Chapter 13 - A surreal start to crossing the Mongolian Steppe
We travel bumpy roads across the Mongolian Steppe in our Twinkies swallowing feasting flies, discovering monasteries, rain storms and vast landscapes.
The Surreal Life
Somewhere in central Mongolia, Thursday, 13 July 2006
I am lying on a sleeping pad in a field, surrounded by goats in the middle of central Mongolia. If this isn’t “the surreal life,” I’m not sure what is. In order to fill you in on our journey so far, I have chosen not to change any names to protect the innocent, as I doubt any of us are “innocent.”
Our Tuesday night began harmlessly enough at the Indian restaurant. Robin, in his professional capacity and considering the previous night, was adamantly refusing to drink any alcohol. After all, we did have an early morning 8 a.m. start to our trip. His refusal proved weak after Derek’s purchase of a bottle of “Chinggis vodka.” We then twisted his rubber arm and convinced him to take us to a nightclub — Jargalan suggested “Strings,” which had a Filipino band playing “Latin” music. The club was pretty much what you would expect in an Asian town, and the band was indeed playing “Latin” music—if by “Latin” you mean Eurythmics. That said, the band was actually a good cover band with a very attractive lead singer.
The clubbing contingent included Derek, Scott, Steve, Robin, Sarah, and myself. Jargalan had dropped us off and gleefully retired to bed. Prior to leaving the restaurant, Robin had given all of us a pep talk. He reminded us how mad the ride was going to be for the next few days and how it would be impossible to get anything—such as batteries—charged.
I figured I’d have the morning to pack.
When we walked through the doors of the nightclub, I could sense how this night might end up. On the dance floor was a guy with a handlebar moustache dancing with a beautiful Mongolian girl—his foreign status was helping his chances at picking up the ladies here in Ulaanbaatar. We also noticed a table of attractive women who were taking turns dancing. There was also a Russian guy sitting at a table, downing beer as if he needed to drown his sorrows after being caught in an unholy land. He was being waited upon and hit on by two attractive Mongolian women. Derek found out that “Sergei the boxer,” as he called him, disliked Mongolian women. We figured he must have been a pimp to those women.
To put a long story short, we got drunk, I started dancing, and then we all started dancing. This led to Derek and me dancing with two of the aforementioned Mongolian girls. Sarah had told me earlier to make sure she didn’t get too drunk and to help her limit the alcohol. Never trust a drunk to take care of another drunk. Next thing I knew, she was out singing and dancing with the rest of us and some Mongolian guys—at least I think that’s what happened; my memories are a little hazy.
I was getting to know this cute Mongolian girl named Chimgee and getting progressively more inebriated. It was becoming quite obvious, even in my drunken state, that she was expecting me to take her back to my hotel. This was when somehow my brain performed some mystical kung-fu, drunken warrior–style training and allowed my senses to finally surface and realize the following:
Robin was missing.
Derek was gone.
The girl (Chimgee’s friend) who had been dancing with Derek had also disappeared.
In fact, I was alone. Derek had likely taken the girl back to our shared hotel room. Chimgee insisted on giving me her phone number as I frantically tried to find my jacket—which I couldn’t find—and booked it back to the hotel. I managed to say the hotel’s name clearly enough to the taxi driver that he took me there and didn’t charge me an exorbitant amount.
At the same time my taxi pulled in, so did one carrying Robin. According to Robin, Steve, Sarah, and Scott had been sent back earlier in cabs. Derek and his lass had been sent in a separate cab. And here my worst fears were realized: Derek had picked up a girl, and I would need to sleep elsewhere that night. Robin kindly offered the spare bed in his room, though I doubt he had much choice at this point, considering my condition. Looming in a mere three hours was our wake-up call for beginning our trek. Sitting in Robin’s room, thoroughly drunk, I showed him Chimgee’s number and made a drunken attempt to place it carefully back in my pants pocket for later use—at which point I passed out.
Sharp at 7 a.m., the door was shaken by hurried knocking. Still in a drunken haze, I scrambled for my pants and said to Robin, “Oh boy, this is not going to look good at all,” and certainly it must have been entertaining for Lori to watch me exiting Robin’s room half undressed, still mostly drunk, and bouncing off a couple of walls. Little was registering other than the urgent need to pack and have breakfast.
I opened the door to Derek’s and my room, hoping to find only Derek’s sleeping carcass, but of course the gods had not yet stopped playing with me. Eliciting a drunken shudder, I vanished into the bathroom and let the couple continue their, err… goodbyes? I’m positive I was still inebriated when I exited the shower, found my clothes, said hello to a half-naked Mongolian girl, and disappeared to have a semblance of breakfast.
Yeah, completely surreal.
I still had not packed. Any food that might have been placed into my gut was going to be rejected by my body in short order, so I grabbed Steve and went to wake Scott. Fortunately, he had left his door open and it was easy to torment the poor guy out of bed. Next, I headed back to my room, where Derek bid farewell to the girl, and I quickly packed my gear and sheepishly boarded the van with a still-sobering Sarah, green-in-the-face Scott, and a mostly-drunk, sleep-deprived Derek.
A couple more points to round out the drunken evening: as karma would have it, I lost Chimgee’s number. Now that I had time to consider the happenings, the clientele, and the various conversations, I suspect she would be easy to find at the nightclub in Ulaanbaatar should I—or anyone else—go back. I decided she was, perhaps, not the kind of person I was looking for.
An hour into our bumpy road trip, Scott signaled to Danielle, and the van screeched to a halt as we saw Scott retching into a plastic bag.
