Mongolia pt. 2: Kazakhs

So I boarded a flight to Hovd and was met at the airport by Tilek's younger brother Eljas. Eljas speaks nearly perfect English, and will probably be studying in America soon. From the airport it was 30km to Hovd Soum, his village. When I arrived Hovd Soum was over 99% Kazakh, the other fraction of a percent being made up of me and one peace corps volunteer. I was happy to learn that because the Soum wasn't even mentioned in Lonely Planet, it was likely to stay that way. The next day Tilek, who had quit his job in UB, returned to his home.
One of the first orders of business was visiting an eagle hunter. Traditional Kazakh nomads use golden eagles to hunt game such as rabbits, small dear, foxes and wolves. The eagles are flown only in winter however, and the one I held was too fat and lazy to hunt well. I was given a suit jacket to wear in case the eagle decided to climb off the glove and onto my arm. I later learned that if the eagle had gotten pissed at me, the jacket wouldn't have helped. The bird could have ripped the bicep right of my arm in a matter of seconds, and bad tempered eagles have actually killed human children. Though the eagle wasn't flying, it still needs to eat large quatities of meat to stay healthy. To keep natures cycle intact, we grabbed a shotgun and headed into the brush. After blasting a rabbit and removing the shot, we returned to the bird to watch (and listen) to it rip the bunny to pieces.
A couple days later, it was time for a peace corps picnic back in the main town. It was really like any other picnic, with a couple exceptions. The first was that instead of seagulls harassing us, we had falcons. Dozens of falcons and hawks circled our food, diving to the ground as I threw them pieces of leftover meat. Later in the afternoon, Tilek whistled over a fellow Kazakh, who let us take turns riding his camel, while he worked on a jar of pickles and a can beer we gave him.
On the evening of my second last night, Tilek and I headed into steppe to visit his sister and her husband at there summer campsite (they move their Gers and animals with the seasons). The next morning we jumped on a couple horses and started looking for a gun. This took some time however, because everywhere we stopped we were invited inside for traditional milk tea which would be rude to refuse. After pushing my lactose tolerance to the max, we were locked and loaded. We headed out to the mountains in search of game, but ended up just shooting at targets we set up.
Overall my experiences of Mongolia in general and the Kazakhs in particular have been some of the best in my life. There nomadic lifestyle, hospitality, food, and vodka culture is incredible. If I ever see Sasha Baron Cohen (Borat) in person, I am going to repay my Kazakh friends by shooting him. With all the practice I have had with firearms lately, its doubtful I would miss.

Mongolia pt 1: Mongols

I woke up on the train from Beijing at 11:30am. Suffering from a brutal rice wine/vodka hangover and opened the shade to find everything completely covered in snow! Luckily it was only a fluke occurrence, and it melted shortly afterwards. The train arrived in the capital Ulan-Bator (everyone who speaks English calls it UB), which is kind of a shithole. Of course I had know idea what I was going to do in Mongolia. That quickly changed when I stopped for a slice of cake and met Tilek, who was working at a bakery. We decided that I would go and stay with his family on the other side of the country.
Because I had a few days before my flight, I decided to do some kind of tour in between. The first day I went horse riding with another guy from the hostel. It was really fun, except the guide's sattle broke and he really hurt himself. Thankfully we had two bottles of vodka to drink that night, which also helped me sleep on the crowded floor of his Ger (round fabric tent). The next day was more horse riding, and I moved in with another family, who lived in the middle of nowhere (the scenery pic was taken from the top of a hill nearby). That night I helped them vaccinate sheep by tackling them and carrying over my shoulder to the 'veterinarian' (see video). Back at the Ger I learned some Mongolian kids games, all of which involved using a box full sheeps' ankle bones in some way. The next day I helped them build a new latrine and tried to help them in getting a satellite signal. Because the whole thing was running off a car battery, I convinced them (through charades of course) that we should take the whole operation up to the top of the hill. Assuming that I knew what I was talking about, they carried everything up, only to lose the signal completely. I was called over from trying to fix the satellite dish to watch the eldest son make a small cut in a sheeps belly, then reach inside and disconnect its heart from its lungs. After watching it suffocate to death and get skinned, I was called into the Ger for lunch. On the table, a big pot of sheep stew... that was the only meal I didn't take seconds. That evening I headed back to UB and prepared for my flight.

Beijing and the Great Walls of China

I arrived in Beijing having barely made it on my overbooked flight from Nepal (worst international airport I have ever encountered by the way). Beijing is actually quite a nice city, and if you were colour blind, you might actually think it is beautiful. I say this because it has clean wide streets, lots of trees, and some incredible sites. Unfortunately, the horrible air pollution means that everything beyond 500m in front of you appears to be in different shades of grey. The Chinese authorities have promised to remove millions of cars from the roads to improve the situation before the Olympics. I personally don't think that anything short of uninventing the wheel will make a difference by August.
Now everyone knows about the Great Wall of China, the one built over hundreds of years to keep invading Mongols out of China (see pic). Fewer people know about the much more successful wall that protects Chinese from a far great threat: free thought. Yes, when you turn on a computer there is an invisible wall that stops you going on certain dangerous websites (unfortunately for the Chinese people that includes my blog). I do certainly understand this methodology however. They could just trust their citizens not to look at these harmful sites, but in the event they didn't, cleaning Beijing's air would be impossible: imagine the pollution that sending a row of battle tanks back to Tienanmen Square would cause!

