Tash Rabat

Doesn’t it sound oh-so-mysterious? Tash Rabat is the site of a 15th century (could be 5th — time does fly, and there’s no question but that these kinds of places have been around 4-evah) caravanserai; sometime mosque; occasional church, and general resting point amongst Silk Road travelers. Remember that scene in the very first Indiana Jones movie – Raiders — where Indy finds Marion in a bar in Nepal? That wasn’t Nepal — I’ve been there, years ago — that was truly Tash Rabat in the snow, as far as I’m concerned. (I’m starting to believe that there’s nothing that can be imagined that doesn’t exist, somewhere in place and time – and that doesn’t mean that we humans suffer from limited imaginations, either). This place is the stuff of dreams and legends, where travelers from distant worlds connect, for a moment, for trade, for shelter, for worship without persecution, for armies to bivouac, for lack of any other connection, save being in the same place at a time when nature was and is the primary enemy.

We went with a group of young people from Naryn, and had lunch in a yurt. We hiked up one of the hillsides; took in the view; saw a Bowzer look-alike (everyone has a twin somewhere in the world — even dogs); watched a sheep playing with his boy and marveled in the extraordinary and sublime beauty and history of the world we were in. And we jumped.

P.S. Those would be the Tien Shan mountains, all around us, moren’ likely. Go figure.

~ by mimi on July 30, 2008.