Shocking

I awoke deep into Mongolia at 5:30. We packed and the train arrived at 6:10. I had exchanged contact info with Michael and Enk and we went our separate ways.

Off the track, we waited for Gans, our guide for the next two days.

I was about to call him when Gans showed up - a small, young, thin guy who speaks fantastic English. We got all our stuff into a very nice Mitsubishi Jeep-style car and went to run some errands.

Pulled 75,000 Tugriks (About 1300T to the USD) out of a bank. Stopped at a few places to look for food but nothing was open until we hit an American restaurant at 7 on Peace Avenue. We met John, and ExPat from San Francisco who has been here 11 years. He gave us a fantastic impromptu history of Mongolia with his Canada coffee mug and giant map of Mongolia as he sat with us - and made us delicious egg wraps, USA style. Gans left us for an hour to run some errands. John and I were talking, and in a beautiful moment for a situation I don't think will ever come again (and as there were no witnesses I need to spread this myself because it's so good), John was saying how some people will steal any horse in Mongolia because "a horse is a horse is a horse," and without missing a beat I said "Of course, of course." ...he's the amazing Mr. Ed!

At 8 we left because they were about to close the street for some big politician. We met up with Gans.

By 9 we were on the road and all errands were completed. We took our car over the pothole-filled Уланбаатар (Ulan Baatar) roads and off to the desert.

UB is a fast growing city that seems to be expanding too fast for it's own infrastructure to keep up. Until a few years ago there wasn't even a Mongolian word for traffic jam. Not anymore. But even then, with all the growth, a mile from the city center we passed a field of over 500 goats!

While the land was deserted right outisde UB, 2 hours into the famous Mongolian Steppe, Brian commented, "You know, when you said the middle of nowhere, I didn't think you meant nowhere! I don't think I've ever been THIS nowhere." There was nothing. It was shocking. "What happens if you run out of gas?" Brian asked. "Uhh, you try to catch a horse," Gans replied. In a country where horses outnumber humans 13-1, that might actually be ok.

We arrived at 1 to the Ger we were staying in this weekend, in the middle of nowhere on the border between the Steppe and the Gobi, what I have dubbed unofficially the halflands. Gans calls it "fake Gobi" because some tour companies tell you it's the real Gobi Desert, and even though this place has the same climate and conditions as the Gobi, there is non-Gobi land between this area and the real thing. But it was still a really a shocking sight.

The home we were to stay in was a few miles off the road, in the middle of a vast expanse of grasslands, surrounded in the distance by mountains to the northwest, the east, and the south, and with the beginnings of the desert visible a km or two away to the southwest.

The homestead itself consists of a deteriorating stable for horses, a larger ger and a smaller ger. The largest of the two is about 7.5 feet tall at its highest point in the middle, and perhaps 15 feet in diameter. Three beds line the inside of the ger, which are occupied at night by the three children (an elder boy [12], a middle girl, and a very young boy, maybe 5) and a stove sits in the middle, with a chimney rising from the stove through the opening in the middle of the roof. There were personal belongings and family photos in the ger, but all in all they had a very sparse collection of "stuff." It's fitting that they do, though, since they move the family, and the house, four times a year.

The smaller ger serves as home to the parents, and is perhaps 9 feet in diameter, 5.5 feet tall in the middle (so I had to stay crouched when I stood up), and doubles as the main kitchen and storage. A stove is in the middle of that ger as well, and all the extra family things are piled around the outside. In all, it was a very culture-shock inducing scene at first.

When we first met the family, it was a little awkward at first. For one, we speak no Mongolian, and they speak no English. Gans translated for us. And second, their cousin (or someone close to them, the exact relation didn't come through in translation) had just died. He and a family horse had been struck by lightening and fried and died while the entire family was outside a few days ago. It was a shocking story.

