05-AUG-A-3
SECOND
AND SEEING A
FEW SIGHTS AROUND
AND AN
ATTEMPT AT EMAILING AND POSTCARDS
August 2, 2005
This day might
be considered a bit of a bummer and would have been a disaster, but for my
laptop and ballpoint and the fact that I had carried postcards with me that had
been sent to me by Jack Hardy from
We were to be picked up at 1:00 PM,
so that gave me a morning to have breakfast and then to prepare two complete
reports—05-Jul-C-4 and 7. These were the
complete accounts of my first day ending in the head bonk after starting with
the long climb, the bear charge, and the mist-Tur; the second I had hoped to
send out is the account of my day in the hills when I scored the spectacular
long shot and collected my trophy Tur. Both of these along with the outline of
the others of the Jul-C-series should be on their way to you just now, since I
believe I was able to “attach” them along with a brief note that I am back in
I was ready at 1:00 PM but we
received a call that there had been a delay in picking up two hunters at the
airport, just recently renamed after the ex-president, father of the current
president. The Russian young hunter
Vladimir and the American Gary Parker from
We went, once more, to the office,
where few if any of the people we had to see were around, as the big boss
Yullat had flown off to Moscow. As I
tried to get the emails to send attachments 4 and 7, Patrick woke up long
enough to see the DVED on the TV in the office.
There was a scramble once again about my written but as yet unmailed
postcards, and then the most recurrent theme yet heard: Can I write them still
more checks since they are not at all certain about this money order; yes, all
the AmEx traveler’s checks had been cashed but they would like still more tip
cash available, and “I must to pay.” I
had explained infinitely often that they had every negotiable guaranteed instrument
I had bought for this trip and that the tips were generous and complete, and
there were no more traveler’s checks to give them. Yes, but you will have to produce just two more,
one for us and one for the guides. This
is getting quite unfunny and the monotonous subject of two full days of
obsessive attention to details that are already cleared out, since the AmEx is
changed into cash money, but they hope their might be more than that which was
promised and fulfilled. I am not the
Russian Mafiosi who walks around with rolls of US $100 bills and scatters them
to the wind in batches of twenty at a time.
I am not even covering the expenses of anyone other than me, which I
have to remind Patrick as he sends out laundry by putting his whole pack out
the door or pops anything he wishes from the MiniBar ignoring the breakfast
buffet that is included in the room rate.
I have charged nothing to my room and I may need to remind him of that
since he is regularly down at the bar accumulating large room drafts. The only intensive activity I have pursued in
my room is the typing up of reports, the filing away of pictures and not the entertainment
of ladies of the evening. It is getting
to feel altogether too much like a reversion to
AS
YESTERDAY, A LATE, BRIEF FLURRY OF
We went to the Macmar Restaurant, a
second day we were in the “late lunch” group of solitary diners, in an al
fresco outdoor garden. Dinner was
similar, with a variety of veggies, cucumbers, parsley, goat cheese, flat
bread, and kebab. The delightful addition
was a tray of shelled nuts including walnuts and hazel nuts, and pistachios in
the shells. After four different kinds
of drinks, including the “banana beer” we headed out by Taxi to see the port
and the memorial to the Turkish soldiers who had helped the Azeris, and also
erected the second largest Mosque in the town.
Most of the Azeris are Shia, but may use the Sunni prayer style. We noted that the Azeris were independent for
only about eighteen months after WW I, when the 1920 Russian revolution and the
Soviet Empire gobbled them up. It was in
January 20, 1990 with the deaths of 131 citizens in the streets that
independence from
WE walked down the steps adjacent
to the Funicular that goes up the incline to the Soviet era shops and restaurants
in ruins now being redone as is the
With a light rain threatening, we taxied back to the Hotel Elite, where I again retreat to my room to type up the completion of the hunt experience, with the hope that tomorrow we may yet have the chance to bather in the allegedly fresh waters of the Caspian Sea and end the evening in the Karavanserai—but we may now be out of sequence and hear the singer on the odd evening rather than the belly dancer on the even evening. Ah, well, there are more than enough spectacular looking young women strutting their stuff on the streets to make up for whatever other performances are missing.
AT breakfast this morning, an event
in which I participate and Patrick does not, I saw a weird sight. I was having the usual melon, hard boiled
egg, breads and yogurt. The TV was tuned
to an American Black rap number, which was unrestricted as it would never have
been allowed on the
Every once in a while, while wandering the capitals of the world’s cities and continents, I have to ask myself, “What planet is this I have landed on, and which millennium is it today?”