One Good Eye

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.

Not too much happened today, we left Houstai bound for Elstai via Ulaanbaatar. The rain was still pelting down hard, it had been raining heavily all night and on into the morning. A pretty good effort for a country that has a monthly average rainfall of around 50mm (check this fact).

Again, I’m sure you’re all caught up by now and know that Tans is up the duff. This means that she has to go to the toilet every 30 minutes. After holding on for a record 13 hours, there was no way she was able to get dressed, and get down to the toilets. Times such as these call for desperate measures, so we managed to channel MacGyver and use our bin as a makeshift toilet. I must admit I also needed to go badly and a walk to the toilet block in horizontal rain was not appealing, so I also went via the bin option.

At breakfast we watched as a 3 centimetre tidal wave of water washed through the door of the restaurant. The canvas awning out the back of the restaurant was full of water that the workers were trying to clear.

We spent 3 hours bumping along the offroad tracks, I was hanging out to get back on the bitumen, but once back on it, it wasn’t much different from the offroad tracks.

We stopped along the way at a traditional Mongolian driver reviver centre and picked up a couple of bottles of airag. Airag is fermented mares milk, that has a slight effervescence and is mildly alcoholic, think milk based beer. It was still overcast, but the rains had stopped.

As soon as we arrived at Elstai and exited the vehicle the heavens opened and we trudged to the ger in yet more rain.

After a lunch of apricot chicken, not a traditional Mongolian staple, we waited in our ger until the rains cleared and then went for a walk around Elstai. We met the gardner and the lady that looks after the camp, we went for a short stroll and looked at the horses. Tans went to sleep. I sat out the front of the ger, read my book, watched the clouds roll across the Steppe and put away half a bottle of airag.

Whilst sitting around outside, I saw two kites fighting and flying all over and around me, so close that I could hear the flapping of their wings. Herds of goats and horses can be seen off in the distance and endless rolling hills.

For dinner, we had a great vegetable soup, with mutton spine, very tasty. We played traditional Mongolian games with knuckle bones and watched a bit of Mongolian TV. Then it was off to bed.

We woke up at the respectable hour of 8 and headed up for a breakfast of pancakes, cucumber, tomato and yak milk cheese. After this we boarded our now fixed car and headed out onto the Steppe.

We stopped frequently looking for Marmotts. Marmotts are a small rodent like creature, not unlike a ferret that lives on the Steppe and eats berries, grasses and other plants. Tan’s and our driver, Gumbolt were the best at spotting them, I managed to see around 2. However I did manage to be crowned official marmott whisperer of our group, as I was able to mimic their calls very well after copying Gumbolt.

Marmotts, were nearly hunted to extinction, and are now protected. Imagine an animal that spends its time munching on sage, thyme and other herbs making itself especially tasty, whilst having fur that is pretty much indistinguishable from sable. It wasn’t looking good for the Marmott due to their great taste and saleable skins, however now with the new ban, it seems their numbers are on the increase.

The Steppe is amazing, from a distance its just rolling green hills, but up close it is many thousands of plants that present an astounding biodiversity. Wild onions, Mongolian Sage, Mongolian Thyme, wild rhubarb, spearmint, medicinal plants that prevent diarrhea and wild garlic. Every step releases a strong smell of herby goodness that just makes you feel good. This combined with beautiful sunshine, an azure blue sky, endless solitude in every direction and a gentle cooling breeze make what is effectively a totally inhospitable landscape feel like a paradise on earth.

We stopped for a lunch of mystery meat and cheese sandwiches, meatballs, rice and cooked vegetables, basic, but good and tasty. Numerous Kites (a bird of prey) were circling overhead, attracted by the scent of our lunch.

We saw some gravesites from the Bronze Age in 300 AD and also saw the gravesite of a Turkish Noble that was erected circa 600 AD. This grave had hundreds of stone carvings stretching off into the distance, as if they were all queued up waiting to pay tribute to a great warrior or elder statesman.

We drove on and spotted deer, more marmott, numerous kites and big ugly vultures feasting on carrion. Aside from the animals, the Steppe is in bloom this time of year, with yellow, vivid white, purple, orange and red flowers sprinkled like hundreds and thousands across the entire landscape.

We returned home for a dinner of “beef” stew, vegetables and rice. After dinner we drove off into a rainstorm to look at the wild horses, Tahkis. We saw about 8 Takhis and gave up, as we were all pretty soaked. The rain was being relentlessly driven into us by huge gusts of wind, its strength unchecked by trees, buildings or any other kind of wind break. There was also a fair bit of lightning. Lightning is a big problem in Mongolia as there are no tall buildings or trees to conduct it, it usually zaps a number of people, usually children on horseback, each year.

