Mongolia Chapter 5: Obligatory Travel Puke Story

After a lovely morning breakfast, we hop in the vans to rush off to one more Naadam horse race. What's special about this race is that Dava gets to come to this race. Dava is a horse wrangler, remember? But because it's his job, instead of going to all the Naadam races, he's been hauling our asses around. So this is really the only race that he gets to see, and his happiness is infectious. He's so excited by the racers and the results and all of it. And after the race, he finds trainers and the winning jockeys for us to ask questions too. It was great. Here are some pictures of the morning. (The point of the second picture is to show you how much horse sweat was on that boy's pants since he had ridden bareback).




Nope! No puking yet!

Then we have a lovely morning ride. I mean a really lovely morning ride, across a flat meadow, through a herd of yak, through a herd of cows. There's this precious moment where we're all trotting down a road into Tsetserleg and we look over and see that Dava is watching us ride with this huge smile of pride on his face for his horses and his wranglers and us. It's very sweet.

We're headed to Tsetserleg for the last day of Naadam festivals. So we have this lovely, lovely ride into town, and then we meet up with one of the vans for lunch. Now, one thing that is obvious about the Boojum staff is that they pay attention to what we like, and they adjust to it (refer to story about beer). And they had noticed that we loved the "fast food" meat pies at the Naadam festival the day before, so that was what was prepared for us for lunch, and we were in heaven.

Nope! No puking yet!

We spent the afternoon at this larger Naadam festival, which featured some interesting wrestling, complete with controversy. There was a very buff wrestler who was very new to the scene. The day before, he had fought a more established wrestler and I think the match was a draw, but there was some question about it. So the judges had ordered a rematch. Except that the more established fighter didn't want to fight the younger fighter, so we sat around for a long time waiting for him to take the field. And when he did, we saw why he didn't want a rematch. He got his booty kicked in less than thirty seconds.

We spent the rest of the afternoon taking in Naadam. It's crazy, because one thing I'd never think to do is to wear heals and good clothes to a dirty field, but then again, I'm American. These girls were DRESSED to the NINES. I wonder how many people find their eventual mate at a Naadam festival? Here are some pictures from the day.





Nope. No puking here yet!

So, we are walking out of Naadam. And Tina and Siri start asking if anybody's stomach is upset. And the rest of us are all like, "Um, no." But Tina & Siris' stomachs are upset. So Mandaa decides that they will have to ride in the van instead of take horses back, and we feel so badly for them. The rest of us jump on our horses and head over to the local Buddhist monastery. We tour the old monastery remnants and historical museum, complete with a picture of Mongolia's prize cosmonaut, whom they pretty much worship. It's cute. There are also these great plaques with sayings from Genghis that I wish I could remember, but one of them definitely had to do with women knowing their place. The monastery was fun and lovely, and here are some pictures.






And then, with Tina & Siri almost passed out in the van, we hop back on the horses to ride back to camp. We've noticed the rain clouds coming close...

Judging what rain clouds were going to do was a constantly fun game on this trip. The Mongolian landscape is really expansive. So you'd see some very dark rain clouds quite far off in the distance, and it would appear that the wind was blowing them in the opposite direction. But then without warning the wind would shift and suddenly the rain would be right on top of you. Or, alternatively, it would appear that the rain was about to hit you full on, so you'd all get off the horses, put on your hot and uncomfortable rain gear, get back on the horses, sweat in your rain gear, and then see that the wind had blown the rain away from you and have to stop again to get the rain gear back off, usually only to repeat that again later. It was a fun game. Sometimes.

But on this day, on this day the rain hits us full force. And it's probably one of the worse rain storms we get caught in. Worse yet, it's windy, and things are blowing all over the place since we're still in town, and the horses are getting spooky. So Mandaa makes the call that it's not safe for us to ride and makes us all get down and get in the vans while she and the wranglers get the horses back to camp. We're honestly all a little bummed about not getting to ride through the rain storm, but one of the Boojum guides had actually been killed by being struck by lightening not that long ago, and we were going to be riding through an open field, so we can't really argue with her logic. I mean, honestly, it was hard to ever argue with Mandaa's logic.

Here it comes! Puking story comes here!

So, I'm sitting next to Siri in the van. I should note that on the way to camp in this van, we never made any effort to actually use roads. It was off-roading through the fields the whole way, so needless to say it was bumpy. Bumpy is putting it nicely. And Siri (and I presume Tina's) stomach was a mess by this point. Anyway, she makes it through the ride okay. And as we're literally pulling within 10 feet of camp - like we could stop the van and get out and walk at any point - she looks at me with this adorable little sad look on her face and holds out her hat and says, "I have my hat ready just in case I need to puke in it."

And I smile at her and think to myself, "Oh, little Siri. We're home. You're not going to puke."

And at that EXACT moment, Nia hits a bump unlike any bump we experience at any point in the trip before or after this moment. It is HUGE. Everybody in the van is pitched forward and saddle bags and jackets and water bottles go flying. And Siri looks back over at me again with a small and sad look on her face ...

And then ...

She immediately leans over her hat and starts puking in it.

The poor girl was so embarrassed. We managed to get the hat thrown out of the window, and it's quite sad but we don't get a picture of the poor discarded hat on the ground. Later, Siri would prove that she was a trooper by just washing the hat out and continuing to wear it. But at this moment, all she wanted to do was to go lay in her tent, which was understandable.

The rest of the evening is lovely. By most accounts it's one of our best meals (some chicken wrapped around vegetables). I get to wash my hair, which was ecstasy. And I know I did not conceal the ecstasy because Lizzie told me she could hear my cry of ecstasy all the way in her tent the first moment I poured water over my hair. Though that is a fun story. I was down by the river using a cup to dump river water over my hair. River water is cold, ya'll, so I'm not sure what she heard was ecstasy or shock, but either way. And as I'm doing this, my trip secret crush H'asha comes down to me with a bucket of warm water he's heated up for me. And so I take a cup of that and dump it over my head, except that what H'asha meant when he said "warmed up" was "boiled" and I'm pretty sure I actually lost hair in the singing process from that. But clean hair is a luxury, and it felt good.

And it's a good thing that this day was so luxurious, because the next day ...