While traveling in Nepal, I could not help but pay attention to the curious game, which was enthusiastically given to old and young (mostly still young) in every Nepalese village. This is something like a mixture of “Chapaev” with billiards – you need to snap your fingers on the cue ball to drive the opponent’s chips into the pockets.Six months after the trip, I finally bothered to ask the search engine what the Nepalese game is called. It turns out that this is Carr, and they play it almost on half of the globe. Strange that I didn’t notice the carrom players in India. Judging by the data of Pedivikia, India is the main stronghold of the carromists, and the International Carrom Federation was created there.
Day 13. Worshiping Lake Tilicho
Когда я смотрю на фотографии, сделанные на озере Тиличо, то не вижу в нем никакой изюминки. Просто вода у подножия обледеневшей горы. Это можно сказать снимку, бледной копии, но никак не оригиналу. Когда ты приползаешь к нему, растратив на бесконечном подъеме весь запас жизненной энергии, оно – Великое озеро настолько велико, а ты – человек настолько мал, что все, на что ты имеешь право, это тихо молиться.
Route: BLT (Tilicho base camp) – Tilicho lake – BLT – Khangsar.
Traveled: 20 km in 10 hours
The total ascent is 1200 m, the total descent is 1500 m.
Altitude above sea level: maximum – 5000m, overnight stay – 3734 m.
Terrain: dense firn, stony scree.
Leonid Kaganov – Charisma
Finally, I came across an easy and absolutely standard book. No surprises (even the last chapter did not surprise), everything is predictable and familiar. I immediately remembered the late Strugatskys – “The Powerless of This World” and “The Search for a Destiny”, Akunin’s “Fantasy”, and Lukyanenko also seems to have written something in this vein.But Pelevin (he considers Kaganov, Strugatsky and Lukyanenko to be his teachers) is not at all like – there are not enough Sumerian goddesses and in general the book is not creepy enough. In some places even comedic (No, well, do you want lope? – the man does not let up. – Lope? – No, but lope is, ...) though more of a comic. After all, this is a classic comic book plot – a simple guy gets superpowers (and super enemies in the kit).
Eski-Yurt Spring
This spring is designated in the updated 500-meter “Soyuzkarta” as the source of Eski-Yurt. The coordinates taken on the ground did not coincide with the map data a little – the captured spring is located 100 meters to the west than it is drawn.It is very easy to find it – if you walk from Lesnoye along the dirt road, then 70 meters before reaching the main clearing of Eski-Yurt (with a monument), you will see a sign “Resting place” and a dirt road going to the left, perpendicular to the main one. After walking 200 meters along it, you will find a log-table, benches, a fire pit and the spring itself. A little higher up the slope there is an almost flat area for 3-4 tents.
Roe deer voice
Yesterday, scouting out a new area for hiking, I wandered through the beech forest near Eski-Yurt. And in addition to three thousand mosquitoes and twenty ticks, I managed to meet a male roe deer (in the photo – a female). Moreover, I recorded the jumps and the amazing voice of the roe deer on video.
I walked along the path very quietly, and froze as soon as I heard a rustle behind the trees. Apparently, the animal sensed me and also froze, staring in my direction
Hunter Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Honestly, I did not deliberately select books and the order in which they were read. But somehow, over the past month, I have read a whole bunch of “non-format” works with only a slight mistake with the chronology. “Fear and disgust” – adequately continued the selection, fully revealing the topic of dangerous drugs and drugs.For me, as a person who does not even drink beer, it was very interesting to get acquainted with the psychology and way of thinking of a junkie who was stoned to the limit.
Ken Kesey – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
One of those cases when you read a book “after the movie” (I think I’m not the only one who had exactly this order).True, I saw the Oscar-winning adaptation of Mlosh Forman only once and a very long time ago, but as it turned out during the reading of the book, I remembered all the main plot twists. Therefore, the main highlight of the book for me was not the events, but the impressions and thoughts of the characters.
Lev Gumilyov – The end and the beginning again
Gumilyov’s book interested me from the very first pages (I started reading it at the top Olympus< /a>). I’ve heard about theories of passionarity and, in principle, guessed what the author would be talking about. But it’s one thing to guess, and it’s quite another to hear for yourself that … an awl in the ass is from God and it can be inherited.The first chapters of the work made me excited. Gumilyov struck not so much with his theories as with the eccentricity of the questions that arose in his head. What is an event? Does history belong to the humanities or natural sciences? And so
Henry Miller – Tropic of Cancer
Another book with a “prestigious” title and merry, as it turned out, content. If this continues, then sooner or later I will start reading the Old Testament in the original language – there is also probably a lot of interesting things hidden there.I read (listened to) Tropic of Cancer in travel around Turkey. Naturally, the tourists were interested in what their instructor was listening to, and they repeatedly drove me into a stupor asking me to tell what the book was about. Far from the first time, I managed to answer them
Milan Kundera – The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Choosing which book to read next, I am often guided by such an obscure concept as the prestige of a book, which usually manifests itself in “non-pop” and “alternativeness”. Such books often resemble serious author’s cinema – frankly boring and understandable to few. Sometimes, on the contrary, a fascinating story is hidden behind a frightening name (this was the case with A.S. Makarenko’s Pedagogical Poem).The phrase “Unbearable lightness of being” also somehow got into the “prestigious” section of my cultural associations. And choosing to read this after the entertaining “, I settled on this solid title.
