Seven Bulls,No Dragons, and the Sound of No Music in Kok-Jiayk

So about this place called Seven Bulls, Valley of Dragons, Vale of Flowers.  A place where the road is not meant to be well travelled.  A place where bridges and vehicles have an uneasy alliance.  A magical place – in all its forms.

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On the mountain lives a dog.  He isn’t really a dog.  He is a God.  He has wise eyes and he stares at you until he sees right through your heart.  He collects pine cones from travellers who take the time to look for him behind the shed.  You bring him a pine cone and toss it.  He leaps and catches it.  He lays it at your feet.  You begin the process again.  He never misses.  Ever.  He is fierce but with you and a pine cone he is love and joy.  He likes it when you toss the pine cone  high above his head even though he can only jump the length of a three foot rope anchoring him under the tree.  I suspect he is tethered there because he is too smart for his own good.    He is a God in a German Shepard’s clothing.  He endures his imprisonment with quiet dignity.  I come to say good bye.  He runs behind the tree and brings me our pine cone. <I always remember you>  I never forget you…

****

He sits by the fire and tells me he is a lawyer.  It wasn’t his first choice and it won’t be his last.  He wants to make a difference.  He wants to help people.  He’s not sure how but he knows he is ready to let law go.  He says he is at that place where he is ok alone and doesn’t care what other people think.  He doesn’t have anything to prove.  He loves cats and secretly wishes he could have one in his office because he spends more time there than at home.  He asks me about what I do – or use to do – and I tell him.  He asked me why I stopped.  I tell him it was because I cared too much.  He asks me if I plan to start again when I get home. I tell him no.  “But you can’t do Nothing!”  (says the man who spent 20 minutes telling me he does not want to be judged or put in a box) “Nothing is boring!  You must do something!”  “Actually,” I reply, “doing NO-thing and being in an honest state of vulnerability is the best thing I could be doing right now.”  He takes a long drink from his mug of vodka and stares into the fire.  I look up at a sea of stars that would make Carl Sagan weep.  No-thing more need be said…

****

We walk in the valley of pristine trees and green pastures.  We cross the rickity bridges to the cave by the stream.  We can only go so far as we have no light.  We walk as far as we can until the darkness swallows us and we know we must turn back.  We pause by the river and sit on rocks already occupied by snails and flamboyantly colored lichen.  We silently apologize for the intrusion.  We make our way past a few yurt camps and the animals they graze.  There is not enough up here to feed everyone.  Occassionaly we are jolted out of our awareness by the sound of  an old military vehicle returning from an illegal logging mission.  We think this afternoon would be a good time to try for the glacier.  We walk farther up the valley away from the camps.  The grass is thinner.  So are the horses.  A mare drops to the ground and dies.  Her foal whimpers beside her.  I feel the warmth leave her.  Skin like paper.  Bones like twigs.  The flies are only now noticing.   The foal looks at me helpless.  He is so tiny and thin…  We walk a little farther.  We cry.  We decide to turn back.  A man with a stick and a noose is trying to catch the horse child  <Probably should have tried that before you took the axe to Mother’s neck>  Simon says she was disembowled by the time he walked by.  Nothing more need be said.

I will be your stick buddy forever

Keeping your eye on the Koan

A River Runs Through Us

Always time for Zen...

Rutger reconsiders singlehood...

"I take up very little room, I love to cuddle and I am handy with tent pegs!"

Shower prep Nomad Style!

This way to the Hotel that doesn't exist except in our dreams

Life an Death on the Mountain

"Greetings Comrades! Lenin and I salute you!"

Old Abandoned Orthodox Church

Harvest stuck in time

Tsar Peter The Great about to embark on his epic Starbucks run

A Fine Specimen of Turkey Masculinity

Bitches be Hatin' - me and my new Home Girl chilling at the felt workshop

Buzkashi and the Heart

Buzkashi – otherwise known as “goat polo” is an ancient sport played by the nomads along Lake Song-Kol.  It is described as being as close to warfare as a sport can be and involves using the headless, limbless carcass of a goat, sheep or calf as the ball.  It is full contact bone breaking every man for himself as riders on horseback attempt to grab the carcass and run it to the opposite end of the field.  It takes place in the late Autumn or Early Spring (planting and harvesting) or at a special occasion such as a wedding.  But here, in our camp, for a mere $5 per person, we can have full honor of witnessing this blood sport for no other reason other than we can.

