Taking a blogging break

I'll be coming back here later to sum up my year of travel, but for the time being anyone interested in seeing something about my latest trip should head over to http://helenaopeter.blogspot.com. And bring your knowledge of Swedish! :-)

Anyone else that likes Jim Steinman?

Jim Steinman is a long-time favourite of mine; composer and producer, he is mostly famous for writng and producing the Bat Out of Hell 1 and 2 (not the despicable BOH3) albums for Meatloaf, and Bonnie Tyler's mega-hit Total Eclipse Of The Heart.

However, many Steinman afficionados rate his two songs on the soundtrack to the 1984 movie Streets of Fire by Walter Hill as the best he's ever done. The group playing is called "Fire Inc.", but you can clearly hear long-time Steinman collaborators such as über-drummer Max Weinberg and keyboardist Roy Bittan, both from Springsteen's E Street Band.

If you are interested, the movie in itself is awesome if you like action movies, and the music is a highly integrated part of the movie. You can find more info on
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088194/
and a torrent download at
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3293913/STREETS_OF_FIRE_PAL_FULL_DVD5
Sadly, as far as I know, the movie is no longer availbale on DVD.

But I'm getting away from the subject... Last night on Swedish television show "Talang 2007" (kinda of like American Idol), 11-year old Mimmi Sandén gave us her interpretation of "Tonight is what it means to be young" from the movie, as well as the Bonnie Tyler song "Holding Out For A Hero".

The reviewer in Dagens Nyheter said "hopefully Mimmi's parents realize that the most appropriate summer job for their daughter is to go on tour with Meat Loaf", which I guess is praise enough.

You can check out her version here:
http://www.tv4.se/player/categories.aspx?progId=135292

Not bad for an 11-year old kid, that's for sure! But honestly though, the original soundtrack is much better...

Video focus

Well, videos are fun... During my gap year, the whole Youtube craze happened; weird to think that it hardly existed only a year ago, at least not for most of us.

I want to experiment a little with that, I have a few videos that might be fun to watch, so let's see what can happen with that in the future. Meanwhile, I'm going to put up just as a test, a vide o I recorded in Kyrghyzstan more than six months ago, as my school buddies from high school was gathering for a reunion. At the time, the thought of putting it on Youtube or something similar never occured to me!

I'm putting it on Google video instead of Youtube; I have some hope that it will be more integrated with blogger that way. Ok, here's the chance to see the mohawk in action! :-)



Oh yes, now that I have a self-produced video up there, I have deleted the Nintendo post that I had here earlier. It wasn't that funny anyway...and it possibly might have offended some.

Where did I go?

Yes, I haven't posted in ages, and that is for a number of reasons. I did continue to travel after Kyrghyzstan, and over the next few weeks I will hopefully be able to tell you more about that. Right now however, I am back in Sweden, enjoying meeting my friends and family again. I have just collected all my things from all over the city (and outside of it), and I am busy moving everything in again.

The best bed in the whole world
Finally, last night, I was able to go to sleep in my own bed; the bed was picked up, I had linen, and now the bed was even put together (it took three people!), and indeed it is the most comfy bed in the world! Go Hästens (the brand)!

But after having slept on that soccer field of a bed in the lakehouse (more about that later) for so long: ohmygod how narrow mine is, at only 5 1/3 feet. And it seemed so wide when I slept there last time?

Next time I will get a bedroom that fits a bigger bed, that's for sure!

Best of Barskoon - a picture collection

Only a sample of the 187 pictures in the collection

I have finally gone through the 3000+ photos from ten different photographers from the build in Barskoon, and selected the 187 best ones! In total I have spent more than 30 hours on this now, categorizing, selecting, cropping, sharpening, color-balancing, etc.

The pics have been selected from many criteria, among them:

• Photographical excellence. You know, the ones with perfect focus, colors that hits you in the face, and all that. Luckily enough we had some excellent photographers with us!
• Funny motifs. You know, as long as it makes you laugh it's ok if the pic is totally out of focus.
• Representative motifs. I have tried to get a couple of pics from each of the main things we did.
• Personal taste. I have really done my best to not crowd the collection with pictures of myself, butI am sure that the Barskoon mountains are over-represented, just because I loved them so much.

You can find the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/inkorg.peter, so go there as soon as possible. I'm sure that you won't agree with everyone of them, but there's something for everyone.

I have had a really good time going through the pictures the last few weeks, remembering everything that happened and weeding the good from the bad, and then finally adding the captions, I hope you will have almost as much fun when you look at them!

/ Peter

P.S. Three tips for new users of Picasa Web Albums:
1. Use the slideshow function to see my witty(?) comments.
2. If you download Picasa, install it, and then get a Google account you cannot only publish your own albums, but you can also download mine and other's albums complete with comments to your own computer, where they are even easier to look at and manage. I love Picasa!
3. I have uploaded the pictures in 1600x1280 resolution and not too compressed. Although fairly good quality, I have of course the full quality pics available offline - just ask me if you want a copy.

P.S.2. If you are a member of the team and is reading this - yes, this means that I am very close to sending out the DVD's with almost all the 3000+ pics in full quality.

Too many TV's?

I just read on Dagens Nyheter, (DN article), that in the US, there are now for the first time more television sets than people (including infants and such).

I was going to say something really scathing until I realize that I own three of the damn things myself. Shutting up now...

Recreational drugs - not always hard to get hold of

Taylor fantasizing what he could do with this if it wasn't a Habitat trip...

Back in Sweden, getting your recreational drugs isn't always easy - I mean even alcohol is only sold in government stores for god's sake! Unless you make your own of course, but that's a story for some other time...

In Kyrghyzstan all you need to do is literally to walk out in the fileds and get it yourself. This picture is from a roadside ditch in Barskoon, but you could also find it in the parks in Bishkek!

 

The proudest moment of the Mohawk - and the Smiles

Yes, I know that all my readers are dying to know. My inbox is completely overflowing with requests, I need a secretary just to keep track of all the requests. No, not really, no. As a matter of fact, there has not been a single request for two months, so it's probably time to get it off?

I know I have said that before, but it is really getting unruly now, so something needs to be done anyway! But before that, let's celebrate the mohawk's proudest moment, and let me tell you a little about all the Smiles the 'hawk gives me.

The proudest moment

In July, the situation was similarly hopeless as now. The 'hawk was growing all over the place, more or less threatening to take over most of my body, rather like a 50's horror movie. But to the rescue came Scott and Monica. I asked them to just trim the sides a little, but it must have been a really boring night, because they asked if they could do more. And since I am such a trusting person I gave The Siblings full reign with the machine. Well, there might have been some alcohol involved too I guess, but I don't really remember. Which in itself is a sign of course!
After a long brainstorming session, they decided to do a lightning pattern on my right side. Ok, I'm not showing you that, out of respect for thir artistic integrity of course. I don't remember which one of them it was that decided that after that disastrous apprenticeship, they were ready for bigger things, but whoever it was must have a serious case of hubris. Who wants to bet on the software saleswoman and who wants to bet on the management consultant? Hmm, looks like dead race to me...

So after an even longer brainstorming session, probably involving some vodka, the idea came up to do something to honour our revered hosts, and what could be better than the pattern from the Kyrgyz flag? Well, "anything" we thought to be honest, because not one of us actaully believed it would be any good! But thanks to the beers, I let them get it on anyway. I mean it wouldn't take more than a week for the hair to grow out, right? An probably not more than six months for the cuts and scars to heal - that would heal me in time for work at IBM anyway...

But The Siblings did an awesome co-operative job. I don't remember who did what any longer, but one of them did the broad strokes while the other did the detail work, and they did great! The divine miss M is about to quit her job anyway, and if BCG ever decides to fire Scott (surely only a matter of time!), they could definitely open up The Siblings Hairsaloon (I'm registering that web address right now guys, but you can buy it from me really cheap!).

Thanks though - I know it might be hard to believe for mom and dad when looking at the picture, but that is actually the happiest I've ever been with a hair cut!

The Mohawk in it's proudest configuration yet.

The Smiles

I'm not completely sure why it is, but I get so many more looks from people on this trip than ever before. I want to believe that it is my winning smile and charming eyes, and maybe it would be if they matched my crap posture and gut belly better. No, I think I need to admit to myself that it's all about the 'hawk...

Unfortunately, it is not only admiring looks from hot women of all ages, no there's so many different kind of looks that I get...

The "Wow, I want one of those!" smile
A gaping mouth, with the chin almost touching their chests.

This is common from boys at around eight or nine years old, and probably makes their mothers curse the crazy swede walking the streets of Bishkek. I want to come back in two months and see how many of the kids has managed to convince their mothers to let them have one. But since Kyrghyzstan is a country where they still beat their kids regularly, no that is probably not going to happen... :-(

The "Are you crazy?" smile
Heads tiliting backwards in disbelief, and a laughter that they never quite dare to come out.