I was also given my Mongolian name this evening, I am Bat-erdene, named after the 10 time traditional Mongolian wrestling champion and national hero. Apparently this is due to my cool temperament, but mostly due to my size. I don’t think I’m getting out of Mongolia without wrestling someone.

The rainstorm I mentioned before is still going, but our Ger is warm and cozy, parts of it are a little damp, as rain is getting in through the skylight, but it is pouring outside, if we were in a normal tent, we’d be soaked through, cold and miserable.

I think we woke up at around 7am. The train was stopped in a featureless, flat and dusty landscape. It was dusty and hot, our compartment was stuffy, we still couldn’t open the window due to the dust.

The armpits of hell and his mates were chowing down on raw onion, raw garlic and possibly even carrion. At least thats how it smelt. Yes all of this managed to seep through into our compartment.

The train remained stopped here, again with locked toilets for around 2 hours. At 9am we got moving, but it was still pretty uncomfortable, as our compartment was hot, dusty and smelt like super concentrated garlic.

We stopped again about 1.5 hours later. I don’t know where, somewhere between Zamyn Uud and Ulaanbaatar. We were able to get off the train and have a wander. People on the platform were selling ice cream, soup noodles, dumplings and some nice young lads gave us some amethyst. We politely said no and gave it back, but they said “no money” and ran off, big smiles all round.

In case you are wondering, the reason why train toilets are locked at the station are because their contents are vented directly onto the tracks, but it seems that someone forgot to lock the toilets at this station and I was able to watch a couple of large turds drop out of a train carriage, all before breakfast and my morning ablutions.

We made our way down to the dining car. During the bogey exchange the Chinese dining car had been replaced with a Mongolian one. The Mongolian car was far far superior in terms of service, quality of food and decor. We sat at carved wooden tables, with carved wooden backdrops under the watchful eye of golden Elk heads stuck to the bulkhead between each window. We breakfasted on schnitzel with cheese, rice, onions cooked in beetroot juice and chips. The food was very good, but bloody expensive.

Given the stench in our carriage we spent a good deal of time in the dining car and returned to our cabin about two hours later.

By this time the landscape had changed again and we were now on the rolling green hills of the Mongolian Steppe, so we could open our window, keep our door closed and when the train was moving really really fast, no smell from the armpits of hell. Tan fell asleep, I read.

We got into Ulaanbaatar around 1 hour late, met our guide, stopped for a quick beer, got some water at the Supermarket and hit the road.

Ulaanbaatar traffic gives Beijing traffic a run for it’s money. There are lots of old Soviet era trucks, vans and a couple of UAV jeeps thrown in for good measure. The wealthy drive fully pimped out Landcruisers, resplendent with graphics, most of which say LANDCRUISER, just so you are sure it’s a Landcruiser and about 12 rally spotlights on the roof and bull bar. There are new buildings and old Soviet era “workers” apartments, factories making biscuits and woolen garments are on the outskirts of town.

Around 30 minutes outside Ulaanbaatar we promptly broke down, so we decided to go for a walk on the Steppe, we watched horses whilst our guide pointed out Mongolian Sage and Mongolian Adel-vise, there were 3 Gers off in the distance.

After our walk we went back to our van, and Humbolt our driver had off his shirt and was under the car, after changing out the now busted alternator. Without an alternator, we were going nowhere, on the spur of the moment we decided to visit the nomads.

After a warm welcome, with men sitting on the man side of the Ger and the women on the woman side, close to the kitchen and cooking pots, just in case any man needs something,

The inside of the Ger was filled with saddles, silks, horse numbers, comfy cushions and carpets on the mens side. On the womens side was the furniture and cooking utensils. We were seated around a low table, and began our introductions. We met Gantulga and his wife Enkhjarjal.

We had a tin of biscuits that we gave to the family, in return we were given sweets, bread and homemade Mongolian moonshine. The moonshine which is named shimiin arkhi, is made from cows milk, which is made into yoghurt, then distilled to yield something that tastes a lot like Korean soju, with a horsey aftertaste. It was actually pretty good. I drank two bowls, as it is bad form to refuse things given to you in Mongolia and Tanya could only have a sip out of hers.

