No one was there, but everyone leaves the door unlocked so we went in, and what did we find?
Why, a little lamb too young to go to pasture!
Our driver suggested I pose with the lamb, since he knows I'm an animal lover who doesn't eat meat.
The lamb was very soft.
This kind of hat is common in the area we were in. They don't sell them in stores; they're handmade by family. The lining is fox fur and I've seen the outer fabric in every color. They're quite striking.
and I'm sure incredible warm.
The bundle on the left is made up of the parts of the traditional yurt, though you can see the winter house runs on solar power. The cord hooks up to a radio inside the house. This is not the house of a poor person.
Our driver making tea. The ground water out here is too salty for human consumption. People collect snow and melt it for water. It has a very distinctive taste. We had tea with sheep tail fat instead of butter(I thought it was butter when it was added to my tea, but then it tasted like lanolin). Eating animal fat this way is a common practice here. I felt a bit like Goldilocks, coming in and eating someone's food, sitting on their bed, drinking their tea. This is expected, though. It's a harsh environment and to get to town sometimes people walk all day to the next house, stay the night, walk all day to the next one, and so on until they reach the road or a town. The man who lives here returned as we were finishing up and gave us directions. He was probably pleased we had hot water ready for him as he had been walking all day from another house.
This is an animal husbandry office.
We were pretty far from Qiakaertu at this point, and it was getting late, so we spent the night here.
Our hosts were very happy to have company, and entertained us with a card game called "Close the Gate" which everyone plays.As you can see, they get pretty into it. Our hosts were initally put off, I think, by my vegetarianism(most Kazakhs seem to think I'm having some kind of mental episode), even though our driver kindly explained that I take pictures of animals because they are like people to me. They thoughtfully included some vegetables in the evening meal for me, which they normally would not have done. I redeemed myself by being extremely good at this game. The older man called me a word which can be translated as both "terrible" and "awesome". Over the course of the evening they gave me a Kazakh name, which Dr. Z explained is the most common Kazakh name, the equivalent of "Susan" or "Jenny". The older man mentioned he had a son and asked if I would like a Kazakh husband, a form of teasing I grew used to. Several times through the evening he would say things like "My son studied in college for five years and speaks Russian." I told him I'd raise the grandchildren vegetarian and he'd hate that.
There is a kind of alcohol they drink in China which has been around for thousands of years and is made from wheat. It's referred to as "white liquor" and it's taste can be described as something akin to canteloupe and nail polish remover. In terms of what it does to do, it's like Bacardi 151 and Uzo combined. And they drink a lot of it. Our hosts toasted us with it and proceeded to go around the table saying nice things, a drinking tradition here, at the end of every toast you have to do a shot. We all slept on the platform you see the men sitting on in the video. They have stacks and stacks of warm blankets that kept us quite comfortable.
In the middle of the night, I went out to use the outhouse, and saw more stars than I've ever seen in my life. I could see the spiral arm of the milky way splashed across the sky. It was incredible. Of course, I was also a bit tipsy and thinking about how our hosts commented that there were a very high number of wolves in the area they were having problems with. Eventually I decided that if the wolves came for me, I'd stand my ground and shout "Come for me, G'mork, I am Atreyu!"
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