Sunday, October 20, 2013
Sunday, September 29, 2013
We Did It!
Hello From Ulaanbaatar!
Despite a crazy storm that is not well translated in these pictures and a few other challenges, we were able to ride our bicycles all the way here. 6,300 kilometers. More photos to follow upon our return.
Looking forward to seeing you soon.-
Thank you for the prayers and positive thoughts. -They worked.
Take care and have fun.
Monday, September 23, 2013
Hi Everyone,
Tyler and Adrianne will be back in the states in early October. They would like to invite you all to a gathering to share stories of their adventure and to be reunited with their friends. the Party will be held in the Plymouth/Holderness/Rumney NH area on Columbus Day October 12th. So please save the date. More details to follow when I have them. I know that they would love seeing as many people as possible.
-Brett
Tyler and Adrianne will be back in the states in early October. They would like to invite you all to a gathering to share stories of their adventure and to be reunited with their friends. the Party will be held in the Plymouth/Holderness/Rumney NH area on Columbus Day October 12th. So please save the date. More details to follow when I have them. I know that they would love seeing as many people as possible.
-Brett
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Is this dish available?
All night long the piece of canvas covering the entrance of our orts, similar to a tepee, flaps in the howling winds. The pelting of snow can be heard as it hits the canvas a few inches from our heads, and i wrap my sleeping bag tighter around my face as the fire in the wood stove goes out during the night. In the dawn light, with three inches of new snow covering everything, the world appears black and white. The Tsataan, literally the Reindeer People, are already out milking their herd of 60 reindeer.
We arrived at this camp of 3 orts, which house a family consisting of 1 brother, who lives alone, and a younger brother, his wife and 2 sons, after an insane van ride of 12 hrs through the night, and 2 days of horseback riding in the mountains. It felt really magical to see these 3 tepees, wrapped in white and black canvas, silhouetted against the golden larch forests with snow topped mountains, next to a lake, with a herd of reindeer staked behind.
Not only do they herd the reindeer, they ride them! It was so wild to see these people flying along on their saddled reindeer over some of the rockiest, boggiest, uneven terrain, with total ease and grace.
We got to try some reindeer milk, cheese, and even got to help make a batch of reindeer khuushuur. Khuushuur are these fried meat dumplings that are like the fast food of Mongolia, and all of central Asia really. We have had the opportunity to make khuushuur, and buuz, a steamed dumpling, with a few different families along the way.
We have now had reindeer, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goat on our trip. As far as i know, no camel. It is not just the meat though, it is the fat. This is the best part and people have offered us chunks of white fat to eat with bread. It is kind of gnarly, but I have to say that after eating some, I didn't need to eat for the rest of the day. We have also had milk, as well as the fermented, alcoholic milk of most of these animals. From this milk there is made every variation of dairy product imaginable.
All of this animal product makes everything have a particular smell. I call it 'ger smell'. Ger is the Mongolian word for yurt. Or, really, yurt is the Russian translation for ger. It is the smell of smoke, cheese, and meat. Goats in particular have the craziest smell. Just to ride past them on our bikes leaves a smell that sticks in the nostrils for awhile.
Animals provide the sustenance for existence. It is amazing to witness a culture that still exists the way it has for thousands of years. There are differences. Many gers have solar panels, and people watch television and have phones. But most people live almost entirely off of their animals. They eat dairy products and meat.
One night we camped in this beautiful valley, within sight of a few gers. As usual, within a brief time, a herdsman, on horseback, rode over to us to see what was happening. Even with our phrasebook, our Mongolian is bad. There is such variety of vowel pronunciation, and a rhythm to the language that is so different. So, we delve into conversation with this man, and at some point we give him the book so he can try and find what he it trying to tell us.
He meticulously flips through our tiny book, page by page, and eventually points to something. It is in the restaurant section, and says "Is this dish available?".
I look up at him, wondering if he is making a joke. There is no smile though, and it seems he is just really concerned about our lack of meat. He keeps saying something about bringing us some meat. I am all for trying everything when we are a guest in a ger, and I hate to refuse hospitality, but we have one pot for cooking, a limited amount of water for cleaning, and no way of keeping meat from spoiling. We are trying to explain this in as nice a way as possible, and eventually settle on him bringing us some dried meat.
The next morning he arrives as we are packing up camp with a white shopping bag. The bag says 'I love New York', with a big red heart instead of the word love, and inside is dried goat meat. Excellent. So, for the past 2 weeks, every night a bit of dried goat meat goes in our dinner, and we get to have the smell of ger everywhere we go.
Our dried goat is finally finished in the village of Tsagaanuur. It is from this village that we rent the horses to visit the Tsataan, and while there, are lucky enough to attend a shamanic ceremony, as well as an entire day of a Naadam Festival. Naadam is a traditional festival that typically is held in July, and consists of horse racing. archery, and wrestling. In Tsagaanuur, it also had a reindeer race!
In keeping with the food theme, which is what we spend a lot of time thinking about and doing, we went to the equivalent of a food tent at the festival. Inside the tent were 4 women making khuushuur, while one woman took the orders. Most restaurants here don't have menus, and if they do, you have to ask what they actually serve, because it is often only one or two items anyway. At this tent, it was obvious- khuushuur and soup. It is actually easier for us that way, because otherwise we just pick something and cross our fingers.
There was one table outside the tent which people were crammed around. Once one person left, you could take their spot. There were also only 6 bowls and spoons available. So, the real wait was for someone to finish their food, and then you were served with their bowl and spoon. All of this was washed with some cold tea and dried with a rag. It was like musical chairs with dishes and cutlery.
These food options, or lack there of, make going to town, not nearly as exciting as usual on a long biking, or hiking trip. There is no Pizza Hut- All You Can Eat Buffet, or any kind of breakfast place with pancakes and omelets and cinnamon rolls. Occasionally we have an egg, and find some fresh bread. We are excited if we can find oats and cheese in town. Apples cost about $3 each. In the bigger towns, we can find carrots and garlic. The small towns have noodles, cream of wheat, and thankfully, there are salted peanuts and raisins!
No matter what size shop, there are always an incredible variety of candy, biscuits and chocolates available. Sometimes half the shop is junk food. Guess it never goes bad. In one shop we bought an already opened and half finished package of sunflower bars, because it was the only one left and the only thing that was not just refined sugar.
The one common denominator of all these shops is the Choco Pie! It is also the most prevalent piece of garbage we have seen throughout our trip. We finally broke down and bought a box in a tiny village. They are chocolate covered cookies with a marshmallow filling. I was really hoping for something special, but it was terrible, tasteless and stale.
So, for now, our food fantasies continue. Perhaps Ulaan Bataar will be able to fulfill some of them, but I think they will mostly have to wait for our return. I am most looking forward to eating food that crunches and is raw. Raiding the bulk bins at a supermarket is also high on the list. Breakfast foods, sushi, pizza, thai food, indian....
Hope you are enjoying yours. Looking forward to sharing some with you upon our return.
love, adrianne and tyler
We arrived at this camp of 3 orts, which house a family consisting of 1 brother, who lives alone, and a younger brother, his wife and 2 sons, after an insane van ride of 12 hrs through the night, and 2 days of horseback riding in the mountains. It felt really magical to see these 3 tepees, wrapped in white and black canvas, silhouetted against the golden larch forests with snow topped mountains, next to a lake, with a herd of reindeer staked behind.
Not only do they herd the reindeer, they ride them! It was so wild to see these people flying along on their saddled reindeer over some of the rockiest, boggiest, uneven terrain, with total ease and grace.
We got to try some reindeer milk, cheese, and even got to help make a batch of reindeer khuushuur. Khuushuur are these fried meat dumplings that are like the fast food of Mongolia, and all of central Asia really. We have had the opportunity to make khuushuur, and buuz, a steamed dumpling, with a few different families along the way.
We have now had reindeer, yak, horse, cow, sheep and goat on our trip. As far as i know, no camel. It is not just the meat though, it is the fat. This is the best part and people have offered us chunks of white fat to eat with bread. It is kind of gnarly, but I have to say that after eating some, I didn't need to eat for the rest of the day. We have also had milk, as well as the fermented, alcoholic milk of most of these animals. From this milk there is made every variation of dairy product imaginable.
All of this animal product makes everything have a particular smell. I call it 'ger smell'. Ger is the Mongolian word for yurt. Or, really, yurt is the Russian translation for ger. It is the smell of smoke, cheese, and meat. Goats in particular have the craziest smell. Just to ride past them on our bikes leaves a smell that sticks in the nostrils for awhile.
Animals provide the sustenance for existence. It is amazing to witness a culture that still exists the way it has for thousands of years. There are differences. Many gers have solar panels, and people watch television and have phones. But most people live almost entirely off of their animals. They eat dairy products and meat.
One night we camped in this beautiful valley, within sight of a few gers. As usual, within a brief time, a herdsman, on horseback, rode over to us to see what was happening. Even with our phrasebook, our Mongolian is bad. There is such variety of vowel pronunciation, and a rhythm to the language that is so different. So, we delve into conversation with this man, and at some point we give him the book so he can try and find what he it trying to tell us.
He meticulously flips through our tiny book, page by page, and eventually points to something. It is in the restaurant section, and says "Is this dish available?".
I look up at him, wondering if he is making a joke. There is no smile though, and it seems he is just really concerned about our lack of meat. He keeps saying something about bringing us some meat. I am all for trying everything when we are a guest in a ger, and I hate to refuse hospitality, but we have one pot for cooking, a limited amount of water for cleaning, and no way of keeping meat from spoiling. We are trying to explain this in as nice a way as possible, and eventually settle on him bringing us some dried meat.
The next morning he arrives as we are packing up camp with a white shopping bag. The bag says 'I love New York', with a big red heart instead of the word love, and inside is dried goat meat. Excellent. So, for the past 2 weeks, every night a bit of dried goat meat goes in our dinner, and we get to have the smell of ger everywhere we go.
Our dried goat is finally finished in the village of Tsagaanuur. It is from this village that we rent the horses to visit the Tsataan, and while there, are lucky enough to attend a shamanic ceremony, as well as an entire day of a Naadam Festival. Naadam is a traditional festival that typically is held in July, and consists of horse racing. archery, and wrestling. In Tsagaanuur, it also had a reindeer race!
In keeping with the food theme, which is what we spend a lot of time thinking about and doing, we went to the equivalent of a food tent at the festival. Inside the tent were 4 women making khuushuur, while one woman took the orders. Most restaurants here don't have menus, and if they do, you have to ask what they actually serve, because it is often only one or two items anyway. At this tent, it was obvious- khuushuur and soup. It is actually easier for us that way, because otherwise we just pick something and cross our fingers.
There was one table outside the tent which people were crammed around. Once one person left, you could take their spot. There were also only 6 bowls and spoons available. So, the real wait was for someone to finish their food, and then you were served with their bowl and spoon. All of this was washed with some cold tea and dried with a rag. It was like musical chairs with dishes and cutlery.
