Kyrgyzstan — Embedded Life
The Tajik border post was in a remote place – I felt respect for the soldiers working here. From their post it’s 20 km over the pass and then downhill until the Kyrgyz border station.
I wonder how much snow they get here in winter and what’s the effect on supplies delivered to northern Tajikistan – all traffic from the north has to come over this pass.
The pass location is well chosen – it’s the lowest point in a long mountain ridge with peaks over 6,500 meter west and east of the pass.
Descending further I passed a snowplow and perhaps also truck repair station:
In the Pamirs the few human-made things you see are made for durability – here nature makes the rules and her rules can be tough.
But then again nature makes the rules everywhere and humans are always an embedded part of nature. How long would we survive without sun, water, and grown food?
It’s easy to drift into an analytical mode in our consciousness and to focus on “thinking” as if thinking was all that we are. In reality, we are not at all just a “thinking mind” – we are first and foremost a biological life form embedded in a larger biological life system.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate Albert Schweitzer based his philosophy on respect and admiration for biological life, and considered central the realization:
“I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live.”
Be existential philosophy what it is … inside our skin we are all a cell pile with a beating heart and breathing lung, and outside we are all part of nature’s overall biological life system in which we exist as one instance of embedded life.
Feel your pulse for a moment.
Your body is where you are biologically alive – not the dead screen you are looking at in this moment while you are reading this.
The area between the border checkpoints is so spectacular you could spend days here admiring the landscape’s beauty.
I crossed the Kyrgyz border checkpoint in five minutes checked by professional and friendly soldiers.
Some kilometers after the checkpoint I stopped to take a look back on the Pamir mountains in which I had spent the last 3 weeks … thank you.
I didn’t find water and fought with headwind in the afternoon, so I decided to cycle into Sary-Tash and look for a home-stay.
In Sary-Tash I stayed in a small hostel operated by two sisters. I’m a fan of mountain solitude but sometimes spending time with humans feels great.
Are you aware that your biological life is significant?
The fact that you are alive matters as by your existence you carry forward earth’s biological life system … yes you, dear reader.
And the significance of your biological life goes further than being part of the miracle of life – the force bends reality through your biological body and its actions.
Remember that your life is significant – I’m sure you can feel your biological life inside yourself when you give it some consciousness attention.
Two passes in the morning – perfect to wake up and get some fresh air in the lungs:
From here the next 90 kilometer until Gulcha were downhill with an altitude drop of 2,000 meter – time to celebrate life by racing hard.
When was the last time you thought about your own beauty?
Take a close look at nature: the colors, the lines, the different elements forming a whole – that’s you too.
Have you ever realized that the wind from the mountains is strong and free? That’s your breathing too, just put a hand on your chest and feel it.
Have you ever realized that wilderness is something pure and original and fundamentally right? That’s your biological body too.
Parallel to our individual pain and hardship and one day dying, I think we have many existential reasons to celebrate life along our journey … being an embedded life form means the beauty of nature comprises ourself.
We humans are nature ourselves – we are not living “with” nature but rather we all are an existential part of it.
Our nests and trails look different from the ones other biological life forms make … but no human-made infrastructure can change the fact that we are and will always be a biological body – breathing, and with a beating heart.
Perhaps when we remember that we are biological beings we naturally have more trust in life? The force of nature perpetually propels us forward – that’s a pretty strong and reliable consciousness tailwind we can surf.
You can kind of feel it …
Perhaps reconnecting with indigenous knowledge can help us to reestablish balance with mother nature – our available knowledge pool is large.
According to the United Nations:
“There are an estimated 476 million indigenous peoples in the world, living across 90 countries. They speak an overwhelming majority of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages and represent 5,000 different cultures (…).
Spread across the world from the Arctic to the South Pacific, Indigenous peoples are commonly understood as descendants of the Earth’s original land-stewards, living in a geographic region at the time when people of different cultures or ethnic origins arrived and later became dominant through conquest, occupation, and settlement.”
