What I did on my summer vacation

[Note:  I have several pictures I wanted to sprinkle in this post for some show and tell.  Apparently you need a PhD in blogging to do this on WordPress though, and it makes me want to kick something how my pics get pasted in the size of an interstate billboard.  And my frustration makes me feel like an unlovable old person.  So I'm done with photos, I will just go ahead and post this thingie below and describe verbally what would have been there visually.  It will be tell and tell!]

We took a trip to Kegety Gorge earlier this summer, to celebrate our first anniversary. Almost every last bit of Kyrgyzstan is a mountain, the result of copious hot tectonic plate-on-plate action. Science shows there is a mountain for everyone.

We stayed at a lodge at the very end of this gorge’s long road, where a hunter named Talai lived.

[Talai seated casually on a railing, smiling kind of roguishly like a Kyrgyz Clark Gable.]

In the winter he takes wealthy sport hunters out to shoot ibex and the rare Marco Polo sheep. His kitchen was decorated with several sets of antlers.

[Kitchen-lodge wall; pairs of symmetrical horns come out of the top of the wall.]

We shared some beans with Talai for lunch. He scooted them around in his dish and smiled. “I’m pretending the brown ones are meat.” He shared some fresh cream so thick that slices of bread could stand on end in it.

Our room was where hunters normally stayed when pussy vegetarians aren’t in town. A group of hunters staying there once got into some firearm hijinks, and one of them shot his rifle across the table. The bullet missed his hunting companion by inches and exited through the lodge wall. They named the bullet hole:

[A bullet hole, piercing an old wall with faded wallpaper.  In a semicircle curving over the hole, in capital letters, is printed JESUS.]

We spent an afternoon hiking up the gorge to a waterfall. The terrain was mostly scrawny pines, thick wildflowers and animal poo. Sometimes a bird would circle overhead. There were ladybugs everywhere. And zero people. Which is maybe why the ladybugs felt comfortable reproducing so much.

When planning this trip, we were warned to be careful of ticks, which can carry tick borne encephalitis in this part of the world. Before leaving, I called a few clinics, asking about how to get the vaccination. Nobody had it, and one place summed up: everyone’s too poor here to afford that.

Later that day I found a tick buried up to his neck in my hip, like a piggy boy face-down at a no-handed pie eating contest. We spent the rest of that day intermittently glum at the prospect of tick borne encephalitis and its attendant brain-swelling action. I pictured OBF having to spend the rest of our marriage tightening the chin strap of my helmet and wiping drool from my face, recalling how good that first year was up until that fateful hike. We would periodically hug and tell each other how much we loved each other. (Happy anniversary!)

Here’s a funny thing: The word for encephalitis (энсефалит) is dangerously similar to the word for syphilis (сифилит).

I am happy to report that no энсефалит has emerged.

The next day Talai let us shoot his Kalashnikov rifle. We took turns laying on our stomachs in the grass, scootched up into a short wall to brace ourselves. Try as I might to line up all the sights, I failed to kill the glass bottle, but I did manage to shoot the enormous mountain. Talai smiled good naturedly, took the rifle, and exploded the bottle with one try.

Talai had two boys. Serious little boys, when staring down a camera. Here they are, posing for their daguerreotype before heading off to the war:

[Sepia picture of two small Kyrgyz brothers, each looking up at the camera, mouths set tight.]

We gave them the camera to take some pictures of their own. This is what they came back with:

[A mountain.]

[Someone's feet, out of focus.]

[A nearly empty sky except for a a few bits of linty cloud.]

[A self-portrait, out of focus, eyes and mouth screwed up for funny effect.]

[Green door, the number 1 painted on in white.]

[Another mountain.]

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