These food options, or lack there of, make going to town, not nearly as exciting as usual on a long biking, or hiking trip. There is no Pizza Hut- All You Can Eat Buffet, or any kind of breakfast place with pancakes and omelets and cinnamon rolls. Occasionally we have an egg, and find some fresh bread. We are excited if we can find oats and cheese in town. Apples cost about $3 each. In the bigger towns, we can find carrots and garlic. The small towns have noodles, cream of wheat, and thankfully, there are salted peanuts and raisins!
No matter what size shop, there are always an incredible variety of candy, biscuits and chocolates available. Sometimes half the shop is junk food. Guess it never goes bad. In one shop we bought an already opened and half finished package of sunflower bars, because it was the only one left and the only thing that was not just refined sugar.
The one common denominator of all these shops is the Choco Pie! It is also the most prevalent piece of garbage we have seen throughout our trip. We finally broke down and bought a box in a tiny village. They are chocolate covered cookies with a marshmallow filling. I was really hoping for something special, but it was terrible, tasteless and stale.
So, for now, our food fantasies continue. Perhaps Ulaan Bataar will be able to fulfill some of them, but I think they will mostly have to wait for our return. I am most looking forward to eating food that crunches and is raw. Raiding the bulk bins at a supermarket is also high on the list. Breakfast foods, sushi, pizza, thai food, indian....
Hope you are enjoying yours. Looking forward to sharing some with you upon our return.
love, adrianne and tyler
What Sound Does a Goat Make?
Thank you all for sharing your inspiring thoughts and prayers. It is really wonderful to hear from you.
It has been a while since you have heard from us because internet access is not that easy to find in rural northern Mongolia (nice to know there are places on Earth where this is still the case).
We bought a camera, and we have been able to take a few pictures, so hopefully there will be at least a few images to see, but our time without the camera had us thinking about other ways to share this experience:
The soundscape of Mongolia-
Animal Sounds-
An important category since humans are outnumbered by horses 13-1.
"Baaah."
"Meh!"
"pbpb."- Goats often suppress their sneezes with tightly pursed lips creating an always amusing fart noise.
The murmur rising from the sod as a hundreds of little goat and sheep hooves shimmer and scamper out of our path.
The thunder of herds of horse hooves approaching our very small tent in the middle of the steppe in the middle of the night waking us to vivid imaginings of trampled tourists- and the subsequent roar from the tourists to alert the herd to the presence of the small tent and its alive and hoping to stay that way occupants.
"Hey, hey, hey!"
"Hey, hey!" -The Far Side translation of every dog bark. We hear this sound as we ride past some gers, but more often if we are in town, and particularly if we sleep in town, as some dogs have the amazing ability to shout out this sentiment all night long.
"Moo."
The familiar bellow of cattle is sometimes accompanied by the more pleasing deep grumbles of yaks. The sound from the hairier beasts is less plaintive and more accepting of whatever their current conditions may be.
"Whooshshsh"
Birds. It is amazing how often the air displaced by feathers can be heard overhead. It is especially nice to hear this sound through the roof of a ger.
A few sounds noticeable by their absence; oink, meow. Apparently, not that easy to herd pigs, and cats are not that helpful in rounding up other critters.
Cyclist Sounds-
We hear them often.
Rattle, shake, bump, bump, rattle, thump- Six wheels supporting two riders, their gear, their flags, their found eagle, hawk and owl feathers, and their four license plates can produce a surprising symphony of sounds as they roll over different surfaces.
"Hummmmmmmm buzzzzzzzzz" By far the most preferred sound rising from below the riders is the hum of tires rolling over smoothly packed earth with no sand or washboard in sight, and the pleasing song of a quickly coasting rear wheel.
"Shcrih, shcrih, shcrich, uf... son of a .." Sand. We pedal, sometimes valiantly diagonally as our bicycles decide not to travel in the direction of the road, and the direction in which they are being steered, but instead to veer at very sharp angles and head for the deeper sand on the side of the main track. This makes it very difficult to pedal, and sometimes difficult to sing happy songs. And sometimes easier to walk and sometimes easier to curse.
"thunkathunkathunkathhunkathunkathunkathunkaaaaathunkathunkathunka" Washboard. Not that awesome, but preferable to sand because we can mostly keep pedaling. There is usually some part of the eight tracks heading in the same direction that is a little smoother than the others, and the hunt for the elusive ribbon of smooth can keep one's mind quite occupied as it requires a surprising amount of concentration. When the road is like this, it also makes stopping for a snack and a moment of stillness quite refreshing.
"Rattle clacka clunk tink bunk clanka kagagkaagaka..." When the way is rocky, and their is no smooth way through you have to proceed as gingerly as possible with 4 months of gear. and 6 days of food and 2 days of water. Go straightish and think light thoughts.
"Flapwhapwhapflapwhap..." Uninterrupted by any natural obstacle like a tree, or a shrub or a rock, the wind which is sometimes blowing over nothing but grass is happy to meet our collection of flags and feathers and faces and introduce itself. More often, it has met our backs, and left our flags listless as our parade and the wind continue eastward at roughly the same speed.
Human Sounds
Although there are relatively few, and they are not that densely packed, we see at least a few others every day.
"Sain bainooo." Hello. Mongolian is not a language easily transliterated into English, because there are a number of sounds not normally made by English speakers, and vowel harmony is a difficult thing to write. It is also challenging to speak.
"crickle" The first draw of smoke into the mouth of the shepherd who has shown up to spend some time staring at us next to our tent, glows and burns the tip of the newspaper in which the tobacco has been rolled. The cigarette continues to burn, and we continue to hear it, as the space (sometimes very short) between our new Mongolian friend and ourselves is not filled with idle chatter...or meaningful chatter...or much of anything but being there. It is an initially disturbing trait of many people we have met here to be very comfortable with silence. Now, we find it a nice reminder that actually there is nothing more important than simply to be.
"fwip. fwip. fwip. fwip...." Our Mongolian phrasebook is kind of handy since we were not able to find a good English/Mongolian dictionary. We are able to look up things like; "How much is a berth in the sleeping car" and slightly more useful things such as the standard greeting, "I hope your animals are fattening up nicely." The problem is that the other half of the conversation is very difficult to translate as there is no Mongolia/ English portion of the book. This is a problem for us, but rarely a problem for the people with whom we are speaking. Minutes pass as they patiently search through the book which is not organized alphabetically for them until they find one word and point to it. More minutes pass as the search for the next word takes place.
"Stockton passes the ball to Malone..." It is often the unexpected things that make traveling so fun. It was after a very annoying string of flat tires that we found ourselves in a fenced-in yard in a small village getting some "help" from the brother-in-law of the man who brought us to the yard. He was attempting to fix the hole in one of our tires by attaching a giant slab of rubber to the inside. After trying to explain that this is unlikely to work because the tube will chafe on the rough edges, minutes passed, while we waited for something. When the something turned out to be a power drill with a sanding bit, we decided to abort the brother-in-laws project and patch the tire with a good patch made for tubes. We then retired from the sunny yard into the comfortable living room of the house. This is where we sat to eat some meat and rice and watch an NBA playoff game between the Seattle Sonics and the Utah Jazz from 1993.
"Crunchsquish" Gristle, amazing how it squeaks as it crunches! And the flavor lasts and lasts.
"mmmmMMMMmmmgunggungmmmMMMM..." 150 or 200 cc motorcycles laden with two, three or four people and a sheep, or water, or a big-screen tv, or car parts, whine and moan their way up and down mountains around and through mud puddles and all over the countryside.
Others
The sounds so far described are different than perhaps you are imagining. The sounds that one can hear here are louder than their decibels because there is so much background noise and din of modern western culture that is wonderfully absent. Upon entering a shop in a small village, there is no hum of drink coolers, and there are not hot-dogs sweaty with effort rolling endlessly on squeaky un-oiled heaters. There may be a few flies circling the paper meant to entrap them, and there may be a person passing a needle through a needlework project, but the buzz of living in the hive of electronica is absent.
There is quiet.
There is the land.
There is the sky.
There is the person staring at the stars in the middle of the night.
It is then, under the white ribbon of milky way, and the cool sparkling sky that one can even hear the subtle heartbeat of stars.
Hoping you all can find a moment to enjoy some quiet.
And looking forward to making some noise with you when we return.
Take care and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne.
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Stone Faces
Thanks for all the healing thoughts from everyone! We just reached Ulaangom, after another welding of Tyler's trailer in a coal mining town. It is now reinforced with extra steel and looks very frankensteinish.
The road we took to Ulaangom went over one pass at 2800m, which the book described as requiring "yeti lungs" to complete. It was grueling, and was also in a hail storm for part of it. On the top of the passes are ovoos, shamanistic offerings, piles of stones with sacred scarves and incense, horse skulls, money, food, and always lots of empty vodka bottles. After placing your rock, or offering, on the stone pile, you make a wish and walk around the pile 3 times. It feels pretty cool, to be in these remote places, with blue scarves blowing in the wind, surrounded by an immense landscape. Sometimes a car or truck comes by, people offer fermented mares milk, to us as well, then get back in their car and drive off, blaring their Asian pop music.
The landscape we rode through was some of the most stunning i have ever seen. So massive. We camped by one lake that was huge, surrounded by 3000m peaks, and in this huge valley. The whole evening and morning we were there we saw 2 vehicles far off in the distance. We squinted, trying to discern if that was in fact the road we planned to be on. We rode up these amazing valleys, stayed with some herders, drank tea with others, and saw some ancient burial mounds and rocks carved in the shapes of people! Sometimes, you could just look around and not see anything except for grass mountains and valleys stretched out before you. We even saw Bactrian camels!
Camera issues continue. Lesson learned- bring 2 cameras on a big trip.
Onward, next big stop, Moron. Really.
Love to all, Adrianne and Tyler
The road we took to Ulaangom went over one pass at 2800m, which the book described as requiring "yeti lungs" to complete. It was grueling, and was also in a hail storm for part of it. On the top of the passes are ovoos, shamanistic offerings, piles of stones with sacred scarves and incense, horse skulls, money, food, and always lots of empty vodka bottles. After placing your rock, or offering, on the stone pile, you make a wish and walk around the pile 3 times. It feels pretty cool, to be in these remote places, with blue scarves blowing in the wind, surrounded by an immense landscape. Sometimes a car or truck comes by, people offer fermented mares milk, to us as well, then get back in their car and drive off, blaring their Asian pop music.
The landscape we rode through was some of the most stunning i have ever seen. So massive. We camped by one lake that was huge, surrounded by 3000m peaks, and in this huge valley. The whole evening and morning we were there we saw 2 vehicles far off in the distance. We squinted, trying to discern if that was in fact the road we planned to be on. We rode up these amazing valleys, stayed with some herders, drank tea with others, and saw some ancient burial mounds and rocks carved in the shapes of people! Sometimes, you could just look around and not see anything except for grass mountains and valleys stretched out before you. We even saw Bactrian camels!
