A Body Needs Milk

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After a few days in Mongolia here are a few of my initial discoveries:

The Mongolian diet: The seasons are strong in Mongolia (latitude wise think North Dakota), the summers are hot and the winters are icy cold. In the winter the Mongolians eat almost nothing but meat and starting in the spring, in order to cleanse the stomach they believe, they eat almost nothing but milk products. I’ve visited with several nomadic families in their ger’s now and the offering always the same: first you're given a bowl of airag (fermented mare’s milk) which is about 3-5% alcohol, it must be accepted with the right hand and it would be very insulting not to drink the whole bowl…just don’t drink it to fast or you’ll quickly find it refilled the very sour tasting liquid, and then dried yogurt biscuits made form goats milk which you dip into tsagaan toas which is milk fat. To make tsagaan they take a big vat of cow’s milk and boil it until it has 1-2” layer of fat on top and then skim it off…it actually has a brie like consistency and taste pretty good. After a short visit you’ll then be offered homemade Mongolian vodka distilled from cow’s milk, it has about 20% alcohol and as far taste it’s not bad at all- imagine sipping watered down vodka from an empty yogurt container!
The Mongolian steep: 65M grazing animals can eat a lot of grass. What I found amazing about the consequence of this massive attack on the grasses of the steep is that the entire country appears like a freshly mown park! I mean really everywhere you go the grass is 1-4” high. Now there are two significant differences between the steep and your neighborhood park and they can both be seen pretty much everywhere you look and both are purely physiological. One, 65M grazing animal eat a lot of grass…grass goes in and something else comes out…65M grazing animals create a lot of something else. Two, you see the cycle of life everywhere you look in Mongolia; families live together in gers with 3 or 4 generations, and you can’t walk more than ten steps on the steep without stepping over a piece of bone…a rib, a whole spinal column, a skull, etc- when you have 65M grazing animal with an average life span of 7 or 8 years many are bound to just die. I went jogging the other day and ran past two complete sheep carcasses right in the middle of the trail, picked clean, just bone and wool left. ½ mile later I ran past 3 more in a ditch. There are large number of predators and scavengers in Mongolia; it’s not uncommon to see twenty huge vultures flying overhead or to hear a wolf howl at night. In fact there so many wolves in Mongolia you can buy a pelt for about $100…they sell them right in the State department store, there must be several hundred just hanging there.

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Comments

[Natalia]

Twins
Your hosts look like identical twins in this picture, except that one has lighter skin.