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on Friday, July 15, 2005 - 04:14 PM AST - 3252 Reads
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For the following weeks, you're invited to follow Jeremy through his Silk Road Journey. You can get the whole story on his blog.
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Horses and Catching Colds
By Jeremy
October 14th - 20:00pm
Back in the yurt, but with a newly sore behind
Today was horseback day. It's only around 20:00 - 20:30 PM, but Ma Bing has already gone to bed. I think it's a good thing, too. It has come to my attention that he's got a pretty bad cold. He says he got it on the last trip he was on, which he came back from just before picking me up at the airport. He had a bit of a cough then and yesterday morning, but he's a smoker, so I didn't think anything of it. But yesterday, with all that hiking, he got really tired, and I think he's now having a relapse and a fairly severe one at that.
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I'll describe what I mean as I describe the day. Last night, I ended up being quite cozy here in the yurt. I had on: underwear, thermal long underwear, jeans, kung-fu pants, three pairs of socks, a white t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a fleece sweater and a baggy cotton long-sleeve shirt over that. I also had a skiing beanie, and fleece gloves on. I slept on top of 2 blankets for padding, and with 2 blankets on top of me for warmth. I was almost immobile, but I was comfy. One thing that made it hard to sleep well, though, was Ma Bing coughing throughout the night. The only time I was cold was when I had to go outside to go to the bathroom.
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I'm frequently reminded of my many camping trips when I was in Boy Scouts back in Washington State. The trees here are mostly evergreens, in the mountains, near a lake, etc.... All very much like Boy Scouts. When I woke up this morning, I went right to work at building a fire, though there was barely enough kindling to get the coal burning. Very reminiscent of waking up cold in boy scouts and impatiently trying to get a fire going to warm your body, because your metabolism is slow due to having just woken up.
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We had breakfast, then got on our horses and headed out about 10:00 AM. There were 4 of us in total: Me, Ma Bing, our main Kazak guide Chahocmete (I'm making no apologies for transliteration), and his helper, Hosune. We had 3 horses, one for me, one for Ma Bing, and the third for the two Kazaks. They sometimes rode on the horse at the same time, and sometimes Hosune just walked.
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As we got going I started to feel like perhaps my horse wasn't very sure-footed. I thought, "Maybe I'm just making it up in my head, as I haven't ridden a horse for a while..." But it kept slipping, so finally I asked the Kazak guys if they had been giving the horse some liquor that day. They laughed and said that last night my horse had just been fitted with winter shoes and wasn't used to them yet. This concerned me a little, as I knew we'd be climbing up and down mountains, but by this time, there was very little that could be done about it.
We trekked along the west side of the lake again, but this time further away from the shore, as the horses couldn't take the path I walked yesterday. We reached the point I got to yesterday, which I discovered is where the water from the mountains feeds the lake. From here, we basically started upward in the riverbed. The riverbed itself was about 100-200 meters wide, despite the fact that the river itself was at most 3 or for meters wide. Chahocmete said that it all used to be plains but in 1996 and 1998, there were huge floods that wiped out the trees and most of the land, making the river bed that wide.
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| Chahocmete's mandarin is pretty accented, but very good for what I hear from most Kazaks. After a while of navigating the least rocky areas of the riverbed, we finally got to a place where the riverbed was narrower, but much deeper. At this point, we started up along the riverside, which seemed much more natural and easy on the horses. The further we went, the more reluctant the horses were to go at any speed but really slow, but I quickly realized that we were gaining in altitude, and there was less oxygen in the air.
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About 2/3 of the way to our destination, Ma Bing got off his horse and said he'd wait there for us. Apparently, the altitude was giving him a headache. He had been coughing and spitting the whole way, so I think his cold was really getting to him. So, we went on, while he laid down for a rest and took about 3 of the "Custard Pie" things he had bought for our "lunch" (which was composed of these really cheap, individually packaged pies with no nutritive value whatsoever, and a couple bottles of water). At about 13:00 PM, we arrived at our destination.