After the initial awkwardness had passed, we had a lunch of noodle salad and bagel-like bread. At 3, Brian and I took a hike to a nearby mountain to the south. It took us an hour and a half to get to the top, but the view was amazing. To the south we could see the vast expanse of the desert, which just appears next to apparantly fertile grasslands. To the north we looked over endless flatness of brushlands and grazing lands interrupted by unexplained mountainous growth. The wind was strong and the sun was hot, and we had been hiking for an hour and a half, so when we got our fill of pictures, we turned back towards the ger, just a little unsure of whether we would find it again. There were only about 20 gers (not including the two tourist ger camps we could see) to choose from on the entire endless field, but they were miles apart..

Speaking of tourist gers, we are not in one. We are in a ger that hosts tourists. I know Gans, our tour guide, through four degrees of separation, and the distinction between his friend's ger and tourist gers is that this one is lived in, and we are merely flies on the wall of someone elses life. Tourist gers are only lived in when tourists occupy them, and life in the tourist gers is designed to make tourists happy. The ger we're in moves four times a year with the seasons for the animals. Tourist gers are in place all year and only operate during good months for tourism.

At 5, when we got back from our hike, Gans and our hosts were off to pay their respects to the family who had lost their son. They said they'd be back in an hour, so Brian and I were left alone in the family homsestead, passing the time with card games. 2 hours passed before they returned. They didn't apologize for their tardiness; Mongolians don't apologize.

While dinner was being prepared, Gans, Brian, the 12-year-old boy and I went for a horse ride. We saddled up and spent two hours trotting through the desert to the dunes, which we climbed on horseback. I felt very Lawrence of Arabia for most of that. On the way back Brian, who's horse just didn't like him and kept on turning around, asked to try my horse out... and he rode that horse all the way back to the ger. I took Brian's horse, then, which was perfectly nice to me, and did everything I asked it to, and had a wonderful ride back with Gans, discussing Buddhism as it relates to Mongolia, Tibet, and their political and social stability, while Brian and the boy rode ahead.

Dinner was traditional Mongolian barbeque -- stones are heated in fire until they are glowing red and then placed into a pot with meat and closed with a lid. The meat cooks inside. We had the latest slaughtered lamb of the family's stock. That and rice. A simple meal but oh so good.

While the meal was cooking we sat outside on various items we used as chairs, while someone broke out the Chinggis Khan Vodka and a Mongolian shotglass. A Mongolian shotglass is essentially a little bowl, but entire groups all drink from the same one. There is a very ritualistic way to drink from the bowl - one receives the bowl with their right hand, while their left hand is held full open, fingers together, towards the sky, with the fingertips just under the elbow side of the right forearm. One passes the bowl the same way. When one is about to drink, the right ring finger is dipped thrice into the alcohol and flicked into the air at each dip, to share the alcohol with traditional gods. During the first round of drink, each person drinks a whole bowl's worth of vodka in one gulp, in order of eldest to youngest. Then the bowl is refilled and passed as people sip from it, still with the same ritual. Brian and I had read that it's considered insulting to refuse a drink in Mongolia, especially for men, so we had to follow local customs...

And speaking of customs, apparantly it's good luck in Mongolia, when you take the meat out of the pot, to take a hot stone and put it in your hand, rolling it between your hands, then holding it in one, fingers closed around it, then rolling again, then holding it in the other, and so on. I got passed a hot stone and sucked up the shocking pain while I proved my manliness, which is a big thing in the country.

After dinner we watched a little World Cup on the tiny staticky tv in the corner of the ger, followed by sleep. Brian and I were offered two of the three beds, but we declined in favor of the floor. When I lay down my sleeping bag, though, Gans said our host wanted me to turn it around. I asked why, and Gans said because I had to point my head towards the Buddist shrine! So I did and lay down for sleep.

Bedtime at starry time. I so quickly lost the need to measure time, by sundown I didn't know what hour it was. The stars tonight are unobstructed, and they are gorgeous. With a lifestyle like this, one can truly appreciate the stars...