Except for the kid's mothers, I seem to get this one from guys my own age. They are probably silently thanking themselves that they aren't so pathetic as to try to make themselves look younger with a hair-do. And then they run home and take some Viagra; except that in this country Viagra is a vodka brand! (Which I find awesomely cool btw!)

The Russian Viagra - better than the American?

The "please don't kick my ass" smile
A nervous smile from people looking down and trying to make themselves as small as possible.
I must be uglier than I thought, because at night some people actually seem to be afraid of me! I guess I understand now why punkers like their mohawks. It is a strangely satifying feeling though, even though I am sire it will get me beaten up some day by someone who actually has some muscles to back their hairdo up...

The "wow he's hot" smile
As we pass in the street, they tilt the head slightly downwards, and looking up towards me with a shy smile twitching around the mouth.
I remember getting this once. Fram an 80-year old grandmother to this girl I was trying to pick up.

No, seriously for a while: I do get this disturbingly often, and from girls who are half my age, and look awesomely hot. Oh, to be 20 again. Or even 35... :-) No, but it is nice to get that confirmation again, even though I am now old enough not to know what to do with it.

The "he looks effing stupid" smile

Turns out to probably be the most common one, the same smile you give the harmless village idiot back home...except it borders on a laughter. Often combined with the "please don't kick my ass" smile, just to be safe.

The nervous smile
Is the one that I give back while I'm trying to figure out what smile I'm getting...

Public banyas and other moral issues

Next to my favourite hotel in Bishkek (Asia Mountains) is a suspiciously looking building, with a huge banner with a Conan-type guy on. I always though that it looked like a place where you could buy...interesting...female services, but when I have asked people they have said that it is only a public bathhouse (or "banya" in kyrgyz).

But yesterday as we were driving by the place, with two hours until my plane was taking off (which meant I didn't even have time to stick my head inside and check it out), Irina, Karliens friend told me that, yes it is a public banya, and yes, you can buy striptease (one hour 1700 som (=$40) for an hour) and massage there!! Unclear exactly what type of massage and what cost, but she admitted that there were two bedrooms on the top floor...

Now, all I want to know is how come she knew that, and even more so that she knew the exact price... :-)

Certainly not the type of public bath I went to with my family back in the 70's anyway!

Change of my future plans

After coming back to Sweden (going through Turkey) in two weeks , I had planned to continue back to the middle east later on. More specifically, the idea was to travel (more or less) overland to Tanzania and the big mountain itself, Kilimanjaro. However, it was kinda dependent on two things: Getting the company of Anna (or someone else for that matter, since I am getting awfully bored with traveling by myself), and spending a lot of the time discovering Lebanon, something that I have wanted to do forever.

Well, Lebanon seems to be out of the question for obvious reasons, and now Anna has chickened out on me as well, preferring to spend quality time with her new boyfriend instead. What is it with these girls?! :-)

So now I have no idea what to do from October-February. Or rather, I have tons of ideas, but no one that seems better than any other. Care to help me out?

The hunt for good French Fries in Kyrghyzstan, Sep 19

Those of you that have met me in Kyrghyzstan knows that I continously search for some good french fries. As my stay in K-stan draws to a close, I have to declare two winners:

1. Overall best, and winner of the home-made category: Andrew Rickard in our apartment in Osh
2. Runner-ups and winners of the commercials category: Aphrodite in Osh. Plus a bonus point because the waitress was cuter than Andrew. :-)

But sorry guys, none of you holds a candle against McDonalds, and today I arrived in Istanbul and in an hour or so it's lunchtime. Yummy!

The Toi, Aug 9 (or thereabout)

We must have done something right when we were helping out with the houses in Barskoon, because the villagers decided to throw us one of the legendary "Toi" parties. Well, that is not entirely true, there was also the fact that Nick and Val were celebrating their one-year wedding anniversary, and there was something about them paying for at least part of it. So, credits where credits are due for this wonderful experience:

• Nick and Val for having the good taste to get married exactly a year ago, and to have the even better taste to feel that they needed to celebrate it!
• Zauresh and the rest of the Barskoon Habitat committee for arranging everything for us.

A "toi" is this inherently Kyrghyz party, something that most visitors to Kyrghyzstan never gets the chance to experience. It is definitely not something that you buy at a restaurant in Bishkek, or anywhere else for that matter. It is a dinner (although to be honest not that good :-)), but it is much more than that, it is most of all a cultural experience.

For us it became a weird mixture of something entirely different and strange (like eating truly weird body parts), surprisingly familiar (kids games like pass-the-egg), and a heartfelt thanks and goodbye from our host families, the house owners, and all the other people we got to know while in Barskoon.

The place for the Toi was right where it was supposed to be: up in the mountains. In this case more or less at the foot of the famous Barskoon waterfalls. Legend has it that Yurij Gagarin himself saw observed the waterfalls as he was shooting out in space from the Soviet base in neighbouring Kazakhstan during the first mission to space, and he liked them so much that he first commented on them while talking to the command center, and later came back here. I don't know how true it is, but there is at least a big bust of him up here in space suit and all!

The perfect place would have been a jailoo of course, but since there are none within a reasonable distance of Barskoon, we had to make do with this place, which was close enough. We did have a yurt, and I don't think we missed the hundres of sheep that much :-)

Talking about sheep, they are a central part of the whole Toi. A Toi always starts with a ritual slaughter of one or more sheep, and our did too of course. Not everyone took to well to the whole thing (I seem to recall having to hold Monica up), but to me it was great. "We" said a prayer over the sheep, thanking them for letting them be slaughtered for us, and after that their throats were slit. It all looked quite painless to me, but what do I know? I'm sure that they both lived and died a better life than most of the animals in Sweden, so I'm happy enough about that. (Yeah Linnéa, that is a defence towards you! :-))

After that, the sheep were skinned, and the sheep and the rest of the food was prepared by some of the villagers, while the rest of us was free to do whatever we wanted. For some obscure reason, what followed reminded me very much of the Swedish celebration when we throw out the Christmas tree! There were a lot of games, some seemed Kyrghyz, and others were definitely more western in style.

• A running contest, which seemed to be taken seriously by the Kyrghyz, supposed to be an important tradition. Which meant that the Habitat teams took it easy and let the locals win... Have to say though that the main part was definitely the kids contest where everyone had a great time!
• Passing an apricot from cheek to cheek in a long line. I seem to recall us winning that one.
• Passing a bottle between peoples thighs in a long line. The last two felt definitely western in style, despite the bottle game being suggested by our hosts, and I was a bit surprised that no one was taking offense... I think we did it two times and each side won one each.
• Shoving an egg up one pant leg and down the other. Now, if that wasn't crossing the line, I don't know what was. The clear winner was Monica - I had no idea she was that good at working strange men's pants! :-)
• Tug-of-war, where us guys won, and the women disgraced us by loosing. :-)
• Move-the-matchbox, a game I cannot even begin to describe (but look at the pictures), with me and Monica once and for all proving we have the best hip movements in the business!
• Horse-fight, where I (as the horse) and Monica (as the knight) desperately tried to defend the Habitat colors against a nation of horse people!
• Some weird running-and-hunting game, where my competition instinct made me run so hard that I slipped and ruined my pants. :-(

Compared to this, the dinner itself was a very relaxed and quiet time, and some of us had problems getting our adrenaline levels back down to normal (I was definitely one of them!). We were just lucky I guess that someone had forbidden vodka for the dinner, otherwise things might have gotten terribly wrong.

Just kidding though - to be honest I was a little bit disappointed - I've heard so much about how Kyrghyz parties get out of hand when vodka is involved that I looked forward to experience it firsthand, but no such luck. I don't even remember why we had that rule anymore, probably a Habitat thing or something - it is a Christian organization after all.

The dinner started normally enough, with some cold snacks and sallads like most other dinners in this country (although both the sausages and the cheese seemed better than normal). We also took the opportunity to celebrate Nick and Val officially, with champagne and everything. They had been hiding out in their own yurt (and we don't want to know what happened there! :-)) for some time, but joined us for dinner again.

And then the core part of the toi started! After the ritual killing of the sheep, the whole preparation of the animal is also covered by a multitude of rituals, of which I don't understand much. But once you get to the table, there are a few things you need to know.

For one thing, the guest of honor has a few...let's say "special" duties that he needs to attend to, all having to do with the sheeps head, such as:

• Cutting off parts of the cheek and making sure that everone gets some.
• Cutting off parts of the palate (the roof of the mouth) and give it to either someone already artistic or someone who needs to improve in that area - I forget which. But since I got a piece it must mean that you should give it to someone who needs improvement! Now I just need to explain why obviously artistically Lynn got the major part...
• Cutting off the ear and giving them to the young that you want to listen to you.
• Cutting out the eyes (which is a much more delicate procedure than you think, since it involves cutting the optical nerve from behind) and giving them to someone special that you want to look out for you in the future.
• And finally splitting the skull in two, and mixing the brain with meat from the legs and pasta to make Besh-Barmak (Five-Fingers) for everyone.

