A writer remembers one morning in the Ugam-Chatkal National Park.
Never have I been so cold, and never have I been so happy to be cold. We left the ranger's hut at four in the morning, three of us in a line: Saidakbar, the ranger, at the front; a photographer from Almaty behind him; and me at the back. I was breathing hard, and I wished I had stayed in bed.
Saidakbar has worked in these mountains for nineteen years. He knows every path and every spring, and he walks without a torch. He told us before we started that we were not going to see a snow leopard. "Rarely does anyone see one," he said. "I have seen two, in nineteen years. We are going to see the ibex, and the sunrise, and that is a lot."
We climbed for two hours. Not until the sky turned grey did we stop, on a flat rock above a long valley. Saidakbar lifted his hand, and we sat down without a word.
For a long time there was nothing. Then a small group of ibex appeared on the opposite ridge, and the photographer began to lift his camera carefully.
Saidakbar put his hand on the camera and pushed it down. Only when he pointed, very slowly, at the rocks below the ibex did I understand why.
It lay on a ledge in the first light, the colour of the stone around it. Then, for perhaps three seconds, it turned its head and looked straight at us. Had I blinked, I would have missed it.
When I looked again, the ledge was empty.
Nobody spoke on the way down. At the hut, the photographer asked Saidakbar why he had stopped him. The ranger's answer was short. "The sound of a camera frightens it. The picture would be for you. The quiet was for the cat."
Should you ever go to those mountains, walk slowly, keep your camera in your bag, and do not expect anything. Seldom does the mountain give you what you came for — but now and then it gives you something better.