Paragliding and Whitewater Rafting

Paragliding sucks. There, I said it. Well it doesn't suck, but it sure wasn't worth $100. The idea of soaring like an eagle and catching thermals to rise higher in the sky sounds amazing. But when you are just a passenger, suck between the legs of an old French man who keeps asking you 'who is the boss' (yes that actually happened and yes it was traumatic), its not all that great. The upside was the amazing views, and the spiralling aerobatic decent. Overall though I'm glad I did it, if only to check it off the list.

White water rafting was great. It hadn't rained in 2 days so the river was low, very low. But although the rapids were not strong, the clown factor of our crew more than made up for it. Basically I was laughing the entire time. We actually had to get out on rocks in order to push the raft whenever it got stuck, having to quickly jump back on once the river started to take it away. Of course we all fell out of the raft at various times, in one case three of us went in domino style one after the other. Since none of us payed any attention to the 20min safety briefing (except how to straddle the safety kayak), we're lucky nobody actually got hurt.

The Motorcycle Diaries

Nepal is not a country in which civil litigation is a major concern. Case and point: renting a motorcycle. After clearly explaining to the shop owner that I did not know how to ride a motorcycle, writing my name and hotel on a piece of blank paper, and handing over my ATM card as collateral, I was off. Well not really 'off', first I stalled it a couple times in his driveway before lurching it suddenly onto the busy road. Possibly adding to the danger that first day was the shirt I was wearing (and not because it provided absolutely no protection in a fall). Though the shirt was purchased as a souvenir from a market in Lao, the hammer and sickle is the symbol of the Maoist movement in Nepal. While they are now a political party that just won majority in the latest election, only a couple years ago they were waging a civil war that killed over 20,000 people. Thankfully everyone seemed to either like it or at least find humour in me wearing it. I now have only one more day to survive before the motorcycle gets returned.

Kathmandu and Pokhara

Kathmandu and Pokhara are the only two cities I will visit in Nepal, so I feel I should write something about them. I arrived in Kathmandu on 4.20.08 from Bangkok. I had already fulfilled the day's duties by burning one pre-flight, but when I arrived in Thamel, the tourist area of Kathmandu, it wasn't long before a major currency error (wonder how that happened) resulted in my procuring a piece of hash the size of my fist (top pic). Overall Kathmandu has been the most hectic city I have been to so far, and the only place where I would absolutely never want to drive a car. This view was reinforced when my taxi hit a cyclist and the driver had to chase the victim down on foot to show him the scratch his bicycle had made, and to demand payment. Still Kathmandu has a certain charm to it, and I am looking forward to going back.
Pokhara is a smaller city located a 20min flight away from Kathmandu. The thrills started about halfway through the flight when I noticed a screw was coming loose on the wing of the plane. The pilots sounded concerned when I told them upon landing, but before I had entered the terminal they were both back in the cockpit and the engines were starting. Unlike Nepalese aviation safety standards, Pokhara is beautiful. The tourist area here is located right next to a lake with views of the Annapurna mountain range. The lake has large peddle boats that can be rented (see bottom pic). Unlike Kathmandu, there isn't anything to do at night and the town is asleep by midnight. But the hash is a little better and the power goes out a few hours less per day, so we'll call it a tie.

Everest

Shortly after arriving in Nepal, I left for a trek to Mt. Everest. The first leg of the trip was a flight to Lukla airport, which is a tiny strip that literally runs down (20% gradient) the side of a mountain. A two day hike and my guide and I reached Namche Bazar, a mountain village that is great for acclimatizing, using the internet, and getting drunk off moonshine. After Namche the we reached 4000 meters and I got a headache. The human body is not really designed to go to high altitude, and when we do fucked up things start to happen. Some people are fine, some people get headaches and cannot sleep, and other people die. I was in the middle category, I had a headache for over a week. There were two main destinations on my trek: Gokyo Ri (5350m) and Kalapathar (5550m). In between them was a hike over the Cho La pass, which is a giant glacier at 5300m. Gokyo Ri is a 'hill' surrounded by lakes. You can see in the bottom pic, 2 of the lakes and the tiny village of Gokyo, where we stayed two nights. The top pic shows the Khumbu Glacier, and surrounding mountains, Ama Dablam being the most bad ass. The middle pic shows Mt. Everest in the center, the taller looking mountain in the front is Nuptse and is not actually taller (if your not an a complete idiot you probably know that in fact, no mountain is actually taller). Both these pics were taken from the summit of Kalapatar. I also went to basecamp, which was basically a bunch of tents filled with pissed off climbers who paid $50,000 a piece to summit the mountain, but who were barred from doing so because of Chinese paranoia about pro-Tibet protests. On the last days the weather turned to shit and I couldn't see anything, but that wasn't so bad because I had seen it on the way up. Overall a great experience, and one of the highlights of my trip so far.