We knew that we would have two sheep, and Nick would obviously be one of the honored guests (sorry Val, but in this country...), so we had a discussion about who the other one would be. I was pretty much the only one that didn't think the whoile thing was disgusting as hell, so the honour went to me, but I was disappointed to learn that only one of the heads made it to the table! I still don't know what happened to the other one, so maybe it's ghost is still roaming the hills of Barskoon?

Nick was nice enough to let me have one of "his" eyes though, so at least I got to try everything out, except the ears. The cheek and the roof of the mouth was nothing strange at all, and the eye was just like a big piece of fat. The brain however wasn't that great. I know a lot of my friends only took "fake" besh-barmak without the brain, and it was probably just as well...

During the whole dinner, we were entertained by some of the locals, singing songs, playing weird instruments and dancing for us - I'm still not sure if it had any ritualistic meaning or if it was "only" entertainment, but it was great fun!

As the dinner wound to a close, is where I am a little disappointed that the vodka was not with us, because with it, I am sure that the fun would have continued all night, but as it was everything just kinda fizzled out as we packed up everything and went back to the village.

Nonetheless, I had a great day at the Toi.
Sometimes I wish that I had joined the others to hike up to the waterfall, but instead I had a great time just hanging with Monica, and that more than made up for it!
Sometimes I missed some of the rituals that I thought would dominate the whole thing more, but that was more than made up for by the lovely family-style experience that we had.

And sometimes I did miss the vodka, but that was made up for by Nick's "secret bottle" - cheers Nick, and happy second anniversary in advance to you and Val!

Inland climate sucks! Sep 17-18

17 Sep
Obviously it has been too long since I lived in Minneapolis - I had completely forgotten how sensitive inland climate is to the warming rays of the sun. Today the sun has been down, and the result is that I quickly moved from sweating-in-my-t-shirt to having to put on my extremely yucky fleece sweater. Bleah! Hoping for some sun tomorrow so I can go on that photography rampage!

18 sep
Not so - today is rain, which means a day in my apartment. Can't even be bothered with the blog or the photo collection (is my mood a refelction of the weather or the opposite?), so I watch some movies and read comics instead.

Trekking from Talas to Sary-Chelek and Osh, Sep 2-15

Wow! The last few days has just got to be one of the best things I’ve ever done, it has definitely been one of the most scenic ones anyway! Below is my impressions in more or less diary form through the days, interspersed with what I myself think is some incredibly beautiful pictures.

Day 1 : Shopping

Day one was planned to be a sightseeing day in Bishkek; I’ve lost track of how many days I’ve spent in Bishkek now, but what I did not need was another tour of the ex-soviet cement palaces on Chui Prospekt.

Instead I spent the day preparing for the trek. I bought a new camera, a warm hat, a new knife, and some more stuff, but I mainly just relaxed by the pool...

[Update about the camera: after having researched on the Internet for hours I wound up buying a Casio EX-Z600. After using it for two weeks it comes highly recommended. Picture quality is very good (for the price, US$ 250, although nothing compared to Raquel's incredible Nikon D70 of course!), and battery life is the best I’ve ever seen – after taking 400 pictures the battery is still 2/3 charged. But the best thing is the reaction time. No more missing pictures because the motive changes while the camera takes the picture!]

Day 2: Ala-Archa hike

This was a warm-up day for the main trek. We did a four-hour hike in the Ala-Arch valley south of Bishkek. Nothing that special, except for the snowball fight we got to have at the foot of a waterfall below the glacier. Gotta be the coldest water I’ve ever seen!

Oh, and I got to meet Team Germany, i.e. the German people that will accompany me on the trek. I can’t say that the impression has been too positive: it is two guys (Ulrich and x) and a woman (Antje), that are all around my own age. But they seem so old, and to be honest, boring. Have I spent too much time with young people to appreciate people my own age?

Day 3: Bishkek -> Talas

I met the rest of the teams today. When I signed up for the trek there were only supposed to be two more participants. Sometimes Asia Mountains have talked about them as Germans, sometimes as Australian+Spanish, but today everything has cleared.

Team Belgium is a young girl, she says 25, but I could swear that she is no more than 19. Her name is Karlien (pronounced like Carlene Carter, the country singer), and is a very innocent and naïve political science student, that seems to fully believe that she will be able to come up with a way to create a perfect society, implement it, and rule the world before she retires. Well, there is certainly something attractive with youthful enthusiasm, and coupled with a very charming smile she seems to be very nice. Should be fun to spend more time with her!

When we had to leave, Team Australia and Team Spain was still missing, so we took off without them. Walkover? (Oh, in case anyone was wondering where the whole "Team" thing came from, it is of course inspired by the 2001(?) Raid Gauloise competition, which in turn was about getting around Kyrgyzstan as fast as possible.)

We have not been doing any trekking today, “only” getting from Bishkek to Talas by car. The road there was amazing, with some of the best views I’ve ever seen. As always in these situations, I managed to get the wrong side of the minibus, so I’m hoping to leach some good pics from Team Germany.

Oh, and at lunch time, a taxi from Bishkek showed up, with a nice but quite confused Team Australia+Spain. Although they seem to be very nice, I must admit that I was a bit pissed that they weren’t even able to remember which day the trek was! They actually realized at 11 am that they should have started the trek at 8 am. But they seem really nice both of them, so as long as they have remembered to bring decent gear, I am sure we will have a great time together.

Now to get to sleep in a tent for the first time in I don’t know how many years, except for the Karakol trek last week that is. I might never have done it to be honest? I wonder how many of the others realize that - I think I come off as much more experienced than I really am. It seems bloody cold, especially since I got my own tent. Would have loved to share tent with Karlien instead since we have had a good time chatting today, but of course a guy and a girl could never share a tent... :-( It’s going to be nine lonesome nights in my tent.

Day 4: Urmaral Valley; the first walk

Finally the trek has started for real. The whole team took off up the Urmaral valley this morning, although at somewhat varying speed. Me and Team Belgium (Karlien) seem to be leading the pack, and that suits me fine since she is fun to talk to. The journey was fairly flat, along a beautiful river with a mixture of pine and leafy trees.

We camped quite early, so it gave me and Karlien a chance to climb a small nearby peak, to add another 536 vertical meters to today’s statistics. I hope I didn’t overextend myself though – tomorrow is supposed to be much harder.

Dinner was very much like breakfast and lunch - adequate but not really anything special. At least the nan bread is still delicious, I'm sure I will be less enthusiastic about the stale stuff we will have in a week!

Day 5: to Chiim-Tash; my new Dos Ojos

Any long-time reader of the blog should remember my fascination with the cave diving in Dos Ojos in Mexico. Well, now I have another “two eyes” to be fascinated about.

Today we started early, as always with the clangs from the cook’s frying pan waking us up. Yes, we have a cook, which is awfully nice – the mornings are so darned cold (around 0 Celsius / 32 Fahrenheit and a LOT of humidity) that it is almost essential to have hot Chai waiting for you. Hooray for luxury trekking! So after a quick breakfast, we packed, broke tent and set off towards a high mountain pass.

Not very hard for me, but the German and Spanish girls seem to have a hard time, since they fall behind a lot. Blisters coming maybe? The hardest thing is actually to focus on the walking, and not trip while you look at the beautiful landscape!

Today I’ve spent more time with Teams Australia + Spain (Andrew and Eiger), and I must say that I like them a lot already! You meet so many people while traveling, and I don’t know how many I’ve been asked to exchange email addresses with, while knowing that I will not stay I touch. With these guys it is different though – I really like them!

We arrived quite early to the lakes, so I tried to get Karlien to do another peak with me. No such luck – I had to go by myself, but as you can see from the picture it was worth it. What was not so clever was to take a swim in the lake after the sun had set behind the mountains – I have now been freezing more or less nonstop for four hours, and I am sure it will continue until lunch or so tomorrow. Brrr!

The terrain around here is beautiful though, and really looks like what I think high-altitude country should. It is only 3000 meter, but it reminds me of pictures I’ve seen from Everest base camps – cool!

Day 6: Kara-Kuldja Valley

This morning’s camp has been right below the mountain pass, and after breakfast, we set off for the highest point on our trek – 3600 meters. The path almost went up to the small peak I climbed yesterday, after which it followed along a lovely glacier until we had a steep climb up to the Chim-Taash pass.

As I climbed over the ridge, it wasn’t only the hard wind that hit me (although that added nicely to the whole mountaineer-like experience), more than that, it was the magical landscape stretching out in front of me! Mere words can’t describe it, and pictures can’t do it justice, so I guess you guys just have to go here! :-)

Although it was freezing cold, we spent a long time here, just taking the landscape in, with what must have been the biggest smiles I’ve seen in K-stan so far on our faces! As well as a slightly more stressed look at Sasja's face, since he was bored (bored? how can he possibly be?!) and wanted to get down to camp.

