I got to stay in a hotel in the soum centre which was lovely. I cooked up some pasta with a tin of tuna and a tin of corn and geez it was good. I ate SO much food, it was just delicious. Proper food that I didn’t have to woof down. From the soum centre we slowly slowly made our way home. By this point I was just in a home mind frame. I hadn’t been home for ages, I needed to wash properly and do home things.
So when we left at 11am for an 8 hour drive, I knew we were pushing it. We ended up driving 120km and stopped nine times. Each time we stopped we had to drink at least two bottles of vodka and say thank you again. I was beyond livid. There’s no way to explain the anxiety, helplessness and pure anger I was feeling. When you have no option but to roll with what’s happening, your life is in someone else’s hand. When they take over another vehicle at 140km/hour on a shit road around a corner, you’re looking for fate to be on your side. When you eat next is up to someone else. When you get home is up to someone else. Where you sleep, go to the toilet – everything. And no one was telling me anything because everyone was so tired and no one wanted to be there and they were hungover and sick of translating for me.
Anyway, so that was the really shit bit. The good bit was stopping by an extinct volcano. It’s obvious from a far that it’s a volcano. Everything else is mushed up rocky mountains and this volcano is a perfect conical shaped mountain in the middle of no where with a dome on top.
The hike up the side of the volcano was epic! It was very steep and got my heart thumping out of my chest. This is the view from the top (left: looking out from the crater; right: looking in to the crater):
The bestest bestest best part was the WILD STRAWBERRIES on the side of the volcano (and maybe the awesome chunks of aerated basalt).
Have you tried wild strawberries? If you haven’t, you should. They are the epitome of deliciousness. They are small – maybe the size of your pinkie fingernail at the biggest. They are mostly white with sometimes a bit of pink of them. And they taste like heaven.
I picked and ate a lot of strawberries and my driver picked me a posy of strawberries and I ate even more!
There was a massive commotion going on around the fire. I assumed it was another khorkhog of mutton. It wasn’t until I was sitting eating my strawberry posy that I realised the commotion was larger than usual and the cooked animal was a MARMOT! A marmot is a teddy bear sized rodent that is thought to be the originator of the bubonic plague. Marmots still carry the plague. It’s a shame because they’re really cute. It’s a crying shame to see them dehaired and decapitated.
They look just like a bloated teddy bear with no head. Their little feet are still attached and poke out. Their tummies are full of hot rocks that cook them from the inside out. Once they’re cooked, they’re cut open in the belly and the rocks and guts are taken out. The juice is highly prized and caught in a cup to share around. The meat is cut up in to rudimentary chunks and looks like pork belly. It’s very very very fatty and apparently very tough. I wouldn’t know, because I ran away to pick more strawberries because I couldn’t handle these people going nuts over eating a protected rodent that carries the plague and looks like a teddy bear.
Eventually everyone succumbed to their hangovers and we piled in to cars and left. And the stopped again another 4 times to drink more vodka and then it was too late to drive home because Mongolian roads at night are dangerous. I guess I should have been thankful that safety was made a priority for a change, but at the time I was just ever so desperate to get home. We stayed in a ger camp that was really quite pretty. We ate two minute noodles for dinner. And I went to bed early because of my busy cultural day. below: our ger camp for the night
So the next morning we finally piled in to cars again and got on the way. This time we only stopped 7 times on the way back to UB and I arrived home at 4:30pm. We still have NO running water in our house and I wasn’t in the mood to wrangle a shower somewhere, come home to more mess and then not cook because there’s no water to cook/clean with.
I packed my pink wheely bag full of essential clothes, shampoo, pillow etc and wheeled to my friend’s house. I had a shower, washed my hair and sat and chatted to beautiful friends, which was the most important thing I’ve done for a while. I didn’t sleep much/well, I’m not sure why. Too much going on because I have a lot to do as I haven’t been in town to organise myself lately. Probably.
Today was a piece of shit day. I couldn’t face going to work so I sat at my friend’s house, moping while I waited for clothes to wash. I contacted the new volunteers that have arrived and organised to help them at lunch. I did some basic shopping at the supermarket and met them for lunch. We had a long chat, I had a salad. We went to look at apartments and stopped to buy some roadside fruit. My wallet had gone. So had my sunglasses case.
SOMEONE STOLE MY FUCKING WALLET FROM MY BAG
I am SO vigilant with my bag. It is leather and has only one zip that I hold closed. I hold it in front of me even though it’s impractical and uncomfortable. I never leave it open – blah blah blah. And some GOT IT. They got my WALLET. My credit card, my two debit cards, my Alien registration card (very important in Mongolia), my work permit, my brand new Australian license. A lot of Mongolian money, two house keys. And my favourite wallet I’ve ever had.
I was with all the new guys, and out of pure exhaustion I didn’t even express any kind of emotion except for a couple of swear words and a stamp of my foot. What could I do? It was gone. All my important stuff was gone. And I needed rest time. It was just taken from me – both my wallet, and my rest time. I had to go to the police station where they didn’t believe I’d lost it because I was in a big group and carried my bag so no one could touch it and all that jazz. But someone did and they stole a part of my patience with Mongolia. I’m here to help and if they needed my money I could have helped them with that too. Motherf*****Ers.
I haven’t cried yet and I don’t know if I will. And I know in the grand scheme of things it’s no big deal – I’m still okay, nothing happened to me and it’s all replaceable (at a cost though!). It’s just very very disheartening and it came at the very, very worst time possible. It’s never a good time to lose your wallet, today just feels like an even worse time for it to happen. It doesn’t even really seem real. But it is. PAIN.
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