So many questions… The first being, the senseless sacrifice of an animal merely for sport.  Now this is not a knock against tradition for I think we lack good ones these days – especially ones that challenge us in ways we never thought possible.  But this

seems less about tradition and more about entitlement.  Tradition dictates we would be here when it was meant to happen.  White Tourist Privilege dictates we make it happen at our own whim.  And it is our whim – people here are poor and live a hard life.  So in the name of adventure tourism we ask for the decapitation and delimbng of a goat for our sporting pleasure. 

Nomads living around Song-Kol live without sentimentality.  They will gladly house you in their yurt and feed you a meal.   But animal rights is not high on their list.  You live and die off the land.  It’s primal.  It is in many ways beautiful in its barbarity and simplicity.  Which brings me back to “The Game…”

When it was first broached, Ken without hesitation said “I am not interested in having an animal killed for sport.”  We were in the definite minority.  I said it just felt wrong to use a tradition as a tourist event to satisfy our need for entertainment.  At what point does our need to see and experience the world become an intrusion?  At what point do we stop being gracious visitors and instead become demanding children with more money that morality?  Buzkashi was said to have been started by Ghengis Khan as a way to test his warriors superior horsemanship and brute strength.  At a time when life was singularly about war it made sense.  It makes sense even now for the people living in a harsh unforgiving environment.  But does it make sense for us?  What is our war?  What is our fear?  What is it that makes us feel we NEED this to happen because if not, we are somehow less than we were before we came?

It is never easy when your faith in humanity is tested and humanity loses.  Bloodlust wins over humility and grace.  With so much to see and experience in this land, the one thing needed by almost everyone was a death.  A senseless needless death.  A throat slit.  A decapitation.  Limbs cut off.  Lifeless body tossed about battered and broken.  All in the name of sport and good fun.   I wonder…  did those who witnessed this feel sated?  Do they feel happier now than they did before?  Do they feel they are better people?  Does going home and sharing your story of “goat polo” make you a more interesting friend or lover?  Death after all is still death.  It is unavoidable.  But it need never be a senseless death.  And we should think long and hard when we have the power to impose Death.  For how we use that power speaks volumes to who we really are…

A small boy sits in the distance with a blow torch and his puppy.  He is burning the hair off the head and the limbs of the goat from the game.  His family will then boil it and make gelatin.  The carcass – battered and broken – is rumored to be stewed and eaten.  Not by the spectators of course – they are dining on sanitized duck breast fillet.

Final Score – 0 for love 9 for entitlement.

A day in the life of a small boy and a group of Adventurers

It just takes one to Breathe...

Our Home in Song- Kol

Doing the Dish Dry Dance at Song Kol

Horse love is the best Love (next to Yorkies and Camels!)

Ken's New Buddy

"Pink Lips" the pregnant mare

Wild Horse at Song Kol

And one donkey of Ill repute

Our Guide, Said

Said and Rutger playing non-violent ball games

Puppy Love on the Plains

Horseplay

Tash Rabat - Bliss Point

Here we are.  In a place nothing short of spectacular.  This post is being written in a yurt in the middle of no where in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. It will have to wait until I reach civilization to be sent.  You may have to wait forever until that time comes.  If I had my way, I would never leave this place.