I drank some water and ate a couple of energy bars I had brought (as I had seen what Ma Bing had bought, and was completely unwilling to let individually packaged, Twinkie-like custard pies be my only midday sustenance). Then Chahocmete and I hiked about 20 more minutes up the steep hill we were on to get a better view. Along the way, he spotted quite a few wild goats in the hills, and pointed them out to me. Those animals are amazingly nimble in those mountains. He kept saying that if he had a gun, we could shoot one down, but that the government protected wild goats, so it was against the law. I think he's probably done it before, though. Before leaving, I gathered up our garbage, and Chahocmete lifted up a rock and said, "Here, put it under here." I told him that I didn't want to. He looked at Hosune, they kind of shrugged their shoulders, and we were back on the way.
The way back down was quite steep, and therefore more difficult for the horses (even with the new horseshoes), so for the steepest parts, we walked and led the horses. We got back to where we had left Ma Bing (we knew it was the right place, because of three custard pie wrappers and an empty plastic water bottle, which I got down and picked up), but no sign of Ma Bing. We figured he had gone back down the hill some to lessen the altitude's effects on him. We found him sleeping with his head on a root about 500 meters later. He still wasn't feeling well, and sort of silently got back on his horse, and we continued. The way back was pretty uneventful, except that my behind was really starting to feel sore. Not only had I not ridden a horse in a while, but also we were going up and down some steep hills, and my horse was tripping and slipping the whole way. In light of this, I'm kind of glad that it wasn't an entire 4-day horse trip.
We had dinner as soon as we got back. It's completely impossible to count calories here, but with the amount of exercise that I'm putting out, I'm actually not too worried about it. Instead, I'm a little concerned that I'm not eating enough. Well, there's not a lot to be done about it. We'll see if there's any big change when I get back to Shanghai.
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At about 5 or 6 PM, they lock the doors to the bathroom stalls here, having something to do with pipes freezing, so people make vague efforts at finding a spot away from the yurt resort, in the trees, to go to the bathroom. Let me tell you. They don't try hard enough. People really aren't too concerned about taking care of their surroundings here, even in the trees where it would be so much better without the garbage everywhere, and even the people who live here in the yurts year-round don't seem to care at all. It really makes me sad. This place will only get less and less nice unless somebody starts to give a damn. I'm worried about China in general in this aspect. The Chinese are turning everywhere worth going in China into garbage dumpsters. Unless a place has enough money to pay someone full-time to pickup after other people, like a nanny would (example: the bigger streets in Shanghai), no one will take responsibility, not even for their own waste.
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I've now had to ask Ma Bing a couple of times to not eat from the same plate as me, because with all the exercise I'm getting and the degree of cold here, I'm getting more and more concerned about catching his cold. I've got a lot more travel to do after this and the LAST thing I want is to be sick throughout it. I'm actually a little disappointed that Mark Zhong assigned a person who he knew was sick to be my guide. Ma Bing is with me the whole day, and sleeps in the same yurt with me. It kind of makes me feel my health is being irresponsibly put at risk. But once again, there's nothing I can do about it now. Even if I do get sick, the only acknowledgment I'll get is a "不好意思- Bu Hao Yi Si" (a small sorry).
I'm glad he went to bed so early tonight, maybe he'll get better. I've also told him I may not want him to come hiking tomorrow, because exercise has already made his cold worse, and it's no fun to have someone along who's producing a lot of phlegm.
Well, I guess we'll see how he's doing tomorrow. Tonight, another cozy night covered by more layers than I ever really remember wearing. I've decided not to change my clothes while I'm here. Yes, this is despite the fact that I'm very active during the day, and sleeping in these clothes at night, and that there's no showering going on here. But CLEARLY no one else is changing their clothes here - Ma Bing didn't even BRING extra clothes with him. So "入乡随俗- Ru Xiang Sui Su" ("when in Rome..."). I've just decided that when I get back to Urumqi, I'm just going to have one of the most Amazing showers I've ever had. I'm already excited and it's only been 48 hours since my last bathing.
Jeremy
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Episode 5: Yurt Livin' and Finding a Way. or not.
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