Camera issues continue. Lesson learned- bring 2 cameras on a big trip.
Onward, next big stop, Moron. Really.
Love to all, Adrianne and Tyler
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
mongol rally
I suppose for every adventure to really be an adventure there are the unknowns. That is what makes them worthwhile. All life has these unknowns, but most of the time people try to pretend
they don't exist. Placing oneself out of the comfort zone is often
where the magic happens. That is what makes one feel really alive. And that is the addiction that drives many people to do things that otherwise seem crazy.
Alas, with the highs of adventure, there are also the lows. One can prepare for the difficulties as much as possible and therefore be better equipped and able to deal when things do go wrong, but at some point, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best. Hope the weather holds out, hope your equipment holds out, hope the body holds out, just hope. Yet, sometimes there is an Achilles heel that is found, the armor is pierced, and it is usually something for which one wasn't prepared or couldn't prepare.
This past week, things got really hard.
A few days before arriving in Mongolia, while in the gorgeous Altai Region of Russia, full of stunning mountains, cliffs, and rivers, Tyler's BOB trailer cracked and broke. As luck would have it, we were in a tiny village, but managed to find Ivan the Welder, and within two hours we were back on the road. This area of the Altai follows a few rivers upstream, and with each 100 km further along the road, the landscape became more and more striking. The green hills, turned to mountains, the quaint Russian looking villages with little gardens, gave way to Kazakh looking villages of grey logs and stone walls and surrounding land brown from livestock. We were climbing to a plateau, with passes around 2500m, that were supposedly a desert climate, but which rained on us for 15 days in a row. The plateau is surrounded by 4000m peaks, still holding snow, and there are no trees, only brown and red and light green with grasses.
We had met up with a French couple, Tiben and Pauline, also planning to cycle across Mongolia, so for 6 days the 4 of us pedaled and camped together. It was relieving and fun to have companions for a few days.
We all rode into Mongolia on August 17th, and just as everyone said, the pavement ended. It literally went from a paved road in great condition, to dirt, at the gate. It felt like the end of the road, not the beginning. The town at the border was all grey, and nothing taller than one story. Many buildings have flat roofs, and there was dung drying on the roofs, to use as fuel in the winter, I suppose.
We quickly came upon a herd of yaks grazing by the road, and soon saw more gers scattered in the hills. It was gorgeous and pretty much what I had imagined of Mongolia. That night we camped by a lake, and the next morning it was 2 degrees Celsius, and the sky looked like snow. We pedaled 15 km into town, bundled up in all our clothes, weaving our way through the washboard of the dirt road. There is not just one dirt road though, so when one got really rough to ride, we would switch onto another dirt and try that for awhile. We saw people just drive anywhere through the grass and make their own road.
We arrived in a tiny village, which felt more like a frontier camp, and met a man who wanted to show us a map of the area because there was a problem with the road we planned on taking. We followed him to his house, were invited in for tea, looked at maps, and when we went to take a picture, realized the camera, as well as a leatherman knife were missing. We had them when we left camp, and we no longer had them. Tyler went back to our camp to look for the camera, but to no avail. All of our photos are gone. It makes me feel sick, and so sad. The camera is replaceable, but those pictures...
We rode away from that house, and I have never felt more vulnerable and more exposed. Dark clouds loomed overhead, the road was rough, there was no place to camp that was sheltered, and it felt like we were on another planet. We camped that night in a hailstorm and watched as the white piles grew around the tent. The next morning, while packing up camp, my back went out. I didn't know if I could even ride my bike. All hail Vitamin I!
As I watched Tyler pedal up the pass, after also riding my bike up the pass, it was one of the grandest views ever. I thought, what a great picture! It looked like he was riding on the edge of the world, with these huge peaks, white with new snow, draped behind him. More like someone had pulled a screen of a 'mountain scene' on the wall behind him.
Amazingly enough, here in Mongolia, we found a perfect road down from the pass into town! Not only did I ride, but we cruised 35 km down to town, going about 30km/hr! It was incredible. And the landscape equally so. I have not been so relieved to make it to town in a long while. Now, we are enjoying the first day of sun in about 15, looking for a new camera, resting my back, and praying our bicycle tour can continue.
Things like this really make me question everything about myself and my life, and its hard to not try and look for some reason all this is happening. Maybe some day it will seem really clear, and maybe "strange things just happen". Maybe it is to remind me about what is really most important. And perhaps that is the greatest lesson that any adventure teaches anyway; that we are blessed with this breathe, this life, the relationships we have, the love we share, and each moment we are given.
Blessings, adrianne and tyler
Alas, with the highs of adventure, there are also the lows. One can prepare for the difficulties as much as possible and therefore be better equipped and able to deal when things do go wrong, but at some point, all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best. Hope the weather holds out, hope your equipment holds out, hope the body holds out, just hope. Yet, sometimes there is an Achilles heel that is found, the armor is pierced, and it is usually something for which one wasn't prepared or couldn't prepare.
This past week, things got really hard.
A few days before arriving in Mongolia, while in the gorgeous Altai Region of Russia, full of stunning mountains, cliffs, and rivers, Tyler's BOB trailer cracked and broke. As luck would have it, we were in a tiny village, but managed to find Ivan the Welder, and within two hours we were back on the road. This area of the Altai follows a few rivers upstream, and with each 100 km further along the road, the landscape became more and more striking. The green hills, turned to mountains, the quaint Russian looking villages with little gardens, gave way to Kazakh looking villages of grey logs and stone walls and surrounding land brown from livestock. We were climbing to a plateau, with passes around 2500m, that were supposedly a desert climate, but which rained on us for 15 days in a row. The plateau is surrounded by 4000m peaks, still holding snow, and there are no trees, only brown and red and light green with grasses.
We had met up with a French couple, Tiben and Pauline, also planning to cycle across Mongolia, so for 6 days the 4 of us pedaled and camped together. It was relieving and fun to have companions for a few days.
We all rode into Mongolia on August 17th, and just as everyone said, the pavement ended. It literally went from a paved road in great condition, to dirt, at the gate. It felt like the end of the road, not the beginning. The town at the border was all grey, and nothing taller than one story. Many buildings have flat roofs, and there was dung drying on the roofs, to use as fuel in the winter, I suppose.
We quickly came upon a herd of yaks grazing by the road, and soon saw more gers scattered in the hills. It was gorgeous and pretty much what I had imagined of Mongolia. That night we camped by a lake, and the next morning it was 2 degrees Celsius, and the sky looked like snow. We pedaled 15 km into town, bundled up in all our clothes, weaving our way through the washboard of the dirt road. There is not just one dirt road though, so when one got really rough to ride, we would switch onto another dirt and try that for awhile. We saw people just drive anywhere through the grass and make their own road.
We arrived in a tiny village, which felt more like a frontier camp, and met a man who wanted to show us a map of the area because there was a problem with the road we planned on taking. We followed him to his house, were invited in for tea, looked at maps, and when we went to take a picture, realized the camera, as well as a leatherman knife were missing. We had them when we left camp, and we no longer had them. Tyler went back to our camp to look for the camera, but to no avail. All of our photos are gone. It makes me feel sick, and so sad. The camera is replaceable, but those pictures...
We rode away from that house, and I have never felt more vulnerable and more exposed. Dark clouds loomed overhead, the road was rough, there was no place to camp that was sheltered, and it felt like we were on another planet. We camped that night in a hailstorm and watched as the white piles grew around the tent. The next morning, while packing up camp, my back went out. I didn't know if I could even ride my bike. All hail Vitamin I!
As I watched Tyler pedal up the pass, after also riding my bike up the pass, it was one of the grandest views ever. I thought, what a great picture! It looked like he was riding on the edge of the world, with these huge peaks, white with new snow, draped behind him. More like someone had pulled a screen of a 'mountain scene' on the wall behind him.
Amazingly enough, here in Mongolia, we found a perfect road down from the pass into town! Not only did I ride, but we cruised 35 km down to town, going about 30km/hr! It was incredible. And the landscape equally so. I have not been so relieved to make it to town in a long while. Now, we are enjoying the first day of sun in about 15, looking for a new camera, resting my back, and praying our bicycle tour can continue.
Things like this really make me question everything about myself and my life, and its hard to not try and look for some reason all this is happening. Maybe some day it will seem really clear, and maybe "strange things just happen". Maybe it is to remind me about what is really most important. And perhaps that is the greatest lesson that any adventure teaches anyway; that we are blessed with this breathe, this life, the relationships we have, the love we share, and each moment we are given.
Blessings, adrianne and tyler
Monday, August 19, 2013
"Houze yer trip?"
Hunkered, hunched, and shivering, the mind retraces the steps that led this body here. Seeking maximal weather protection from a minimal motorcycle, I watch the tormented clouds drag a curtain of cold and wet across the plain between us and the small village where everything changed so quickly.
Waiting is not easy, so the arrival of a second motorcycle and a second and third brother and a pump is a welcome sight for rain-pelted eyes. Acting quickly, air once again fills the tire, but all is not well because the chain has been damaged. The kinked links are straightened after a few swift knocks with a fist-sized rock, and two motorcycles and four people race back through the rain to the village, where their family and my friends await our return.
Why is anyone out in this weather? In hopes of retrieving an item smaller than a stick of gum.
The camera, and the tiny SD card, and the thousands of photos of nearly three months of travel through some of the most amazing landscapes and skyscapes we have ever seen are gone. And the feeling that you now have after reading that sentence has been our companion for the last few days.
We will never be able to share with you the photos of Song Kol, of the people we have met, of incredible places where we set up our tent, of really crazy places we have slept because we are cycling and sometimes that means you just have to stop, and sleep where you are, and sometimes that place is behind a gas station, or buried in some bushes, or on top of the world.
There is the picture of the bob trailer's wheel so caked with sticky mud that it no longer turns, socks covered in barbs that require pliers to remove, morels discovered while kicking clear a spot for the tent, pushing our bikes through snow, our faces after 130km with lots of hills, the three year-old Uzbek boy wearing my sunglasses, a rainbow emerging from the head of a Lenin statue, the one of... I can barely write because my stomach hurts to think of the images that are gone. Look at this one, it is amazing. This one would be great to accompany an article we could write for a magazine. I can't wait for the slideshows during which we share these incredible experiences with all of our friends and family...
What is the lesson? Maybe I shouldn't think so much about what will happen in the future, and I should be present here in these amazing places with the wonderful people here. And one in particular. Small circles. One breath.
We rode into Mongolia on August 17th. I don't know that I have ever been anyplace where the actual so closely matches the imagined. Leaving Russia, the customs guard told us, "In Mongolia, no asphalt." Western Mongolia and the vastness these words conjure are accurate. Mountains and hills of grass and no asphalt. The sky continued its fickle trend of the past month threatening rain. Fifteen days of rain, four days of sun, fifteen days of rain.
On August 19th, we stood atop a pass with all of our flags snapping in the strong breeze. A "Mongol Rally" car rolled up alongside, and some non-Mongolian faces who had spent the last five weeks driving from London greeted us from within. The Australian driver asked, "Houze yer trip?"
