Kyrgyz Horse Trip Part 3 of 4

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Kyrgyz Horse Trip Part 3 of 3

So first of all sorry to all of you waiting on the edge of your seat drooling to read the outcome of the adventure through Middle Earth. I have spent the last month in Mongolia seeing the sights and giving myself a much needed weeklong break doing nothing after three months of hard travel. I do apologize for the long delay. In the meantime I have posted many new photos of Kyrgyzstan, China, Outer Tibet and Mongolia. Also I have posted the first two parts of the story at on www.travelblog.org. The address is:

Unfortunately I will not be able to give you guys the third part because my new publisher said that I can’t send it out. Therefore I will give you another story about me and the reindeer people of Northern Mongolia. I hope you won’t be too disappointed to wait until the book comes out next year. I feel bad that I just pulled your leg like that and now on to the rest of the story and the reindeer people will come shortly.

The night passed without incident and we woke exhausted but ready to get moving to find the horses some grass to eat since they had eaten scrub all night. As I was dealing with the call of nature a guy mysteriously rode up and asked McKay for a cigarette. The guy looked Russian and when told there were no cigarettes left without another word which was odd
since virtually everyone we met asked us our business in their land.

We saddled up the horses and saw how bad the back of Liberachi had gotten. There was a dried stream of fluid that had drained down both sides of his stomach. It was almost too repulsive to look at and he seemed very depressed. It was a sad state but we had to press
on and hope that he could make it just a few more days. We hit the dirt road and found grass just ten minutes past the place where we had had the incident with the drunk guy the night before. We had been so close to finding a nice spot when that had disturbed us and caused us to stop. We sat as the horses ate and drank from the swampy ground.

The area we were passing through was still dry and very hot yet the land seemed a bit more fertile as we gained in elevation. With time we passed a few well tended farms and eventually ran into some people moving farming equipment and riding on their horse-drawn carts. The plants were watered by a series of canals but there were almost no trees. We went long into the afternoon before stopping for lunch under the first big tree we had seen. There was a small canal next to the tree and some very tall grass next to a plot of potatoes.

After our normal lunch of canned fish a few guys came over and started the normal Q & A session. We asked them for advice on our horse as well as for the best pass to cross to the caravanserei since there were many routes and we were unsure which to take. They told us which way would be the easiest and then their kid came over with two bottles of brown liquid. The bottles were filled with two types of wheat drinks, one alcoholic and similar to a warm dark beer and the other like cold soup with lots of pieces of churned up wheat floating around, called bozo and sharma respectively. I was somewhat familiar with bozo because I had had some in Kazakhstan where it is called boza. Sharma is delicious and kind of like a wheat shake, both filling and healthy. Both of these could have potential as products outside of Central Asia.

We drank both bottles down and then the guys invited us to go over to their mud rectangle that they called a house. At first we were a little hesitant just because we needed to get moving and didn’t want to waste away the rest of the daylight but we remembered that it was moments like these that we had set out on our trip in the first place and to pass this up we would be forgetting our reason for coming. Sometimes the destination becomes more important than the journey and you have to remind yourself that life is best lived and not just rushed through just to get to the goal.

We sat around a box and a lady who was tending a fire set the table with the usual grub but instead of pouring us kumys she poured everyone two glasses, one was bozo and the other sharma. We discussed with them how they make the drinks and they showed us the green sprouts shooting off of the wheat kernels that would soon be used to make bozo. The men talked of their postings in the army and of a train of camels that had passed a few years before. It was a caravan of tourists headed from Tash Rabat and though they didn’t stop they surely left a big impression on these farmers for they were the first and only tourist that had ever passed by before us. We asked them if it was tough living so far away from anywhere and they revealed to us that during the summer they only spend 10 days there before going back to their village, Ak Tal, for another 10 days. We never cleared up who stayed around and guarded their crops while they were away but it seemed a pretty good plan because a few days in that place would drive anyone a little stir crazy. Their home was a sad sight and I was happy to hear it wasn’t their only house. After a little too much of the bozo we told them we had to get going. First one of the guys said that he wanted to help fix up some padding for Liberachi so that his sore could heal. He pulled a small but highly decorated square old felt carpet and cut a big hole in the middle. I protested saying that it was too nice to cut a hole in but he said it was trash that they left outside to disintegrate. He destroyed the pad we had made a few days before and used the extra felt to really cushion underneath the saddle but still leaving a large opening for fresh air so that the wound could heal and not just fester. He did a good job and fastened up the saddle really tight so it wouldn’t move under the weight of the saddle bags. We took some photos and told them good-bye. The guy who helped with the saddle had to go up and switch the route of the water in the canal which he said he had built by hand over the years. It was a good system that made a barren land able to sustain some agriculture and kept his family from starving. He rode a donkey with really short legs and talked with McKay while I followed along silent enjoying the fresh air and the after effects of all the bozo I had drunk.