Perhaps reconnecting with indigenous knowledge can also help us also to reestablish balance in our individual life – even in urban “civilizations” distant from nature we can google, hear a talk … do you have a single plant in your home?
In the afternoon I passed herds of cows and sheep – I guess with winter coming the locals bring them down from the mountain meadows.
Gulcha is a rural town where two rivers flow together. I stayed at a family homestay to connect with locals and learn more about their life.
What is your relationship with your blood? You have about 5 liter circulating in your body – for the 8 billion humans on earth that’s 40 billion liter of blood circulating in us collectively.
What is your relationship with your lungs? You breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide while plants do the reverse – powered by the sun <- yes, that’s how it is … let that sink in for a moment.
What is your relationship with your skin, tongue, eyes, and teeth? Your mind-body-bundle connects nature’s biological life system with your consciousness. Pretty cool, right?
Have you ever listened for a while to the gentle noise that’s created in your nose each time you breathe in and out?
A last pass in morning, then the route was downhill for the rest of the day until Osh.
Many animal herds on the road, many children running up to the street for high-fives – what a beautiful autumn day.
In Osh I camped for a week in a hotel garden together with other bike tourers – this was a good place to recharge and exchange stories from the road.
Fresh vegetables and fruit taste fantastic when you haven’t had them for weeks. And they taste even better when eaten together with friends.
Other than eating and relaxing, I changed money and took care of my bike:
I even found some spare parts and used the opportunity to replace my bike’s shifting cables – Osh is a good place to get ready for further adventures.
When cycling from Europe eastwards via central Asia you will probably be in Tajikistan or Kyrgyzstan late in the year – then what?
Two things get tricky here. First, the visas. Kazakhstan is uncomplicated but all onward routes eastwards are generally visa-hard (depends on your nationality). You may simply not get a visa, it may not be long enough to cycle the large distances ahead, areas you consider riding may be off limits, or require a special permit or a guide. There are long-term business visas, tourist visas may be extended, but such moves are a complex art, regulations change all the time etc.
Second, the weather. In my view a good start time from Europe is generally spring – you can start earlier but then you face a lot of winter camping during your first expedition phase. You can start later and/or go slow along the way but one thing is certain: autumn will be followed by winter everywhere in the northern hemisphere and the meteorological winter in Russia/China/Mongolia is real.
Geographically and politically, there is a massive southern roadblock formed by Tibet and the Himalayas. North of that roadblock (the size of central Europe), the line that is probably most winter-ridable is the southern edge of the Taklamakan desert and then all the way to eastern China and then perhaps into Vietnam – as always depending on the personal “why” of your tour.
However, for cyclists attracted by India there is a single route crossing the Himalayas from China’s Xinjiang province southbound, a route that has been described as “offering great views on many of Pakistan’s seventy-eight 7000 meter peaks” – the moment I read this my mountaineer heart made its decision: Karakoram Highway.
I didn’t have a tour end defined in terms of time or location … but cycling over the Himalayas into Pakistan and India somehow felt deeply right.
When I was recovered from the Pamirs and ready to cycle into China, I learned that this border was closed for 8 days due to Chinese holidays. Who knew? With the extra time I explored Osh and while stopping at a Lenin monument I decided to hitch a ride back to Sary-Tash and then cycle up to Peak Lenin basecamp, one of the easiest 7,000 meter peaks.
In the afternoon a shared minivan dropped me off in Sary-Tash, from there I cycled west along the Vakhsh river to Sary-Mogul.
The Vakhsh (also called Kyzyl-Suu) river springs in the mountains near Sary-Tash. It then crosses Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan until merging with the Panj river at the Afghan border where it forms the Amu Darya flowing through Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan towards the Aral Sea.
Embedded life – what does it mean to you?
