Ah yes, today was the day I had been looking forward to for the longest time, the archery and horse riding day. I did have romantic notions of loosing arrows on the Steppe at far off targets, riding along at full gallop, resplendent in full leather armor, my bow and quiver by my side, but it didn’t quite go as planned, or imagined. Lets face it, my view of Mongolia was basically shaped by form 2 history.
Archery I must say was a bit of a let down. We took a set of traditional woven leather archery targets, stacked them up, and let fly with a few traditional arrows, minus their flights. Tan’s, as with all competitive sports, boardgames and cards was pretty good, her archery skills are second only to my scrabble game.
We then went up to the horses, where I was fitted with a pair of leather chaps (only small ones, so don’t get too excited), a helmet and a Mongolian army saddle. The traditional Mongolian saddle is wooden, which goes a very long way to explaining why the traditional Mongolian way to ride is standing, rather than sitting.
The Mongolian domesticated horse is different, they are smaller, they are broken in very differently, apparently only after being ridden 5 – 6 times. It took us a long time to get set up, as there was a lot of people riding and a small horse shortage, especially for big bastards like myself.
Eventually we were all with horse and were off, or so we thought. My horse would not budge, no matter how many times I said “chu” (Mongolian, for go), no matter how many times I said “chu” and gave the horse a good kick in the ribs, no matter how loose I held the reins, no dice. The only bit of good news was that my horse did have a large erection, so at least our relations were off to a cordial and convivial start.
In the end the horseman, who funnily enough is named Bum-sore (I’m not sure of the correct spelling, but this is the correct pronunciation) grabbed my reins and pretty much dragged my horse and me away. Once my horse realised it had no choice, it was pretty good and did get up to a good trot along with a lot of farting during the journey. Poor Tans was denied horse riding, due to her “condition”.
Both of us had understood from breakfast, that the horse ride was only meant to be for one hour and we would come back, pick her up and head out to the Ghengis Khan statue. As the horse ride continued, well beyond an hour I began wondering what might be the trouble. I could see no other members of our party in sight, I began to wonder where the horseman might be taking me, would he take me out into the middle of the Steppe and leave me for dead, would he refuse to go further unless monetary tribute was provided or was he simply thinking sod this, I’m up for a bit of a ride. It turns out none of these were the case, atop the next rise 250 Tonnes of Mongolia’s finest stainless steel lay gleaming in the sun, there stood Ghengis Khan, mounted on his horse, totally dominating the valley and surrounds, much as he had done in life.
We dismounted and walked over to the carpark, where a couple of Mongolian chaps had their 3 year old pet eagle. For a mere 2,000 Tugruk, I could hold it on my arm and be photographed. I have a fear of birds and this was total immersion therapy, I happened to glance over at the eagle and it’s beak was open and it’s beady little eyes bored deep into my soul, I asked if it was okay to still have my glasses on, everyone agreed it was no problem, I was not so sure so gave the bird back.
Due to the previous mix up, I had no camera or money. However one of the others we were traveling with lent me the money to enter the monument. Inside is a 9 metre high riding boot, restaurant and gift shop. After seeing this, you then ascend a lift, which is inside the horses rump, walk through the belly of the horse to emerge, via Ghengis’s crotch onto the horses neck, where a panoramic view of the Steppe awaits. Whilst Ghengis’s achievements in life are more than impressive, his monument in death will become something like the big banana or big pineapple, which is a real shame, given that the statue is supremely impressive.
We walked back to our trusty steeds and mounted up for the ride back. My horse let out a supremely loud and odoriferous 10 second fart, it had been doing this all day, even though we had forced it forward, and urged it on, it was determined to get me back in some way. We got back into camp at around 3pm, after 3 hours in the saddle. Later I found out I had been given the horse that pulls the wagon, the only one capable of carrying me. This it seems was the trouble.
