Naryn, our home

We have found a home in Kyrgyzstan, complete with an apartment and a

"job" to go to everyday while we complete our obligation to the

government. Our home is a cute town of 40 000 Kyrgyz, old men wearing

the traditional tall, felt hats who spend the day sitting at bus stops

waiting from nothing but time to pass and little kids of run off to

school in uniforms that vary between slick, shiny suits and dowdy

french maid outfits. Naryn is the last big town on the road to China, 4

hours from Bishkek if your shared taxi driver goes 140km. Naryn has a

kind of end- of -the- road feel with many low-rise soviet block

apartment buildings that are the same beige as the hills behind them.

It is 15 km long but only about 1km wide as it is set along the Naryn

river and sandwiched between two ranges of hills. The hills are only a

couple of Kms apart but look as if they should be 100s of kms away. On

one side they are low, biege hills that look like they are made from

sand and on the other they are much higher with a hint of green

vegetation and some actual pine trees and sumac turning red and yellow

at the top. We hiked to the top of these hills starting in the desserty

bottom with no trees, where we could see where we were going and where

we had come from...which was helpful as they directions we had were

rather imbiguous. Once we scrambled to the summit, pulling ourselves up

by rocks and clumps of dry grass we could see down the other side. This

view showed us another 2 sets of mountains, the closer with red mixed

in with the green carpeting and the other much farther away being real,

live mountains with snow on the top. Up at the summit the goats, sheep

and horses were congregating as this was the only place with sufficient

food. We tried in vain to capture a goat to stuff in to our horse

costume for the world's funniest photoshoot but damn, are they nimble.

We chased a herd up a steep slope only to have them escape and us be

left slipping and sliding back down. We were trying to catch a smallish

one ( goats have gotten dramatically larger than when we first got to

Central Asia...all that good pasture grass) near a farmer's house and

we wondering what he would say if he caught us cross-dressing his

livestock as another species. We firgure that as this is Kyrgyzstan

maybe he would bring out the family album and show us all the holiday

goat costume pictures. Other than goat catching missions, living in

Naryn is like living in the 1900's...no tv and no internet at home

leaves us reading for hours huddled under blankets. And to add to the

turn of the centruy experience the power has been out for 12 hours at a

time for the last 3 days. It would be the perfect chance to catch up on

all the good books we wanted to read if only our selection extended

beyond two bestsellers with "Phoneix" in their names. We have become

rather domestic cooking every night and even inviting gentlemen callers

over from dinner. Our culinary creations have ranged from the barely

edible ( though happily consumed by dudes who are just happy to be fed)

to pretty damn good for a country that seems to only cook 5 different

meals, all with the same spice. On other random notes we saw a donkey

happily lying down in the trunk of a Lada sedan and there is a car in

Naryn that has Ontario licence plates for some very strange reason. We

chased it down a street to get a better look but it the cops who we

driving it got away. The hunt continues