Green Elephants at the Borderlands
Sary Tash, Kyrgyzstan. 2018
Clouds, dripping with light, ground their cosmic way across the ragged sky. China, veiled by storm and snow, slumbered hidden behind the golden mountains, their golden peaks filling the world, timeless in the sunset light.
The few people on the road hurried home, pulling their jackets against the cold encroaching night. But high on heady complacency, I missed all these ominous signs. I was feeling goooood. I had done this hitchhike before.
In the Kyrgyzstan border town of Sary Tash, there was only one way to China, trucks would come down the road at about 9am, and it would be like jumping onto a bus. This will be like stealing candy from a baby, I thought, and I laughed wickedly to myself like a village idiot.
The next morning I stood by the side of the junction, and tried my best Romanov look - dignified, yet pitiful. A car drew up beside me, the driver a stocky local man. “Irkeshtam! Kashgar! China!” I cried, a word salad of key places further up along the road.
He beckoned me in. But suddenly my instincts fluttered. You know how we should always trust our instincts? the spark, the intuition, that, long ago, alerted our cavemen grandpapas to the murder mammoth hiding behind a nearby rock? Why would a guy be going to the faraway Irkeshtam border alone? What business did he have there? This seemed too good a deal. Reconsider! But the road is a cruel mistress - it giveth and it taketh away, the next ride may well be hours away.
The hitchhiker forever dances on a razor edge, pirouetting between salvation in a high-performance muscle car driven by Nordic supermodels, and being turned into a skinsuit in some unspeakable deep dark Mad Max nightmare. Due to my bad planning, I had gone all in on this. There was no way out now. I was at a border town in Central Asia, the road was long and time was short, and there were no other options of transportation. Fuck you, instinct. I threw my bag behind the seat.
This guy was not going to the border. As the car moved away from Sary Tash, he turned to me: “Jailoo. We go my Jailoo.” Jailoo is like a summer yurt, commonly hired by tourists who want to feel like a nomad. I had no intention to go to any jailoo in the middle of nowhere. Was he trying to sell me some touristic experience? “No Jailoo! Me Irkeshtam! Border! China! Please!” My mouth made dry desperate sounds. Sary Tash, the last vestige of civilisation, faded into the distance as the car accelerated into the wide open plains that opened up before the mountains.
My driver smiled and laughed and shook his head. “No, No. Jailoo.” The car sped down the road. Silvery streams irrigated the grassy plains around us, threads of mercury glinting among the dull bronze autumn grass.
I took out my phone and opened googletranslate to Russian. “I do not want to go jailoo. I want to go border.”
My driver glanced at my phone, his eyes soft and warm, his jowls wobbling prosperously. He pondered this for a moment. “Nah, Jailoo.” He said, waving my phone away, laughing and smiling into the horizon. He motioned drinking actions. Which when done with his meaty hands, also looked like stabbing actions. The car sped on and the morning sky opened up yesterday’s storm, the world clean and fresh and clear like a virginal bride.
I was about to shit my heart out from my pants. “I wish to get off” I typed. Once again that sly fox laughed it off. If the car was driving slightly slower I would be questioning my life decisions, all these stupid risks I was taking, what’s the point of all this? but there was no time for philosophizing and introspection! For a brief stupid moment I thought about calling the police, but hell the last cop I saw was in Osh, scowling at the traffic, the city 4 hours of mountain passes away. Here among the golden hills my screams were ghosts in the wind. Who would miss me, who would mourn? White clouds hovered in the sky, quaint daydreams of lazy gods.
I buckled up and went through my choices. There was the possibility this will turn out to be a red day of blood and violence, and he’s going to drive me somewhere and… hopefully he’ll spare me my life and not beat me up too badly, so I can at least...walk back to Sary Tash? I had no idea of time and distance in the car. “I have no money to give you”, I typed into my app. Once again my driver laughed it off. The car continued to speed down the highway. I weighed my options. Now if there were to be violence, I’d rather not be sitting in the seat waiting for him to pick the time and space. I’m like a fucking fish in a barrel, I thought. I looked at the back seat. Well at least there was no AK 47 lying around. Or, perhaps I could choose a path of action? If it’s down to the wire, I could grab the steering wheel and swerve the car. We may die. But at least… I stop the car? That’s a very very bad plan. My driver outweighed me and all I had was the element of surprise, but here was a man of the mountains and the sky. I am a weak soft denizen of the knowledge industry, sometimes I’ll get paper cuts that I’ll complain to my girlfriend about (editors note: Now wife! Edited as wife reads this nonsense). He would crush me like a soft manti. He would drink my sad sad tears. Maybe I should just follow him to his jailoo then? Suddenly a stopover at a holiday yurt did not seem like such a bad option afterall.
As I was contemplating my options, my driver slowed the car. An icy darkness speared my mind. What is happening now. We turned off the highway and drove towards a jailoo.