The Buddha explained that all things are impermanent and flowing, be it water, consciousness, or biological life. And however you want to call it, there seems to be a natural force driving this flow of the general existence of things forward – a force that also flows through you dear reader. A force you can use to bend reality consciously when you practice awareness of your consciousness attention.
I pitched camp next to the Vakhsh river – this place was too beautiful to move on, and the external mountains would still be there tomorrow.
In the morning I crossed 20 kilometer of flat terrain until the mountains began, no problems.
The climbing began at 3,400 meter. Calm, peaceful environment.
In the afternoon it started to snow so I pitched camp some kilometers before the basecamp.
In the middle of the night I heard a banging sound on my tent – a fox was hitting my tent with his paw, probably to inspect this alien thing in his territory. I went outside and he came 2 meter close with curiosity before running away into the night.
Here I found the fox encounter still nice – but the little bastard must have come back at night and shit on some equipment which I didn’t see under the snow and also didn’t smell it in the cold when I packed up camp. His greeting stayed with me for several days until I had a chance to properly wash my things in China.
In the morning the weather was pretty cold and foggy so I decided to turn around and cycle back into Sary-Tash.
In Sary-Tash I stayed with a farmer family and gave myself an extra recovery day as the Chinese border was still closed.
Embedded life – does being a biological life form mean we have a responsibility for nature?
For me there are three reasons why I care about nature. First, as a biological life form I want to survive. Second, as someone loving his fellow humans I want future generations to live on a healthy planet with a functioning ecosystem – it will feel better for them. Third, when I look at the beauty of nature I sense a moral obligation to protect it independent of human survival.
But everyone must listen to his or her own feelings of what feels right and wrong inside themselves … and of course the world is complex, there are trade-offs to be considered etc.
From years of being a sustainability researcher I learned that there are no easy answers to complex issues, but one thing is certain: only collaboration, from local to international levels, enables breakthroughs in nature protection.
It’s our collective actions which make us truly powerful, not egoism and nationalism – actions driven by our reality-bending force.
Today was Sunday which meant tomorrow the border would be open again – time to cycle up to China. The beautiful cold and sunny morning was a gift.
East of Sary-Tash I cycled for 40 km over a plateau with high mountains all around.
I met a cyclist from Belgium. He didn’t have a visa for China but wanted to cycle to the border and continue in the future from Kashgar as his plan was to cycle separate Silk Road stretches per vacation. We had to part ways at a checkpoint already in the afternoon as you shall not come close to China without a Chinese visa.
This is roughly the area where the Pamir, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and Himalaya mountain ranges meet (their geographic definitions vary).
We cycled over a small pass and on the downhill my rear brake stopped working completely. WTF was the problem now with my newly fixed brake!? Spray water had iced up the brake caliper but I found a quick solution to fix it.
I waited for a long time for my Belgium friend and already thought about cycling back uphill to check when he finally appeared. What had happened was that while he stopped to shoot a video his drivetrain froze to an extent that he couldn’t move it anymore and it took him 20 minutes until he could continue cycling. I wonder why he didn’t pee on it.
At the checkpoint where my cycling fellow wasn’t allowed to continue a discussion with the soldiers began. It was already late afternoon and for him returning to Sary-Tash today meant climbing 800 meter elevation up again and arriving at dark.
Perhaps he found a hitchhiking opportunity, if not he could have perhaps camped at the checkpoint (I offered him food but he seemed to have sufficient supplies).
Nura is the last village before the border. It looks calm but just 9 years ago a major earthquake completely destroyed the village and killed more than 70 people.
I stayed in a friendly family homestay – they are not marked on maps but if you simply ask locals someone will be happy to help you find a place to sleep.
Kyrgyzstan, your nature is a reminder that we are alive in a large biological system, that we all are embedded life. On our further consciousness expedition, perhaps it’s a good idea to always feel the biological side of ourself and others … cognitive existential philosophy is definitely optional to breathe, love, and live life well.