October 15th - 20:00pm
Once again writing in the yurt by the coal stove.

My skin is beginning to fall apart. The air is so dry here, the sun is so strong, and the temperature is so cold. The tips of my fingers are beginning to crack and split between the ridges that make up my fingerprints, the skin surrounding my fingernails is even worse, and a few of my calluses are cracking and bleeding, too. My face isn't doing well, either. I've been putting on sunscreen, but perhaps not diligently enough, as my nose, cheeks, and lips are still quite burnt-feeling. I'm putting on lotion, lip balm, etc. but I'm not sure how much it's helping.

There's a peak that the people here told me about, from which you can see a whole lot of the sights around here. They described the route to me, and Ma Bing told me that if I went slowly, that it would take me at most an hour. So, I put a couple of energy bars in my pack, ate a couple bowls of noodle soup and got on my way. They said that I would go up a wide road (that a car could go on) and I would reach a basin, and from the basin, I could see three large rocks, and that I should head for them. After about 20 to 25 minutes of walking, I reached the basin. Very pretty basin. Still had WAY too many garbage deposits, but not quite enough to ruin it when viewing from afar. Once I got there, though, the road split. To the right (north) of the basin, there was horse trail that went up along the side of what was *almost* a cliff, but too steep for a hill. To the left, the wider road continued but started going downward, splitting again after a while off even more to the left and upward, but away from the basin. I wasn't even completely sure that the peak I was looking at was the place I should be heading for, as Ma Bing had described the road as easy to find and had said that it would take at most an hour. From what I estimated, it would take at least an hour and a half more from the split in the road, and I had already hiked for over 20 minutes at that point.

Since that furthest left path went almost directly away from the peak I figured it was out of the question. From what Ma Bing had described, I would be following an easy road there, so I didn't take the horse trail along the cliff. Basically, what happened was that the road I took just led me around the basin to the bottom of the cliff. So I ended up having to climb up the cliff to the horse trail, anyway. I finally got to it, and headed in the direction of the peak. Very soon, though, I discovered that horse trail disappeared. Perhaps my eyes just aren't trained well enough to finding trails, but one would think that a HORSE trail wouldn't be that difficult to spot. So I stopped trying to find the trail, and just climbed as high as seemed safe, before it got too steep. I ate some food, and headed back down.

I had only been out for about an hour and a half, so I decided to follow the third road, despite the fact that it clearly headed nowhere near the peak. On this route, I did manage to get to some places with very nice views, though, and the paths were much easier to find.

I ended up back here at the Yurt resort at around 16:20 or so, and asked Ma Bing about the route. I discovered that he had never been there before. I have no idea why he thought he should be able to tell me how long it would take and what the route would be like when he'd never gone before.

So, I decided that I will go back tomorrow. I've asked Ma Bing to bring someone who knows the way. He's arranged to have one of the security guards here take us up there. I asked him if the security guard knows the way, and he said, "He can take us there." I asked him, "Has HE been there?" Ma Bing replied, "I didn't ask." I really don't know what to say. I suggested having Chahocmete take us up there, but he said nothing. Perhaps there's a money issue here. Maybe the guard is cheap, and Chahocmete isn't? I'm not sure. Well, I guess I will just have to see what happens tomorrow.

This morning, Hosune (the helper guide from yesterday) came to visit me. I could barely understand what he was saying, whereas yesterday I could understand him fairly well. It almost seemed to me as if he was drunk, but it was only 10 in the morning. Well, apparently 10 in the morning was no problem for him. He was quite well liquored. He kept telling me that I should take things easy, and kept asking me if I had eaten yet, despite the fact that I already told him I hadn't eaten - when he asked me the first time. I would be having a conversation with someone, and I would hear him yell out, "XIAO HOU!!!" (Which means "young Hou" - something a lot of people call me), and he would have something incomprehensible and irrelevant to say to me. People getting drunk in the middle of the day kind of makes me uncomfortable. His insistence on engaging me was really putting me off. I'm glad he likes me, but he was being a little too forceful about it. He also hinted that he wanted to go hiking with me today, which was the last thing I wanted - an overly talkative, drunk hiking companion. This all urged me to want to get on the way, and going alone was a good excuse to get out of this touchy situation.

There's a tent full of Kazak ladies in the yurt next door. It gets below zero degrees and really dark so soon here, that nobody hangs out in any of the common areas. The ladies all kind of congregate in a yurt somewhere, and chat and giggle about girl-stuff, I'm sure, but tonight they're also singing some songs. It's really nice, having Kazak ladies sing Kazak songs next door. One lady will start singing, she'll sing about one verse or less, then others start joining in. I'd really like to go over there and watch/listen, but I'm absolutely sure that they'd get embarrassed and stop singing. I find that the Kazak ladies look more like Han Chinese than the Kazak men. They're also very well groomed, and have clean-looking, combed hair - both VERY unlike their male counterparts. They generally say very little to me, unless I directly address them, whereas the men love to ask questions and chat about stuff. I'm interested to know more about the women, but I get a strong impression that it wouldn't be entirely proper for me to show a great deal of interest.

Tonight's my last night in a Yurt, and to tell the truth, I'll be glad to get back into a hotel where I can shower and have clean sheets, etc... And if I wake up and have to go to the bathroom, I won't have to go into the below-freezing air to do it. Not that my yurt-life hasn't been quite rewarding, but I’m not going to lie and say I won't enjoy some modern comforts.

Jeremy