The family were horse trainers and had come 3rd in the 2009 Nadam festival horse racing. Quite a big achievement given that the field consisted of 310 horses, in a race of over 8 kilometers. We took photos of the family in their traditional Mongolian clothes and then it was dress up time, where I posed for photos in the traditional hat, coat and sash.

The cousins dropped by and it turned out that they had been to Australia for a convention on horseracing and breeding, that was held at Royal Randwick.

After around 1 hour spent with the family a replacement van had arrived with a new alternator and we were off. Driving down the road we saw a mob of horses, around 20 or 30 racing along at full gallop, kicking up dust, as they raced off into the sunset, a truly amazing sight.

We left the road and drove on the steppe, all the way to houstei arriving at the Ger camp at around 9pm, where we had a dinner of chicken caccitore and pasta. We sat around chatting with our guide, we listened to some traditional Mongolian singing, which set the restaurant dog howling and growling.

I had another Ghengis lager, after narrowly managing an invite to go and drink vodka with the Mongolian blokes, I managed to politely disengage and we finally got to have a shower after around 40 hours of traveling.

We are staying in a traditional Ger, it smells like horse, but the interior is very nice. We have a cozy wood burning stove, traditional orange Mongolian furniture, consisting of a low table, little stools and relatively comfy beds, it’s pretty windy outside and the rustling of the Ger is noisy, but it’s warm inside and comfortable.

Coming to you live from a Ger at Houstai on the Mongolian Steppe. Today, is day one of our roughly 4 week adventure through a bit of China, Mongolia, Siberia and finally Russia.

Even though China is now a free market economic powerhouse, they can still make the trains run on time…….well at least leave on time, we left precisely at 7:47am, it seems some vestiges of Communism still remain.

About 3 hours into the journey I was getting pretty worried, sure, we were traveling through an amazing landscape of high limestone cliffs and rock formations, watching ancient Chinese villages with ancient Chinese stone houses whizzing past our windows, but nothing funny or noteworthy had happened to us. It seemed that we were stuck on one side of a massive sarchasm. The trip pretty much went along this way, for the next 12 or so hours.

We did go to the dining car, and we did have a meal of “serviceable” Chinese food (sweet and sour pork, crispy chicken and rice), the Hienekens were cold, the table cloth was dirty, someone had left a filthy jar of tea on our table and even though we were only one of two people eating, they still managed to forget our order. But I’m used to such high levels of service and pride in ones work in China. Towards the end of our meal the chef, the chief conductor and one of the waiters in said dining car decided to light up, in clear view of Tan’s, who is very clearly up the duff.

Merely blogging about the ineptitude of a couple of China Railways employees is not enough for the epic journey, that is the Trans Siberian. When we stopped at Erlian, I was not going to be disappointed.

At Erlian, they have to have a bogey exchange, and no this is not a common form of Chinese greeting, that involves your nostril being probed by a strangers finger. The trains wheels are changed from the Chinese gauge to the Mongolian / Russian gauge, which involves being shunted into a large shed, having your train carriage jacked up, lifted off of it’s old wheels and having new wheels attached. A pretty interesting thing to watch. Based on the excited talking, numerous picture taking and lots of gesticulating the German anoraks in our carriage were getting a lot more out of it than we were.

This is where things get really interesting. A couple of Chinese guys get on the train. One is carrying a couple of sheaves of wheat, the other about 5 or 6 massive sacks of god only knows what, both smell like the armpits of hell. They set up in the compartment next to ours. We have to close our door to keep out the smell, but it is so strong it still manages to faintly permeat our compartment.

Now I’ve traveled to many parts of the world and nearly all of Asia and I’ve never smelt something like this. I would dry reach, every time I had to go past their compartment. Their mates also liked to spend lots of time smoking and dropping lit cigarettes next to the sheaves of wheat and standing around in the corridor, not getting out of peoples way, even when spoken to in comprehensible Chinese.

To top all of this off, we’ve basically been going nowhere fast since about 8:30pm, when we arrived into Erlian. We had to go through Chinese border formalities, the bogey exchange and Mongolian border formalities. The whole process took around 6 hours, for most of this time the train toilets are locked, the train isn’t moving fast enough to get rid of the stench and we can’t really open our windows because the cabin fills with a fog of fine desert dust when we do. Strangely enough the armpits of hell next door keeps opening the windows to look out into the darkened night, even when the conductor in our carriage is running around shutting them.

After having my passport collected and returned by a Mongolian woman with gold eyeshadow and gold nail polish, you may laugh, but she was totally pulling it off, we fell into a fitful, sweaty and grimy sleep.