The decent was slightly less dramatic, although no less beautiful, and we camped for lunch at a jailoo (pasture in the mountains with yurts and tons of sheep) next to a river. By this time I had put my MP3 player on and was playing some awesome dance music, so I couldn’t really sit still. On the way down from the pass I was dancing(!), and I just kept running around that jailoo for ages, taking tons of great pictures.

This landscape is just giving me so much energy, it feels like I will never tire!

Camp was set just a little higher in the valley which gave us a lot of time in the afternoon for the boring essentials, like cleaning yourself and doing laundry. The others insist on wearing swimsuits when washing themselves, which I find really weird, but at least I snuck off downstream as to not offend anyone. But come on guys – it’s the wilderness!

I’m getting more than a little envious of Karlien’s previous trek now though. They had a big kitchen tent where everyone was having dinner, and which worked as a communal area after that, for playing cards, talking, etc. Here we eat dinner outdoors, after which everyone is freezing our asses off, and just set off to bed. I’m sure that Andrew and Eider can come up with something nice to do in their tent :-), but I am bored out of my skull!

I have tried to lure Karlien to my tent for some talk and card games, but she seems to think that I’m hitting on her, so that doesn’t really work. And the German’s continue to be extremely shy, quiet, and to be honest, boring. I hope for warmer weather as we get down to lower altitudes, else I will commit seppuku with my pen knife!

Day 7: Kara-Kuldja pass and the pine forests

This has not been one of our best days :-(. It started out good enough, although the landscape was a little boring compared to the last two days. A nice gentle slope upward until we came over a small ridge and started the decline through a beautiful pine-covered valley to lower altitudes. It really is amazing how quickly the climate changed from one valley to the next!

But then people really started to feel their blisters. Ulrich has been walking backwards at times(!), and Eider has also had a hard day. As we have approached pine forest country, the landscape has been extremely like where I grew up in Sweden. If not for the fact that you can see the high mountains in the background, it could be home!

For those who know the Swedish forests, you also know that this means a lot of low vegetation (until know we had only had alpine grass and flowers) – and Sasha hadn’t prepared us to wear long pants. Which means that everyone has a lot of cuts on our legs.

And to top it off, the camping spot is crap. We passed a few good ones an hour earlier, but we passed them by. Instead we are camping in a field of rocks, with extremely high and sharp bushes everywhere. :-(

Day 8: Kashka-Suu pass

Today has been an awfully hard day, but as we are trekking this is of course a good thing! Except for the poor blister victims that is... :-( Finally leaving that hell-hole of a camping-site was very nice this morning, especially after a filling breakfast on porridge, sandwiches, and of course warming Chai. And as much candy and nuts as we can eat – not normal breakfast food exactly, but I’m sure we burn a million calories a day here so we need it.

In the morning we trekked up, towards a mountain pass called Kashka-Suu. The trail was not as steep as the one after the Dos Ojos lakes, but it was definitely longer. And we got to walk on real glaciers! Somewhat unexpected I must say, but a definite plus that made me feel even more like a true adventurer. :-) I have been envious of Karlien and her Tien-Shan glacier trek in August, but this at least allowed me to tick “glacier walking” off that mental list! :-)

After the final ascent a beautiful landscape opened up for us, with valleys and rifts visible from our feet to the horizon - possibly the most beautiful sight so far. We selected the right of the two ridges (I love walking on ridges), and followed it all the way down to the floor of the biggest valley, a wonderful walk.

Once again less wonderful for the blister victims (I just love my La Sportiva boots more for each day!). Eider had looked especially pained the whole day, and at the end of the day she finally let me carry her backpack for her, after tons of nagging and some fighting! No wonder: when we got to camp and she took her bandages off, liquid was gushing from almost all her foot. It was like the whole underside of the foot was just two big blisters, one at the front and one at the back!

Day 9: “Rest day” – hiking to the lake shore

I think that we were supposed to come to today's camping spot already the day before, but the slower speed of the blister victioms slowed us down somewhat. Didn't matter much though, becuase we got to enjoy a lovely morning walk down a wide (50-100 meter or so) pristine valley, with a stream in the middle and a couple of farms with their cattle surrounding it. Totally idyllic!

And the short walk meant that we arrived to the camp site well before lunch time - and what a camp site it was! As the valley opened up approaching a small lake, the creek opened up into a small delta, where horses were grazing on the small islands. We pitched tents at a lovely meadow next to the lake, and quickly proceeded to swim at the beach (the water is much warmer here than close to the glaciers!), sunbathe, read, and just generally goof around and have a good time.

Unfortunately I slept through a lot of it - for some reason that I don't really understand, I was completely exhausted and almost fainted in my tent! Well, to be honest I do know why I was so exhausted - you see, I had a little accident this morning...

When I woke up, I had a little..."emergency" to take care of. And at that camping spot it was extremely hard to find a private spot to do "number two" at. So I hastily grabbed the TP roll and threw myself up the steep mountain walls at the back of our camping spot (in front there was only a river...). But when you are in a hurry, you don't always look too carefully when you put your feet, and when I also forgot the Golden Rule of mountain climbing (always keep at least three contact points with the cliff), things went wrong.

As I stepped on a ledge of the cliff, it broke off and I fell hard, suddenly finding myself sliding down an almost vertical cliff face! I was lucky enough to fall right by a tree, becuase the frantic clawing I did at the cliff face didn't slow me down at all. My reflexes made me quickly grab hold of a tree branch and hold on for all my life, and although my arm was almost pulled out of it's socket, and I lost most of my skin on one of my fingers, at least I was dangling in one arm instead of lying at the foot of the cliff!

Looking down, I had another five meters or so to go, so that was out of the question (and my god, I would have been hurt if I had went the whole way down!), and upwards it was three meters or so. Luckily enough, I could scramble around the tree and reach the path from there though... Whew!

At first I thought I was unharmed, but it was just the adrenaline masking the injuries. I have scratches all over my body, my lower back hurts like hell, and I won't be playing badminton with that arm again for another few weeks! Not too mention that something tore a hole in the crotch of my pants, although I seem to be unhurt there - lucky!

The funny thing though is that I didn't really want to cause a commotion in the camp (plus I felt pretty stupid about the whole thing!), so I just got some desinfectant and a band-aid for the finger, and didn't say much about the rest, so no one has any idea how close we were to a serious incident!

So, yes, maybe it wasn't strange after all that I slept most of the afternoon...

Since there was plenty of dead tree branches around (we were after all at what is a river bed during the wet season!), we didn't hesitate to make a fire for dinner, and the following chit-chat. Yes, we finally had that nice relaxed conversation in the evening, and I am sure that the moonshine I bought from some of the farmers we passed helped to add to the nice time we had! As I sat by myself late, late at night and watched the fire burn out, I thought to myself that this is the life...

A sky as starry as they come with the Milky Way shining down on me, and the fire crackling and keeping me warm - what could possibly be better? Well, it should be that special someone to keep me company then! :-)

Day 10: Kuturmu pass and lake Kara-Suu

Yet another rest day I would say, with only four hours reasably easy trekking (although we did 800 verticals in rocky terrain) before we arrived at the camp site, Once again at a lovely lake, and it feels like everyone is getting the feeling that the trek is soon to be over, because everyone was happy just frolicking in the sun, swimming and enjoying a lovely afternoon.

Oh, Karlien slept under the stars tonight. I was seriously tempted to join her, but her -10 Celsius sleeping bag just gave her too much of an advantage. And lucky too, the frost on the ground in the morning did spell problems for my super-light 0 Celsius Mountain Hardwear Phantom32.

Day 11: Sary-Chelek

We got up earlier than usual to be able to spend more time at Sary-Chelek, and after an hour or two of light hiking we made it there. The porters made us a late breakfast while teams Sweden, Australia and Spain was re-united with our luggage that we have had sent from Bishkek! I’m staying around Osh for a week so I need guidebooks, clean underwear and so on, and the other two are moving south to Uzbekistan.

Seeing the luggage reminded us all that the journey is about to end, which did feel a little sad. Especially since Eider started the whole let’s-exchange-email thing. It felt a little bit awkward since I am sure that she and Andrew are the only one’s I will stay in contact with in the long run anyway...

The S-C lake itself was something of a disappointment. We’ve heard so many good things about it, but I would only rate it as average. Probably because all the amazing things we’ve seen before, but still... I made a nice hike with Ulrich and Karlien to the other side though, and the morning light was really good to us, so I got some good pictures.

Oh, and Ulrich and I skinny-dipped, which was really nice. I asked Ulrich to take a picture of me naked which I studied later, and I must say that I must have lost a lot of weight. Or at least lost a lot of fat around the waist, although I have probably gained a lot of muscles as well. Although Karlien laughed at me (when she managed to get hold of the picture) it still feels good. I might not look like I’m 25 anymore, but at least I look better than 6 months ago – and more importantly I feel A LOT better now!