What do you say?
Well, as you can see from your comfortable seat there within that car, it is a whole lot different than yours. It is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. We have been ill, we have had a trailer break, we have had flat tires, we have frozen, we have melted, we have been told that people will slit our throats and steal our money, invited warmly into people's homes, then asked to pay for the mutton noodles that we did not want but which we ate in order to be polite, we have been unable to communicate, we have been chased by dogs, run off the road by crazy drivers, harassed by drunks, swarmed by biting bugs...and yesterday our camera was probably stolen, and this morning...
"Good, and yours?"
On that high pass, was a pretty low point, but as so often happens, something remarkable happened after they drove away. We began our bumpy descent. Choosing whichever dirt track appeared to have the smoothest rough surface we headed towards the town of Olgii. Before too long, we saw a path that looked very smooth.
Pavement. A ribbon of smooth new asphalt laid down as if by seraphs in safety vests. 30km downhill on smooth pavement with tailwinds and no traffic through the most spectacular mountain scenery; popping because of the clouds and sun lighting the valleys and summits. And with each kilometer passing, perspective gained. The list of people and things for which to be thankful is always so much longer than the list of things for which one might gripe. And the list starts with this one breath. This moment is the only one we ever have, so we might as well enjoy it.
We hope you are enjoying yours.
Take care and have fun-
Thank you-
Tyler and Adrianne
PS- Healing thoughts.
Waiting is not easy, so the arrival of a second motorcycle and a second and third brother and a pump is a welcome sight for rain-pelted eyes. Acting quickly, air once again fills the tire, but all is not well because the chain has been damaged. The kinked links are straightened after a few swift knocks with a fist-sized rock, and two motorcycles and four people race back through the rain to the village, where their family and my friends await our return.
Why is anyone out in this weather? In hopes of retrieving an item smaller than a stick of gum.
The camera, and the tiny SD card, and the thousands of photos of nearly three months of travel through some of the most amazing landscapes and skyscapes we have ever seen are gone. And the feeling that you now have after reading that sentence has been our companion for the last few days.
We will never be able to share with you the photos of Song Kol, of the people we have met, of incredible places where we set up our tent, of really crazy places we have slept because we are cycling and sometimes that means you just have to stop, and sleep where you are, and sometimes that place is behind a gas station, or buried in some bushes, or on top of the world.
There is the picture of the bob trailer's wheel so caked with sticky mud that it no longer turns, socks covered in barbs that require pliers to remove, morels discovered while kicking clear a spot for the tent, pushing our bikes through snow, our faces after 130km with lots of hills, the three year-old Uzbek boy wearing my sunglasses, a rainbow emerging from the head of a Lenin statue, the one of... I can barely write because my stomach hurts to think of the images that are gone. Look at this one, it is amazing. This one would be great to accompany an article we could write for a magazine. I can't wait for the slideshows during which we share these incredible experiences with all of our friends and family...
What is the lesson? Maybe I shouldn't think so much about what will happen in the future, and I should be present here in these amazing places with the wonderful people here. And one in particular. Small circles. One breath.
We rode into Mongolia on August 17th. I don't know that I have ever been anyplace where the actual so closely matches the imagined. Leaving Russia, the customs guard told us, "In Mongolia, no asphalt." Western Mongolia and the vastness these words conjure are accurate. Mountains and hills of grass and no asphalt. The sky continued its fickle trend of the past month threatening rain. Fifteen days of rain, four days of sun, fifteen days of rain.
On August 19th, we stood atop a pass with all of our flags snapping in the strong breeze. A "Mongol Rally" car rolled up alongside, and some non-Mongolian faces who had spent the last five weeks driving from London greeted us from within. The Australian driver asked, "Houze yer trip?"
What do you say?
Well, as you can see from your comfortable seat there within that car, it is a whole lot different than yours. It is one of the most difficult things I have ever done. We have been ill, we have had a trailer break, we have had flat tires, we have frozen, we have melted, we have been told that people will slit our throats and steal our money, invited warmly into people's homes, then asked to pay for the mutton noodles that we did not want but which we ate in order to be polite, we have been unable to communicate, we have been chased by dogs, run off the road by crazy drivers, harassed by drunks, swarmed by biting bugs...and yesterday our camera was probably stolen, and this morning...
"Good, and yours?"
On that high pass, was a pretty low point, but as so often happens, something remarkable happened after they drove away. We began our bumpy descent. Choosing whichever dirt track appeared to have the smoothest rough surface we headed towards the town of Olgii. Before too long, we saw a path that looked very smooth.
Pavement. A ribbon of smooth new asphalt laid down as if by seraphs in safety vests. 30km downhill on smooth pavement with tailwinds and no traffic through the most spectacular mountain scenery; popping because of the clouds and sun lighting the valleys and summits. And with each kilometer passing, perspective gained. The list of people and things for which to be thankful is always so much longer than the list of things for which one might gripe. And the list starts with this one breath. This moment is the only one we ever have, so we might as well enjoy it.
We hope you are enjoying yours.
Take care and have fun-
Thank you-
Tyler and Adrianne
PS- Healing thoughts.
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Comments
We changed the settings so it should be easier to leave a comment if you feel inspired to do so.
-Our wak of mayhem widens and lengthens. You should have seen the post office after we finished with them.-
Take care and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne
-Our wak of mayhem widens and lengthens. You should have seen the post office after we finished with them.-
Take care and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne
Monday, August 5, 2013
"Sweet Dreams"....ZZZZZ
Greetings, Friends-
They let us in.
As two young Americans raised in the "Red Dawn" era, it is quite thrilling to be infiltrating the enemy's stronghold and spreading Sherman-esque disarray in our path across the motherland.
It began on our first day in country. Our Kazakh send-off was made after riding one of the most awful stretches of road we have yet encountered in our trip. The motor vehicles using the same road would often show us their full side-view while presumably making progress in our direction. The holes and mud pits in the road were so daunting that westbound cars were frequently south, south, north, south, north, north, west, south bound. Although it had rained plenty before our arrival, we were fortunate to not be riding that bit of road in the rain.
We were welcomed to Russia under sunny skies, and found much smoother pavement on the other side of the border. After exchanging some money, lunching in the park-while airing out sleeping bags and looking appropriately gypsy- we headed out of Gornyak, and on towards Barnaul.
After all the excitement of the challenging road, the big border crossing, and the gifts received at the grocery store, we were pretty tired, and decided it was not necessary to cover 100km that day.
There was a spot on our map where it appeared that a few kilometers up a side road there was a river crossing. Alongside rivers one can sometimes find nice flat camping sites, so we turned of the main route and pedaled a little ways up a dirt road. Hmmm. There was a river, and there was flatness, but the flatness was separated from the river by impenetrable vegetation...except for right under the bridge.
Deciding not to sleep under the bridge where the local youth undoubtedly party, we pushed our bikes a good distance from the road and the bridge and access to the river, and found a good flat spot on the floodplain where we would be bothered by nobody but the mosquitoes.
And boy howdy the bugs showed up. We set up the tent/mosquito refuge, and cooked and ate dinner in our full rain gear because despite the lack of rain, there certainly was no lack of straw-mouthed flying things looking for human flesh to suck.
Quickly, quickly, we dove into the tent, zipped it up and did our best to rid the sanctuary of invaders.
Phew. Well, at least we will sleep well on this pleasant evening on this flat ground far from anywhere that normal people would wish to venture....
"Do you hear something?"
"You mean something other than the drone of billions of mosquitos trying to get into the tent?
"Voices. Human voices."
And wouldn\t you know it, through the tall grass, out of the darkening (sunset and clouds of mosquito caused) evening, came four Russian teen-aged boys who were quite as surprised to stumble upon our campsite as we were by their stumbling.
"Preevyet?"
"Preevyet."
Then followed one of the more strange exchanges we have had so far on the trip.
The tee-shirt clad lads who had come down to the floodplain after sunset to drink with their friends must have been made of different material, because certainly no humans made of flesh and blood could have withstood the punishment they endured while they chatted with us for the next forty minutes.
We were very bad hosts, or guests- difficult to know who was which- because we did not leave the tent to greet them. We did not leave the tent to assist them in their attempts to start a fire a few feet from the vestibule, -a brief mission quickly abondened, thankfully- we did not leave the tent at all. We pretty much kept the force-field intact and chatted with the lads until they grew tired of our inability to understand Russian.
"Sweet dreams!" zzzzzzz
We have continued to spread mayhem in our path, and the Russians (most of them-not the people working in a field to whom we offered half a watermelon-but that is a whole other story) have continued to treat us with kindness.
This evening, we are on our way to Yadveega's apartment, where we will be spending the night. We first made her aquaintence at the pharmacy where she was working when we decided to restock our contact lens solution and soap and such.
Take care and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne
They let us in.
As two young Americans raised in the "Red Dawn" era, it is quite thrilling to be infiltrating the enemy's stronghold and spreading Sherman-esque disarray in our path across the motherland.
It began on our first day in country. Our Kazakh send-off was made after riding one of the most awful stretches of road we have yet encountered in our trip. The motor vehicles using the same road would often show us their full side-view while presumably making progress in our direction. The holes and mud pits in the road were so daunting that westbound cars were frequently south, south, north, south, north, north, west, south bound. Although it had rained plenty before our arrival, we were fortunate to not be riding that bit of road in the rain.
We were welcomed to Russia under sunny skies, and found much smoother pavement on the other side of the border. After exchanging some money, lunching in the park-while airing out sleeping bags and looking appropriately gypsy- we headed out of Gornyak, and on towards Barnaul.
After all the excitement of the challenging road, the big border crossing, and the gifts received at the grocery store, we were pretty tired, and decided it was not necessary to cover 100km that day.
There was a spot on our map where it appeared that a few kilometers up a side road there was a river crossing. Alongside rivers one can sometimes find nice flat camping sites, so we turned of the main route and pedaled a little ways up a dirt road. Hmmm. There was a river, and there was flatness, but the flatness was separated from the river by impenetrable vegetation...except for right under the bridge.
Deciding not to sleep under the bridge where the local youth undoubtedly party, we pushed our bikes a good distance from the road and the bridge and access to the river, and found a good flat spot on the floodplain where we would be bothered by nobody but the mosquitoes.
And boy howdy the bugs showed up. We set up the tent/mosquito refuge, and cooked and ate dinner in our full rain gear because despite the lack of rain, there certainly was no lack of straw-mouthed flying things looking for human flesh to suck.
Quickly, quickly, we dove into the tent, zipped it up and did our best to rid the sanctuary of invaders.
Phew. Well, at least we will sleep well on this pleasant evening on this flat ground far from anywhere that normal people would wish to venture....
"Do you hear something?"
"You mean something other than the drone of billions of mosquitos trying to get into the tent?
"Voices. Human voices."
