Chickpea, in her latest post, points to this CNN story of four MIT kids driving an old jalopy from London to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia (just gotta to love a place that has a name like that). This actually bought back memomries of one of my all time heros, Richard Feynman's Tuvan saga.

As the story, told in Ralph Leighton's book "Tuva or Bust" goes, Feynman who was an avid stamp collector, had colleceted stamps from in Tuva for their odd ballness; they came in odd shapes (triangles, diamonds, etc.) showing odd scenes (men on camels racing trains, men on horseback hunting with airplanes above them, etc.). In 1977, at a dinner Feynman asked, "Whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?" And when they looked Tuva up in the atlas, they saw that the capital was named Kyzyl. They decided that any place with a name like that must be interesting; Kyzyl- a place without a vowel in it. They soon discovered that a monument near Kyzyl claimed to be the center of Asia, and Tuvan throat singing.

And being the madcaps they were, they decided that they had to go and check out Kyzyl for themselves. The only hitch: Kyzyl was then inside Soviet Union, and those comrades weren't going to allow two madcap American scientists to just take a walkabout in their backyard, even if one of them had already won the Nobel Prize for Physics. By the time the Soviet paperwork came through, Feynman had succumbed to stomach cancer, and Leighton had to go on the trip by himself.

While my Tuvan oddesy is still very much incomplete - a day will come when I will post here from Kyzyl - I was very, very happy when I attended a workshop as well as a concert on throat singing, even if it was the Tuvan cousin, the Mongolian variety, few years ago at the Silkroad Festival in Washington DC (Attention Chicagoians: Silkroad is coming to your city in 2006!). For those of you who must hear throat singing, do watch the wonderful film Genghis Blues. Meanwhile here are some samples for you to check out:

Rekha Alash Artyy Saiyr Feynman Drumming over Throat Singing

Also before you even think of knocking this music, remember it is damn hard!

so excited to have been mentioned on your blog.. thanks for making my day :) happy thursday