The afternoon was spent in a car going through Kyrgyzstan’s counterpart to the Ruhr in Germany, i.e. their coal mines. The less said about that the better...

The evening was great though – we are staying in a great guest house in Osh, where I have my own little suite. And the price is only US$ 15, if I want to stay here after the trip is officially over tomorrow.

After arriving here, we asked the hotel staff if there was any bar or something nearby, and one of them followed us for more than 15 minutes to the local hangout (yes, that's how friendly everyone is here!). Normally I’m sure that it is completely desolated on a Tuesday, but today one of the locals was celebrating the birth of his little son, he invited us, and we had a great time!
I had far too much beer, smoked too much cigarr, and had a great time! The music they played was similar to what is played at Re:Orient/Akaba back home in Stockholm, and everyone was on the dance-floor to have F-U-N. Everyone took turns going to the center of the ring to perform (always fun!), and we even played out a small mini-play where I picked up one of the local girls and her boyfriend battled me to win her back!

Some slow dancing too – Anna, I am eternally grateful for the dancing lessons you gave me back home, even though I didn’t dare to try all the moves you taught me of fear that Karlien would think I was hitting on her!

Hey, what is this – Peter writing so passionately about dancing? Yeah, I must be changing... All in all a great night – and I will surely miss Team Germany and Team Belgium when they leave tomorrow. Luckliy enough Andrew and Eider will stay for a few more days.

Day 12: Osh

Sasha (our Russian guide) took us on a tour of Osh today. Osh isn’t a exactly a marvelous town, but the tour was nice enough. We started out at a historical museum at the foot of the Suleiman Hill (make sure you have an English guide if you ever come here), and than did the hill itself.

Supposedly the third most important Islam pilgrimage after Mekka and Medina, Suleiman Hill contains a few sanctuaries that we westerners weren’t really supposed to go to, but also a few more "lightweight" ones.

My favourite among them was the caves where you were supposed to pray to get preganant easier, but where Karlien though that you were supposed to actually have sex in the caves. No wonder that she was looking so carefully there... :-)

Also good was the slide along the mountain to cure your back. My back possibly became worse after the whole thing, but the slide itself was impressing. There had been so many people sliding down over the centuries that it was a foot deep crevasse in the rock surface!

The bazaar that we went to was quite impressive too. We were too many people to make it possible to shop, but it was nice to just look around. I will come back tomorrow or so to buy some clothes and other stuff. I still have some room in my bags that I need to fill...

After saying goodbye to the rest, I’ve spent the rest of the evening with Andrew and Eider. The more time I spend with these guys, the more I love them – certainly two of the more impressive and lovable people I’ve met on the trip so far. I’ve been reading a book (“Emergency sex” it’s called, but it is actually very serious and comes recommended) the last week, and Andrew & Eider reminds me very much about the people in the book. They have made a conscious decision to work in the NGO-like community and have been doing SO many great things even before going on their six-month journey.

And now on their journey they have a great project going on, where they document the ecological impact on people of different projects in the areas where they are traveling. Obvious things like the Three Gorges in China and the Aral sea in this area, but also less obvious things like rice farmers in Indonesia. I can not enough recommend their Environmental Memoirs site at http://www.swin.edu.au/ncs/environmentalmemoirs and their personal travel blog at http://www.weareheadingwest.blogspot.com/. If you want to know more, let me know, and I will get you in touch with them.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I will get a look at the 100+ mails I got from you guys the last two weeks. I sneeked a peek earlier today, and I know that there’ll be some pleasant stuff and some not-so-pleasant. Please keep it coming though – I always love your feedback, whether as blog comments or email!

Spending my time in Osh, Sep 15-20

I’ve had a much more positive feeling in Osh than I expected. There isn’t much sights to see here (we took them all in during that one day), and the guidebooks recommend you to leave for the mountains after a day or two. But it is a nice town to actually live in for a while – maybe it is because I actually came down from the mountains? :-) I rented an apartment with Andrew and Eider for a few days, and now when they have left, I decided to stay on for a little bit longer.

I have tons of things to do on the computer (catch up on mail, write blog entries, clean up 5000+ photos from the Habitat build and the trek, etc.) and the slow pace of Osh gives me a good opportunity to do just that.

Osh is in the southern, more Muslim parts of the country, and that is easy to tell. Well, not the Muslim part per se, but people are definitely different here. Where Bishkek was dominated by the colonial, Russian influences, and Karakol and Barskoon was distinctly Kyrgyz, there is a completely other vibe to Osh.

This part of Kyrghyzstan consists of the fringes of a gigantic fertile valley called Fergana, for thousands of years the dominant area of central Asia. The main part of the valley belongs to Uzbekistan, so most people call the culture here Uzbek – me, I would call it "Fergana" maybe.

The result of which anyway is that people seem warmer and more open to strangers than up north. People look slightly darker-skinned to me, and there clothes are wonderful!

Combine that with some amazing light in the morning and afternoon, and you have a photographer’s paradise. I haven’t taken much advantage of that yet, but there is always tomorrow...

Building houses in Kyrghyzstan

Since I spent a couple of weeks building houses here in K-stan, can I now go home and build myself a summer house or something in Sweden? No not really!

Houses here are built in a completely different way to back home, or rather I guest that it is similar to how we did things a hundred years ago or so. Yes, I did recognize some of the tools that we were using from the historical museum we had in Härnösand (the town closest to where I grew up).

We took turns doing different chores, even though there were some tasks that were better suited to some people, which meant they got to focus on them. 76-year old Betty was maybe less suited to shovel mud up the back of a truck for an example. I probably participated in most of the things, so here’s some descriptions of what I did.

Mixing mud
Monica was the supermixer among us, but even she could not compete with this creature

I would never have guessed that there would be so much mud mixing, but boy; these people use a lot of mud to build there houses. We made many different batches, but it can mainly be divided in to three different kinds: A thinner mud to be used instead of cement to hold bricks together, a thicker one to make bricks of, and a thicker one, mixed with straw to use instead of plaster for walls and ceilings. (Plaster not being the correct word – my English fails me here…)

This was bloody hard work, where we mixed either by walking around in the mud with our feets, or used hoes to stir with. Cleverly enough we had a horse for the first few days, which meant that the mud automatically got mixed with horse poo and urine as well!

Making bricks
Drying the bricks in the shade takes longer, but gives you much stronger bricks.

We filled forms with mud (sometimes with straw sometimes without, I never really understood why), dumped them on the ground, and then left them there to dry. Since they were never ready during the builds (we used other bricks to build), my guess is that they run some kind of exchange system: you get 500 bricks from someone for your house, and you give back 550 or so acouple of weeks later when they have dried.

Laying bricks
Let's just say that Monica looks better than her brick wall, ok? :-)

Worked the same way as back home, except that the bricks weren’t exactly even, so choosing which bricks that worked well together was an added element. Quite fun, although hard to do right for those that was beginners.

Cutting planks
Bigbollah straightening planks with an axe!

The planks that was delivered to the work site still had uneven edges, i.e. they had a certain thickness, but the width varied by a lot along a plank. No one ever cared if the planks were of the same width, so we just tried to get the widest plan possible with the length we needed, which meant that some planks were four inches wide while others were twelve.

For one of the builds, we had access to a table saw, so when that was working getting reasonably straight planks was fairly easy, but far too often it just refused to work, or we didn’t have electricity. Which meant we had to straighten the edges with an axe... :-(

Yes, I would also have thought that a saw was the right choice for this, but obviously not. It did mean that the planks were not very evenly wide.

Don’t mess with Kyrghyz methods
This might be a good opportunity to say something about their methods in general: we didn’t mess with them. The first few days we had some ideas on how to improve how the locals worked, and even though you aren’t supposed to, some of us couldn’t really help ourselves. We quickly realized however that we shouldn’t be bothered. Although our methods might be better back home, over here they simply don’t work, because of the quality of the materials, the tools, or whatever. So we pretty much didn’t question the axe – especially since it was fun!

Putting in floors


First we put in the floor trusses, which were simply some logs going from one end of the room to the other. To get them on the correct height we simply balanced them on rocks!

Then the floor planks came in. Remember how the planks were very uneven? Well, to put them in, that meant that we pressed them together and then used a saw to take off the pieces of the planks that touched each other. So after doing that a lot of times, there were no gaps between the planks anymore! Clever, but it took around an hour per plank... Then the planks were pressed really hard together and nailed down.

Plastering the walls


Since the walls were...let’s say less even than they could be, we had to use TONS of plaster on the walls to get them even. And of course, the plaster being used was mud...

Painting
Or rather whitewashing I guess. Not much to say about that really, no more than we had to mix powder with water ourselves, and the homeowners wife at the last build was NEVER happy with the results. He was a really nice guy, but she was a complete bitch!

