Archive for July, 2010

An Apology and an Adventure

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on July 26, 2010

First off, I feel I owe all of you an apology. I have tried, all these years, to provide the most wild and enticing letters the traveling community has to offer. However, my last one, I believe, was thin on the ground. Here, I’d like to offer an explaination, if not an excuse.

The “ear-ache”　I mentioned in my last email turned out to be none other than a viral infection in the depths of my right inner ear. It was only after the fluid drained from my Eustachian tube did the pain subside. It was arguably one of the most painful experiences of my life, and on I was overcoming when I last wrote.

These things are a risk of traveling, and only my second time really getting sick, since that awful bought of esophogitis I overcame in Vietname, those many long years ago.

But boy oh boy, folks, have things picked up since then! After recovering from the ache (from which I still have some ringing) (and writing that too boring letter) my friends and I cavorted about Xi’an and all it’s wild splendor.

Xi’an is the city everyone expects to find when planning a trip to China. It’s ancient city walls are still in full force, big and broad enough to host hords of tourists as they ride around them on bicycles. Inside the walls, the buildings still have their upturned eaves, and even the tourists night markets sport very un-pretty touches, like external air conditioners; proving they are still lived in by real, breathing people. Outside the city walls, the buildings are giant, and it seems as though the walls are defending the inner city from the montrosities without.

After a mean set of suction cups (traditional medicine meant to suck out poisons) the three of us amigos got on a 12 hour train for Beijing. Here in this heavy touring season, train tickets are hard to come by, and we settled for seats, even though the train was over night. This was fine, until we found that (first) all the unseated passengers linger in the seating car, and (second) a landslide and a fire redicrected our train, and balooned the trip up to a solid 28 hours plus.

However, we did arrive in Beijing, our spirits in tact, and only missed a day.

Now, we’ve a few more days here. My friends are all cavorting about the sites, while I meet friends from a time long past. But more on that, when we meet again.

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Western China, and on to the Mainland

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on July 21, 2010

I wrote to you last from Urumqi ( I think) the capital of the once and former Uighurstan. Today it is a modern Chinese city, appearing almost identical to every other Chinese city I’ve seen since. The marvel, of course, is how the Chinese are able to build at the speed that they do, and with such uniformity, in such far flung places. Urumqi sports clean streets and beautiful parks. It also features a 75% ethnically Chinese poplation, effectively drowning out the natives.

The Uighur language is very close to Kyrgyz, and during a mission to track down my laptop (unfortunately now lost forever), I got to speak to many Uighur people. They comiserated my loss, helped me try to track it down, and took the opportunity, for whatever reason, to share their discontent. Perhaps it was the novelty of a white man speaking something like their language, but the stories were unending. China, folks, is a big a complicated place.

(Language side note: The Uighur people I spoke with sprinkled their language liberally with Chinese, just as the Kyrgyz do with Russian. Just one more parallel with the old Soviet Empire…)

But we haven’t just been on a tour of big cities, not at all. My crew and I spent some serious quality time in the city of DunHunag, the plastic-y Disney Land tourist town nearby the spectacular MoGao caves. Once we got over the overwhelming mass of tourists pumped through the caves (an attraction in its own right), we were able to see some of the most extensive Buddhist cave art in the world. The colors were magnificent, and the restoration an abomination. It would have all been for naught had we not also gone to the dramatically less touristed 1,000 Ming West caves, a singificantly smaller find, but absent the tourist hord. In this place, we experienced a quiet ambiance that might have been closer to how the place could have been during its heyday. This plus a riotous night market and a desert oasis (chock full of Chinese tourists all identically clad in knee-highm, bright orange, sand protecting booties) rounded out our desert time in sheer magnificence.

Since then, folks, we dropped by the delightful Lanzhou, for a taste of a pleasant working class city (with more commerce than, perhaps, all of Kyrgyzstan combined) and are now resting peacefully in the city of Xi’an, in China proper. It is this place that houses the unparalled Terracotta Warriors. While my friends check it out themselves (these are old stomping grounds for me) I’m resting from our long train rides, getting over an ear-ache, and waiting to see what my old home, Beijing, has waiting for me, after all these years.

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KyrgyCarl on the Road Again (In the Old Haunts)

Posted by KyrgyCarl in Letters on July 13, 2010

First of all, I must thank all of you for the outpouring of support I received from my last letter. You were all so kind, and so gracious, it hurt that I could not reply to you all individually. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the violence, Peace Corps put all of its volunteers on radio silence. I can tell you all that I am safe and sound, and so are the other volunteers; furthermore, as for now, the future of Peace Corps Kyrgyzstan looks bright. I wish I could say more.

But time is moving forward, and I am moving with it, and that is where I will write from today. Specifically, from Kashgar city, China.

That’s right, your very own, Kyrgy Carl has returned to the Middle Kingdom, his once and former stomping grounds. This time, however, with my Chinese hiding deep in the recesses of my mind, my Kyrgyz is coming out in full force. See, the people of Kashgar are ethnically Uighur, and there language is in the same family as Kyrgyz. Imagine a Frenchman and a Spaniard trying to carry on a conversation. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

See, my father and my brother and my best friend, Matt came out to Kyrgyzstan, timed just right for the parliamentary referendum at the end of June. We toured the country. I showed them the world that I have grown to know, and I relearned the novelties. The fermented horse milk was once again sour; the boiled sheep bland; the hospitality overwhelming: at one point, my brother said, “Carl, I think I might be feeling hungry right now, but I’m not sure I can remember the feeling.”

We spent our Fourth of July in the At Bashy Mal Bazaar, the place I’ve now spent so much time. We drank beer and ate fried fish with grilled beef. My Dad didn’t like the fat. I was the kind of magic that is too easy to forget. Plus, to have such luxury as to share my new life with my best friends in the world is a gift finer than any other.

Their trip, a small two weeks, went by with reckless ease. Since then, Matt has stuck around, and we’ve teamed up with another volunteer, and cross the Torugart Pass, one of the highest commercial borders in the world, and are now resting with cold beers on a rooftop cafe in Kashgar, the capital of the Uighur world. At the border itself, high and cold in the middle of nowhere, we ran into a crew of Kyrgyz nobles, both from Kyrgyzstan and China. Upon learning of our language skills, they invited us to they’re parting party. We drank and ate with these people, enjoying hospitality like only the Kyrgyz can show.

Since then, it has been China, once again, in full force. The city is big, the buildings tall, and the streets broad and well paved. The Uighurs are surprisingly lax about hearing us speak a varient of their language, but tickled all the same. From here, we head to the magical Mogao caves, some of the most impressive repositories of Bhudist statues in the world.

It’s travel like I know it, folks, and never fear, you’ll be with me every step of the way.

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