LAST DAYS IN TUVA

Wednesday, July 4, 2007
On location with Huun Huur Tu, playing in the hills overlooking the valleys northeast of Kyzyl, as the evening breeze swept over the steppe and the lowering sun touched everything with a golden glow.

Their homeboys came along and despite their menacing appearance, they turned out to be a sweet bunch of guys to hang out with... and strangely familiar, too, as if I'd known them back in the small upstate New York town where I grew up. On our last day in Tuva, we all drove out to village of herders where the film crew shot Huun Huur Tu playing in a field of galloping horses. Afterward, we feasted on boiled lamb and fermented mare's milk, a traditional alcoholic beverage of the Siberian steppe - a little something different from the beer you're probably drinking on this Fourth July.

Now, back on the long road over the Sayan Range to the Sayan Ring Festival...