Digging


As if we didn’t get enough blisters from the mud-mixing, every now and then we had to do some digging as well. It could be either about loading sand or dirt on a lorry to get to the site, or maybe leveling the ground underneath the house before putting in the floors.

Chai time


I’m sure that there were tons of other stuff that we did as well, that I forgot or didn’t take part in.

The most memorable part of the day was definitely Chai, or tea time. You might think it was like taking a coffee brake, but there was food as well. Sometimes only consisting of bread, butter and marmalade, but just as often (at least on build #2) it was a full meal with maybe noodles or a soup.

I know that I lost a lot of weight in Central America, but NOT so on this trip!
All in all everyone had a great time while we were on the builds. Maybe we didn’t learn as much about building a house in the west as some of us would have liked, but we had a great time! As well as sore muscles...

No more pictures in the near future...

OK, now I give up - I've been preparing some posts with great pictures, and lots of them too, but the Internet connections in this country is just too slow...

Starting today, I'll start to put up some posts anyway, and just add the pictures when I get to Istanbul or something.

I love Kyrghyzstan, but sometimes this country is so irritating...

Trekking to Osh, through Talas and beautiful Lake Tary Chelek, Sep 3

Tomorrow (Monday) morning I'll be off on my next main leg on my Kyrghyzstan journey: a trip to Osh. We are a group of seven people (of which I have met three briefly, nice german/austrians) who will travel together. With guide, porters and a cook, I guss that makes about 15 people in total!

We will start by going in a car to Talas in the northwst corner of K-stan. Supposedly a boring mining town, but we will do not much more than set up for the trek.

Then we trek to Tary Chelek, supposedly the most beautiful lake in K-stan, and on the way we will cross several 3500+ meter mountain passes, follow some beautiful rivers, see a handful of lovely mountain lakes, and stay with nomads in a couple of those jai-aloos (pastures) that I've grown to love so much. 8 nights in tents though, so I hope that there won't be too many ice cold nights like on the last trek. Hope that there will be one though, so I get some use from my newly bought fleece hat!

And on the 13th I'll be back in civilization (and Internet!) again, in Osh to be precise. Osh is the biggest city in southern K-stan; the most muslim part of the country, and as such supposed to be quite different compared to the northern parts where I've been so far. Exciting - I plan to be there for about a week before heading back to Bishkek and my flight to Istanbul on the 22nd.

In the meantime, greetings to everyone!

Kyrgyz food

A collage of Kyrghyz food - most pictures by Ian McLellan. Who ever can name all 16 dishes correctly: please tell me because I sure as hell can't! :-)

When I first read about the food in Kyrghyzstan, it almost made me not coming here. And for those who now that I eat pretty much anything, that gives you a clue as to how bad I thought it was…

It all began when I went to Leningrad (currently under the more fashionable name St. Petersburg) in…oh I don’t know. 1988 or something? I can’t say I remember much of the trip itself, since it was just about the first time me and my then girlfriend spent ourselves. Needless to say, we didn’t see much of St. Petersburg, but almost 20 years later I still remember how bad the food was. That’s my impression on russian food.

So when I read in the guidebook that food in Kyrghyzstan is completely dismal, and the only chance to get some half-decent food is to go to Russian restaurants, I balked.

Well, I’m happy to say, that the situation is nowhere near as bad as I feared. As a matter of fact, I think that plov, manti, besh-barmak, laghman, shashlik, and the other dishes are quite good. But the variety…not very good, no. When I have been at the Habitat builds, we have been staying in people’s homes, which is very nice, but when you get the same three dishes (shashlik is to expensive and besh-barmak is onlyfor very festive occasions) served every day, with small variations, then you start to long for something new…

Laghman:Mutton stew with noodles and veggies like cabbage, carrots and onions.
Manti: a steamed dumpling filled with mutton meat.
Plov: Rice mixed with veggies and some mutton meat on top.
Shashlik: Grilled mutton, served with anything from french fries to rice.
Besh-Barmak: Meat from ritually killed sheep, served with noodles and a sauce made from mutton brain(!).
Pizza: what you are dying for after having had the above for three straight weeks!

P.S. I might be overdramatizing a little – in towns like Bishkek, Karakol and Osh, there will be lots of different kinds of food available, although not often cooked as we are used to in the west – DO stay away from the hamburgers...

Who are these Habitat people?

My wonderful team in Barskoon - only a very small part of Habitat for Humanity.

Well, I was wondering the same thing myself a couple of months ago. When I was in Belize in May, I was quickly reaching the point where I had to come up with some solid plans for Kyrghyzstan – it is not really a place where you just go without having any plans.

Since I really wanted to do some voluntary work, I just googled “voluntary + Kyrghyzstan” (+ of course I had to try a number of other ways to spell the country, a pity that no two people can agree as to how!), and from the different options that came up, Habitat for Humanity kind of stood out.

Not only is the cause very worthy, it was also work that I knew that I would love to do (build houses), and not least important, the organization seemed very solid and reliable.

My personal experience has been excellent. The quality of the organization, both at headquarters in the US and here in Kyrghyzstan has been of the highest standards, and all the arrangements has been great. I especially recommend them fir anyone doing voluntary work for the first time, since they are great at easing you into things.

And of course our team leaders, and indeed the whole team were great, but more about that another time…

More information about Habitat for Humanity can be found at http://www.habitat.org/

New layout and functions

I had hoped to post a new batch of posts today, but the Internet place did not accept my laptop today for some reason... :-(

Instead I decided to do a couple of upgrades to the site. The first is obviously the new design - hope you like it? Secondly, the list of links that was lost for a while is back - this time on the left side. That means you can always find my current travel plans with a single click.

And thirdly, I've added a list of your latest comments to the left sidebar. I've heard many times that you have had problems knowing whether I've answered to your comments or not - well, this is the place to look.

All the weather you could possibly handle, Aug 28-30

Yours truly at the 3900 meter Ala-Köl pass.

I decided to go on a short-ish three-day hike in the mountains above Karakol. This as partly to see how I handled high altitudes before going on the two-week trek from Talas next week. Well, I’m happy to report that not only did I handle the altitude well, but my gear also handled the weather pretty fine. During three days we not only had all the beautiful landscapes that I have now come to forever connect Kyrghyzstan with, but also all possible weather types.

The first day was constant raining from lunch until we went to bed. When I woke up on the second day, the temperature was well below zero, with the rain from yesterday turned into ice. And during the 9-hour trek to the next valley (we walked over a 3900 meters mountain pass), we had sunshine, rain, snow and hail back and forth, changing every other five minutes. We literally went from freezing temperatures with snow to 20+ degrees and sunshine in five minutes and then back, a few times. Weird!

So arriving to to the base camp at Altyn Aryshyn with it’s hot springs did indeed feel very good! Not to mention the cold beer…

So now I’m definitely more confident about next week’s trek, especially since we will have porters to carry the luggage, as well as having the meals cooked for us. It will be like an actual vacation in comparison!

Wasting my time in Bishkek, Aug 12-20 + getting a new itinerary

The lovely Miraida - Photoshopped nonetheless! The first time I've done that with any of my pics on this site - a price to anyone who can see what I did!

Looking back on the last few days, I can hardly remember what I have done. What I do remember seems to be mostly walking back and forth through Bishkek, and writing e-mails, but I guess there must have been more than that?

Some of all that time-wasting has at least meant meeting a few nice people, chief among them is Miraida, a 20-year old business student who has been helping me with some mysterious Kyrgyz traditional rituals, such as beat-the-bureacratic-guardian-of-the-holy-visa-extensions, and retrieve-the-lost-Mastercard-treasure-from-the-banking-monster.

We have also been improving her English somewhat; although we’ve done nothing about my lack of knowledge in Kyrgyz.

A lot of my walking has been back and forth between trekking organizers and tourist agencies to try to find a nice company to go trekking with. I have decided to go with Asia Mountains, despite that they managed to mess up my reservation a their lovely guest house, forcing me to move back to terrible Kyrgyz Altyn instead. :-(

So, now I have my travel itinerary done for the next month; barring any changes it should look something like this:

• Aug 22: Travel to Barskoon
• Aug 23-25: Build houses, hike, and meet old friends in Barskoon.
• Aug 26-31: CBT hiking and excursions around Karakol on eastern shore of Lake Issyk-Kul
• Sept 1: Travel back to Bishkek
• Sept 2-13: Trekking excursion from Talas to Lake Tary Chelek
• Sept 13-19: CBT hiking and excursions around Osh and Arslanbob in western K-stan
• Sept 20: Travelling to Bishkek
• Sept 21: Final shopping in Bishkek - still hoping to find that dream Shyrdak...
• Sept 22 - Oct 3: Istanbul
• Oct 4: Flying home to Sweden

So tomorrow morning at 8 am the bus leaves to Barskoon, and just as before Barskoon has no Internet. Which means that the next post will be from Karakol in a few days – see ya then!

