remember to bring our own soap (they had a bit there), towels, and birch branches.

Post Banya:

On a side note – the boys had been to the banya a few weeks before we went and they said that in the men’s side there was this old Kyrgyz woman walking around with a birch branch and getting really mad at anyone who didn’t get themselves clean enough in the shower before going back into the sauna. They said it was a bit traumatizing.