More emptiness....

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My sleep was troubled and filled with visions of horses, yaks, camels, sheep and goats, all laughing loudly and displaying a rather strong stench. I awoke from those visions of horrors with a jolt and a sense of relief at it having only been a dream, only to be faced with Stinky smiling at me wildly with all of his 6 teeth and gesturing to the outside world. It was 9 am on my 20th day of travel. I pushed Stinky away from me, made a slalom through the empty bottles of vodka, made a mental note never to drink vodka again, banged my head on the ridiculously low doors and stepped, mumbling and grumbling outside. This time round, the experience was more pleasant. The Ger where we stopped was on top of a hill overlooking the vast lake we had been following. The view was magnificent, the air fresh and free of bugs and the sky clear all round, with not a cloud to be seen on the horizon. What a splendid morning indeed. After much stretching, yawning, scratching and cracking of bones (to the greatest amusement of Stinky’s children, hiding behind the Ger and giggling away at the fat foreigner), the others emerged painfully from their sleep (actually Snaily was ready long before us and had already made an unsuccessful attempt at making normal Earl Grey tea: it still tasted of mutton, due to there only being one cooking pot). Bene and I went for a quick wash and shave in the lake, to the greatest excitement of the assembled crowds (a gathering of more then 3 people constitutes a crowd in Mongolia) of 5 people (Stinky, 2nd wife and 3 kids). They admired and commented on the soap, I expect the first they had ever seen, made gestures as if they were going to use it, but the hope was quickly lost as they returned the soap to us in a ceremonial manner, presenting it in the palm of the right hand with the left hand supporting the elbow of the right.

After our wash, we were horrified to hear loud, threatening and approaching mechanical sounds: a great cloud of dust and clunking sounds signaled the approach of what could only be Sleepy and our car. Indeed, it was him. He came to meet us early or just came to get some breakfast, I will never know.

I marveled at the horse riding capabilities of the kids: one, as young as 7, could master, far better then I, a huge Mongolian, long haired racing horse.

At the risk of sounding cliché and anti-capitalist, the kids in Mongolia all seem truly happy, they have no TV, radio, play station, commercial products and goods of any kind, they are healthy, spend all their days outside, riding horses, helping with the cattle and being active. They only have available to them what is produced in the Ger or available in the local market (all practical goods). They laugh and smile all the time; they are proud and strong, not nagging and spoilt like in our society; fashion is not an issue, they wear the same clothes as their parents, there seems to be no jealousy nor fights for attention, the elder brother looks after the younger, the sisters help the mother. I normally have a great dislike for kids of any kind and any age, yet here I find them fun, nice and curious.

During our long hours of riding, I also reflected on how healthy the general population (all of 10 people we had seen in the past 3 days) looked. They had full white teeth, good healthy skin, and seemed to be in excellent physical condition. Is it the complete lack of chemicals in their daily life, the huge abundance of dairy products? The fresh air and the daily exercise?

As I kept reflecting upon our two societies and the by-products they created, breakfast was prepared for us by Stinky’s 2nd wife. It consisted of the inevitable salty mare’s milk with layers of sun dried skin and fat, with a generous helping of what I assume can only be goat’s butter.

As a back up plan, we carried with us small dried pieces of very sugary bread (sugar preserves the bread) and some Polish jam (all the jam in Mongolia is from Poland). The back up plan was eaten and the sun-dried layers of fat with butter was respectfully tasted, declared, through forced smiles, a torture and left well alone for the rest of the morning.

After breakfast, I wanted to take a picture of the Ger and the lake in the background. This involved moving the car away from the Ger. Bene took the keys, moved the car, I took the picture, all the kids came out to see the car move, we loaded them in the car, Stinky came along, I jumped at the front and we took the lot of them for a bit of a joyride through the steppes, they were absolutely terrified but did not show it. I am convinced that it is the first time any of them ever entered a car and will probably be the last. Handbrake turns followed by tight turns, maddening accelerations and brutal stops was on the menu for them. After a while, I took over the driving and rarely had so much fun: there is nothing to stop you or to crash into, everything is allowed, the only limit is the endurance of the car. After having driven about for a while, I made back for the ger at thundering speeds to be finished by a neat handbrake 360 turn in front of “not so happy” Sleepy. As I got out of the car, I was wrestled to the ground by our Mongolian professional wrestler and given a serious beating, I nearly won one of the matches but still lost it when he threw me 4 meters down the hill. After my thrashing, we went back in the Ger for a last cup of salty mare’s milk, arm in arm, best friends ever. We made arrangements that Sleepy would come and pick us up at 13:00, wherever we were. We indicated the direction we were to take and showed him to head there and he will see us. Not too complicated, as there is nothing else about. He made a promise to be there on time and went back in the Ger to get a few minutes of sleep. Stinky got the horses ready. This time, we could ride without the bags as we left everything in the car. Once all was ready, Sleepy was, as expected, fast asleep in a bed with all his clothes neatly folded away at the foot of the bed, on top of his shoes. I could not resist the overwhelming temptation and took all his worldly possessions and hid them in the car. I giggled at the thought of Sleepy running around the steppe, naked, looking for his clothes. Because the horses had a lighter and less cumbersome load than usual, they were roaring to go, Mully most of all. She (or he?) took off at great speed, Moho followed but Peter declined on the basis that he was on strike. Stinky stayed with Peter and Bene. It was incredible to see that Moho and Mully managed to climb the highest hill around (considerably high) in one gallop, at full speed. Incredible resistance and endurance. Stinky delighted us with his singing, very guttural and quite enchanting, considering the surroundings (I wouldn’t buy the CD but in the right circumstances…) and we taught him to sing the Beetles' “Yellow Submarine”. Stinky was also know as the OKAY man, as it is the one word we taught him and he loved it: everything was OKAY, the horses were OKAY, the countryside was OKAY, his wives were OKAY, the singing was OKAY, his age was OKAY, our food was OKAY, basically the answer to everything was OKAY. As we reached 1300, we also reached the top of the hill. The view was superb and majestic but we were too glad to get off the saddles to care. 3 hours of hard galloping in a Mongolian saddle does things to you that a doctor would find most interesting and peculiar.

