Chapter 16 - A lost Twinkie on the way to Karakorum
"When one plays with Madness, one loses their way to Karakorum" - ancient proverb from the Bayun Gobi
Playing with “Madness”
White Lake, Mongolia, Saturday, 22 July 2006
True to form, the night did end in “Madness.”
We also managed to drink the camp out of their (overpriced) wine. First, Scott, Steve, Mieko, and I participated in some horseback riding. We were out for exactly one hour. I’m not entirely sure I’ll be giving up the car in favour of horses just yet—my balls hurt way too much after just one hour of saddle pounding—but I can see the attraction of the open Steppe on horseback.
My horse was contrary, as were Mieko’s and Steve’s; Scott ended up with a great one. Of course, maybe it was my inexperience and inability to communicate with either the horse or the horse handlers. I couldn’t get the horse to do anything more than a trot—when it wasn’t standing still or trying to bite the other horses’ arses and pick fights. He was probably annoyed by the bumbling idiot on his back. I know I would be if I were him.
After our thrilling ride, Scott and I went for a walk with Steve and Barbro to reconnoitre the area for potential party guests. We also climbed a huge rock. The rock climbing was successful and did not end in hospitalization—though the party recruitment mission was abandoned. Derek, on the other hand, had succeeded on that front. He’d run into the Australians (see previous entry), made friends, and invited them over. The Australians were Jodie Foster (no joke), Kat, and Brett. All were fairly young and travelling with a driver who didn’t speak English.
By the time dinner arrived and the wine drinking began, the weather was deteriorating into heavy rains. Scott and I had come up with the only workable solution to our spider infestation—we would have no fire in our gir, as we figured that’s what attracted them.
Seeing the weather turn sour, Derek sprang into action. He convinced Naidam, our driver, to let him drive one of the Twinkies to the Aussie gir (about a ten-minute walk) to retrieve our party guests. We gathered in the “Bar Gir” and promptly purchased all the camp’s red wine—believe me, it was not cheap. When the Aussies arrived from the cold, the vodka began to flow liberally.
To keep things going, Robin started a drinking game. It involved picking a topic or category, and we each had to name something from it—no repeats or hesitation allowed. The penalty? A glass of the “Madness” wine. I think I came close to losing the most—I drank four glasses of “Madness,” in addition to continuing my vodka odyssey.
The two longest-lasting categories were “sex aids” and “illegal/illicit drugs.” Go figure.
Some time during the night, we noticed that the staff were sleeping at their tables and realized they probably didn’t want us there anymore. We retired to our gir to continue. Unfortunately, the weather had started to cause our girs to disintegrate. Sarah, Lori, and Jargalan’s gir had sprung a leak and was flooded. Between spiders jumping on arachnophobic Sarah, us trying to light their fire with wet, smoking wood, and the whole thing slowly turning into a sauna of chaos, the night degenerated into complete—well—madness. In the end, the girls’ gir had to be vented of all the smoke to prevent suffocation.
Finally, of course, we had to deal with the completely inebriated Aussies.
The highlight was Kat falling off her stool and still managing to hold her lit cigarette and her vodka high and clear of damage. Derek decided to walk them home, as they had managed to lose their one and only flashlight. According to him, it took an hour to walk them home and ten minutes to walk back. This was on account of their inability to walk straight and their deep love of falling into large puddles. The good fellow made them a fire, tucked them into bed, and bid them farewell.
Oh, and don’t even give me the whole “no sympathy for the hangover!” I didn’t have a hangover—nor did anyone else.
Personally, I think the almost two months in Russia and Mongolia has killed my liver.
We’ve just arrived at our next stop: the hot springs camp. It’s a little sketchy. There are a ton of tourists, and the hot spring pools seem a bit on the dirty side—no filters or controls. Not a huge issue except for the number of people using these small pools. Thanks to Derek, we’ve changed our rating scale to camel humps. We’ve redone the rating for the White Lake camp to a one- or two-humper, and the pools at this new gir to a one-humper, if that.
Addendum: Jodie Foster also had a Canon battery charger that fit Robin’s camera. He is finally taking photos of the trip… hey, there’s still two days left on the trip!
Lost on the way to Karakorum
Karakorum and the Bayun Gobi, Mongolia, Sunday, 23 July 2006
There’s not much to say about the Hot Springs Gir Camp. Very few of us descended into its grimy depths, and even fewer went to see the source of the springs. The food, however, was excellent. A solid three- or four-humper rating for the food!
