Mongolia Chapter 2: There May Be Mutiny

Day two! Heading out!

We meet up with Nick after breakfast, check the packs and then head down to the lobby where we meet Officer Donna and Siri the Norwegian Goofball and T&A, who are blissfully married and on the dream trip they wanted to take for their honeymoon three years ago. Mandaa shows up and we're off.

Firstly, you need to meet Mandaa. Mandaa is awesome. She has a Masters in Humanities. She is a grandmother. She has lived through all three governments in Mongolia (Russian Communism, Chinese Socialism and now Democracy - though we did not ask her which she likes best because we weren't sure she' really be comfortable answering). She has a zillion jobs - translator, tour guide, administrator. She rides the most uncontrollable horse in the pack and rides lead every day we're out there. She treats tour guiding like being a mother. Sitting at the table debating whether you want to wash your hair or not because the river is cold? Mandaa solves that problem for you by heating a pot of water and ladling it over your head. She wears these sassy riding boots and cute little Bonnie Bluebell riding bonnet. When you tell her your stomach is upset, she gives you vodka. She makes this trip into something truly special.



So, what we are off in is something resembling a VW bus, but not quite. It has some strange emblem on it that resembles a Mercedes logo but it not a Mercedes logo. It also has all of our gear in it because we're not meeting up with the second support vehicle for a day or so. Uh huh. That means it has not all the seats in it. So your options are to cram in with the four person set up in the very back, in which case you have a one in four chance of sitting on a crack between the main seat and the jump seat. Or, you can sit in the three person middle section, but then you have a one in three chance of sitting in front of the cooler so your legs MUST be propped up at all times - which sounds fun until I tell you that we are off-roading in the strange little van-bus. Or, finally, you can take the front seat, but then you can see the "road" and its obstacles and you're very aware of how fast our driver, Nia, is hitting these huge potholes. I personally end up in the "legs on the cooler" spot, and let me assure you that that is no way to off-road.

This picture was actually taken at the end of the trip, but it's our whole crew with Mandaa and Nia.

Oh, and we're off-roading. I mean, we'd be off-roading it anyway because the roads once you're outside of the city are dirt, but to make it more interesting it's dumping rain. DUMPING. There's some speculation as to why it's dumping rain and I don't have an answer because I heard both things. One school of thought says that it's dumping rain because the Mongolians seeded the clouds to have a plush growing season, and one school of thought says that the Chinese seeded the clouds so that the rain would fall over Mongolia instead of over Beijing during the Olympics. I was prone to the second school of thought, but, after visiting the Beijing airport, I'm not convinced that the Chinese could have it together enough to get that pesky rain thing taken care of.

These roads are bad. BAD. And you wanna know what makes bad roads worse? It's when you're crammed into a van-bus that's over capacity and everybody is damp from the rain and then Mandaa says, "It is normally a six hour drive, but with the rain, it will be eight to ten."

It's at this point that I worry about mutiny from Nick and Pook. I kind of "sweet talked" them into taking this trip, and here I have them in a somewhat third world country, stuck in a van, wet, in POURING rain that is supposed to hold up for a large portion of the trip since it's human-induced, and we're going to be driving for about ten hours. This isn't really the scenic vision of Mongolia on horseback that I promised them, so I keep my head down.

The day progresses. There are high points. Like when we switch seats and I can get off the cooler. There's also peeing, which is an issue because we're in flatland and there's nowhere to conceal. So Tina and Siri and I develop the umbrella technique, in which we carry an umbrella to the field, two people hold it, and one person "uses the ditch" behind it. Then we move two feet to the right and repeat. Incidentally, "ditch" became the verb form of "go to the bathroom" on that trip, and I'm keeping it in my vocab.



We make a game of looking at how many cars have gotten stuck in the mud and cheering on our awesome driver, who did not get us stuck even once. We even help push a van once. By we, I don't mean me. We say the scenery is awesome, but I now know that we knew nothing because the scenery was about to get spectacular.



And by the way, what's awesome about the fact that we have to drive on these crazy, rutted, flooded dirt roads is that, fifty yards to our left, THERE IS A PERFECTLY FINE PAVED ROAD that for whatever reason just isn't open to the public.

I may or may not have asked Joel and Nick if they hated me yet a couple of times. They are good sports and optimistic.

And then ... the day, it changes.

We're there during Naadam, which you would already know about if you read the New York Times. Naadam is the festival of three manly sports: archery, horse racing and wrestling. It happens over a couple of days on the local, county and province level. We saw some amazing things and I'll be talking more about Naadam as we go along, but on this miserable day, here's what literally happens.

Around 3pm, the sun breaks out. And not that long after that, Nia points out that a local Naadam festival horse race is about to start in the field next to us. So we stop and get out into the beautiful sunshine in the beautiful countryside, and we see what we're in for.

Naadam horse races are 26 kilometers long (about 16 miles and change). The horses race the ENTIRE thing at a full gallop. The riders are 8 to 10 year olds, and they ride bareback (they also ride without shoes and largely without reins since they use their hands to whip at the horse). And these horses are BEAUTIFUL. Because they are smaller than American horses, they move faster and are less bulky. And by the end of the race they are glistening, and the little jockeys are yelping, and the excitement is everywhere. These horse races are seriously like the NFL playoffs to the Mongolians.

Anyway, in the middle of this day that I'm sure is going to go horribly wrong, the sun comes out and children race stunning horses at full speed in front of us and everything is colorful, and suddenly I know the trip will end up a fast, crazy adventure. That moment is still one of my favorite trip memories.




And then we drive, but we're about to hit paved road.

And when we hit paved road, Nia hits 90 miles per hour. It's like he waited all day for this.

Where we were driving to was a ger camp. We camped in tents all nights but two, when we stayed in ger camps. The ger is the traditional nomadic "mobile home" of the Mongolian herders, and they are lived in in towns and nomadically alike still. It's like a round tent with a solid wood frame that disassembles and a thick felt covering, just about tall enough to stand comfortably in. And very, very warm. Shockingly warm. I loved them. Think living in a studio apartment, but round, and your bathroom is outside. And you generally share it with most of your family, but it's fine because you spend most of the day outside so it's mostly for sleeping.

We also enjoy the luxury of flush toilets and showers for the last time.

And because it rained all day, the sun sets spectacularly.



And then, we get lucky, though the day was pretty lucky all in all. There's a traveling music group there to perform. Two horse head fiddle players, some kind of marimba-type thing, a harp, a folk singer, and a throat singer. And they are wonderful. They are wonderful despite the fact that right before they start there's some obnoxious American complaining to her guide that the air conditioner didn't work in their vehicle. SHUT UP CHARLOTTE, YOU'RE IN MONGOLIA. But despite Charlotte, the music is wonderful and a wonderful way to end the night. And so, so, lovely. And afterwards, Pookie tries to play the horse head fiddle.




And then we sleep, on an interpretation of "bed" that is more like "slat," but still warm and comfy. And the next day, there are temples and wrestlers ...