We didn’t carry on much further that night and found a nice little place near the muddy stream. The moon was full and we reminisced on the on our strange journey through the town of Arkit one month before. The night was clear and we didn’t bother putting up the tent and planned for an early morning the next day so that we could get over the pass and close to the main road where turn off to Tash Rabat lay.

The water had separated from the red sand which lay on the bottom of our water bags. Instead of getting off early we spent a while trying to doctor Liberachi’s wound. Since he didn’t seem to like McKay it was my duty to get in there and try and clean him up. I used a gauze pad to scrape out the greenish yellow gunk that was oozing out of the wound. He wasn’t too pleased but I managed to get the wound fairly clean before placing a new bandage over it. Then we put on the new padding and fastened his saddle. We were really tired of walking so much so we decided to take turns riding Lionel that day.

The sun rose over the mountains before we left camp and already we could tell it was going to be another scorcher. McKay rode first and I walked behind dragging Liberachi along. It was tough work and something that I wasn’t enjoying at all. After an hour we switched and we tied Liberachi to Lionel in hopes that it would save us the effort. It turned out that it was more of a chore trying to keep the rope from getting stepped on and tangled up and after my hour on the horse McKay looked dead tired and a bit frustrated. We had begun the ascent to the pass and now we had to pull both of the horses up the mountain and over the pass.

The first part was easy and after 10 minutes we were at the top of a minor ridge that divided in half the valley we had just walked up. On the other side was a brilliant valley with every shade of red and orange imaginable. It looked like a canyon from Arizona or Utah and we were sorry we had come up the other one instead. We were walking to the east and the valley stretched out to the north up to the mountains that encapsulate Lake Song Kol, very far in the distance. We came to a canyon on our right, to the south, but the trail seemed to keep going around the mountain so we followed it that way. Eventually the trail began to peter out until finally it turned to the right, straight up the mountain. The grass was tall and we couldn’t figure out which way to go but up. In hindsight I see we should have saved ourselves the trouble by turning around and finding where the trail actually went but instead McKay went ahead up into the tall grass. It was hard going as the pitch was very steep and we hadn’t gotten water before beginning the climb thinking that there would be water coming out of the mountain like every other mountain in the country.

We zigzagged our way up the mountain for nearly two hours before reaching the top. Once at the top we could see that we had definitely gone the wrong way and that we had few choices but to go back down, either the way we came or into the bowl that was on the other side of the ridge. We also realized that the saddle bags on Lionel had fallen off and McKay went down to go find them. I staked down the horses and they grazed while I tried to determine which way we should go. After 20 minutes I began to get worried for McKay. A million things flashed through my head but I figured he had missed the bags on the way down so I began backtrack along the part of the ridge we had followed looking for the trail. After completing the short stretch and not finding anything I started down to find him. A few minutes of leaping down the mountain and I caught sight of McKay struggling to take another step. He was like a climber on Everest struggling with every last ounce of energy to get to the top. I ran down and we divided up the bags and carried them up to the horses where we laid out tired and thirsty. The sun was beating down on us yet we had no water to drink save for the backwash at the bottom of my bottle. I covered my head and took a nap hoping that when I woke up we wouldn’t be lost and would have ten gallons of water to refresh us.