I don’t know if anyone has tried to call me or txt me the last few days, but if so you have failed. I have gotten myself a local SIM card for my phone, so until September 22 (or whenever I go back to Istanbul), my phone number is +996 502 314 626.

Barskoon Build, July 27 - Aug 11

Life-defining trip? Well, that might be stretching things a little, but at least I had a very good time, and learned a lot. I also got a great opportunity to do a lot of thinking and evaluation of my life, not least because there were so many wonderful people on the team, some were very different to me while others were kindred spirits.

All of them however were able, each in their own way, to give me valuable input. So many of them were outstanding examples for how to be a true humanitarian, always giving and generous, both to me and to all the other people we met. I don’t think I have ever met a group that I was overall so impressed with!

I could bore you to death with all the stories about the team, Barskoon, the build and all our other activities, but I’ll just try to give a brief overview here and then publish some focused entries later on, ok?

Meeting the team

Many of you know that I was slightly worried before meeting the team. Habitat is after all a Christian organization and I am...well let’s just say that I’m not! :-) I was worried that there would be daily prayers, and that everyone else would look down at me.

I hadn’t needed to worry though, because everyone was very relaxed, not only about religion, but about pretty much everything. When the group gathered in one of the apartments where we were staying, I was kinda worried about this Jill character, because she was dressed more or less like an Amish, but she turned out to be great, just like everyone else.

Traveling to Barskoon

The road to Barskoon takes you over the plains east of Bishkek, through the mountain passes surrounding Lake Issyk-Kul, and finally around the beautiful lake. The nature surely is very beautiful, and the moment when the road opened up towards the lake was memorable, but my favorite mist definitely be the landscape on the southern parts of the lake.

Barskoon lies squeezed in between the lake and the mighty Tien-Shan mountains, and this gives the village un unparalleled beauty. Every morning when I woke up I had to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn’t still dreaming, so beautiful was the view from the house where we were staying. A big WOW!

Building the houses

Building the houses for the locals was a truly educational experience. Many of us (myself included) came with a lot of ideas about how the houses should be built, ideas that we had to throw away right off the bat.

The Kyrgyz does definitely not build houses like we do, and although many of their methods seemed old-fashioned, they are very well adapted to the materials they have available (or does not, as may be the case), and the tools they can use.

We even had to make our own bricks from mud, straw and water, that’s how basic things were! And the materials had none of the precision we are used to from home (never again shall I complain about warped planks!), which meant that they had to use methods to adjust things that I am sure we used back in the good old days. At least I recognized some of the tools we were using from museums back home!

Very educational – and great fun!

Hanging with the locals

To be honest, wed didn’t spend as much time with the locals as I had expected. This was mainly due to the language barrier, the only people that talked English was some translators that we had on site, but in the evenings we couldn’t talk to our hosts.

Another reason was that we was so well taken care of that we really didn’t need to talk to them. Especially Zauresh, the local coordinator made sure that we had everything we needed the whole time!

And finally, we had so much fun getting to know the other 16 of the project members that we didn’t really have time for the locals.

However, although we didn’t spend too much time with them, they were exceptionally warm and kind. I could go on forever aout all the things they did for us, but that will have to wait for later posts.

Excursions

Life in Barskoon wasn’t only about hard work, we got to play a little too. First I though that we had to much non-working time in our schedules, but I soon realized that was not the case – we really need the rest every now and then.

Among the things we did was:

• Daytrip to Karakol (highlight: the livestock bazaar)
• 2-day hike to jai-aloo (summer pastures) above Bakanbaevo
• Hike up Barskoon Valley
• Toi (very special Kyrgyz party) with waterfall view

All of these things will be detailed out in later posts of course

Leaving for Bishkek...

...felt very sad, but at least it gave us a warm feeling that we had touched people’s lives and actually done something good.

I know that it has made a difference in my life, and I have learned to appreciate other things than what I did before. Maybe it has been life-defining after all?

Focus posts to follow in the next few days/weeks…

Back in Bishkek

I've been back in Bishkek from Barskoon for five days now actually. I had hoped to have new "proper" blog entries up quite fast, but I guess that I have just had too much fun. :-)

Barskoon and the house-builds was great, and the time here with the team in Bishkek afterwards was almost as fun. I will stay in Bishkek for another five days or so to answer my email and update the blog (as well as lounge around the pool at my hotel!), so don't worry, if you haven't received a reply yet, you should do so in the next few days.

Until then, Peter

Your own chance to visit the Cenotes?

During the less-than-harmonious part of my stay in Bishkek, I’ve taken the time to watch some of all the countless hours of TV shows that I downloaded to my laptop before going away.

I started with a couple of the aforementioned “Boston Legal” episodes (recommended - James Spader is as good as always) to get my mood up. However, I quickly started to watch some episodes of the BBS series “Planet Earth” that I got from my Australian friends Kate & Allan Reed, who I met in Flores in Guatemala. DO have a look at their travel blog at http://www.diysell.com/blog - they have some truly amazing pictures from their trip to the Galapagos Islands.

But I was going on about the Cenotes - if you don’t remember how ecstatic I was over the underwater cave systems in the Yucatan peninsula, you need to go back to the entry “Tulum: cenote snorkeling”. Sorry about the language in the article, this was while I was still writing in Swedish.

When I got to episode four of the series (called “Caves”), one of the sections of the episode was about those exact Cenotes where I was snorkeling! Wow, was it exciting to see what I had been missing by only snorkeling and not diving there, and it made me even more sure that I need to come back someday!

Another way for you to experience those Cenotes, short of going there yourself, is to watch the IMax movie “Amazing Caves”, which is also shot in the Dos Ojos cave system. It’s fairly good as IMax movies go, as long as you can stand the voice of narrating Liam Neeson that is! Oh, in Sweden you can see IMax movies at Naturhistoriska Muséet in Stockholm, and I think someplace in Gothenburg.

The last post for a while – goodbye from Bishkek

Happy cookies in Bishkek - hope that the people in Barskoon are as happy!

Today will probably be the last post for a while. It will also be the last day where I have e-mail access for a while.

You see, Barskoon, where we are going, is about as poor as a town gets in one of the poorest countries of the planet. I have no indication that they will have internet access there – as a matter of fact they tell me that I should be lucky to get a couple of hours of electricity each day to charge the laptop batteries!

The current plan is to be back in Bishkek next time around the 10th (but plans might of course change in any country where they have no word for “now” – the closest they get is a word that means “within three hours”), so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear anything from me until then.

If you want to get in touch with me, don’t hesitate to text (SMS in Swedish) me on +46 70 756 0874, but please don’t call me unless we have texted before – receiving a phone call in this country costs me a fortune!

And don't miss today's new posts, not only the ones visible at the top, but I also snuck in two new articles about a Blues Fest and a wedding between the "old" Stockholm and Istanbul entries. That makes for eight new entries in the last three days - better start reading before I deliver another batch again! :-)

Rounding off Bishkek, July 24-26

My last entry about Bishkek was not very positive, to say the least. If the government could check what I’m writing (like in the “good old days”, when they opened and read all mail to other countries!), I would probably have been deported! Like I suspected and was about to find out, things couldn’t continue to be quite that bad…

At least everything except the hotels are cheap. A meal is 1 or 2 US$, a 1 litre bottle of water is 0.25 US$, and enjoying the sun is free! Also, a girl on the other side of the street almost walked into a tree yesterday as she was turning her head to look at me - that did wonders for my self-confidence of course! :-)

But the best thing happened on the afternoon of the 24th. I had been sleeping until noon, and spent a few hours in bed, really somewhat afraid to actually go out after the disastrous day before, when I got a phone call. It was Nargiza, the local coordinator for Habitat here in Bishkek, and she invited me to a party! It turned out that there was a special Habitat team here already working in Bishkek.

They belong to something called an interface group in Edinburgh; a group of people from all religions, some Christians, some muslims, some Buddhists, etc, and just to round it off some non-religious people as well. I didn’t have time to find out the background around that, but probably some government-sponsored project about cultural integration in the UK?

Anyway, their project was about to wrap up, and they were having a barbecue at the building site to celebrate. They had even hired a local band that was playing, so not only did I have a decent meal, I also got to dance a little with the local girls. I was trying to remember the dancing lessons I got from Anna before I left, but somehow it didn’t work as well on grass and dirt as on proper dance floor! :-(

A great time was had by all, and more or less a miracle happened: as I was introducing myself to one of the scots, a voice from behind was saying “pratar du svenska” (do you speak Swedish)? It turned out that the build site manager was trained at the Royal Swedish Institute of Technology, no more than 500 meters from my apartment in Stockholm! It’s indeed a small world, and I’m very much looking forward to meeting Sanjab (which I think he was called…) when I get back to Bishkek again. He wants to practice his Swedish, and there’s only like a billion things about his country that I want to learn from him!

A great time was had by all, but the team was going on a three-day R&R trip to the mountains the day after, and most people wanted to get early to bed, so we finished early. Really early. Like 8 o’clock early! It might have been a religious thing, because the three proclaimed non-religious girls in the team definitely did not want to stop to party, and neither did I!

