“Dad, isn’t that an abandoned building?” Nathan asked with a slight fear in his voice.
The abandoned building had broken doors and windows that were patched with wooden planks or locked up with metal bars and padlocks. The surrounding walkways were overgrown with weeds. The lot was surrounded by fences made of shiny grey aluminum sheets, the type that one normally see at construction sites.
“Why don’t you ever wait when I tell you to wait!” Nathan shouted angrily at me as he kneeled on the wet pasture land at 2500 meters trying to clean his shoes. “Why can’t you wait!”
Unlike just then, Nathan rarely showed his anger. However he stepped accidentally into a mud hole and his shoes and socks were wet and muddy. After trekking up the alpine mountain for 15 kilometers and 7 hours, Nathan was tired, hungry, and had reached his limit.
“Dad I don’t want to stay here, it’s like living in a cave!” This was the place where my dad choose to stay after three days of camping. We were expecting to have good living conditions once we got back to the city, but instead we got The Cave. Living there was an interesting and new experience. Continue reading The Cave→
“Do you think we can hire a horse for today? My children look forward to riding a horse,” I asked Belek, the slim but very athletic guide for our four days and three nights trek to Song Kol Lake in Kyrgyzstan.
Belek smiled at me without replying. Next to him was Arina, a tall woman who is a decedent of Russian and Dungan (Chinese Hui) ancestry.
Arina had a sparklein her eyes as she motioned Belek to come closer, “Do you think we should tell Jonathan?”