The morning dawned dismal and rain-filled. The night saw more sleep talking—or so we thought. Scott talked to all of us, but because we assumed he was talking in his sleep, we promptly ignored him.
The real adventure today was getting to Kharkhorin—ancient Karakorum—once the heart of the Mongol Empire. We were in the green Twinkie with the young Tudev at the wheel. We knew we were in trouble when, within twenty minutes of leaving the hot springs camp, we encountered a rain-swollen river.
Tudev stopped, scratched his head, and waited for the elder Naidam.
Naidam looked at the river, laughed, and launched the grey Twinkie through the deep water.
Tudev revved the engine and followed suit, with all of us screaming and cheering.
Suddenly, halfway out of the water on the other side, our engine sputtered—_putt putt_—and died. With the exhaust pipe submerged, it looked like we were all about to get very wet pushing the van out of the river. The smart drivers—who have probably dealt with this any number of times—kept starting the engine in first gear using the starter motor, inching the van forward just enough until the engine could start properly.
Having parted the sea, we overtook the grey Twinkie during a swan photo stop and tried to find the promised land of Kharkhorin without our elder leader. This is where things went awry. Tudev must have taken a wrong turn in the maze of wet, muddy, foggy forest roads, and soon we were in uncharted territory. A few days earlier, the drivers had told me they had a “mental map” of Mongolia and navigated using local signs like rocks, mountains, and rivers.
Obviously, the rocks, mountains, and rivers had gone wrong.
We realized our predicament only when Tudev abruptly stopped at a random gir to speak with a surprised nomad. There was much pointing and gesticulating, and off we went—back the way we came. About three such attempts later, we finally made it back to the road to Kharkhorin. Naturally, we had started to wonder about the possibility of being permanently lost in the featureless, now rainy and miserable Steppe.
Ancient Kharkhorin no longer exists. It was razed to the ground in the distant past, and its foundations have only recently been uncovered. Instead of ruined palaces, our stops were to be the Erdene Zuu Monastery, Turtle Rock, and the intriguingly titled “Phallic Rock.” We arrived at the monastery about thirty minutes after the others, who had decided that the delinquents (us) had stopped off to use the Internet or something equally frivolous.
Instead of wandering around the rainy monastery, the delinquents (still us) decided to go to a café described in Lonely Planet Mongolia as:
“After a long drive from Ulaanbaatar, the European Crown Café will come as an excellent surprise…”
We all decided Lonely Planet might want to update—or perhaps visit_—their entry. For instance, they could drop the word European_ unless by “European” they mean the coffee machine and the existence of an English menu. They could also revise excellent to reflect the long service times and the soggy fries. Oddly, having not had fries in many weeks, we still cleaned our plates and didn’t complain much.
From the monastery, we drove to Phallic Rock. We had all been expecting a gigantic penis-shaped rock, to which Sarah sighed and said:
“Well, at least we girls are used to exaggerations in size…”
It was, at best, anti-climactic. The rock was erected by the head monk of the nearby monastery to shame the other monks into celibacy.
The Phallic Rock points to a “Vaginal Slope”. Egads.
With the conversation turning to vibrators, butt plugs and so on we headed east and south toward the Gobi Desert—or rather, the Bayun Gobi, which is not quite the famous sands you expect when you hear “desert.” As I write this, the others have gone on a camel ride while Scott, Jargalan, and I will join them by camel in an hour.
Addendum: We found out today that right after we left, Khovsgol Lake flooded due to massive rains—some of which we had witnessed earlier. Apparently, the Blue Pearl Gir Camp was underwater, as was the Intrepid crew that had left Ulaanbaatar a day or two behind us.
Camel Jockey and Twinkie Driver
Ulaanbaatar, Monday, 24 July 2006
Here, I have to describe our (very) brief camel ride through a part of the Bayun Gobi.Unlike the horses in Mongolia so far, I have to admit that the camels were very quiet, not too smelly, and relatively friendly. The saddles between the humps were also rather comfortable. The camel guides took Scott, Naidamm (our driver), Jargalan and I through an area which mimicked the famous photos of the sand dunes attributed to the Gobi Desert. While the ride was brief and we got no farther than a quick trot, the experience gave me an idea of how stable surfing on the back of camels can be traversing a sandy expanse where my stubby feet would have sank quickly and deeply.
Having declared ourselves camel jockeys, we retired to our Girs and then to supper. I should mention that only Scott, Derek, and I were sharing a Gir at this point. We had swung an arrangement that left Jargalan and Robin sharing a Gir (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more, say no more!).
