No photos; currently using phone internet to wifi to my laptop and it's not good enough for photos. I was going to wait to add everything WITH photos but then I felt that every definitely needed to know all this stuff. A special shout out to gma - hope everything's okay and this is probably long enough to keep you occupied for a little while. xox
What a bloody surreal day. How lucky am I...... Or is it luck? I don't care what it is; wholey shitballs this is AMAZING.
I'm sitting in a ger in the school yard of the local kindergarten where the locals have erected a ger especially for us. We have 3 beds - one each. They're ridiculously uncomfortable but I guess better than nothing.
I left the house in a hurry this morning at 7:30am. Apparently it was the day to be on time. Nevermind. I hurried and I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything. I definitely have nickers and a toothbrush anyway.
We picked a couple of Swiss guys up and some more Mongolians. Turns out the Mongolian guy in my car lived in Albion (near where I lived in Clayfield, Brisbane) and drove cabs for a year so we had a lot of catching up to do.
And then it just gets better. The road to the first town we stopped in was fully paved. TOO EASY! Warm, comfy jeep, paved roads. It only had to get worse.
And it did.
From lunch (which, by the way, was awesome Chinese food in a restaurant in a town that would not even rival Gulgong for size and quality) the highway to the East became a dirt track. Imagine, if you will – Moolarben Road. But not just Moolarben Road. Imagine the road having not been graded for two years and a flood come through twice.
It was THAT bad. The road was 300km long and our driver drove at MINIMUM – 80km/hour. My dad would have had a FIT. I got pretty car sick. Sore neck from jerking. The driver didn’t see it necessary to slow down early for bumps and bends.
We stopped a lot. To ‘look at the horses’ (to pee) – which, might I add – is a lot easier for guys than for girls on the steppes with no trees. We beeped at everything. Birds (we saw vultures!), wild horses, flocks of sheep and goats, Ovoo’s (Buddhist piles of rocks you’re suppose to stop at, give an offering and walk around three times anticlockwise – OR you can just beep as you go past), people, cars……
Wild horses are everywhere. It’s a steppe – but it’s not completely flat. There are no fences, just gers dotted every 5-10km.
It rained the whole way which apparently means good luck. It has to. This is amazing. Don’t get me wrong – I feel like a fish out of water. Like an alien from the Milky Way without chocolate, like someone who is from somewhere so completely different and doesn’t have the capacity, wisdom, knowledge and/or experience to fully appreciate it.
But (excuse the blasphemy) Christ Almighty, it is just amazing. Think Atacama Desert (oldest driest desert in the world) with slightly more rainfall, shitter climatic extremes and a super turbulent history.
These people live here. It’s not a life that I would call a life. These people are here to survive. And they do that – just fine. But certainly not without pain. Last winter (the one before last) was a major Dzud (winter drought) that killed 50% of the livestock. That’s half of their entire income. As nomads there is no economic diversity. It’s easy to see why – there’s no point as there’s no one to sell anything to anyway. So with only animals to make a living off, to lose half of your salary – oh man, I just can’t imagine. And then to go on, year after year.
We arrived after 10 hours of driving. We ate dinner in what could only be described as the boondocks of a CWA hall that hasn’t been used in 10years. We had mutton soup for entrée. I don’t like mutton. I figured out why, too. It smells and tastes like a shearing shed. Literally. With the piss and the pooh and the lanolin and the dust and everything. So then for mains we had mutton with rice. I could stomach the mutton if it were just muscle. It’s not – the fat is the best part to Mongolians (one can only presume because of its fattening properties to allow you to basically fatten up for the winter).
We are kept warm with a fire that is kind of a like a thinner version of a pot belly stove. The fuel is a combination of pine and pooh. Horse and cow pooh. It doesn’t even stink, and if anything it’s better than the pine because at least it lasts a bit longer.