I awoke sweating under my rain jacket but we hadn’t found the trail nor any water I wanted to go back to sleep but knew we had to get ourselves out of the bind or we would really be in some trouble. McKay awoke and we ate our customary canned fish lunch and a piece of a Snickers bar. Down in the bowl to the right we could make out a trail, we thought it came from the canyon we had passed and not turned down and that it led to the pass. If we were correct we had basically just climbed up 2 hours unnecessarily but really weren’t too far off of the trail. We agreed that instead of following the top ridge around to the other side of the bowl and seeing from there, we should instead traverse down into the bowl and get on the trail and hope it goes across the pass.

The traverse was difficult and we stayed on the uphill side of the horse so that they wouldn’t roll on us in case they lost their footing. Horses seem to naturally zigzag or switchback down steep slopes and they determine when they want to turn when the going is really steep. After fifteen minutes we had made it to the flat bottom and had to then deal with dodging some strange plant with long spikes that punctured through my thick jeans and left my skin numb and itching for hours. We navigated through the strange plants and got down to the trail where we turned left. Next to the trail was a dried up stream, at least we were on the right track, or so we hoped.

The trail wound around to the east between two tall peaks, made a short climb and then we were going downhill. The pass was like a joke and we were happy because we were now thirstier than ever. Our main mission was to find water and I sped up the pace because I could smell it. The trail kept going up and down, back and foward over and around small humps until finally we saw up on the slope a small house and a bunch of animals. When the people up there saw us they whistled and called us but we were in no mood for visiting and McKay pointed on ahead so that they would quit bothering us. Another two minutes and as I crested a small hill I saw a spring bubbling. Though there were hoof prints all around the spring I went and dipped my bottle into immediately and threw in some iodine tablets and looked at my clock knowing that in thirty minutes I would find relief. Although it had only been one day without water I now knew what it must feel like to be in a desert or some other dry place dreaming of water as you slowly pass away.

As we filled up our bottles a guy rode up on his horse and tried to speak to us in Kyrgyz. His Russian was nonexistent but we got our point across and I asked if cows ever drank from this water to which he replied only sheep. The water looked pretty clean and I knew the iodine would kill the bacteria but I try to refrain from drinking water that cows have been in and around. We asked where the road was and the guy pointed down to the bottom of the valley then said for us to follow him. We went down the trail as he led the way past a small mud house with a corral in front of it. As we got passed the corral I yelled up and asked if he had any milk. He motioned for us to tie up the horses and come up to his house.

We took an empty Nalgene bottle up to his house hoping to get some milk and get on our way. As usual we were invited into his house and given a saucer of kumys and some sary mai, kaimak, and bread. The kumys went down without any trouble and I got another glass. As we struggled to explain what we were doing another guy came into the one room house. They spoke together for a few minutes and then the guy sat down and began to talk to us in Russian. It turned out to be the mysterious guy that had come up the day before and asked McKay for a cigarette and when denied turned around and left without saying a word. He looked a little Russian and said that his mother was Russian, the only one that lived in Ak Tal, that poor soul. We told him what we were doing and he asked why we had not stopped when he had whistled and called for us earlier. We apologized and said that we were really thirsty and didn’t want to stop. He said he had water up at his house and that we should have stopped. We were the first tourists they had ever seen there and he wanted to talk with us. As he shifted he spilt his kumys all over the floor and we all laughed at the faux paux(or however you spell that). The one minute after he got his spilled milk cleaned up I spilt mine all over the floor. Again we laughed but I didn’t feel very stupid after he had just spilt his as well. Now both McKay and I had spilt our kumys while sitting with people we didn’t know.

We discussed our trip as the half Russian guy translated to the other guy. It was getting dark and they suggested that we camp near their place for the night. Then as we were getting up to go and get on our horses the half Russian guy said that the owner of the dirt room we were sitting in wanted to trade one of his horses for our youngest. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing and said that he was injured and that the guy wouldn’t want such a bad horse. We couldn’t be anything but honest but hopeful that somehow the guy would actually trade us a horse for Liberachi. We all walked down and as McKay pulled back the saddle I showed them the bad saddle sore. The guy winced, grimaced and moved back when he saw the damage to the back but the half Russian guy suggested we stick around and talk in the morning. We discussed it for a bit, looked at the approaching darkness and agreed. He said that we would all meet sometime in the morning to discuss it further and they left as we went to set up camp.