And wouldn\t you know it, through the tall grass, out of the darkening (sunset and clouds of mosquito caused) evening, came four Russian teen-aged boys who were quite as surprised to stumble upon our campsite as we were by their stumbling.
"Preevyet?"
"Preevyet."
Then followed one of the more strange exchanges we have had so far on the trip.
The tee-shirt clad lads who had come down to the floodplain after sunset to drink with their friends must have been made of different material, because certainly no humans made of flesh and blood could have withstood the punishment they endured while they chatted with us for the next forty minutes.
We were very bad hosts, or guests- difficult to know who was which- because we did not leave the tent to greet them. We did not leave the tent to assist them in their attempts to start a fire a few feet from the vestibule, -a brief mission quickly abondened, thankfully- we did not leave the tent at all. We pretty much kept the force-field intact and chatted with the lads until they grew tired of our inability to understand Russian.
"Sweet dreams!" zzzzzzz
We have continued to spread mayhem in our path, and the Russians (most of them-not the people working in a field to whom we offered half a watermelon-but that is a whole other story) have continued to treat us with kindness.
This evening, we are on our way to Yadveega's apartment, where we will be spending the night. We first made her aquaintence at the pharmacy where she was working when we decided to restock our contact lens solution and soap and such.
Take care and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne
The Society
Ziplocks. Specifically: blue quart size freezer bags with the "yellow and blue make green seal"- my favorite. Nalgene containers: 4 oz, 8 oz, 16 oz- love them.
I don't know when it happened, but I somehow developed this neurosis for plastic containers. I am definitely a member of 'The Society of People who put Bags inside of Bags inside of Bags'. If you've never backpacked, or bicycled toured, or done any number of other outdoor pursuits, then perhaps you've never heard of it. This term was first coined in my mind by Daniel 'the Cormorant', a thru-hiker I met while on the Continental Divide Trail in 2000. It cracked me up, and yet was utterly perfect. Let's say I buy a box of noodles. I can't carry a box into the woods- for one, it weighs more, it also takes up more space, and then I have to carry the box around for days, until I find a trash. So, i put the noodles in a ziplock bag and throw the box away before i leave town. Now, they are smaller, weigh less, and i can still reuse the ziplock. Brilliant. Then, the ziplock of noodles goes in the food bag which goes in the BOB trailer bag! Bag in a bag in a bag. It gets kind of ridiculous.
Being in Central Asia is not helping my condition, it is only strengthening the container demon because... there are no ziplocks! Worse yet, there are no plastic containers with resealable lids! Now, i get to add hoarding to the neurosis. There are drinks and sodas with lids that are resealable, but somehow this technology has not transferred to wide mouth plastic containers. This is a problem for people who care about weight, size, breakability, and compactibility when empty. Think about honey and butter; two things I love, but which do not travel well in a bag.
Now, as I bike along, past the honey sellers on the road, i stare intently on their wares and try to see what their containers look like. Have they figured it out? I thought maybe the Kazakhs would be more advanced than the Kyrgyz and would possess this new age technology. Maybe the Russians have it dialed? The jury is still out.
Enter the nalgene container with a wide mouth screw top lid. Perfect. This has become one of my essential travel items. Forget about the whistle as one of the Top 10 necessary pieces of survival gear. The nalgene functions as smash-proof water-tight storage, a bowl, re-hydrator, cutting board, and measuring cup. I don't know what I would do without it. I had to buy one for Tyler before we left, as he was not yet a believer.
So, next time you close your jar of peanut butter, do so with a little gratitude, and thank god you live in such a great country, that not only has peanut butter, but has such an array of plastic containers.
I don't know when it happened, but I somehow developed this neurosis for plastic containers. I am definitely a member of 'The Society of People who put Bags inside of Bags inside of Bags'. If you've never backpacked, or bicycled toured, or done any number of other outdoor pursuits, then perhaps you've never heard of it. This term was first coined in my mind by Daniel 'the Cormorant', a thru-hiker I met while on the Continental Divide Trail in 2000. It cracked me up, and yet was utterly perfect. Let's say I buy a box of noodles. I can't carry a box into the woods- for one, it weighs more, it also takes up more space, and then I have to carry the box around for days, until I find a trash. So, i put the noodles in a ziplock bag and throw the box away before i leave town. Now, they are smaller, weigh less, and i can still reuse the ziplock. Brilliant. Then, the ziplock of noodles goes in the food bag which goes in the BOB trailer bag! Bag in a bag in a bag. It gets kind of ridiculous.
Being in Central Asia is not helping my condition, it is only strengthening the container demon because... there are no ziplocks! Worse yet, there are no plastic containers with resealable lids! Now, i get to add hoarding to the neurosis. There are drinks and sodas with lids that are resealable, but somehow this technology has not transferred to wide mouth plastic containers. This is a problem for people who care about weight, size, breakability, and compactibility when empty. Think about honey and butter; two things I love, but which do not travel well in a bag.
Now, as I bike along, past the honey sellers on the road, i stare intently on their wares and try to see what their containers look like. Have they figured it out? I thought maybe the Kazakhs would be more advanced than the Kyrgyz and would possess this new age technology. Maybe the Russians have it dialed? The jury is still out.
Enter the nalgene container with a wide mouth screw top lid. Perfect. This has become one of my essential travel items. Forget about the whistle as one of the Top 10 necessary pieces of survival gear. The nalgene functions as smash-proof water-tight storage, a bowl, re-hydrator, cutting board, and measuring cup. I don't know what I would do without it. I had to buy one for Tyler before we left, as he was not yet a believer.
So, next time you close your jar of peanut butter, do so with a little gratitude, and thank god you live in such a great country, that not only has peanut butter, but has such an array of plastic containers.
Sunday, August 4, 2013
A Few Thousand Words
Greetings, Friends-
Here are a few images that say way more than we could with pages of words.
What you can't see in the pictures is the conversation that took place with the young security guard at this hostel on this computer using google translate in order to figure out how to get the photos from the camera to your eyes. It is often really fun to be on the road in other countries, but it is pretty much never easy.
The view from one of our first campsites at a small ski area outside Bishkek.
Yurts are everywhere.
If you tell someone you visited Kyrgyzstan, they will probably ask if you have been to Issyk Kol. It was quite nice.
Not sure if we will be able to post any Kazakh or Russian photos, but there are some pretty good ones. And rest assured, even the boring ones have a good story.
Take care, and have fun-
Tyler and Adrianne.
Saturday, July 27, 2013
2992
That's right, 2992km. Just arrived in Oskamen, or Ust-Kamenogorsk, depending on which map you look at, and if it uses the Kazakh names or Soviet names. On the approach to the city, the houses somehow started looking different. They are small wooden houses with steep pitched roofs and shutters of varying colors. There are still potatoes growing in the yard and cows roaming about, but it just looks very different than the earth and mud houses we have been seeing throughout the rest of our trip. It definitely feels much more Russian.
Ok- so that posting failed because all six of the staff at the internet cafe had to go on break for half an hour and none of them could give us more time on the computer. Really.
Now, we are in Shaminaikha, a town only 23 km from the Russian border! Foreigners are not allowed to use this crossing though, so we have to go down the road another 150 km or so to enter at a different border point. It feels pretty wild that we are about to enter a new country, and even more incredible that a whole month has gone by and we are now half way through our trip! Kazakhstan has gone by even faster than Kyrgyzstan.
Similarly to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan has sort of divided itself in two parts, in terms of our trip. Steppe/desert and taiga/rainforest. Since writing from the "apple people's" house, we got into a stretch of country that is "The Vast and Endless Steppe". On the map this area had a bunch of funny little symbols, that I now realize mean desert! A Czech couple had warned us about this area of "nothing". No people, no water, not even a tree for shade. I have walked and biked across a few stretches of desert, and we were sort of girding up for some harsh conditions. Perhaps because of this, it wasn't that bad. It did look vast and endless, with far away hills shimmering in the distance, hovering above the horizon, and only the train rumbling by to separate time and space.
We got ourselves into a program of waking up at five, so we could bike when it was still cool, and carrying four gallons of water at a time. There did end up being a few shrubs to hide under for shade, and there were enough towns or random cafes to get water at, that it was tolerable. I adopted a new mantra during this stretch, 'tailwinds', only focusing on what I want.
This was the program up until the town of Georgievka, which we reached ten days ago. From that day until today, there have been thunderstorms and it has poured rain, at least once a day. It has gotten greener, lusher, and more Russian feeling the farther north we go. We are now in the land of mushrooms and strawberries! There are people everywhere harvesting these coveted items. More than once, while setting up the tent by the side of some field, a rough looking man has wandered through the woods by the tent. At first it was a bit unnerving. Are these the drunks people warned us about?
The rain has put us on its program. Sleep later if it pours first thing in the morning, take a long lunch and hide until it stops, make camp before it storms again. So, this morning when we awoke to red skies, I took warning. The rain held off long enough to pack up, but then it kept on till noon, when we reached town and a gazebo to eat our lunch under. I think we fit right in at the park, amongst the kids driving mini-cars around the playground with blaring music, and the girls learning to rollerblade.
This town is pretty much blessed in my book. It is always the towns you expect nothing in that are the best. Our bikes got a shower, we got a hot shower, and the kind manager of the hotel is letting us use her computer.
I like to think that by biking we are making everyone happy. When they see us out their car windows in the pouring rain they think, 'at least that's not me'.
Hope you are all feeling blessed as well. Peace out, Adrianne and Tyler
Ok- so that posting failed because all six of the staff at the internet cafe had to go on break for half an hour and none of them could give us more time on the computer. Really.
Now, we are in Shaminaikha, a town only 23 km from the Russian border! Foreigners are not allowed to use this crossing though, so we have to go down the road another 150 km or so to enter at a different border point. It feels pretty wild that we are about to enter a new country, and even more incredible that a whole month has gone by and we are now half way through our trip! Kazakhstan has gone by even faster than Kyrgyzstan.
Similarly to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan has sort of divided itself in two parts, in terms of our trip. Steppe/desert and taiga/rainforest. Since writing from the "apple people's" house, we got into a stretch of country that is "The Vast and Endless Steppe". On the map this area had a bunch of funny little symbols, that I now realize mean desert! A Czech couple had warned us about this area of "nothing". No people, no water, not even a tree for shade. I have walked and biked across a few stretches of desert, and we were sort of girding up for some harsh conditions. Perhaps because of this, it wasn't that bad. It did look vast and endless, with far away hills shimmering in the distance, hovering above the horizon, and only the train rumbling by to separate time and space.
We got ourselves into a program of waking up at five, so we could bike when it was still cool, and carrying four gallons of water at a time. There did end up being a few shrubs to hide under for shade, and there were enough towns or random cafes to get water at, that it was tolerable. I adopted a new mantra during this stretch, 'tailwinds', only focusing on what I want.