The toilet is a drop toilet with no seat. It seems to have a larger than necessary hole in it which is scary at night time! How do you pee when you’re trying not to fall in the bloody great big hole? I seriously considered trying the kid’s loo (it’s a kindergarten, so they have baby toilets too) because it would have a smaller hole but decided against it.
I’m glad I brought nuts with me. Lots of nuts. What a lifeline.
I’m on a ‘per diem’ of 45000tugs/day. It’s not that much. I paid for water and lunch and then I imagine accommodation will be something similar – taking up the majority of the money. It’s really not that much cheaper in Mongolia than Australia. But the tents are way cooler.
They’re much warmer, they’re not as sunny in the morning, they’re weather proof and they’re stable. There’s a hard floor and a fire in the middle. It takes 29minutes for a team of guys to put one up. That’s less time than it used to take a team of dads to put up those dodgey square tents we camped in before the dome tent revolution. The Mongolians shit all over Australian camping!
The downside is the lack of privacy. Being a one circular roomed tent, you just have to suck it up and get naked. I forgot to change my knickers this morning. Ew – gross, right? No way hozay; I wasn’t stripping down again in front of everyone just to do that! I would care at home. In Dornod, I do not. And looking on the bright side, I will have an extra pair should we get stuck here for a few more days. Re: the privacy issue – for example, I was putting my PJ’s on and generally stuffing around when I just turned and caught a glimpse of the girl I was sharing with – changing her tampon on her bed. Wowsers. But then, not so wowsers. There are guards outside, no toilet, no shower, people whispering around the tent – where else do you do it?!
Another lovely story from the evening: there’s a guy in charge of looking after us specifically. He keeps coming in and adding more pooh to the fire and stuff. He came in with his wife before while I was typing on this very laptop, writing this very blog. They were totally intrigued with the laptop. I specifically bought my external harddrive with my photos and videos in it, for this occasion. I pulled up videos and photos of Australia. Might I add – we totally conversed. I could point at my sisters and say ‘doo’ (Tj, Nikki and EG – they were pretty impressed with you too). I could point at my home and say ‘ger’. You know, those kind of detail oriented, highly structured conversations.
And then I thought – WAIT. You silly girl. You’re in the middle of no where talking to herders. As if they’d be keen to see Australia when I could show them Australian farming! So that I did. Sometimes my organization surprises me. But then it doesn’t because I remember how long it took me to come up with final ideas and final lists. Anyway, I had videos of the dogs going round sheep and cows. I had videos of the Cassilis Rodeo. I had photos of a lot of other things. They almost had kittens.
Dude and his wife: ‘Mert – Mert mert!!!!!????’
Sally: tim (yes)
D: (mimes height)
S: (mimes rough idea of height)
D: Anglaise, Americadt….
S: Anglaise (English horse)
D: ogles, oooohs and ahhhhhhhhh at the bucking bulls, horses and cows at the rodeo
And the story continues – wanting to know how heavy Australian steers are, how tall they are. Why Australian sheep have no tail. How heavy they are. Whether we milk the cows. Whether we eat the sheep.
It was definintely one of those absolutely beautiful moments of my life that I will never forget. His wife was sitting so close to me she was practically on top of me. They just keep looking and looking. It was 11:30pm and I needed sleep so bad. I needed to finish writing my blog because it’s my reflection of the day and without it, I lay awake in bed and wonder and wonder and think and think. Once I finally gave them the impression I wanted to go, I hopped in to bed and tried to fall asleep. It didn’t happen. I should have finished my blog, but the reason this has changed tenses is because I did not finish my blog and instead willed myself to sleep. It only took 3 hours. Idiot.
Sometimes I realize I have a lot more growing up to do than I think. For example, now I know to just do the bloody thing and follow my instincts, thereby getting at least decent sleep.
RIGHT. Breakfast time. Today we are visiting herders.
This is amazing. So amazing. I’m totally scared and totally out of my depth but I love it. The challenge is great and I hate it but I love it.
Bring it on!
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