Mongolia Chapter 10: You Will Think I Made This Bullshit Up

It's our last day of riding.

And we are sad. We are all sad, there's no two ways about it. We wake up the the horses grazing among the tents. We wake up to a herd of goats invading our campsite. Nope, I didn't make that up. A herd of goats is apparently too stupid to realize that a human campsite is no place for them. We wake up to them all over.



And the thing that makes this day so awesome is that it doesn't start out awesome. The morning ride is hot and uncomfortable and full of flies. We stop to visit our last family, and they are very, very shy so it's difficult to really interact. We ride a little further, and then we stop for lunch. Lunch is miserable. Perfectly miserable. For me, it's not the low point of the trip, but some people claim that it was for them. It's hot. Blazingly hot. If you go into the shade, you get attacked by flies. If you stand in the sun, there are less flies. If you're willing to stand in the sun next to the extra heat of a piece of burning dung, there are even less flies. Finally, some of us realize that the best spot to be in is in the thin line of shade next to the support van. It's shady, but the heat of the metal of the van keeps SOME of the flies away. But it's no luxury.

In fact, at one moment, the picture kind of looks like this:
Nick is leaning against the van with his eyes closed trying to nap through the heat and the flies.

Aaron has crawled partway under the van where there are no flies and is sleeping.

Tina and I are both sitting on camping chairs with our faces entirely covered with a bandana and using another bandana to swat flies away.

It's pathetic, and worse yet, Dava and Mandaa have decided that we need to stay in this miserable, bug-infested, hot field for three hours because if we try to take the horses through the last mountain pass in the heat, the closeness of the trees there will be too many horseflies and we risk horses doing things like rolling in the ground. So, here we are, on our last day, stuck in this horrible fields with the bugs and the heat.

It gets a little bit better near the end. Nick and I go over to the river and wade around. There seem to be less flies over there and the water is cool. It somewhat saves things.

We finally hit the horses. The uphill ride is nice. Slow. A little hot. Flies. But not unpleasant.

And then, suddenly, everything turns around. As we hit the top of the hill, a rainstorm starts to blow in. Appropriate, no? We begin our trip with rain and it looks as though we will end with rain. Dava goes off to the top of the hill to make a phone call. Based on what happens next, we're pretty sure he was calling God to give us a perfect ending.

The ride down the hill? Amazing. Because the rain is blowing in, there's a breeze, and it's shady. And the breeze carries all the flies away. And the horses seem to get into really good moods. And it's just beautiful to look at.

We hit the bottom of the hill, and Mandaa turns and tells us it's about fifty minutes to the ... wait for it ... HOT SPRINGS where we're ending the trip if we trot.

Let me just say, nowhere in the itinerary that we received did it say that we were spending our last night together in a hot springs, so it was a wonderful surprise to find that out. After over a week of camping and riding, the idea of spending time getting clean in a lovely hot springs was so welcome. Saying it was so welcome was an understatement.

Anyway, so it's fifty minutes if we trot, and what's pretty obvious to anybody who looks around is that the rain is not holding off for fifty minutes. I kind of keep wondering at what point Mandaa is going to make us get off the horses and put our rain gear on. But we trot through the lovely breeze, through fields of herds of horses.

In the distance, we can see the ger camp of the hot springs. And that, that is when the rain starts. But Mandaa seemingly knows what we want, and she turns around and just says "We gallop through the rain - we can see the ger camp."

And I kid you not. That is how we end our trip with the horses. Galloping through a field with a herd of other horses while the rain whips through our hair and keeps us cool and happy and clean. And I could be wrong, but I felt like even the horses were happy when this happened. Lizzie helps me get my hat off and I let the rain hit my head.

And I also thing we all feel the moment of loss when we get to the ger camp and get off of our horses and realize that we're not going to be getting back on them. I say goodbye to Improvement. I still think of him every day. I'm not making that up.



But the sadness is quickly masked, at least temporarily, by the joy of cleanliness. Joel and Nick and I get into our ger, and I go off to check out the hot springs baths. And then I do a retarded run back to the ger to tell the boys to get the heck out and get into the hot springs. It's so warm! And so clean! And there's heat in the locker rooms! And showers! And shampoo!

We all end up in the hot springs, relaxing and going over memories of the trip. It's still rainy, so it's beautiful out. And we plan out giving Mandaa and Dava and the crew their tips, and we're all like "And we'll go around the table and give our favorite memories of the trip and it will be so emotional."

Shows you what we know.

That's what we do. And we're all very honest and emotional with our favorite memories. And thankful, because we are. So thankful for the amazing experience that they gave us on this trip. But we apparently don't know how to make people emotional. You wanna know what Dava did? He went and cut a piece of horsehair off of each of the tails of our horses, and then he gave that hair to us in a baggie so that we would always have a piece of the horse we rode across Mongolia with us. And the minute he takes those out, Lizzie and I begin to cry.

That piece of horse hair hangs next to my door right now. I look at it every morning. It makes me think of Improvement. It makes me think of Joel and Nick and Mandaa and Dava and the boys and Lizzie and Donna. It makes me think of open fields and how stupid it is that I'm stressed about having to bill out my consulting hours. It makes me check myself. It takes me back, and I hope that it always does.

We got back to the hot springs for a while. And then we go to sleep. For the last night in the countryside. Tomorrow it is back to the city. And the city won't make you feel the same way the countryside did.