Sunday 1 July, Uppsala

I will be in Finland until the 8 July (incidentally, my birthday) when I will quite suddenly surge further eastwards to Tuva in Siberia (Russia). Apparently dope grows all over the place there. But that is not why I'm going there — it is to learn throat singing. We (Eero, Sauli, Sami & Anna & I) are going there by train, so it will take a while, but it's the Trans-Siberian, so it should be fun anyway! My plan to is to keep sending you emails along the way. That is if I can actually find any computers along the way... This way I feel you will be at least partly doing this trip with me, but without the smelly socks, bad breath, pointless quarrels and hang-overs.
   I 'm mentioning Sadam Hussein and George W.Bush and terrorist in this email only to waste some time and money for the tracking devises that track these kind of things.

Here's looking at you, in a cyber-sort of way,

Girilal

Friday 6 July, somewhere in Eastern Finland

Hello, again!

After celebrating Midsummer/Juhanispäivä in the country-side outside Helsinki, doing folk a music festival right at the North end of Finland's coast (Haapavesi), I'm now in the deep East of Suomi, Sorsansaari, a large, wild island where a large,wild family lives.
    This land of the Midnight Sun tests my strength because there is light all the time and I never get
really tired. Well,I do, but I don't sleep... But I'll probably come up against a wall of exhaustion at some
point. In a few days, I board the Trans-Siberian and head for Abachan (Half-way to Bejing). That'll take 4 days! And it will be a good place to drop dead. After that only a stone's through (nine hours on a bus) separates me from Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva. So, Tuva is still in the distant future, physically as
well as temporally, but we met and fraternized with some Tuvans (Huun Huur-Tu!) at the Haapavesi Folk festival. The initial taste of the flavour of the country has been most rewarding. But the temperature in Tuva has been reported to be 48C IN THE SHADE! Now why did I bring my big black winter coat? There has to be a limit to the just-in-cases.

Bye for now and if you don't hear from me, it's because I've gone native and bought a camel herd.

Girilal

Hello, fellow travellers!

Yesterday, after 4 nights on the Trans-Siberian and another 5 spine-breaking hours in a car, we finally arrived in Kyzyl, the capital of Tuva. We're still in Russia, but Tuva is an independet republic, as they call it. In fact our visas say that we are officially invited by the parliament of Tuva! I've never been
invited anywhere by any parliament before!!
    The train trip was one night from Helsinki to Moscow, where I spent a lovely day with an old friend and let the others run around the Red Square, etc. Then 4 nights to Abakhan. No washing facilities, so we were heavily into body smells and other things Westerners can't take for extended periods of time. The toilets left a lot to desire, naturally, but luckily my bowels' response was to require the minimum of regular service. We disembarked in Abakhan and rented a minicab to take us to Tuva (and I successfully negotiated a lower price, usually I'm too meek to do that...).
    You can imagine that the last days on the train felt longer that the first couple of days, but the final leg of the journey was a true nightmare. We were all sleep-deprived and cramped into this car and then we bounced around for the next 5 hours. And I'm not exagerating the bouncing around, those roads were just not built with cars in mind. My neck will take days to recover from the quantum-level fluctuations of this local confluence of bad-road-bad-shock-absorbers. Once in Kyzyl, we walked around in the tremedous heat, half-dazed with exhaustion. Eventually we found our way to the flat we are supposed to rent for a week from an old Buddhist lady. Well, the price turned out to be double of what we had been led to expect (I didn't take part in the negotiations, obviously...). Obviously, Buddhists need to pay tithes, too. Then last night her whooping drunk son spent some 4 hours outside our door knocking and crying and being otherwise incomprehensible. We had been warned by his mother, but we didn't expect him to stay that long!!
    Here ends this dispatch from your correspondent in Tuva. I'm off for a cold beer and some local food.

