Films 6/7: Son Kul

We definetly had left the civilisation behind as we approached Son Kul. And all the wheels in my head which are usually busy all the time came more or less to a stand still. We passed camels, we passed ruins and climbed higher and higher.

We even passed cowboys as the lead up their sheeps to greener grass. It was a lot of cliche but the strange thing was that it was real. No touristic show but the very opposit. The way was a bit of a road movie. Paris Texas may be but more 50ies like and black and white as you can see. And it still was not borring for a single moment.

I must say that the second bowl of mare milk did not even taste as bad as the first one and I probably would have loved it from the third bowl on. But I never had a third bowl and now I am stuck somewhere in the middle.

I could not even tell you how the days passed. Details yes but as I am sitting here and writing there is little I could write. And I mean that absolutely positively. My brain slowed down and so did time. One of the clear memories though is from one of the mornings when I got out of our Yurt to go to the toilet( we had one for men and one for women - basicaly it was holes in the ground with a little house on top) and I saw the beautifull sky behind these houses. It was simply a perfect morning for an early photo.

One of the rituals that started here was having coffee with Sergej after I visited one of those houses in the morning. It happened every morning from thta day on. I droped my mug at Sergejs car, went to the toilet, washed my hands with cold mountain water and went back to the car where Sergej had boiled hot water allready. Theses morning chats with instant coffee and the mountain view will be something I´ll always remember.

One evening our guide told us we could watch a Kok-Boru-Match and we jumped into the car to get over there. We were to late for the game of the grown ups but we still saw kids "playing" it and that was more than impressive. We had been riding six hours that day and our backs and buds still hurted. I was a bit prooud of myself that I managed that day without falling off the horse and (what I thought) without looking too stupid on my horse. But in comparison to these kids who seemed to be glued to their horses I must have looked like a senior citizen on a wheel chair.