What a shocker it had been out of the blue for that guy to offer us to trade horses. It was beyond our wildest dreams for if it were to work out we would be back in the saddle the next day and our goal of reaching Tash Rabat and making it up to Naryn was still possible. We boiled up the milk we had bought and as we were making milk tea the guy who wanted to trade horses walked up from down in the valley and we invited him over for a drink. He sat there and drank our Indian chai as we cooked macaroni and cheese. He seemed to enjoy our tea and we tried to converse a bit but the language barrier was acute and we didn’t get too much out of him. It seemed he lived in the mountains in his little one room mud house for five months a year and in Ak Tal the rest of the year. One time he said there had been two tourists that they had seen in the distance through their binoculars but they had never met any. It was a special feeling to know that we were treading almost on untouched lands that hadn’t been traversed by foreigners since the collapse of the Silk Road many hundreds of years ago. We staked down our horses with the hope that the next day we would be riding them again.

The next morning the guys came down to our tent as we were getting our things packed. They watched as we pulled out all the things from the tent and they wanted to pick up and ask us what each thing was and what it did. The half Russian guy got our shortwave radio and turned it on to some very bad Kyrgyz music and then had the gall to ask me for the radio. The guys had brought up a reddish brown horse that looked sturdy and older than our horses. His back legs had a strange look, almost as if he were bowlegged. The front legs of a horse bend forward and are used for pulling while the back legs bend backwards and are used for pushing. The back legs of this horse went stepping looked as if the bend almost touched the ground. I don’t know if it was because it had long hair coming down from that part or what but it sure made him look funny, almost as if his back legs were two springs bouncing up and down. We took the saddle off and saw that there were a few sores on the sides of his back but they looked nothing like the sore on ours.

Overall we liked the horse and decided that we would take him, that is, if they wanted ours. First they had to get up on Liberachi and ride him a bit. It turned out the guy that owned the house we had spilt the kumys in the night before was just the broker and didn’t actually want the horse. Instead it was the brother of the man who had told us to go this way a few days beforehand, the guy who had served us so much bozo. His brother wanted a horse with some new blood and one that would be taller than the other horses in the area. He horse saddled him up with his saddle and tried to get up on him. It was funny and amusing to watch him try and mount the horse. Each time he tried to get up on the horse, Liberachi would run away. We were worried that they would change their mind but instead they all laughed as if it were a game. This was the difference between us walking for another week or riding for a few more days. Finally after four tries the guy got up on Liberachi and began to beat him with a furry. The horse took off up towards the small house and then he came back down and got his little girl who was crying furiously because her father had left. In the meantime McKay and I took turns riding their donkey. It was funny how surefooted the little guy was but just as anyone who rides a donkey we looked ridiculous like a grown man on a bicycle with training wheels. The guy came over satisfied and we shook hands. It was a done deal. He took the back horseshoes off Liberachi so that we could get them put on the front two feet of our new horse. Then we loaded up our new horse and road off without looking back. I laughed at the way the new horse was walking with McKay on him but it didn’t really matter for we were back to riding horses instead of just walking them and it felt good. Suddenly all of our melancholy had disappeared and we knew that we were going to be able to complete our mission. We were still unclear how we had just traded such a bad horse away but we didn’t care, all we had to do now was keep the new horse from running back home.

The road we were following was to meet up with the main road that would take us over another pass and on to the main road to China where we would find the turnoff to Tash Rabat. It was not a very scenic ride and soon the weather had became very overcast and it began to rain. It was cold and the rain made it quite miserable but we were no longer walking and it made things a lot easier, we just had to sit there and bare it. We came to a point where the road went both up and down and we didn’t know which way to go and luckily took the road that went downhill, it turned out that this was where we hit the main road and if we had gone up we would have been going north again towards Song Kol. It didn’t look like a main road though because it was just a dirt track just like the one we had just come from. An hour went by and the rain finally stopped and as we were off the horses taking off our raincoats a Russian four by four van with the old imperial Tsarist double headed eagle crest painted on the drivers door drove by with what looked like Westerns inside. We looked in amazement as it was the first car we had seen in close to a week and it was just then that we realized we were on the main road. The van didn’t stop and we were left to wonder who it had been in the van and why they were traveling in the middle of nowhere, probably the same thoughts that had about us.