Barely,

Girilal

We've been in Kyzyl for almost a week now and everyday has been special and full of new things and people. As Sauli put it, "I'm ready to go home now." Except we still have 4 weeks to go! So far we've been exploring Kyzyl and meeting all these great musicians. Since we rented a flat, they have been coming home to us and after food they often play for us (chamber concerts indeed, with an audience of 5) and then perhaps we play for them, and then we jam.
    Dry heat with occasional rainstorms to cool things down is fairly typical for the entire week and it's great to forget what it's like to be cold. In a day or two we intend to leave for the West-country for a week. We're being taken by Kongar-ool Ondar (master musician and Member of Paliament. We're
rubbing elbows with the elite here!) to some camping site and from there we will travel around visiting people and places.
    Last night we spend a little quality beer time on our own. But the town is small enough to meet the few people we know. We also met two young girls. One spoke English and so I talked a lot to the other one, in Russian. She had some interesting points of view, talking about local politics and the new male-rights party. "You know, of course, that women need to be ruled by men?" I said, "Well, I don't
know, I'm inclined to think that men and women are equal and nobody needs to rule the other." "No, no, she said, you're wrong!" She's a very pretty, educated, upper-class eighteen year old girl. Interesting.
    Later last night, I finally uncovered part of what I had suspected, but couldn't really confirm. We met some Russian – simply put – racists who are born in Tuva, but consider themselves mentally and culturally superior to the Tuvans. 1/3 of the population (total 350,000) is of Russian origin. But you know what? Tuvans are such soulful and smiling people, that somehow meeting these guys didn't even upset me too much. What are you going to be upset about, when the others are rather happy? But, of course, this is just the tourist's point of view.

So, may peace be with you,

Kherel-ool

Friday 27 July, back in Kyzyl again

It was a heartbreaking sight when one of the Tuvans we were traveling with, leapt out of our mini-bus as if on fire, ran up to the Russian driver who had just emerged from his car to yell at us and punched the guy twice in the head. Heartbreaking because our Tuvan friend obviously had very little patience for Russians; because later we found out he had spent some years in a Soviet prison on trumped up charges after being discharged from his military service in the Soviet Army - that ought to have broken more than his heart; also because of the fury in his voice when he answered a witness of the situation, "Of course I fucking own the place! It's my fucking country!!!"; heart breaking because of the obvious remorse on our Tuvan friend's face for hours after the incident and the embarrased apologies he made for his behaviour. I take back anything I might have written about the serenity of Tuvan-Russian relations.
    Some hours later we finally arrived Lake Tere-Hoel. The weather was gorgeous. The lake is the Platonic idea of a lake, at least if Plato was anything like me. Really warm, crystal clear water. We cooked our food from the lake water. The beach is rolling dunes of finest sand and so is the lake bottom. The lake is right at the south end of Tuva and divided between Tuva and Mongolia. It's far away, so there weren't so many people. One couple was making loud, drunken
love just a few metres out into the water (depth 40cm).

    That night, these lucky tourist slept under the bare sky! The Mily Way was a clear as I have ever seen it and the only light polution for hundreds of miles were the dying embers of our fire. It was a time and a place for magic to happen. Indeed, perhaps it did. Myself, I was mainly rather cold and uncomfortable on the sloping, uneven ground. No hot water yet in Kyzyl (they turn it off during the summer), but you get used to it. Anna, being a lady and a Swede, takes a cold shower every day. Us, filthy, smelly guys, we just pretend it's business as usual.
    Since Monday we've been back in Kyzyl. Plans around here change all the time and we just have to learn to go with the quixotic flow of these people. We have booked the Ministry of Culture Concert Hall for the 10 August. 700 seats. We will perform there together with some of our new Tuvan musician friends. It wasn't our first choice of venue, but our friends here have encouraged us and now we are commited. So, this week we've been busy promoting the concert instead of seeing the country. On Tuesday we gave a press-conference!! 4 newspapers and 2 TV-stations!! But I stayed home with stomach cramps and diarrhea. But on the 8 August there will be a 40-minute live broadcast with all of us. Be sure to tune in, friends!
    Today, I had my fortune told by an old lovely Gypsy lady. I've never done that before and it was... instructive. By the way, I'm sorry that there seem to be some of you who haven't received all my highly enlightening and amusing dispatches, but there has been a mix up with eddresses again. I think it should work now. I'm off for some beers.