So, as everyone was going back to their apartments (Habitat rents apartments in different buildings in a block in the southern outskirts of the city for the teams) for packing and rest, I was sent off on a beer run. As I got back to the girl’s apartment, the vodka bottles were out (quite decent vodka btw, even though I am far from an expert), and the party was getting started.

We poured the last vodka eight hours or so later back at the girl’s apartment, after doing a pub crawl in the neighborhood. Or in my case it was more of a pub piggy-back, since one of the girls had hurt her foot and couldn’t walk. I’m just very very glad that they had a spare sofa, so that I could at least get a couple of hours of shut-eye before waving goodbye to the team and going back to sleep at my hotel. I wonder how the girls managed their white-water rafting with a hangover? [sadistic smile]

The rest of yesterday was pretty much spent sleeping, watching TV episodes on my laptop, and blogging. Yes, as you can see, I’ve been writing a lot… And today has been pretty much more of the same. After the team (and with them all the locals I had met as well) left, I did revert back to the same scared-of-doing-anything behavior I had before, but it also gave me an opportunity to think a few things over, and after all this writing and talking to Helena over the phone, I actually feel quite ready for meeting the team and starting the project tomorrow!

News - more entries, new style, and still in english!

Yes, it is update time again! Today I have added three more entries apart from this, about Stockholm, Istanbul and Bishkek - am I global or what! :-) Watch for updates regarding the slightly more mundane but nonetheless lovely Hälsingland and Åmål the next few days.

And I AM continuing in English. I have gathered quite a few English-speaking readers over the last two months, and since Helena is the only one that objects to English, that’s the way it will be. Especially since Helena says that she won’t read it (that’s a whole other story...) anyway!

Yes, I have changed the style - there's nothing wrong with your eyes. I needed to do a style update to get a counter for the site anyway, so I thought that I would try something new. Let me know what you think (it’s reasonably easy to change back), and meanwhile look at the counter at the bottom of the page. It counts the number of visitors since the 19th or something like that, and as I write this I haven’t had the guts to check it myself yet. What if it’s only mom that’s reading it!? :-(

So now scroll down to the entry "Stockholm" and start to read!

Kyrghyzstan day one: Bishkek sucks! (July 23)

The lady on the right recently replaced Lenin as the pride of Bishkek - and the guy on the left is the one that tried to rob me!

Maybe I just should have stayed at the hotel (see last entry)? Bishkek has so far given me NOTHING positive, but instead a lot of negatives. I can only hope that either the city or my attitude improves, because I have three more days until the rest of the team arrives!

• I arrived at 1:30 in the morning, which is never fun. At least I was sitting in the front of the airplane, so I would be quick through the passport control and off to the hotel. I thought... Instead an administrator from the biggest tour agency in town muscled his way in to the line two people in front of me, and handed in 25 (twenty-five!) passports from people in his group, and got preferential treatment! That took more than half an hour... :-(
• Then, as I exited into the terminal building, I was attacked by what must have been the most intensive group of taxi hustlers I’ve EVER seen. And believe me, I’ve seen quite a few. I must have been the only one that looked clearly foreign to them (yeah, the Mohawk, I know...) because they all attacked me. I focused on the guy that looked the least menacing and negotiated the price of a taxi ride down from 35 to 13 US$ (Lonely Planet says to pay 11, so I didn’t do too bad), and got in to the taxi. The ride was uneventful in itself, but when I got out of the taxi, the price was somehow back at $35 again! I had to physically wrestle my bags (big backpack + daypack + plastic taxfree bag – difficult to juggle) from the taxi driver and his friend and fight my way to the hotel!
• The hotel (Kyrgyz Altyn, 30 Manas, +996 312 66 64 12j) is decent enough, with clean rooms and shared shower (even though I can’t understand why it should cost $30 – all hotels in Bishkek are ridiculously expensive!). But of course they had managed to loose my reservation, so I had to argue a lot to at least get a bed for the night. At 2.30 in the morning and with my reputation probably spreading around the Bishkek taxi fleet, I felt my other options were limited indeed!
• When I got out on the town I quickly got my expectations of its state confirmed – Bishkek is definitely a city in decline. Just like the rest of the country, Bishkek has really lost a lot when the USSR was dissolved, and everything from the communist era is slowly falling apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many badly tended facades and gardens of ex-palaces and -villas as here.
• All the signs are in Cyrillic script. OK, I can’t really blame the city of Bishkek for my lack of knowledge in Cyrillic letters, but what really ticks me off is that none of my two guidebooks, neither my phrase book has any Cyrillic <-> roman translation table! How the f%#k can they write names in their books and maps with only roman letters, not include a translation table, and then expect someone to find ANYthing!?
• When I bought a water bottle, it was fizzy and not still. It’s that Cyrillic again… :-(
• When I finally took a break from walking and sat down for the first time, in front of a monument to study the map, a guy comes up to me and says the two English phrases he knows, and then tries to steal my backpack.
• NO ONE here speaks English, not even at Fatboys, described by the guide books as the best backpacker place in town. I’ve also been to two other hotels that are supposed to be backpacker hangouts, without meeting ANY other westerners. I DID see two backpackers (although they might not have been westerners) from afar, but lost them before I could catch up. I know that my dear Anna traveled other central Asian countries and managed well, but then she at least had her sister for company – being by yourself is quite another matter!
• On my way from Fatboys, I took some pictures of a monument. This quickly brought out the local police that asked for my passport. Fortunately enough I had read the warnings that they will hold on to your passport until you pay a made-up “fine”, so I had a laminated photocopy to give them, but they still dragged me into a small building, searched through my pockets and backpack and tried to make me give them my watch/compass/barometer/altitude meter (I have to continue those gear articles soon!) as a “gift” to get my laptop computer back.
• At the local fairgrounds I was assaulted by beggars that literally tugged at my clothes and my backpack. Also the fairgrounds was really depressing and worn down. I’m sure that there will be an accident in the not too distant future.

All in all, I look back at my first day in Bishkek and can not find a single positive thing to say, except maybe about the beer that I’m drinking as I’m writing this. Even that is US-style and very tasteless though, but at least it’s beer...

And the outlook for the next few days is not very promising either: During all my interactions with the locals they have tried to rob me (well except for the simile I got when I paid my food in the supermarket – but she probably gouged me as well :-(). If I can’t trust an ordinary man to not steal my backpack, how do I even dare to ask the way? If I can’t trust the police, what to do if something goes wrong? And since I can’t even read the signs, how do I even dare leave the hotel?

I can only hope that it gets better, otherwise I will probably stay in my room and watch old Boston Legal TV shows on my laptop for three days until the rest of the team gets here and we meet the local affiliate.

I can only say Öf – my phrasebook says that it is the kyrghyz sound used to express something that is terrible or disgusting!

Istanbul, July 21-22

The beautiful blue mosque.

Up until now, even though I’ve sometimes (or you might say always...) published the blog in batches, this is the first time I’ve actually written the entries in anything but chronological order. As I’m writing this, I have just finished the Bishkek sucks! (Kyrghyzstan day one: Bishkek sucks! (July 23)) entry, and maybe that is why Istanbul felt so positive?

I don’t think so however, because I remember the feeling while I was still there! I only spent one day, or even less, in the city, so there’s obviously more to discover when I get back there on my way home, but here’s a shortlist of my impressions so far.

• Cheapest airport to downtown fare in my life so far! The 0,80$ subway ride even beats what Lonely Planet claimed the cost would be in Cancun, and in reality was five times cheaper!
  The hostel I stayed at (Cordial on Peykhane Sok 29, tel +90 212 518 05 76) was excellent – thanks Anna for the tip! Not only was it reasonably cheap (US $12), but it was very clean, had free Internet for us with laptops, and had good beer on tap in the bar! And it is right in the center of town!
  The Bazaar was excellent – easily the best market I’ve ever seen. Especially the central and oldest parts had an excellent selection of jewelry and decorative items. Also, the water pipes looked excellent, but I didn’t have a closer look since I plan to buy one when I get there the next time.
• The area where all tourists gather, around the Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia is unusually beautiful and it’s even nice to sit in the surrounding parks, since no touts (“friends” trying to take you to stores, museums, hotels, restaurants, etc.) are attacking you!
• Food, both in restaurants and in stores seems cheap enough.

All in all, only good experiences, except when I read the map wrong and was only saved by my excellent watch/compass/etc. – yes it definitely deserves a Gear article soon – but I can’t blame that on the city! I really look forward to coming back.

This will probably be in the end of September or beginning of October – if you are interested in joining me there around that time, let me know, I would love the company! I’m planning to see more of Turkey as well and stay for 2-4 weeks, but I am flexible if anyone wants to join. Btw, there’s a travel agent on Sveavägen in Stockholm that advertises Istanbul flights for 400 SEK or so…