Monastical Meanderings
Somewhere in Central Mongolia, Thursday, 13 July 2006
Our journey around Mongolia was to traverse in a circle anticlockwise from Ulaanbaatar to the north and then south to the lesser Gobi desert. Having not had a chance to really look at the itinerary—it had been a plan, had I not gone out drinking—I was completely in the dark about what to expect or even where we were going. You, gentle reader, will be discovering everything at the same time as I do.
We have lovingly dubbed the two Russian-made four-wheel-drive vans “Twinkies” due to their shape. My Twinkie for the first day was the grey van, driven by a portly gentleman named Naidam. The second Twinkie is green. I had already been warned by Anton in Irkutsk that Mongolia had few paved roads—most, he said, were simply well-travelled paths across the Steppe. By the end of the first day, when we left the main paved road, the Twinkies seemed to bounce more than drive, and my stomach travelled up to my teeth a number of times.
Our first day was a couple-hundred-kilometre drive to the Amarbayasgalant Monastery. We were to stay in a tourist gir camp in the vicinity of the monastery.
Before I go any further, let me describe a gir.
A gir—called a yurt in Russia and other places—is the traditional dwelling of the nomadic Mongolians. It’s circular in shape, white/grey in colour, and protected by felt. The inside is held up with wooden sticks that fan out from the central high point, with latticework around the side. A hole in the centre allows for a smokestack for the oven. A single door adorns the structure and always opens to the south to prevent the prevailing north wind from entering during the winter months. A gir is fairly roomy, with the ability to sleep a number of people. You might even be able to stand fully inside one of these—though remember to duck as you exit the short door, lest you hit your head. I did keep forgetting this fine point. The structure reminds me very much of an evolution of the North American teepees of the Aboriginal peoples.
The tourist gir camps were very well maintained and specifically for foreigners. The toilet facilities were modern and even seemed better than staying in a hotel in Ulaanbaatar.
The Amarbayasgalant Monastery is one of Mongolia’s major monasteries. Built for the Bogd Khan—the apparently genius spiritual leader of Mongolia in the 18th century named Zanbazar—by the Manchu Emperor who ruled Mongolia at the time. The Russian-centric communist government left it abandoned during its purge of monks from Mongolia. This monastery housed 3,000 monks at its height and now, in the midst of being renovated, had a fledgling 32. However, by the time our tour of the monastery had reached the third level, all of us had lost interest in continuing. A secret and silent cheer went through most of us on hearing the fourth level was forbidden to outsiders. Despite the length of the tour, the monastery was beautiful—especially viewed after the rainstorm that inundated the place while we were inside.
We spent the evening climbing up a hill near the gir camp to watch the sunset over the Steppe. I had to help a scared Lori descend due to her fear of heights—I had to give her credit for climbing in the first place, she’s pretty cool! We also celebrated Jenny’s birthday with a small get-together and some champagne that the lovely and kind Jargalan had brought for the occasion. Naidam performed a Mongolian song for Jenny, and to our great surprise, Steve also sang. I think Steve knocked the drivers off their seats.
It was very cool to go to sleep in the gir and to wake up early in the morning to the sounds and sights of cattle being herded by a horseman dressed in traditional Mongolian dress.
Feasting on Flies
Somewhere in Central Mongolia, Friday, 14 July 2006
On our second day, we drove north.
Other than switching our guides—Robin and Jargalan—our van configurations remained constant. We were to spend our night in another tourist gir camp, which was close to an extinct volcano with a perfectly shaped caldera. Derek stayed behind while we all piled into the Twinkies and drove to the nearby volcano. Our plan was to climb this small crater, which was about 100–150m high, and then walk back to the gir camp. Our vans dropped the groups at different paths—apparently the vans, drivers, and groups were competing!
We all managed to get up to the rim only to realize one tiny flaw in our plan. At the rim, we were surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands, of flies. The DEET and other protection we had layered on proved totally useless. Robin, Jargalan, and I began our tricky descent on the pathless side of the crater. The pumice from a long-forgotten eruption lay haphazardly, plotting to trip and break the ankle of any unfortunate hiker. The others—Scott, Sarah, Lori, Steve, and Barbro—came behind us. Mieko was off by herself.
Having reached the base with Jargalan and Robin, we turned to see that Lori was going to take a while to reach us. This time Lori was being shepherded by Barbro. At this point though, in all the time we had taken to climb down, none of us had yet seen either of the Twinkies. In classic horror-movie style, we split the party: Jargalan and I would start our walk to the gir camp, while Robin would wait for everyone and hopefully catch a Twinkie.
Unbeknownst to us, one of the vans had had a flat tire. Jargalan and I walked back about four kilometres to the camp, swatting at the flies. I swear I swallowed a good many of them. Mieko had walked the entire rim, descended directly to the vans—unlike us—and had realized the situation with the flat tire. She decided to walk back to the camp and had now caught up to us. If I’m in that good a shape at 62, I’ll be very happy. Scott and Sarah followed us, walking, while the Twinkies eventually picked everyone else up and beat us to the camp.
Our muscles pumped up by the protein from swallowing flies, Robin, Derek, and I helped pump air into the van’s tire with a small bicycle pump. Intrepid, please buy your drivers better pumps! We gathered around a gir, drinking vodka—though this night I declined to participate in inebriation.
A few notes. Robin is suffering heavily from hay fever or a flu, and he has forgotten to bring his battery charger for his camera. Note that he was the one who pestered us all about not forgetting such things—Jargalan was very quick to point this out with a gleeful chuckle. We tried desperately to find him a charger in the town we stopped at for lunch, but had no success. We did, however, pick up a football and a frisbee. The first football match was won by the Commonwealth team of Zack, Danielle, and me against Derek, Scott, and Jargalan. Scott did keep insisting that he had no idea where the goal was.
Small details, pfeh!
Late into the night, as I lay in bed, I heard Lori’s New York accent exclaim that the party was over and kick Steve out of their gir.