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Published: October 8th 2008
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…I reached into my backpack and found a marmot eating all my carrots, so to calm my nerves I sipped a red bull and played tic-tac-toe, while listening to Mongolian radio…I awoke, half blinded by the brilliant blue sky, from this nightmare of sorts to find I was in the middle of a Gobi desert steppe surrounded by mountains that had mouths, I wrestled out of my sleeping bag to consider how I came to be here…
It started a long time ago (billions of years ago I’m told); but to me let’s say 26 years, 239 days, 3 hours and some minutes and seconds and so on that I shan’t conjure up out of my imagination to bore you so, and in all this time the only hope that stays consistent is that it doesn’t end just yet. My life has wriggled its way to the here and still all I have is this hope, although destiny tells me one day I will no longer even have this. Ahhh I’m in this “beauty” and thinking far too morbidly. Beauty is used here as the thing that inspired me to write this diatonic thing on these fish scales I found
in this old sea bed, I could of used ugliness just as easy I guess, but why not beautyness. Now I’ve lost my way and forgotten what I was writing about…ah ha it was how I came to be here this morning. So let’s get over the conception, birth, child-like nightmares, teens, adolescence and so on; and just say this little adventure started in Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia…
So there I was, ready for China, visa and train ticket in possession; just waiting for the time and date stamped on said ticket. Thus, with time to kill until this, I decided upon a trip to a national park with a Polish group of adventurers that I hadn’t met in a fairground. They were here for an expedition sailing across the Gobi, not the big wheel ride as you may well have imagined. During this little side trip, they were also killing time; their intended trip enthralled me.
After some hesitation on their and my parts I went along for the ride, no not on a roller coaster but to the Gobi. And hence you can probably guess how I got to this very moment and writing this sentence by
sentence as it comes to my fingertips from the cosmos. Maybe you want details and so I’ll try and continue to give you what I think you want to maintain your reading.
It took us 5 days to make the 3-day journey to the West. We lost time somewhere between not getting on the road by afternoon and the picture taking that was an addiction to most of the crew (I counted 11 digital SLR’s, a 3D video camera, a 3D photo camera and a normal video camera). They knew what they were doing as you can see from the pictures I obtained for this blog.
We arrived at our start point and the yachts were up and ready in a day, after a bad start (one capsized into a cloud of dust on its first tack) some dusk sailing was had on this fine christening of the yachts. Since then we have made slow progress to here using the wind and to be honest I‘ve not been too impressed with the yachts - when I got on to ride the wind decided to die and so I had to push it a couple of km, my lack
of sailing experience had nothing to do with it I’m sure. The scenery on the other hand has been filed into my brain as awe-inspiring although I’ve seen no actual oars.
I’m now past presuffixes and suffixes here, and even beyond the place where trees grow from the hands of giants who told the fettered man that the world is oblique and suddenly I’m back where I started; the place where I have one hope…
Now I’m somewhere different, in a Buddhist café in Ulaan Baatar, and all I can do is read the above and remember this time where I had one hope. Of course I still have it but now I’m no longer within myself and so all the other hopes and fears have reappeared into my synapses. So after this time the trip made slightly better progress; one day the wind and surface was great and the yachts made 60-70km, I rode on the side netting for a time and for one instance we were only riding on one wheel with me up in the air and at that moment I felt alive and thoughts rushed to me like ducks to stale bread. Also we
had an interesting time sailing up a hill into wind for an hour or so when it was finally agreed to tow the yachts - the hill turned into a mountain range so we continued towing, minus masts due to the overhead power lines that we managed to run into at one stage before.
Well I have many more stories to tell on this trip and yet I feel inclined to end this entry for now because all these stories seem to pale in comparison to a dead parrot when I try to detail upon them, as above, when I’m not in the present moment of it all…but you can read some snippets in the comments on the pics…
Therefore, I end with a quote from Julie (Dutch biker I mentioned in my last blog who actually introduced me to the Polish peeps);
“At night we tumbled out of the truck, and rolled out our sleeping bags on the vast Mongolian plain, dreaming under the millions of stars above us…” Read her account here http://www.biketobeijing.blogspot.com/
And the translated Polish website for the expedition is here http://translate.google.ru/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mongolia.info.pl&sl=pl&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
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Mistadobalina
Nicholas G. Boyce
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