The kids are alright: Do you take sugar?

July 2, 2014

Even though the scenery was quite beautiful and the road generally remote I did have a couple of grievances as I continued east. The first of these was with my fellow cyclists, because Ana had told me that there would be no cars on this road and Swiss Danny from Switzerland had told me that there would be ten cars a day. The latter was closer, but still too far out to claim the prize, as there were in fact about 70 cars per day. I know. Because I counted. One car every ten minutes on average. I know, I know, that still doesn't sound like much, but they all drove too fast and kicked up big clouds of dust, and let me tell you getting covered in dust 70 times is more than enough for one day. As for my second grievance? Flies. Lets just leave it at that.

This is a picture of my arm, covered in flies. The flies were very annoying. I made a mental note to wash more

I stopped in the middle of the day to take a break from the worst of the heat in a shady dry river-bed. I believe I cooked noodles. Then I laid on the ground and tried to build a tower of pebbles as high as I could. And it was as I was admiring a truly remarkable personal best seven-stoner that I felt something brush against my leg. I sat up with a bit of a start and watched as a snake, yes a snake, slithered under my prone legs and away into the undergrowth. I got up and moved on pretty quickly after that.

Beyond that I had a long and difficult pass that made me understand why Swiss Danny and the Germans were taking lifts. The gradient and the road quality made the going utterly demoralising. But I'm not one for being demoralised to the point of taking lifts, not me, and I kept going and going all the way to the triumphant summit. And over the peak I found an area of grassy plains, so different from the dry, rocky conditions on the way up. Of course these high-altitude grassy plains were populated by yurts and a variety of animals.

I had been told that I would receive constant invitations to come into these nomadic homesteads, but until now that hadn't happened. Until now! I came across a few smiling children in the road. One of these, a girl of no more than ten with a purple woolen hat above a somewhat dirty face, was sitting on a donkey. Another girl in red, slightly older and more confident, asked if I would like to drink tea. At that moment a big black horse came around the corner galloping towards us. At first it appeared to be out of control, but then I saw a young boy was riding it, at which point I realised that it was out of control. Fortunately, I think as much by luck as anything else, the horse stopped close enough to us for the boy to join in with the chorus of "Chai? chai? Kumus?"

The boy had lost his horse by the time I took this photo

I was excited about my first yurt experience so I followed the children around the corner to where they were living. Alas, around the corner I saw where they were living and it wasn't a yurt, it was just a trailer, but it was too late to back out now. I was introduced to the adults who greeted me kindly with a slight air of 'I can't believe those bloody kids have brought another cyclist here!' They showed me into the trailer anyway, where I woke up Grandad and took a seat at the dinner table/bedroom/floor. A tall glass of fermented horse milk was handed to me and I took a few sips. Urgh! Kumus, fermented horse milk! Who in the world came up with such a concept? The boy, who had perhaps been thrown from his horse, was now sitting opposite me and watched me through eager eyes.

"Kumus... In England?" he asked me. I considered.

"I don't know about that," I said, "maybe you can find some in Holland and Barrett."

At that point the Grandma suggested that I put some sugar in my kumus. 'Oh God yeah, thats a good idea!'

Next a plate of food containing quite a lot of dead animal was brought out and placed before me. This was a difficult situation for a vegetarian. How to politely turn down such hospitality? I did so by clutching my stomach as if I had been shot and making it clear I couldn't possibly eat anything in my condition.

I realised that the room had been almost entirely vacated and, curious to know where everyone had gone I got up and took a walk outside. It was almost sunset and it was time to round up the animals. A surprising amount of this was done by the little purple-hat girl on her donkey. She rounded up 296 goats by herself and got them into their pen for the night. A more difficult task was the young cows, who had to go into a small pen. It was difficult because a) they didn't want to go into the small pen and b) their mothers didn't want them to go into the small pen and c) there was a big bull that was only being kept away from the action by a small girl with a stick and d) the small girl with the stick was too distracted posing for my photographs to do her job properly.

"Erm, little girl, are you not supposed to be scaring off a bull with that stick?"
(note the cow chaos behind her)

Somehow all of the animals that had to be rounded up were and I turned back to my bike to find that a 2-year old was the only thing stopping it being attacked by cows. The children seemed to be doing an awful lot of the work. And the women. The men did almost nothing, although one of them did just about manage to rouse himself enough to get up and chase away a cow at one point.

Once the cows had moved on it was the turn of a goat to try and eat my bike. For some reason this goat had special privileges and didn't have to go in the pen with the others. Instead it walked around the camp trying to eat everything. It would chew on something completely inedible, like a plastic cup, or a small child, and then cough and splutter and almost choke, clear its throat, and then move onto trying something else completely inedible. I could only guess that it didn't go in the pen because it would just eat the pen. Or perhaps because the people really wouldn't mind that much if it got taken away by wolves in the night.

All of this was, truth be told, a really wonderful experience. I was encouraged to stay for the night, and to pitch my tent next to their trailer. It was a tempting offer, but I decided to pitch up away from them, just on the other side of the road. I did this because quite enough of their animals had already tried to eat my bike and I thought it would be safer if my tent wasn't within easy reach and because I was really hungry and wanted to cook myself some dinner without causing offense. "You'll be eaten by wolves" they told me.

Had to take this one to stop him eating my bike too

I did not get eaten by wolves.

Today's ride: 33 km (20 miles)
Total: 21,836 km (13,560 miles)

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