We drove until we finally reached a point where they’d closed off the road for construction, and we were stopped by a soldier. We parked the car, being told it was blocked for an indeterminate amount of time, and got out one by one to stretch our legs and assess the situation. The tour guide seemed calm as he spoke to the people there, and our driver was simply tired and quiet. My uncle and cousin got briefly out to relieve themselves, then quickly retreated to the safety of the van. The guide brought out a melon from somewhere and had one of the locals help us cut it open. I had two pieces since I was hungry, but I never really liked melon and this one tasted strange to me. Perhaps it was just the hour of the night and the tense, unfamiliar atmosphere.
I wanted to go back to sleep but the situation was getting a little bit exciting at this point. There is something wildly exhilarating about knowing that you are stuck in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in a country you do not understand with people you do not know well. I wandered further and further away along the moonlit road, away from where we had stopped. There were low dwellings for the local people, in which lights occasionally flashed and wobbled. The stench of animals was floating around, but the clear night breeze carried it along without giving me much trouble. I was getting pretty chilly in just a raincoat, but the moon was absolutely stunning, and everything was strangely lit, like an afternoon in negatives.
There was a creek that came down from the mountain on one side and tumbled its way through the five-house village. I stood at the “bridge” where the road passed over the bubbling water and tried to stick my hand in it (it was cold). I noticed something moving by my foot, and bent down for a closer look whereupon I saw some kind of rodent sniffing around. It was probably the size of a hamster or rat, but very sleep without much of a tail. Just then, a truck rolled by with materials for the roadwork, and when the headlights shone on it, the rodent squirmed back and forth, as if suddenly confused and intoxicated. I went back to the car for a flashlight but when I came back I didn’t find any others.
While we waited for the signal to pass through, a local Kazakh man treated us to tea. My uncle and cousin opted out, but the tour guide took my dad and I to the man's tent/house. It was round, made of cloth draped over a metal frame, about 4-5 meters in diameter. Inside there was a little wood stove warming the whole place, a small bed, a table, and a chest of drawers. He gave us tea in bowls--local tea. It wasn't the Chinese tea I'm used to. It was thick and rich, almost like broth, and slightly salty like it was fermented (I found out later they put salt and stuff in it because it tastes good when you have it together with the locally produced goat cheese--which, by the way, I also tried there but it is smelly and sour and hard and I saw a white hair sticking out of the side of the chunk they gave me). The tea was kind of filling, and it was nice that it was hot.
Finally, we got the all clear to move ahead from a soldier in a long Soviet-style overcoat. Somehow we drove over/around the newly paved part, singeing our tires and leaving a smell of burning rubber inside the car, and when I woke up again we were at the “hotel”. In the dark, it appeared to be a complex of many different buildings, with the main common one for meals in the center.
Our room was clean and cozy, although with a strong odour. In the closet where most hotels offer bathrobes, we found two of those Russian coats. So of course, we got silly since it was almost 3am by this time, and I found out how well that coat goes with a side helping of Default Face.
(It was also very useful later on for helping to make my bed feel softer…)
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