So it was true! He was indeed driving me to a jailoo! Well he could very well be intending to brutalize me at the yurt, or perhaps the rest of his murder friends were just waiting patiently inside.
A few horses snorted in the grass, and a metal stove quietly puffed white smoke into the blue sky. An old man with a sweet white beard opened the yurt flap and walked out. He looked peaceful, and he hasn’t shot me yet. Who knows? What’s going to happen? Destiny danced on the blade of possibility.
My driver exited the car, hugged the old man and beckoned me. He disappeared into the yurt. The old man smiled and he waved me to come too. Well of course my driver could be just taking a break from his daily morning routine of murder and pillage, and slacking off to visit some friends first before going back to work, but it seemed that the odds of me dying this day was dimming. To hitchhike, anyway, is to go all in. I smiled and shook hands. What was I do anyway? Stand outside the yurt like a rude asshole, reject the locals’ hospitality, and offend the civilisation of strangers? No no no that cannot do. I kicked off my boots and went into the dark inner sanctum of the yurt, and you know what, I’ll change the lens to the 35mm prime now because hey there may be some nice photo opportunities here too, might as well take a few nice pictures before I go.
The family in the yurt were very friendly and accommodating. The old men had a wife and a son who was about my age, and we all shook hands and touched our palm to our hearts and the wife piled some bread on the carpet and we sat in the middle of the yurt trying to figure out who each other were. The son went to the back of the yurt, picked up a stick - oh shit is he going to beat me to death with it - oh he stuffed it into a sack and started churning the liquid in it. The liquid made the sound it makes when you rinse a mop in a pail. I really did not want to know what’s in that sack, ho! Can you imagine if it’s for drinking? And if I had to drin- and he ladled out a very generous serving of sack juice and poured everyone a bowl of Kurmiss.
Now I have always heard about the fabled fermented horse milk, but never got the chance to drink it. It was 10am and I had a whole day of hitchhiking ahead of me. This was not a good time to chug down strong horse alcohol that was just abused in a sack, but hey how can I be rude to my hosts? They have broken bread with me. The only decent thing to do was to welcome their hospitality. If I had to hitchhike stone drunk and impress Chinese border guards high as a kite and piss horse all the way down the silk road to Kashgar, then so be it, that’s the way this day rolls. My hosts were nomadic herders, and carried all their earthly possessions in the yurt. A fanciful trunk took central place in middle, richly decorated with a strange painting of green elephants frolicking in a forest. Oh wow this Kurmiss must be strong. Various farming implements leaned against the fabric walls of the yurt, waiting to beat me, and bundles of fur and coats prowled in the shadowy borders. Through various gestures we discussed my CV. You have a girlfriend? My driver asked me, cupping his moobs and heaving them up and down. This was no time for the woke parade, so I laughed like a degenerate. You have religion? My driver asked me, wiping his hand with his face. Student? The nomad family asked. Yes I nodded eagerly. Students are universally poor, and hopefully they will feel bad about stealing from a holy man.
My new friends laughed and chatted in Kyrgyz about...life on the steppes? The health of the horses? How much they can ransom me for? And the kurmiss slowly disappeared from our cups. Dark tendrils caressed my stomach walls, but I grew relaxed. My new friends were warm and hospitable and kind, and they chatted at and around me with the ease and familiarity of old friends, as though hosting the occasional random stranger was a regular occurance.
“We are Kyrgyz” my driver said to me, a mix of Kyrgyz, hand signals, eye contact and drops of random English words that he picked up from his previous victims. I had no idea how I understood him, but definitely I got this. “We take care of people”. He swelled visibly with pride. Indeed this was true. The old lady smiled at me serenely. I thought back to the past two weeks. Groups of big gruff Kyrgyz men would come to our table, us random backpackers, and pour us vodka and lift us with spirited toasts: “ - and this specially to our German girls here. My grandpapa died in Berlin.” Kyrgyz people generally looked stoic and serious, but they were universally kind and welcoming to travellers. Perhaps the ageless tale of the wanderer is a familiar story to the nomadic people of the steppes. The Kyrgyz people’s founding legend tells of Manaz, a mythical warrior, escaping the pursuit of his Chinese foes, leading his people over the mountains and settling here in the fertile plains of modern Kyrgyzstan.
We got up to leave. My driver grabbed my shoulder and dragged his friend out of the yurt, and demanded pictures. The old lady carried a bundle of groceries and bags and got into the car. I told my driver, I can hitchhike from here, no problem. But my driver was having none of it, he pulled me back into the car and we started back towards Sary Tash. My driver’s ways were impenetrable. But he laughed and back slapped me like old friends, and by now, I trusted he knew what he was doing. Once again he stopped by the side of the road. A truck came by, he leapt out and waved it down, yelling at the truck driver to pick me up. “ Go! Go! He waved at me as I climbed into the cabin. Never has anyone hitchhiked for me, this was a first. I said hello to my new benefactors, and by the time I turned back, he was gone.