For lunch, we had a nice chicken fillet, in apricot sauce with rice. Even though we came to see Mongolia, learn about Mongolian culture and eat Mongolian food, it seems that Mongolians are determined to do everything in their power to shield us pampered westerners from the culinary fruits of this country. This has been a bit of a disappointment, 4 days in Mongolia and all the cuisine I have eaten can only be described as “international”, maybe they are doing us a favor, maybe Mongolian food is total crap, whatever the case I would really like to find out for myself.
After lunch, we rode our horses out to a nomadic family for an afternoon visit, as it was only 4 km’s away, Tans walked with one of our guides. We were shown into their ger and served steaming bowls of Mongolian salt tea, mutton blood sausage and cold mutton liver, all freshly butchered. The salt tea was made from fresh cows milk, water, tea and salt, boiled over the fire in the ger. As you can imagine, conversation didn’t last long as no-one spoke English and we didn’t speak Mongolian. Tan’s who basically couldn’t eat or drink anything went outside and played with the kids. There was a 13 year old boy, a 5 year old and a 3 year old. The 3 year old had very long hair, as Mongolians grow the childs hair and shave it when they are around 3.5 years old. He looked like a little Ghengis and the warriors blood ran strong in his veins.
The kids had a poor worn out dog, they would take great delight in pulling it’s tail, riding it around like a horse shouting “chu” and generally giving it a hard time. However the dog took it all in it’s stride. Little Ghengis and I kicked the ball around for a while, but the game soon deteriorated into which Mongolian kid can kick the ball the furthest out into the Steppe and make the new foreigner run after it. Once they got tired of this the little one kicked the ball into a fenced off area and when I went to get it tried to lock me in there! Once I escaped from this, there was more riding of the dog and the bigger boys to be had. Even I got down on the ground but they were a little bit wary of riding me like a horse, so instead they layed into me with badminton raquets, at first it was light taps, to try and get me to move, but we had to stop that game as the tapping was getting a little bit rough. They were great kids and it was lots of fun.
The 13 year old boy Hos-toi, invited us over to meet his family. It turns out that he is quite an experienced and accomplished jockey. He’d been a jockey since he was 6 years old and has come 5th in the Nadam races, he is also a champion bareback rider. We munched on some fried bread and looked through some family photos before making our goodbyes and walking back to camp.
During the walk back one of the camp dogs, came running after us carrying a horses foreleg, still with an attached hoof. He was ever so proud of himself, flinging it around his head and happily munching away on it. Close to camp he threw himself on his back, so we could stroke his belly and then spent the rest of the afternoon with us, nipping our ankles, tugging on our pants legs and on for a big play. From this point on, everytime we saw him, he would race after us for a pat and a play.
After a dinner of mutton soup with a dumpling skin on top, much like a pie crust we packed our things and took a few photos of the sunset and the moon. The temperature had plummeted to around 7 degrees and it was quite chilly, we waited in our ger until around 10pm until it was completely dark so we could go and look at the stars.
All I had wanted to see in Mongolia was a clear night on the steppe and luckily for me we were not let down. We walked away from the lights of the camp, with our new canine friend from the afternoon as our fearless protector, there are wolves and foxes on the steppe, however it was highly unlikely that we would encounter one, which was lucky for us as the dog was scared of it’s own shadow. The dog could see it’s shadow in the beam of the torch, it gave chase, sniffed around to see where this “other” dog might be and also threw in a few menacing growls for good measure. The poor thing couldn’t figure out what was going on and became especially frightened of this new “big black dog” and stayed well away from the torchlight and pretty close to my legs from that point on. As you can imagine the stars were amazing, we could clearly see the milky way, satellites, the big dipper, the north star, Venus, and numerous shooting stars.
We walked back to camp with the dog nipping at our heels, tugging on our pants and nipping at our fingers, again back into play mode once it realised we were going back to camp.
We had a large fire lit in our ger and fell asleep at around 11:30 pm.






























