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Kyrgyzstan

Mar
2004-09-14 15:23:35

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owner helped with the Lonely planet video about Central Asia and was one of the persons behind eating the sheep’s eye.

His anecdote about ‘Why the Dutch love mountains’. Once upon a time, ages ago when earth was still one big land. The people on earth created one big chaos. They were fighting over small pieces of land, even killing each other for that reason. Finally one wise man asked God ‘God help us please’ and also God saw no simple solution and divided the land into countries. He gave the French the grape yards, the boot to the Italians, the low lands to the Swiss and the mountains to the Dutch. And so be it. Years past by and people were satisfied and peaceful. However, the Dutch and the Swiss weren’t so happy. Together they turned to God and explained ‘God help us please, we can no longer use our clogs now that you have given us the mountains’. The Swiss continued: ‘Help us please, we can no longer ski now you have given us the mud of the low lands.’ And God exchanged the countries. This is why the Dutch love the mountains it has been in their blood since the very beginning.

Kazakhstan border formalities

28/08/2003. This morning a miracle appeared when we opened the tent. After two days of rain the sky had changed into perfect blue (‘Morning has broken, like the first morning’ by Cat Stevens). We could see the snow on 5000m summit of one of the mountains nearby very clearly. Our only aim for today is to cross the border and cycle into Kazakhstan, heading for China. After we woke up the custom officers at the Kyrgyzstan border we are heading for the Kazakh border. The customs officer doesn’t speak English and walks away to find a senior officer. The senior officer doesn’t speak English either, but starts talking in Russian anyway. Then he puts our passports on the table and start drawing a line, which looks like the border crossing between Kyrgyzstan and ...