Before I wax poetic about the beauty that is here I must tell you how we arrived.  We left China through the Torugart Pass – a “Class 2” border crossing.  This means that getting through must be done in the most inefficient means possible.  To get from China to Kyrgyzstan we had to cross not one, not two, not three but 6 border points.  This involved things like unloading all our bags and putting them through an x ray machine that no one was manning.  (I strongly suspect only the conveyor belt was working).  Then we stand in a line that must be exactly 11 people long (no more – no less) and have a guard look at us and then look at our passport like he is sizing up cattle.  He spends a lot of time just flipping passport pages and looking sternly at us for 20 minutes.  Then he waves us through to the passport desk where another guard (who just watched him do this) repeats the EXACT same thing and then waves us through.  On the truck and a drive for a half hr or so to the next stop to be repeated…  The best was the 4^th stop where  they were all off for lunch so we sat in the middle of no where for 90 minutes being circled by wild dogs.  Finally two guards show up (one of whom was at the last stop checking our passports) and we repeat the waiting and inspection game.  It took us 6 hours to get 100 km.  Welcome to the Chinese/Kyrgyzstan Border where China can’t make up its mind where its border actually is and if it wants you to stay or go.

All that is behind us now.  For the next two days it is full on mountain R & R in Tash Rabat  We are staying in a yurt camp run by Uri the Crazy Russian and his “school mate”.   Uri is desperate to get people drunk on vodka and get naked in his yurt sauna.  He also likes to barge into your yurt at weird hours in the night and proclaim “I LIGHT FIRE NOW!!” and then start fiddling with the stove while repeating the oft used phrase “No Problem. No Problem” in a heavy ruskie voice.  Then he stands tall and exclaims “I MAKE SECOND DOOR ON YURT.  IT GETS VERY WINDY AT NIGHT.  FROM NOW ON YOU EXIT FROM LEFT SIDE!”  Felt yurt doors weigh a ton so adding a second door meant some serious upper body work to push it open.  Our yurt mate – Peter – found this out in the middle of the night when he had to pee.  He could not get the flap to move and ended up having a “Yoda in the Dog Carrier” moment that resulted in him clawing out his own exit point. 

Now about that beauty…

It is almost impossible to put into words the splendour that is Tash Rabat.  The name itself refers to the old ruins of a caravanserai  carved into  the valley.  There is nothing here except nature  and yourself.  A few yurt camps dot the landscape but otherwise human invasion has yet to infect this wonderland.  Grass like velvet.  Impressive rock faces crevassed like the faces of mystic elders.  Blue sky and bird song.  Yaks ambling through creeks.  Marmots scouting for intruders and evading Himalayan vultures that circle the peaks like fallen angels casting shadows on our souls below.  You could hike forever here and still have forever to go.  We hiked all morning and I came upon a very happy black dog that ran to me for head pats.  I knelt down and was promptly greeted with a head “bonk” by one very loving wild goat named “Bambi”.  He had been orphaned and was now the younger sibling of a yurt camp’s daughter.  Here we are invited to stay and treated as a welcomed guest.  You need not want for anything except better insulation in winter (most camps leave by October to return again in spring).  Bambi’s camp offers us their horses if we want to ride deeper into heaven.  We decline.  Uri has lunch waiting for us.  Maybe later?  The ramble continues past wild horses who eye us with understated curiosity.  After lunch, Ken takes up an offer from our guide Said to climb.  As they make their way up the pass I relax onto my felt rug to be alone in my thoughts under the sun by the creek.  I see nothing but blue sky and magnificence.  The sun kisses me.  The wind gently caresses me.  The swallows dance for me.  I am completely alone and at one with myself.  For in this moment, I am soul.

BAMBI!!!

Tash Rabat - kyrgyzstan

A Riot of Color in Kashgar

Beware the Goat God... (Tash Rabat)

Horatio!  Who Knew?

Gypsy life agrees with me - Tash Rabat, Kyrgystan

Wise Man of Kashgar

Camel Love is the Best Love (Next to Yorkie Love - of course!)

Strolling through Kashgar

Rooster paparazzi caught in Kyrgyzstan

Neighbourhood Locksmith - Kashgar

Watching the Drop of Doom at the Kashgar Fair

Me and my Penguin at the Semen Hotel  (don't ask...)

Just rode into to the Mosque after a hard day silk roading - Kashgar

"No No Mohammad - Starbucks IS the best latte!"

Mountain Man - Kyrgyzstan

Zen in Tash Rabat

Save a Horse - Ride an Anaesthetist!

See?!?!  What did I tell you!

Our home in Tash Rabat - Uri's Yurt Camp of Debauchery