Chasing Deer: More from Esik.

Sunday I headed up into the mountains again. This time I wanted to put a little distance between me and town and get a better view of the larger mountains. So up I headed. It took me 3 hours and 10 minutes to get up to a ridge with an unimpeded view of the large mountains. The hike was fairly easy and was interrupted several times when I just wanted to sit and enjoy the view. I saw no other people expect a shepherd, who was watching his flock of cows and sheep, which graze in the mountain meadows. His dogs saw me as a threat and semi-cornered me before he controlled them and told me to take a long detour, which meant climbing down a steep section of mountain and climbing back up. Other than that, the hike was nice and the views were great. The trails are pretty clear for the most part, but there were sections when it was over-grown and thick. It wasn’t until I got home that my “host dad” told me there are 5 types of poisonous snakes up there. Ha. I’ll have to do some research on this and take it into consideration, but I need to get some more hiking in before winter sets in.

Last week was pretty good. Russian is progressing and we tried to learn a little Kazakh on Saturday. After thinking in Russian for 3 weeks it was hard to attempt to learn another language and we repeatedly answered in Russian by accident. We will have two hours a week of Kazakh, so hopefully when we leave training we’ll know the basic phrases.

Last Wed, my practicum group went to the Almaty State Nature Preserve. It was pretty interesting to learn about. As the name would imply, they practice preservation. This means that tourist can’t enter it- its completely untouched, outside of staff and scientist. There are 3 trails that are on the perimeter of the park that zig zag in and out of the boundary, but that is it. The interior is off-limits. It is a pretty big park at 72,000ha (177,909.56 acres). They are pretty serious about keeping it off-limits, as they have 24 security rangers. It’s a pretty big operation. The preserve ranges from 1,200 meters to 5,978 meters (3,937 ft to 19,612 ft.). These elevations make me believe that Esik is probably in the 3,000 ft range, though it doesn’t feel like it.

The preserve has a pretty impressive list of animals. They have 21 snow leopards. Actually, 6 or 7 years ago BBC was in the preserve filming. This is about the time Planet Earth was being filmed and I wonder if they were there trying to get snow leopard footage. I wasn’t able to ask this time. They also have Siberian Ibex, Himalayan Yak, Tian-Shan Brown Bear, Siberian Roe Deer (large deer), Maral Deer (looks like elk), and Argali (big horn sheep).
I’m not sure what we are going to do with them yet. Their main interests were in Env. Ed, which would be fine, but I just don’t know how much we’ll get to do in the short time we’re with them. Other than that, the week cruised by.

Oh, one fun thing that happened: we decided to play ultimate Frisbee last Saturday. We played on a school field and the local kids came out in droves to watch us. One of them came up to me and told me they would be back at 4pm to play soccer against us. We stuck around to play. At 4pm, the school let out and emptied onto the field. Ha. It was about 10-12 volunteers against at least 70-80 kids. It was chaos but lots of fun. After the game, many of the girls who played or watched came up and wanted our autographs. We all felt like George Clooney, as we were ambushed and forced to give autographs. We all thought it was great.

Below are pictures of my hike into the mountains. I also pulled a bonehead move and took most of my pics on the “cloudy” setting. So they didn’t turn out as good as I had hoped. I’m sure I’ll have more of them in the future though. There are also 4 pictures I took during the week of the mountains from town. You guys will probably be sick and tired of seeing these mountains by the time Oct rolls around.