We all collapsed next to a mount of stones (every nomad passing by must place a stone or some object on the pile and turn around it once clockwise). The pile of stone was littered with carcasses, bones and skulls of all sorts of animals. We started waiting for Sleepy; 1300 came and went, 1330 came and went, 14000 came and went, 1430 came and went. Stinky was keen to go, so we made our goodbyes. I gave him as a present an old Leatherman of mine (he was exceedingly proud of it, said OKAY and wore it around his orange scarf, which is used as a belt by all the nomads: this made him the coolest nomad in a 100 miles radius) and so he left us with one last resounding OKAY. 1500 came and went. We were alone, with no protection from the sun, on top of a hill with nothing in sight. At 1523, Sleepy, at last, made an appearance with his old Toyota. He apologized and explained that he fell asleep and forgot all about us. I reckoned it was his revenge for the missing clothes. We boarded the car and headed for Karakorum, the old imperial city of Genghis Khan. 4 hours later, after having gotten lost a good dozen times and breaking down a good 5 times, we arrived. We were staying in a Ger outside of the city, if it can be called a city, more of an assembly of Gers, each surrounded by a wooden fence. The only concrete structure in town is the old flour factory, since shut down. There are talks to move the capital here in 2020 but it seems to be extremely unlikely. After having dropped our bags in the Ger, we made for town. There was nothing to see, so we saw nothing. The only point of attraction was the nearby temple of Erdeni Dzu. As we arrived there, the car park was full of tourist jeeps, there were stalls selling tourist stuff, it was all a culture shock to us, we had not seen so many people for 3 days, we had not seen a shop, nothing for tourists. There was a souvenir shop in the temple grounds; it was filled with cheap tourist artifacts, a blue scarf worth 200 toureg was being sold for 2000, postcards, sold for 250 touregs in Ulan-Bataar, were being sold for 700, stamps of a face value of 400 touregs were being sold for 600. Everything was about money. The “sales assistants” held on to your sleeves and yanked you from one place to the other with cries of “buy sir”, “buy sir”, “very cheap”, “good quality”, “money”, “USD or Euro no problems”. The entire thing was off-putting and disappointing. One had to buy an extortionate ticket for the museum, another one for the temple, and yet another one for the grounds. We were glad to leave and return to the tranquility of the steppes and our Ger. We bought some food on the way; one can only find rice, potatoes and onions in Mongolia, nothing else, this resulted in the usual and unsurprising meal of rice with potatoes and onions.

When we got back to the Ger, we had a restful sleep but, as I awoke a couple of hours later, I was mildly surprised not to see Sleepy in our Ger. I went out in search for him, worried that he was unwell: it wasn’t like him to miss an opportunity to sleep.

I am fully aware that I know precious nothing about mechanics but, as far as I am aware, the car works marginally better if the engine and the undercarriage are attached to the main body. When I found Sleepy under our Toyota, this was certainly not the case. We had little faith in him as a navigator and even less as a mechanic. We panicked and started looking for alternate ways out of the city; we found that a bus could take us back to Ulan-Bataar in the morning if need be. With our minds at rest, we cooked, sat in front of the car and watched the spectacle of Sleepy scratching his head and banging on the engine with his hammer in the clear hope that something might eventually happen. We were full of constructive advice but Sleepy did not seem to be fully trusting of our sense of helpfulness. I think he started having suspicions when we suggested a scheme to transform the doors into wings, stick the engine on the roof and propel it with Yak droppings.

After dinner and the opening of a bottle of Port (bought by Bene and I for such an occasion), we settled back into watching Sleepy do his work. Sleepy still had a bottle of vodka handy. We went through the ceremony of sacrificing a bit of port and vodka to the gods, the Ger and the family (finger placed in glass full of vodka or port and then flicked towards the sky, the door and the stove. Sleepy insisted in the fashion of offering three glasses to each of his guests, presented in the ceremonial manner. We could not refuse, so, drunk the vodka but got our revenge by offering him ceremoniously Port, which he could not drink. Sleepy was very keen on my Mongolian Phrasebook. He had already mastered a few English sentences and words by reading it. He declared to us (once his vodka was finished) “I am happy”, the longest sentence he said in English and all to say that he was happy. We loved Sleepy for it, a good round of applause was followed by the ceremonious opening of a new bottle and the traditional offering.

This pleasant state of affairs was only disturbed by myself trying to add my own droppings to the countryside but finding no adequate space. I turned my back to my companions and went about my business. I had the toilet with the best view of the world: a sun setting over the steppes, but my companion had a less pleasant view of my toilet.

As we started to fall into a pleasant state of sleepiness, a horse rider approached us to inform us that London was exploding. He heard it on the radio in his Ger and was aware that I lived in London. He came to warn us. Bene has his girlfriend in London. We quickly jumped on a couple of nearby horses, owned by the family hosting us, and rode into town.

The Post Offices and the Banks in Mongolia are open 24 hours a day. As I approached the town, my mobile phone received a signal and I got a message from my mother informing me that there were, indeed, explosions in London but that all was well with them. We made our calls and everyone responded affirmative to the calls.

We rode back. The car seemed to be fixed. We went to sleep.

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Comments

[cmthomas]

Wonderful reort! Makes me feel like I am there. Looking forward to the further adventures.