Supper was an intimate affair as our journey was coming to an end. Jenny read a poem she had composed about our trip, capturing the major events, personalities, and spirit of the sixteen days we had spent together. Back at our Gir, Derek attempted to replicate a sauna and maintained it thusly throughout the night so we could sleep in minimal clothes embraced by the crackling of firewood-created warmth.
The morning dawned marginally better with a surprise awaiting us on boarding our vans, potentially for the last time. The drivers wanted to give us the opportunity to drive!
What a treat!
My turn came second. Oh, what fun it was to speed along those trail-like roads in Mongolia, with these powerful vans answering my beck and call. This was a completely different driving experience compared to my little car back home in Edmonton. I may have to come back and learn how to drive on these roads if I’m serious about doing the Dakar Rally.
I could describe more of the vistas: rolling hills, flat grassy plains, the oft-seen herds of horses, goats, and cows, but really my last day’s ride was spent sleeping and contemplating. As the plains of Mongolia rolled by, I could imagine the horsemen riding to war 800 years ago. They would have drunk airag, slept in Girs, and done many of the same things we had seen and done.
And just like that, within a short six hours, we were suddenly amidst noisy traffic, pollution, and traffic jams. We had made it back to Ulaanbaatar in one piece.
After dropping my bags off, my first stop was to run to the travel agency and pick up my train tickets. Probably a good thing I went as early as I did. My reasoning was to pick up my tickets for Thursday and inquire about trains for Sarah, who had been hoping to be in Beijing around the same time. As it turned out, my travel curse may actually extend to trains after all. The government of Mongolia had commandeered most of the reserved tickets, and many people, including myself, were being forced to make alternative arrangements.
My options included taking a local train to the border, waiting twelve hours or more, and then taking another local train to Beijing. The second option was to stay longer in Ulaanbaatar, which would essentially mean missing out on Beijing.
I chose to pay an extra $30 and fly to Beijing the next day on MIAT — Mongolian Airlines.
This was a disappointing and hard decision to make. It would mean that I would not quite complete the journey overland, though I kept telling myself that Berlin to Ulaanbaatar by train was still quite the achievement. However, I now had the opportunity to see Beijing with Scott and Sarah and hang out with Robin. I suspected that perhaps this was fated somehow. Onwards.
Arriving back at the hotel, I had an eerie sense of déjà vu. Scott was sitting outside to inform me that Derek had called his girl from Strings again and was currently up in our room with her. I managed to rescue my bags from Derek and, thanks to Robin, managed to get a shower. This trip seems to be filled with last-minute glitches.
Our plan was to go see a cultural concert, similar to what we had already witnessed at Khovsgol Lake. Unfortunately—can I get a dollar for every time I write that word?—Unfortunately, Jargalan phoned to say that she had been locked out of her parents’ apartment and wasn’t able to make it to the show on time. She had the tickets.
“Never mind,” said Robin.
He put on his best bullshitting face despite having zero knowledge of Mongolian, and we went off to see how to get in. In the end, it was all smoothed over and we managed to see the show. Compared to the fifty-or-so others who interrupted the show by walking willy-nilly, we were actually on time.
The show was indeed a larger-scale production of what we had witnessed at Khosvgol Lake. Unfortunately, as with most large-scale productions, this one lacked the soul of what we had already seen. The most disturbing part of the show was an acrobatic act where several girls bent into positions that should never be possible given the human skeletal structure. I’m told Danielle was averting her eyes at the unnatural poses.
Supper was at the Silk Road Restaurant, where Derek was to join us after his more intimate “cultural adventure.” The Silk Road was the most Western restaurant I’d been to since Berlin. I could actually order a vegetarian meal—my meat eating had stopped once I reached the polluted air of Ulaanbaatar. Scott and I obtained a couple bottles of “champagne” (also known as Bulgarian sparkling wine), and we set forth on a feast of congratulations, speeches, and thanks.
This was also when we found out about Khosvgol Lake and news of the group that had been only a couple of days behind us. On leaving the Gir Camp, where we had crossed dried-up river beds, they had discovered actual rivers. In crossing one river, their van had become stuck—probably similar to what had happened to us, but on a larger scale.
Everyone had panicked and saved themselves and presumably their luggage. Unfortunately, the van had tipped over in the rushing water and had started to float down the river! The driver had saved the van by lassoing it to a tree. Eventually, the folks had been evacuated back to the flooded but still habitable Gir Camp.
Amazing! To think we missed it by “that much”!
Supper over, our sad farewells began. Danielle and Derek were shuffled off to the airport—Derek was all smiles tonight—and the rest of us were shuffled off to bed.