Soon we had come to the bottom of the valley and in the distance we could see a village near the end of the valley. We crossed over a stream that I could have sworn was flowing uphill and we passed through a huge flock of sheep and goats. We continued on until we had reached one of the most pathetic villages I have ever seen. The buildings were all about to fall down and it gave off a feeling of massive poverty. We rode passed a few houses and came up to three girls who stared at us in amazement. Only one of them spoke Russian and we had a hard time describing that we wanted to find someone to nail on the shoes to our new horse and that we didn’t have any nails. We didn’t know the words for horseshoe nor nails and it proved very hard to describe them for some reason. Finally we got our point across and she said we would have to wait for her father to come back in a few hours. We were invited into their house and we were watched by twenty people as we unloaded the horses and went inside.

We listened to the BBC and drank tea as we waited an hour for her father. When he arrived he was very happy to see us. He said he had seen us approaching through his binoculars and that we had been going really slow. We explained what we needed and he said that after some tea he would go out and see about the horse’s hooves. Then he went on to tell us of the foreigners that had spent the night with him and his family. The total came to five including an Austrian and some French and he said that it was getting late and we would never make it to Tash Rabat that night so we should stay with him. We had only planned to make it over the pass and then Tash Rabat would be an easy ride the next day.

The man said that the village was a former meterology station where he had worked during the Soviet times. When the Union collapsed people had claimed the buildings for themselves and then only lived in them during the summer because it was a very harsh place to live in the winter. During the winter he and his family lived in a village near At-Bashy, 45 kilometers north of Tash Rabat on the main road. He pulled out an old photo album and showed us the heyday of the village and talked more about his foreign acquaintances and how they had promised to come back but never had. We then went out and he and another guy looked at the front hooves of the new horse. I am not an expert on this subject but I know that there is a pad in the middle of the hoof and you need this pad to be level with the outer part of the hoof or just a bit shorter. The pads on our new guy were too long and they had to cut them. This was a delicate operation that if done a little too much could make the hoof really sore and the horse unable to be ridden. We held the horse which was a little weary of so many strangers fooling with him. The guy was cautious as we sliced off piece after piece a process that seemed similar to peeling an apple. After they completed both horses they said that we wouldn’t need any shoes if we were careful to keep the horse off the road as much as possible. The old man pressed us to stay with him and we thanked him graciously for the offer and the help but we wanted to keep moving and said we couldn’t stay and apologized. He seemed a bit offended and his mood changed slightly. We possibly made him lose face but there was not much we could do for if we stayed with every family that offered we would have never completed our trip.

The old man and a few of his grandkids rode out to show us the way towards the pass. Directly in front of us was a huge citadel of rock capping the top of a mountain. It was impressive and reminded me faintly of El Capitan in Yosemite, California. I now knew why the Austrian had come to visit the village and we told the man that some day in the future there would be many rock climbers that would come and climb the grand face. He lent us his binoculars to view the rock face and said that if we wanted we could return one day and he could show us some wild animals that lived around the big mountain. He told us to follow the river for a ways, stop and get some water and follow the road that was hard to miss, we thanked him and rode off into the sunset.

It was close to six and we had a few hours to make it up to the pass, probably 10 kilometers away. We continued up with the huge citadel to our left and green grass on our right. There were tons of horses and sheep that we passed and at one point we even accidentally herded up a large flock of sheep that were in the middle of our path. We passed a few yurts and the air began to get colder and crisper with each minute. The darkness began to encompass the country and we were still climbing. We passed a shack with smoke coming out of the chimney and a dog that chased after us barking at the horses’ legs. We wound up and around and just as the last rays of light faded we got to the pass, a small opening between in a large rock wall. We went a short bit before dismounting the horses and going down a steep slope to a grassy field below.

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