Sixteen Months of Mutton: Meat-Eating Journeys Through Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia

Stu Lamb was in a rut. Desperate to shed a few pounds and taste real adventure, he quit his cushy corporate job and joined the Peace Corps. A few months later, the government sent him to Kazakhstan in Central Asia, a land where "adventure" and copious amounts of mutton suddenly attacked him from all sides. Drunk neighbors, amorous hostesses, hostile travelers, and KGB veterans are only a few of the people he encounters in his journey, sampling boiled, fried, and steamed sheep along the way. Naive and blindly optimistic, he jumps in to his new life feet first, embracing every challenge he confronts -- language, culture, loneliness, and the absence of McDonald's -- in hopes of making a difference. In the end, Stu is the one who changes. After finding love, a passion for travel, and different weight loss-inducing diseases, he ultimately discovers what he's made of... and that there's mutton at every stop along the way.