This was the program up until the town of Georgievka, which we reached ten days ago. From that day until today, there have been thunderstorms and it has poured rain, at least once a day. It has gotten greener, lusher, and more Russian feeling the farther north we go. We are now in the land of mushrooms and strawberries! There are people everywhere harvesting these coveted items. More than once, while setting up the tent by the side of some field, a rough looking man has wandered through the woods by the tent. At first it was a bit unnerving. Are these the drunks people warned us about?
The rain has put us on its program. Sleep later if it pours first thing in the morning, take a long lunch and hide until it stops, make camp before it storms again. So, this morning when we awoke to red skies, I took warning. The rain held off long enough to pack up, but then it kept on till noon, when we reached town and a gazebo to eat our lunch under. I think we fit right in at the park, amongst the kids driving mini-cars around the playground with blaring music, and the girls learning to rollerblade.
This town is pretty much blessed in my book. It is always the towns you expect nothing in that are the best. Our bikes got a shower, we got a hot shower, and the kind manager of the hotel is letting us use her computer.
I like to think that by biking we are making everyone happy. When they see us out their car windows in the pouring rain they think, 'at least that's not me'.
Hope you are all feeling blessed as well. Peace out, Adrianne and Tyler
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Sir, They Are As Dumb As We Thought
While riding past a firing range for large armored vehicles, we spotted a fine campsite, but we decided to keep pedaling. The hunt for good camping occupies a large part of our time, from examining maps looking for rivers, to scanning horizons searching for clumps of trees far enough from the road to discourage curious folks from visiting our campsite in the middle of the night.
Here in Kazakhstan, finding a good spot is easier in some ways and more challenging in others than it was in Kyrgyzstan. There are fewer people here, and a whole lot more space. But much of that space is peopleless for good reason, as it is also free of flowing water or trees. It was the presence of a few trees that made the firing range spot so desirable. It was fun to imagine some Kazakh soldiers discovering a journal filled with a string of very bizarre Russian words. "Today, gas station woman give melon and chocolate and almonds. She very nice. We very tired. We smile big." Here is the evidence, sir. The tourists are absolute morons.
The little bit of Russian we do know is proving very useful and is leading to some amazing interactions here in Kazakhstan. Almost every day, we have been given gifts by the very kind folks who live here. After they get a handle on their disbelief that we are from the US and that we are riding our bikes to Mongolia, we are presented with treasures.
Just the other day, we were making a pretty standard resupply stop in Taldikorghan, a small city in eastern Kazakhstan. The plan was to purchase; bread, cheese, almonds, meat stick, cucumbers, snacks and a few other treats to fill up our food bags. By the time we were following the very friendly man on the motor scooter guiding us out of the city in our mini parade, we had been given pounds of treats; 1 plastic comb, 3 cans of beef and barley, 2 cans of mackerel, 2 cans of sprats, 1 pound of raisins, 1 pound of dried apricots, 1 package of wafer treats, 1 large box of assorted cookies, 2 green t-shirts, and 1 five ruble note from 1909.
We are having a pretty wonderful time, and look forward to telling the stories in person.
This post is being written from the home of some very friendly folks who were selling apples on the side of the road. We did not have a chance to buy any apples before we had been invited in for tea, and dinner and showers and a place to spend the night. Amazing.
Thank you for the continued good thoughts and prayers. They are working.
Take care-
Tyler and Adrianne
Here in Kazakhstan, finding a good spot is easier in some ways and more challenging in others than it was in Kyrgyzstan. There are fewer people here, and a whole lot more space. But much of that space is peopleless for good reason, as it is also free of flowing water or trees. It was the presence of a few trees that made the firing range spot so desirable. It was fun to imagine some Kazakh soldiers discovering a journal filled with a string of very bizarre Russian words. "Today, gas station woman give melon and chocolate and almonds. She very nice. We very tired. We smile big." Here is the evidence, sir. The tourists are absolute morons.
The little bit of Russian we do know is proving very useful and is leading to some amazing interactions here in Kazakhstan. Almost every day, we have been given gifts by the very kind folks who live here. After they get a handle on their disbelief that we are from the US and that we are riding our bikes to Mongolia, we are presented with treasures.
Just the other day, we were making a pretty standard resupply stop in Taldikorghan, a small city in eastern Kazakhstan. The plan was to purchase; bread, cheese, almonds, meat stick, cucumbers, snacks and a few other treats to fill up our food bags. By the time we were following the very friendly man on the motor scooter guiding us out of the city in our mini parade, we had been given pounds of treats; 1 plastic comb, 3 cans of beef and barley, 2 cans of mackerel, 2 cans of sprats, 1 pound of raisins, 1 pound of dried apricots, 1 package of wafer treats, 1 large box of assorted cookies, 2 green t-shirts, and 1 five ruble note from 1909.
We are having a pretty wonderful time, and look forward to telling the stories in person.
This post is being written from the home of some very friendly folks who were selling apples on the side of the road. We did not have a chance to buy any apples before we had been invited in for tea, and dinner and showers and a place to spend the night. Amazing.
Thank you for the continued good thoughts and prayers. They are working.
Take care-
Tyler and Adrianne
Sunday, July 7, 2013
Stop, Please Stop
"Akyuda!"
All throughout Kyrgyzstan, whenever we were spotted by the locals, this question often preceded hello. It made little difference whether we were spotted by folks in the same tiny store, or by people on very distant hillsides. "Where are you from?" is the question everyone was asking. Sometimes we would hear the question shouted by people from impossible distances. We have grown quite accustomed to yelling back to unknown interrogators, "Amyerika!"
It was therefore quite startling to be riding along a smooth Kazakh road in the middle of a very hot day and hear a small voice from the other side implore in English, "Stop. Please, Stop."
What else could we possibly do, the voice had said, "please". We stopped, and the young man who had made the request made his way across the narrow highway. In what way is this person hoping we can help him? We were wondering if he needed medical attention or help moving something, but it was not quite like that.
"I have a lake. It is very hot. You are cycling. Would you like to swim? Please come swim."
What else could we possibly do, he had said, "please", and also at that precise moment, there really was nothing that we would rather have been doing, than swimming in his lake. He might as well have descended on a cloud, But we are pretty sure he wasn't an angel, because angels could probably understand our funny accents. "I am sorry, your American accent is very difficult to understand. Could you please speak with a British accent?" We were making things difficult for him by saying things like, "thirdy four", instead of "thirtea four".
After we had sufficiently cooled ourselves in the lake, he asked, "What else can I do for you?"
We thanked him, and continued on our way to Almaty.
That has pretty much been the way of things with people in Kazakhstan. Machines are a different story for another time.
Be well-
Tyler and Adrianne
All throughout Kyrgyzstan, whenever we were spotted by the locals, this question often preceded hello. It made little difference whether we were spotted by folks in the same tiny store, or by people on very distant hillsides. "Where are you from?" is the question everyone was asking. Sometimes we would hear the question shouted by people from impossible distances. We have grown quite accustomed to yelling back to unknown interrogators, "Amyerika!"
It was therefore quite startling to be riding along a smooth Kazakh road in the middle of a very hot day and hear a small voice from the other side implore in English, "Stop. Please, Stop."
What else could we possibly do, the voice had said, "please". We stopped, and the young man who had made the request made his way across the narrow highway. In what way is this person hoping we can help him? We were wondering if he needed medical attention or help moving something, but it was not quite like that.
"I have a lake. It is very hot. You are cycling. Would you like to swim? Please come swim."
What else could we possibly do, he had said, "please", and also at that precise moment, there really was nothing that we would rather have been doing, than swimming in his lake. He might as well have descended on a cloud, But we are pretty sure he wasn't an angel, because angels could probably understand our funny accents. "I am sorry, your American accent is very difficult to understand. Could you please speak with a British accent?" We were making things difficult for him by saying things like, "thirdy four", instead of "thirtea four".
After we had sufficiently cooled ourselves in the lake, he asked, "What else can I do for you?"
We thanked him, and continued on our way to Almaty.
That has pretty much been the way of things with people in Kazakhstan. Machines are a different story for another time.
Be well-
Tyler and Adrianne
Friday, June 28, 2013
Sabaka in Shangri-la
As the techno-pop blares from this internet cafe, and i have to hold the 'e' for a full second for it to register, horns blast on the street, shashlyk- meat on a skewer roasts over coals, bowl after bowl of chay (tea) is drunk, and every variety of meat filled pastries is fried, i am overwhelmed with where to begin. It has been a long time since i have really travelled, and there are so many emotions that go on each day. There is the beauty of travel, of seeing new and incredible places, meeting generous and kind people, experiencing different cultures, riding bikes in some of the most outstanding places i have ever been. At the same time there is almost being hit by cars because the people here all seemed to have learned to drive by playing Pole Position, drinking bowlfuls of fermented mares milk that tastes like drinking an entire horse, eating pepto bismal all day long because there are demons inside, having every child scream hello at the top of their lungs, and carrying rocks in handlebar bags to defend against chasing dogs.
SABAKA! This is 'dog' in Russian. It is one of the few words I really know, that i don't translate. Chay, 'tea', is another, and both have become obsessions since being here. The latter being what i really want, and the other that which i loathe. Anyone who has ever biked knows about dogs. There is just something about bikes that dogs hate. I have heard tricks, like spraying water from a water bottle, and throwing rocks, but most of the time it's really hard to do anything, especially when going downhill, so I have just tried to outrun them. It seems that most people here have dogs, and it seemed that at least once a day we would be charged. Not just barked at, but seriously close, dogs at the legs, adrenaline pumping charged.
I began to get really obsessed. I would daydream while riding about being attacked, about defending myself, about whether beating the dogs head in would be more effective or perhaps stabbing would be better. I decided to buy a knife i could strap on my leg, so that when the dog was latched on I could stab it. My senses would heighten at the approach of every building, looking and listening for any sign of SABAKA.
It really started to wear on me, but I didn't know what to do. In the town where i was going to buy my knife, we happened to run into a Kiwi couple, who enlightened us. Unfortunately, the guy was in the process of getting rabies shots because he had been bit, but they told us to stop and hold our ground. Instead of trying to outrun the dogs, which just gets them more fired up, stop, face them, and pretend to throw a rock, or throw it. Well, anything was worth a try, so the next dog we did it. Stopped, and the dog went from full sprint to dead stop. Its worked everytime! I think i've only thrown a couple of rocks. I also started noticing the way dogs are treated here, and they are pretty much pelted with rocks all day by their owners. Thank God- conquered sabaka!
In my mind, the trip so far has been divided in two parts. The cold, mountain part, and the hot, valley part. For the first couple weeks, we only had maybe 3 days without threatening skies, or rain. We went to Issyk Kol, the second largest alpine lake in the world. The water was almost as beautiful and clear as Tahoe, and I was determined to have a beach day, even though it was mostly windy and rainy. Supposedly it was like Cancun up the road, but our beach just had donkeys and a delicious tandoori oven bread shop!
