Gobi Desert
Another excursion in Mongolia complete and only one more to go before my visa runs out and I am forced to leave this amazing country. My latest travels took me on a 5 day route through a small piece of the Gobi desert and all I can say is wow.
I found a company that organizes trips where you stay with local nomadic families. The families earn some extra money by hosting you and feeding you and you experience first hand their day to day life. What an incredible insight into a way of life that is so far removed from anything in North America. Armed only with a Mongolian-English phrasebook provided by the company I set off on a bus with a couple from the UK/Ireland to begin our nomadic journey.
The adventure started at the bus station where as soon as I stepped out of the taxi and before I had even begun to try and decipher the Cyrillic names on the buses to figure out which one I needed to be on some man immediately came over to help me out. He looked at my ticket, took me over to talk to another group of people and then handed me over to another man who escorted me right to the door of my bus. These small acts of kindness are part of what makes traveling such an incredible experience.
On the bus ride out we left the green hills of Ulaanbaatar and headed into barren scrubby desert landscape. A lady sitting in front of me took an interest in me and began speaking in Mongolian to me. Lost for a reply I pulled out my phrasebook and she immediately forced the man sitting next to her to get up and switch seats with me. She spent the next hour teaching me Mongolian, showing me photos of her family and communicating with a series of charades. A great way to pass the time on a long journey. Mongolian is an extremely difficult language to learn. Many of the sounds of the language don't exist in English which led to much amusement of the other passengers sitting around me listening to my feeble attempts at pronunciation.
At the bus station we were met by a driver and the three of us piled into an ancient Soviet jeep and we set off into the remote desert on dirt tracks that led through an absolutely desolate landscape. We got our first taste of just how massive the desert is and just how easy it would be to get lost with no trees, signs or features to orient yourself with. After a couple of hours of flying over bumps, fishtailing in sand and generally fun offroading we arrived at our first ger and were left to start our journey between families.
It was an amazing experience as we were forced to communicate with the families only speaking small amounts of English and us only speaking small amounts of Mongolian. Since the families still had to go about their daily lives we spent the 5 days with absolutely no schedule and no idea what would happen next. We ate whenever food was served, left to go to the next family when we were told it was time to leave and just went with the flow. The families passed us off like a relay baton so we always had a guide to the next destination. We traveled by camel, horse cart, walking, clinging for dear life to the back of motorcycles and by car. Everyday was a new surprise for how we would get around.
We slept in traditional gers mostly on the ground with only a rug for cushioning. All the families we stayed with had two gers so we had a ger to ourselves to sleep in except for the first night. On the first night the ger we stayed in had one single bed where the mother and two daughters slept. The husband and the three of us lined up like sardines on the floor and settled in for what felt like a giant slumber party.
Now I can profess my love for the ger. It is an incredible structure built with a wooden frame and a felt covering. It is held together with only ropes and straps so that it can be disassembled and moved when needed. A central stove is used for cooking and heating in the cold. There are a number of ger customs that are followed so no matter which ger you enter you can expect it to be somewhat familiar. The door always faces South and to the North is always the altar area where religious items, family photos, awards and other meaningful objects are kept. To the west is where guests sit, but the North position is reserved for the most elder man of the house. You move around the ger in a clockwise direction and never whistle inside. The nomadic families have found ways to incorporate the modern into their lifestyle and every family we visited had a solar panel, TV, satellite dish and some batteries to run lights, charge cell phones etc. Talk about living off the grid! Since there are no trees in the desert dung is used for fuel. The other interesting feature of traditional Mongolian culture is that knocking does not exist. Anyone is free to simply enter at will.
Most families had herds of goats and sheep and I was completely humbled one morning by having a 6 year old girl teach me how to milk a goat. I was pretty terrible at it. This leads to the food. The families subsist almost entirely off of meat and dairy since that is what their animals provide. The only additions are flour and maybe pasta, rice and potatoes if you are lucky. We were well fed the entire time eating meat with rice, meat with pasta, meat dumplings, meat soup and for breakfast fried bread. I drank gallons of Mongolian milk tea, boiled milk with a tiny bit of tea and salt added. Every family has a thermos of hot tea and a plate of curd products ready for the arrival of visitors. The curd products took a bit of getting used to, but I now have an appreciation for them.
The most bizarre food experience came on my last day. We stopped off on our way back to town to pick up a full goat, skinned and gutted, from a family to take to town. While we were there a giant bowl full of the cooked innards of the goat appeared and my driver began filling a small bowl with random goat guts for me. I am still not exactly sure what I ate, but as far as I can tell I think I had some liver and intestine that I think was full of cooked blood. I tried a bit of everything and stomached enough to be polite before handing the bowl back for him to finish off.
The scenery in the desert was beautiful. The sheer vastness was awe inspiring with gorgeous sunsets and views that extended for miles and miles. The highlight was a rocky area full of giant boulder hills, caves and strange formations. We were so lucky to experience the silence of the desert, such a relief after spending almost a week in the crazy city of Ulaanbaatar.
Of course, the main highlight was the families we met along the way. They all welcomed us in with open arms and we were able to laugh despite our limited communication. The kids were incredible. We had an 11 year old boy lead us on a long trek to the next ger through the hot afternoon sun. He also ripped around on a motorbike all on his own to do various chores and took care of his two younger sisters. We had three young girls prepare a play dinner for us using broken dishes, sand and flowers they had picked. They took us to a hill to watch the sunset and showed us how to play some traditional Mongolian games. It was amazing watching them keep themselves entertained with very little. My favorite was a 6 year old boy who had an old wooden stick with an old motorcycle throttle and grips attached. He spent hours running around pretending to be riding a motorcycle complete with very realistic sound effects.
My final adventure came due to some poor planning on my part. When I arrived at the bus station back in Ulaanbaatar I needed to take a taxi back to my hostel. Stupidly I had no map, no address and no telephone number and the English name of the place meant nothing to the taxi driver. I tried a series of tactics to explain where I needed to go including trying to make train noises since my hostel is near the train station. The driver was completely confused by my poor attempts. By the end I had a huge group of people trying to help as he kept calling people over, but no one spoke any English. Eventually using a shopping bag from a store near my hostel I was able to communicate the general direction we needed to go. I have never been so happy as I was when we got close enough to my hostel that I could get out and walk the rest of the way.
Tomorrow I leave Ulaanbaatar once again to head out to Western Mongolia where the mountains are. I am so excited to get out and do some hiking. Until next time please have a look at my photos of the Gobi which are posted at the usual place:
https://plus.google.com/112392129776163836192