Peace,

Kherel-ool

For various reasons email has been hard to come by in Kyzyl lately and so the last instalment of this magic travelogue is a little delayed. Well, 2 weeks ago we finally got moving. One day we went to a lake outside Kyzyl with the film crew and producer of our Tuvan TV-show and recorded some
songs. It was beautiful there, but extremely hot and we had to sit in the Sun and play, sweat spilling out of our pores. The next day we went to another lake outside Kyzyl, but a salty one this time. Some Russian girls who have temporarily befriended us took us there. But then finally our travels to Western Tuva began inearnest.

    Bumpy road to Chadan, 4 hours. We arrived at the local Buddhist temple. The minute I stepped out of the car in Chadan, I could feel a a difference in the atmosphere in Chadan and the Temple further
amplified this feeling. The young monk who recieved us gave us each preliminary readings according to the Tibetan horoscope system. We sat there in front of the altar, the paintings of dieties, a portrait of Dalai Lama and every one of us, even the most sceptical, was affected by the peace and the quiet and the spirituality of the place. We spend two days in Chadan with friends of friends. Heavy drinking took place, since the Tuvans have long ago been smitten by the Russian disease of drinking too much, for too long and not knowing when to stop. Vodka was the principal element of intoxication, and fortunately that sort of left me out of the game. Now, if they would have had single malt whisky here...
    Mart-ol, our host, presented me with a bear claw – it's bloody huge!
    Time came to ship out and so we did, off to the mountains. We spent 4 days at an Arszan, a place where a spring is supposed to have healing powers. Every Arszhan is unique and good for different ailments and there are hundreds in Tuva. Belive it or not, there really was a positive effect from drinking and showering thrice daily in the cold, Radon enhanced water! During the days we climbed all over the local hills. Hard work, but great fun. One day we took an extended tour to the Lake Sut Hol, elevation 1800 m (our camp was at 900 m). From there we went on to climb the local peak – Kyzyl Taiga - Red Mountain - at 2800 m. I won't even attempt to describe the feelings I had that day and the sights we saw at the top. Actually, when back in Chadan I had seriously contemplated staying
behind in the Buddhist temple, while the others went to the mountains. But even with hindsight it's hard to judge whether the temple had been more spiritually rewarding than the mountains. Here in Tuva they say that it cleans your Karma to climb mountains. Of course, they have a lot of mountains here...
   Igor, our captain on this trip, is a musician with a lovely wife and son, a rather patchy past, and a
keen knowledge of the mysteries of Tibetan Buddhism and horoscopes and Tuvan philosophy. He is also predisposed to giving longish lectures on these subjects and so we learnt a lot on in these few days. In Tuva the mundane and the mystical co-exist and after all this time here, I find it perfectly
reasonable. The old geezer who insisted on reading our hands in Chadan, told me, "You're a Gypsy." I replied, cheekily, "well my father is from Rajastan..." He waved my words away, "No! No! You're a Gypsy." In the subway in Helsinki or Stockholm, I'd dismiss this easily, but here... I don't know. The fellow also made some strangely correct statements about details of our lives. Spooky.
    At the mountain camp, we gave two concert, spontaneously devised by the local visitors, who
were very curious about us. One of the concerts was ourway of thanking our tent-neighbours for the absolutely best freshly slaughtered sheep we've had so far, by far (and we've had three before this one). Even the things that normally were inedible, were delicious this time. And on the way back to Chadan
we stopped at a yurt belonging to Igor's relatives. They had hundreds of sheep, goats, cows and horses
grazing around the yurt and far. Well, we gave a short concert in the yurt as well. It was terrific and they loved us and we loved them for we got to sing Tuvan songs in a yurt in Tuva! They offered us Araga (destilled sour milk) and it was the best we've had so far. And we've had some....

   Tuvan recipe for Irish Coffee:
         Instant cofee
         Vodka
         Sugar
         Smetana

Bloody good! Even better that the real thing. Also with the added benefit of saving the whisky for
better consumption on its own.

Bayerligh!

Kherel-ool