We then headed to Song Kol. Tyler wrote a little about the climb to get there. Two days before we got there, it snowed, and the day we left, there were flurries. But on the day we arrived it was one of those absolutely perfect, clear, no humidity, color popping days. When we reached the top of the pass, at 10,000ft, navigating through snowmelt, horses, cows, and sheep, one of the shepherds came over on his horse. He was an older man, asked us the time and then offered us some sort of yogurt drink. It was tasty, and after offering us the whole bottle of it, he motioned for me to get on his horse! It was awesome to be on his beautiful horse in this amazing place, where it just seems to belong. As we rode down the pass in the late afternoon light, it was hard to get anywhere because it was so incredible! It is like Montana/Vermont/Switzerland- so green and lush, with big open skies, towering white capped peaks in the distance, and flowers that make fields of red and purple. Then, beyond the landscape, there are herds of sheep and horses, with no fences, and white yurts scattered about. It is so idyllic looking, its ridiculous. Shangri-La, truly.
After a few more passes, and yurt filled green landscapes, we began descending toward the Fergana Valley. Suddenly, there were watermelons, apricots, peaches, and tomatoes for sale along the roads! What a treat after bread, noodles, animal fat, and every assortment of dairy product imaginable. These lower elevations also meant heat. I do not love the heat, but I accept that it is involved while biking in Central Asia. Yet, it was now hot. I was sweating while at camp at 7 in the morning. This does not bode well for climbing and riding in treeless, dry areas. I felt like I was in New Mexico. By 2 o'clock it felt like riding in an oven. Even going downhill provided no relief. It jut moved the hot air around. I began to think it was not a good idea to keep riding. We ended up huddled under the shade of one bush on the side of the highway for almost 3 hours, as we waited out the heat to keep riding. We then began waking up at 5 AM, to ride early, and then taking a break in the heat of the day.
To recap- we've biked 1457 km. It's been 28 days since we left California. We've had 2 flats. We've drunk countless cups of tea and answered the question "where are you from?" countless times. Kyrgyzstan has been amazing and i have my fingers crossed that the rest of our trip can live up to this auspicious beginning.
Missing everyone and sending lots of love, adrianne and tyler
SABAKA! This is 'dog' in Russian. It is one of the few words I really know, that i don't translate. Chay, 'tea', is another, and both have become obsessions since being here. The latter being what i really want, and the other that which i loathe. Anyone who has ever biked knows about dogs. There is just something about bikes that dogs hate. I have heard tricks, like spraying water from a water bottle, and throwing rocks, but most of the time it's really hard to do anything, especially when going downhill, so I have just tried to outrun them. It seems that most people here have dogs, and it seemed that at least once a day we would be charged. Not just barked at, but seriously close, dogs at the legs, adrenaline pumping charged.
I began to get really obsessed. I would daydream while riding about being attacked, about defending myself, about whether beating the dogs head in would be more effective or perhaps stabbing would be better. I decided to buy a knife i could strap on my leg, so that when the dog was latched on I could stab it. My senses would heighten at the approach of every building, looking and listening for any sign of SABAKA.
It really started to wear on me, but I didn't know what to do. In the town where i was going to buy my knife, we happened to run into a Kiwi couple, who enlightened us. Unfortunately, the guy was in the process of getting rabies shots because he had been bit, but they told us to stop and hold our ground. Instead of trying to outrun the dogs, which just gets them more fired up, stop, face them, and pretend to throw a rock, or throw it. Well, anything was worth a try, so the next dog we did it. Stopped, and the dog went from full sprint to dead stop. Its worked everytime! I think i've only thrown a couple of rocks. I also started noticing the way dogs are treated here, and they are pretty much pelted with rocks all day by their owners. Thank God- conquered sabaka!
In my mind, the trip so far has been divided in two parts. The cold, mountain part, and the hot, valley part. For the first couple weeks, we only had maybe 3 days without threatening skies, or rain. We went to Issyk Kol, the second largest alpine lake in the world. The water was almost as beautiful and clear as Tahoe, and I was determined to have a beach day, even though it was mostly windy and rainy. Supposedly it was like Cancun up the road, but our beach just had donkeys and a delicious tandoori oven bread shop!
We then headed to Song Kol. Tyler wrote a little about the climb to get there. Two days before we got there, it snowed, and the day we left, there were flurries. But on the day we arrived it was one of those absolutely perfect, clear, no humidity, color popping days. When we reached the top of the pass, at 10,000ft, navigating through snowmelt, horses, cows, and sheep, one of the shepherds came over on his horse. He was an older man, asked us the time and then offered us some sort of yogurt drink. It was tasty, and after offering us the whole bottle of it, he motioned for me to get on his horse! It was awesome to be on his beautiful horse in this amazing place, where it just seems to belong. As we rode down the pass in the late afternoon light, it was hard to get anywhere because it was so incredible! It is like Montana/Vermont/Switzerland- so green and lush, with big open skies, towering white capped peaks in the distance, and flowers that make fields of red and purple. Then, beyond the landscape, there are herds of sheep and horses, with no fences, and white yurts scattered about. It is so idyllic looking, its ridiculous. Shangri-La, truly.
After a few more passes, and yurt filled green landscapes, we began descending toward the Fergana Valley. Suddenly, there were watermelons, apricots, peaches, and tomatoes for sale along the roads! What a treat after bread, noodles, animal fat, and every assortment of dairy product imaginable. These lower elevations also meant heat. I do not love the heat, but I accept that it is involved while biking in Central Asia. Yet, it was now hot. I was sweating while at camp at 7 in the morning. This does not bode well for climbing and riding in treeless, dry areas. I felt like I was in New Mexico. By 2 o'clock it felt like riding in an oven. Even going downhill provided no relief. It jut moved the hot air around. I began to think it was not a good idea to keep riding. We ended up huddled under the shade of one bush on the side of the highway for almost 3 hours, as we waited out the heat to keep riding. We then began waking up at 5 AM, to ride early, and then taking a break in the heat of the day.
To recap- we've biked 1457 km. It's been 28 days since we left California. We've had 2 flats. We've drunk countless cups of tea and answered the question "where are you from?" countless times. Kyrgyzstan has been amazing and i have my fingers crossed that the rest of our trip can live up to this auspicious beginning.
Missing everyone and sending lots of love, adrianne and tyler
Topography and Talking
Kyrgyzstan has been amazing. We have been learning to expect the unexpected.
There have been some incredible days on the bikes and some very challenging days as well.
Part of the challenge is the topography. Kyrgyzstan is roughly the size of South Dakota, however there is quite a bit more relief here, so if it were flattened it would cover many South Dakotas. The distances we have been travelling may seem short to some of you, but when one considers that those 100 km may have been covered on dirt roads of every condition imaginable, and on slopes of 12 percent that last for 10 km while carrying food for a few days, and everything else needed for camping in potentially cold places, it makes the days more tiring than the numbers suggest.
When we made the climb up to Song Kol from the direction of Kochkor, we were fortunate to have a beautiful sunny day with pleasant temperatures. Which was good, because we climbed slightly uphill for most of the morning before getting to the real climb before noon. We then rode our bikes very slowly towards the pass which led to the lake. Including the break for lunch which was minutes long, not hours, our time riding up the 10km long steeper bit was just about three hours. At one point, while still pedaling and making apparently geologic progress towards the pass, the computer mounted to the front wheel indicated our forward speed was none. "I'm going zero!"
The mountains which make the riding challenging also make it unbelievably rewarding. Some of the most spectacular scenery either of us have ever seen has been seen in this short month in Kyrgyzstan. The pass described above was rewarding for the view with which we were greeted at the top, and also because the pass had a top. Others we have ridden since then have been a little bit soul sucking for their folds. Well certainly just around this next corner...no...just up here....what the....okay now for real...the road dips and follows a contour and somehow there is another shoulder of the mountain which must be rounded and climbed before the long-sought descent can begin. -- But some of the descents have been pretty nice, also lasting for all of a morning and a good bit of the afternoon.
Along with the topography, talking has presented a bit of a challenge. Our Russian has improved greatly since our arrival. It would have been nearly impossible for that not to be true given the extent of our Russian knowledge before arrival. And our Kyrgyz, astronomical improvements. We now know something approaching ten words. This makes camping much easier than during the first days outside of Bishkek. Those of you who have asked someone who speaks a language other than one with which you can communicate if you can camp on their land can appreciate the difficulty this presents. Some of our early attempts included heavy use of the dictionary and even greater gesticulating than normal.
"We...tent." pointing to our trailers indicating that there is a tent hiding somewhere inside the yellow BOB trailer bags.
This sentence being met by some sort of acknowledgement that the listener understands was then followed by the much more challenging sentence, "We...tent?" With lots of finger pointing between us to be sure the proper "we" was understood, then two hands joined at chest height in front of us then separated and sloping towards the ground to indicate the rough roofline of our tent, and pointing at the ground in front of us, or just over there in that field and very importantly raising our eyebrows enough to indicate that the second sentence is very different than the first and is in fact a question asking permission, and not a statement about our possessions.
Somehow, and as testament to the kindness of most of the Kyrgyz people we were able to communicate in this manner. We have had some wonderful conversations during which no individual word was understood, but a huge amount of information was communicated. It is amazing what can be understood when one has the desire to really listen to what another is trying to say.
One evening when we had set up our camp in a beautiful spot next to a little river in the hills just above the major cross-country highway, a local shepherd stopped by to see what we were doing. His summer home in the hills with his herds was a tent not too far from our own. Satisfied with a very brief exchange that we were okay, he came back later with the perfect gift of half a watermelon. In the morning, he came back and we had some very interesting conversations. We were curious how many sheep he had.
"You,...how many...baaaa?"
"Fifty.'
"Good....good."
"You, house here?"
"Just over there in that tent."
"Good ...good."
"Winter...snow...home here?"
"No, the snow is too deep for the horses."
-Good- seeming an odd response to this answer, no words, but head nodding to indicate understanding.
"You, winter house where?"
"Bishkek."
"Good...good."
More recently we were on our way to Arslanbob, where the world's largest walnut forest hides in the shadows of some magnificent alpine scenery. For those of you interested, the skiing is probably phenomenal (well pretty much all over the country it looks pretty spectacular, but in Arslanbob, there are some folks trying to get the backcountry yurt skiing going- Really hope it works out). Hyett described skiing through widely spaced walnut trees and made it sound pretty magical.
We had not quite made it to Arslanbob, as it had been another convection oven day with many kilometers covered. We were riding slowly uphill on a road that was not presenting many camping opportunities, because there were houses everywhere. Two women and a small boy sat on a little bench in front of their fence near the road. One appeared to be the mother, the other the grandmother. They were very pleased when we greeted them in the local language and smiled warmly. After a brief exchange, we decided to turn around and ask them, "Hello, excuse me, we have a tent. May we tent there?"
Well, as has been the case more than once, it did not work out as we expected. We were told we could set up the tent, but since we were having such a happy time talking to them, and they seemed to be having such a good time talking to us, they changed their minds. "Put the tent away, you should stay in our house."
