After a few days of adjusting my equipment, it was D-Day, and it was time to hit the road.
It should be noted that the D-day was not the right one according to the constellation of stars, because just a few hours after the ride, a two-year old scrape from the original owner, a shepherd, so called “who didn’t give a shit” opened on the Fidel horse. The shepherd rode the horse until it fell down. So, the next step was a ride back to base and a few more days of constructing a harness that would keep the entire saddle in the rough terrain away from the damaged skin. After one last night of finishing, it’s finally done – the harness holds, it works, the already healing abrasion is free of all gear thanks to it, and it should last for several weeks of daily use. There is a downside – it takes about 30 minutes on average to saddle the whole harness in the morning. Unsaddling takes about 20 minutes.
So it’s E day! Departure :)))
Hooray!!!
Enthusiasm is replaced by sobering up. I trudge along the dirt road alongside the cemetery in 40 degree heat and get lost for the next few hours in the dried up riverbeds of the canyon, where each one pretends to lead in the right direction…. but neither one does. After seven hours of driving (and due to wandering around no more than about 15 kilometers further) I finally arrive at a meadow where I could spend the night. But alas, there is no water for the horses. “Water! Oh please, as you wish”, said the magic handset, and suddenly we have as much water as we can fit in, from above, from the side, from the other side, straight on, streams and streams of water everywhere. The horses stand miserably with their heads to the ground, waiting for the storm to pass. I, huddled in my Aussie jacket and raincoat, shivering with cold, am waiting too. After an hour, the clouds part again and the sun comes out. From five degrees it is again a nice thirty, and so, soaked through, I scramble onto the equally soaked horses and in the oppressive heat we set off again towards the pass, beyond which the water might be.
In a few more hours our wish comes true – at a bend in the road a little valley, full of knee-high lush green grass and a flowing river, looks out at us. A perfect place for camping. I mean, it’s right next to the road, and of course, the basic rule of camping in a foreign country is: don’t pitch your tent right next to the road, ideally pitch it so you can’t be seen from the road. It’s just that you can’t do all the things with a horse. Either way, you’re a tourist with three horses, so you’ll attract many times more attention than if you’re a tourist with a battered backpack. Anyway, wherever you camp, after a few minutes the first rider on horseback always arrives and the classic social conversation begins.
“Salam alejkum”
“Wa alejkum assalam”
“Where are you from?”
“From the Czech Republic.”
“And Kyrgyzstan what?”
“Kyrgyzstan is beautiful. Nature is beautiful here. The mountains are beautiful, the water is clean, the people are good and there is freedom.”
“And you don’t have such nature?”
“No, there is no such nature there. We don’t have such high mountains. The very highest mountain in our country is only sixteen hundred meters. You herd cows here?”
“I see. Yes. I’m looking for a cow. One wandered off. And the horses, where did you buy them?”
“I rented them.”
“And how much did they cost?”
“I don’t remember. They’re not very good. They’re old. Can I take a picture with you?”
The golden rule I’d substituted for an international shotgun license and advanced krav maga lessons. When you meet someone, take a picture with them right away. Then if you have a problem later, that person knows you have their picture and you can use it against them anytime. Also, if your horses disappear in the night, you’ve got a few pictures of locals who were interested in them and who will probably know where the horses are right now. Although, as we joked, it’s very easy to know who stole your horse because horses are microchipped. So you’ll know the person by the microchip. How? He’ll have a broken tooth when he bites into the microchip…
“Well, how old are they?”
“This one’s twelve, this one’s old, this one’s fourteen, this one’s ten. How old is yours?”
“What, twelve?” he asks in disbelief. “This one is two/three/four.”
I don’t think the locals hardly ride horses older than four. I wonder if the younger horses do the herding job better, or if they just get so run down by the time they’re four that there’s nothing else to do… but every single one of the local riding horses was between two and four years old. The Kyrgyz also have a special system of calculating the age of a horse, which several people have explained to me, and I hope I don’t mangle it too much here :))) The yearling is “Kulun”. Two-year-old is “Tai”. Three-year-old is “Kunan”. The four-year-old is “Byšty”. And from the age of five they count from the beginning. So a five-year-old is “bir azi” = “one azi”. A six year old is “eki azi”, so “two azi”, a seven year old horse is “three azi”… and so on until, for example, a twenty year old horse is “onalty azi” = “sixteen azi”, but realistically none of the horses here live to be twenty.
At this point you really want to go to sleep because you’ve had over ten hours in the saddle. But there’s nothing to be done, the visiting hours are relentless. Here comes another shepherd. “Hello”, “Hello”, “What are you doing here in Kyrgyzstan”, “I’m a tourist. You have beautiful nature here. The mountains are beautiful, the people are good….” and the cycle repeats. “Can I take a picture with you?”
The visiting hour lasts until they all meet you. Exhausted, you fall into your tent just after dark and hurrah for a restful sleep.
But you don’t reckon on the wild horses walking around outside the tent. And they’re very curious about your geldings. So three times a night you run out, whip in hand, to fend off the strange stallions, who try to bite your peacefully grazing geldings with a mad roar. Well, well, two grazing geldings grazing peacefully. Fidel joins the fray with a frenzied roar because he’s only been a gelding for a while, as the leader he tends to defend his boyish “herd” and somehow hasn’t gotten the hang of it all yet.
With a budding neurosis in your eye, you fall asleep sometime after midnight, only to get up again at dawn to the hysterical roar of the alarm clock.