Fragments of the Turkish campaign.
I have no time to write a detailed report on the recently completed Turkish campaign (along the Lycian path). And I don’t want to be stubbornly silent either, and I want to share photos. Therefore, this time I will make my story in the form of short comments to the pictures – no chronology and completeness, just fragments of the mosaic.Maybe later there will be a video report.
Vlad Malenko – Cheese fell out
If anyone doesn’t know, Vlad Malenko writes fables (and also plays in the theater and talks on TV. I listened to the audio collection of his fables “The Cheese Fell Out” and was surprisingly imbued.
I used to think that fables are a dull and irrelevant thing. Now I began to understand this genre a little better and even singled out the two main secrets of popularity for the fabulist
- Firstly, he should write on current, topical topics
- secondly, like almost any poetry, fables are much better “assimilated” if they are listened to rather than read.
Isaac Asimov – Land of Canaan
The main fantastic works of Asimov were read by me with delight as a child, and since then my impressions have not been updated. But the author’s popular science prose has come into my hands twice in the past year (“Words in History” and “Words on a Map”).It was thanks to this that I was already well acquainted with Isaac Asimov’s specific manner of presenting historical information (dry, monotonous, boring) and was able to focus on the content of the book without being distracted by some roughness of form. For which he was rewarded with several small discoveries.
Stephen King – 1408
King loves to write about writers and does it regularly (I still haven’t read Misery!). “1408”, a story about a writer who exposes ghosts, was included in my playlist for two reasons.Firstly, I repeatedly started watching the film adaptation of this work, but for various reasons, I never watched it to the end. Second, King used examples from “1408” in a book that I liked, On Writing.
V. Kunin – Ivanov and Rabinovich, or “Ai go to Haifa!”
“Ai go to Haifa!” – light, emphatically entertaining reading matter. Unlucky heroes constantly find themselves in unrealistically bad situations, but their good hearts and pure thoughts help to find friends and get out of any troubles. An endless kaleidoscope of hits and a fast change of scenery is somewhat reminiscent of Akunin’s books about Nikolas and Pelagia.The plot isn’t engaging, but it isn’t repulsive either. You listen further simply by inertia, carried away by the colorful reading of Nikolai Fomenko.
P. G. Wodehouse – Mr. Mulliner tells
P. G. Wodehouse’s collection of stories about Mr. Mulliner and his many relatives got into my player quite by accident. But as soon as I started listening, I realized that this is love.
Good old England did not die with the beginning of the twentieth century. Eccentric aristocrats and their high-bred valets are alive to this day. They play golf, dress smartly, visit the Drones club and fall in love with simple and not very English young ladies in an extremely cute way.
Onotole in the cell!
It’s funny to meet an unusual person in an ordinary place. The president is in line at the checkout of a supermarket, or a TV presenter in a district clinic. We are used to the fact that the “stars” live in another world, and having met them on the sinful earth, we do not believe our eyes.I met Onotole in the storage room of the Simferopol railway station and managed not to recognize him despite the presence of all the legendary attributes: a beard, a stomach, huge glasses and a vest with countless pockets.
“The Good, the Bad, the Ugly” is a spaghetti western
The term “Spaghetti Western” has been known to me for a long time. I didn’t really think about its origin and meaning, I just thought that it was called cheap westerns, where there are a lot of gunfights and little realism.And so, last week, my world shook. I learned that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is also a spaghetti western.This discovery is from the category of “captain-obvious”. Only he could not notice that such combinations of letters as “Sergio Leone”, “Ennio Morricone” seem to hint at a certain country – the homeland of spaghetti.
Day 12. On the border with Mexico
Where does Mexico come from in the heart of the Himalayas? And where did a corner of our Motherland come from (my address is not a house or a street, my address is the Soviet Union)?In my opinion, there is no mysticism here – a simple movement of souls.Route: Khangasar – Tilicho base camp.Traveled: 10 km in 5 hoursThe total ascent is 570 m, the total descent is 200 m.Altitude above sea level: 4134 m.Terrain: rocky scree.
Turkey by car, day 2 – Around Olympus.
The owner of the agency did not deceive – the car was new. The odometer showed a mileage of 5000 km, and to further emphasize the novelty, the protective films were not removed from the doors.
To be honest, getting behind the wheel, I felt timid under the strict gaze of the owner. Thank God, he didn’t run after the car, didn’t put a webcam in it, and didn’t even put his photo on the windshield!
Oh, and the steering wheel is harder to turn here (than in my car). But the gears are easier to stick in and the side mirrors are “more visible”.