It is very difficult to capture just how wonderful our hosts were on that evening. The family is ethnically Uzbek, but they have been living in that part of the world for many generations. (We met someone else who represented the 28th generation of his Uzbek family living there.) long before the country of Kyrgyzstan was created. We had tea, and bread and something very similar to dulce de leche, a delicious dinner, a wash in the river, washed some clothes, and had a great time talking long into the evening. Some sad stories were told of violence three years ago during which Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were fighting. The very sweet four year old boy who was keeping everyone entertained by wearing my glasses and waving the flags from our trailers around was one year old at the time. The family told us how they had hidden in the hills trying to keep him from crying so that they would not all be killed. -and most of this was told in Uzbek with a little bit of Russian, but it was very clear that this was the story. Most of the evening was lighter and there was a great deal of laughter. It was decided that we would spread the word in America that there is an awesome family on the way to Arslanbob where everyone must stop to visit.-(Those of you planning your trip, we can offer more details later.) We were instructed to take pictures of ourselves by the big waterfall further up the road, and after we spent the night near the walnut trees, we had to stop by their house in the morning and share the pictures. We did. And it was once again a delight to be near such warm and welcoming people.
Our time in Kyrgyzstan will soon be up as we now turn to the north and head toward Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. It will not soon be forgotten.
Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers.
Be well-
Tyler and Adrianne (aka Tylor and Adreeann)
There have been some incredible days on the bikes and some very challenging days as well.
Part of the challenge is the topography. Kyrgyzstan is roughly the size of South Dakota, however there is quite a bit more relief here, so if it were flattened it would cover many South Dakotas. The distances we have been travelling may seem short to some of you, but when one considers that those 100 km may have been covered on dirt roads of every condition imaginable, and on slopes of 12 percent that last for 10 km while carrying food for a few days, and everything else needed for camping in potentially cold places, it makes the days more tiring than the numbers suggest.
When we made the climb up to Song Kol from the direction of Kochkor, we were fortunate to have a beautiful sunny day with pleasant temperatures. Which was good, because we climbed slightly uphill for most of the morning before getting to the real climb before noon. We then rode our bikes very slowly towards the pass which led to the lake. Including the break for lunch which was minutes long, not hours, our time riding up the 10km long steeper bit was just about three hours. At one point, while still pedaling and making apparently geologic progress towards the pass, the computer mounted to the front wheel indicated our forward speed was none. "I'm going zero!"
The mountains which make the riding challenging also make it unbelievably rewarding. Some of the most spectacular scenery either of us have ever seen has been seen in this short month in Kyrgyzstan. The pass described above was rewarding for the view with which we were greeted at the top, and also because the pass had a top. Others we have ridden since then have been a little bit soul sucking for their folds. Well certainly just around this next corner...no...just up here....what the....okay now for real...the road dips and follows a contour and somehow there is another shoulder of the mountain which must be rounded and climbed before the long-sought descent can begin. -- But some of the descents have been pretty nice, also lasting for all of a morning and a good bit of the afternoon.
Along with the topography, talking has presented a bit of a challenge. Our Russian has improved greatly since our arrival. It would have been nearly impossible for that not to be true given the extent of our Russian knowledge before arrival. And our Kyrgyz, astronomical improvements. We now know something approaching ten words. This makes camping much easier than during the first days outside of Bishkek. Those of you who have asked someone who speaks a language other than one with which you can communicate if you can camp on their land can appreciate the difficulty this presents. Some of our early attempts included heavy use of the dictionary and even greater gesticulating than normal.
"We...tent." pointing to our trailers indicating that there is a tent hiding somewhere inside the yellow BOB trailer bags.
This sentence being met by some sort of acknowledgement that the listener understands was then followed by the much more challenging sentence, "We...tent?" With lots of finger pointing between us to be sure the proper "we" was understood, then two hands joined at chest height in front of us then separated and sloping towards the ground to indicate the rough roofline of our tent, and pointing at the ground in front of us, or just over there in that field and very importantly raising our eyebrows enough to indicate that the second sentence is very different than the first and is in fact a question asking permission, and not a statement about our possessions.
Somehow, and as testament to the kindness of most of the Kyrgyz people we were able to communicate in this manner. We have had some wonderful conversations during which no individual word was understood, but a huge amount of information was communicated. It is amazing what can be understood when one has the desire to really listen to what another is trying to say.
One evening when we had set up our camp in a beautiful spot next to a little river in the hills just above the major cross-country highway, a local shepherd stopped by to see what we were doing. His summer home in the hills with his herds was a tent not too far from our own. Satisfied with a very brief exchange that we were okay, he came back later with the perfect gift of half a watermelon. In the morning, he came back and we had some very interesting conversations. We were curious how many sheep he had.
"You,...how many...baaaa?"
"Fifty.'
"Good....good."
"You, house here?"
"Just over there in that tent."
"Good ...good."
"Winter...snow...home here?"
"No, the snow is too deep for the horses."
-Good- seeming an odd response to this answer, no words, but head nodding to indicate understanding.
"You, winter house where?"
"Bishkek."
"Good...good."
More recently we were on our way to Arslanbob, where the world's largest walnut forest hides in the shadows of some magnificent alpine scenery. For those of you interested, the skiing is probably phenomenal (well pretty much all over the country it looks pretty spectacular, but in Arslanbob, there are some folks trying to get the backcountry yurt skiing going- Really hope it works out). Hyett described skiing through widely spaced walnut trees and made it sound pretty magical.
We had not quite made it to Arslanbob, as it had been another convection oven day with many kilometers covered. We were riding slowly uphill on a road that was not presenting many camping opportunities, because there were houses everywhere. Two women and a small boy sat on a little bench in front of their fence near the road. One appeared to be the mother, the other the grandmother. They were very pleased when we greeted them in the local language and smiled warmly. After a brief exchange, we decided to turn around and ask them, "Hello, excuse me, we have a tent. May we tent there?"
Well, as has been the case more than once, it did not work out as we expected. We were told we could set up the tent, but since we were having such a happy time talking to them, and they seemed to be having such a good time talking to us, they changed their minds. "Put the tent away, you should stay in our house."
It is very difficult to capture just how wonderful our hosts were on that evening. The family is ethnically Uzbek, but they have been living in that part of the world for many generations. (We met someone else who represented the 28th generation of his Uzbek family living there.) long before the country of Kyrgyzstan was created. We had tea, and bread and something very similar to dulce de leche, a delicious dinner, a wash in the river, washed some clothes, and had a great time talking long into the evening. Some sad stories were told of violence three years ago during which Kyrgyz and Uzbeks were fighting. The very sweet four year old boy who was keeping everyone entertained by wearing my glasses and waving the flags from our trailers around was one year old at the time. The family told us how they had hidden in the hills trying to keep him from crying so that they would not all be killed. -and most of this was told in Uzbek with a little bit of Russian, but it was very clear that this was the story. Most of the evening was lighter and there was a great deal of laughter. It was decided that we would spread the word in America that there is an awesome family on the way to Arslanbob where everyone must stop to visit.-(Those of you planning your trip, we can offer more details later.) We were instructed to take pictures of ourselves by the big waterfall further up the road, and after we spent the night near the walnut trees, we had to stop by their house in the morning and share the pictures. We did. And it was once again a delight to be near such warm and welcoming people.
Our time in Kyrgyzstan will soon be up as we now turn to the north and head toward Kazakhstan, Russia and Mongolia. It will not soon be forgotten.
Thank you for your continued thoughts and prayers.
Be well-
Tyler and Adrianne (aka Tylor and Adreeann)
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
jalal-abad
Asalam aleykum- Peace be with you. Just wanted to let you know all's well. We're riding bikes, it's hot, few computers, no postcards, lots of dairy and melons. Love to all. More details to come.
Monday, June 3, 2013
Hello Friends-
We made it to Bishkek. Our itinerary suggested that we would arrive today at 3:05 in the afternoon. Our plan was to arrive with two bicycles and two duffel bags full of trailers and other gear. Two days later, the vision has become reality.
Our flight from Toronto to Moscow was especially exciting as it was the first Aeroflot connection between the two cities in over forty years. That is why there was so much confusion while we were trying to get our boarding passes. That is also why there were so many beach balls and inflatable airplanes and flowers at the ticketing counter and so many delicious finger foods, fruits, juices, pastries, flags of the two countries, and a podium for representatives to say "we are so glad to be here, and we are so glad you are here". Our plane also arrived at the gate taxi-ing through a double rainbow of water spouting from two fire fighting vehicles. Awesome. And to top it off, the stewardesses were straight out of 1960`s- complete with white gloves and little orange hats.
The arrival in Bishkek was a little less grand. It did involve a rather slight young man holding a sign with one of our names on it, which was nice. It got interesting when we had to strap our bike boxes and a large duffel on the roof. The boxes were the same size as the roof and they were tied on with only an 8 ft. piece of tattered parachute cord. We held onto the boxes with our arms out the window the whole way. We all made it in one piece, and spent the evening wandering around in a dazed stupor.
Thank you for the good thoughts.
Take care
Tyler and Adrianne
We made it to Bishkek. Our itinerary suggested that we would arrive today at 3:05 in the afternoon. Our plan was to arrive with two bicycles and two duffel bags full of trailers and other gear. Two days later, the vision has become reality.
Our flight from Toronto to Moscow was especially exciting as it was the first Aeroflot connection between the two cities in over forty years. That is why there was so much confusion while we were trying to get our boarding passes. That is also why there were so many beach balls and inflatable airplanes and flowers at the ticketing counter and so many delicious finger foods, fruits, juices, pastries, flags of the two countries, and a podium for representatives to say "we are so glad to be here, and we are so glad you are here". Our plane also arrived at the gate taxi-ing through a double rainbow of water spouting from two fire fighting vehicles. Awesome. And to top it off, the stewardesses were straight out of 1960`s- complete with white gloves and little orange hats.
The arrival in Bishkek was a little less grand. It did involve a rather slight young man holding a sign with one of our names on it, which was nice. It got interesting when we had to strap our bike boxes and a large duffel on the roof. The boxes were the same size as the roof and they were tied on with only an 8 ft. piece of tattered parachute cord. We held onto the boxes with our arms out the window the whole way. We all made it in one piece, and spent the evening wandering around in a dazed stupor.
Thank you for the good thoughts.
Take care
Tyler and Adrianne
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Passports and Packing
Hello Friends-
Our passports are back in our possession after doing some preliminary travels of their own to Washington DC (for the Kazakhstan visa) and San Francisco (for the Russian visa). Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia do not require US citizens to obtain visas prior to arrival.
Last minute preparations continue; all we have to do is sort through all of our stuff and move from a nice large house into a small storage unit and two bicycle trailers. In some ways, it feels like the easy part will be cycling for four months. After we leave North America, we no longer have to decide how many pairs of socks to bring, we just have to wear them while meeting great people and traveling through incredible terrain.
If you are interested in seeing a map of our proposed route, you can click on the link below.
Our next post will probably be from Kyrgyzstan.
Until then,
Be well-
Tyler and Adrianne
Map of the proposed route
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