It’s midway through the year already. It seems only yesterday that I was making the decision to move to Mongolia. Now I’ve been here two months. One of my best friends is celebrating an epic exploration find with all the rest of my (old) work team. Another amazing friend has moved in to a house that is (maybe, eventually) hers for the keeping. Trevor’s not far off his first breath and I’m eating peanuts and freshly smoked Khovsgol lake pike (fish) in my ger by the lake.
Yesterday was a day of very little. We ate a lot and read a lot. Today has not been too dissimilar. I’ve finished another book on my Kindle and created a list to help guide me during the frantic few hours I’ll have in UB to prepare for our next journey.
Dad and I did go on a bike ride after a few rounds of UNO. We stopped by a smaller lake and watched some very archaic shrimp flit around in the shallow water. If I was a biologist/ecologist, I’d say they have evolved very little since they became what we see today. They can’t see or hear – we threw rocks and shadowed them but nothing phased them. They felt their way around with their whole body and just changed direction when they ran into a rock or a weed.
Then we stumbled across a rack full of drying fish. They were 20cm-ish long and had been gutted but not scaled. They were strung by their head and their tummies were kept open with two little sticks, to aid the drying.
I guess once they were dry, they were smoked. It’s a pretty fair guess because we found a rudimentary smoking machine right by the dried fish, next to a large pile of wood. We commented on how delicious they would be and moved on.
To a log cabin being with with spectacular beams of pine. They’d obviously bought the pine beams pre-milled, but were making all the cuts and grooves to build a cabin. They were using a very old Chinese chainsaw, a crowbar and man power.
Back on the road and my tyres went super flat. Really flat. We stopped at a ger camp where two drivers were fixing their cars and asked for a pump. They whipped out a battery powered air compressor and we were back on the road. It was only a few minutes before they were flat again.
Dad needed a beer stop so we pulled in at a little shop and got three beers. As we were about to leave, the shopkeeper whipped open a box of smoked fish. They were the same guys we’d seen earlier in the morning! Only now they smelt all cooked, smoked and delicious! For 1000tugrik (about 70c), we got two fresh smoked fish. Our ger was locked when we got back so we sat on the step in the sun and ate smoked fish. Dad had his beer, I had some lemonade.
A lazy afternoon of packing, reading and showering and then we’re off – back to UB and my crazy month of camping and holidays begin!
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