Short bushes like tufts of bristly hair give way to rolling dunes, snowy mountains and mirages of frozen lakes. Traveling in the back of a jeep for ten days in the Gobi Desert presents a range of constantly shifting, dream-like imagery. The vehicle bounces jerkily up and down, left to right, on roads which only a Mongolian can understand. There are frequent mechanical breakdowns and flat tires, which our driver adapts to and fixes in continually inventive, Macgyver-like ways.
“Look! Godzilla!”
Our guide means to say gazelles. They’re too quick to get a good look at. Later, for mile after mile, mice pop in and out of holes in the road. Foxes dash into view and vanish. Vultures feast on the carcass of a collapsed goat. A herd of furry camels seeks out grass amidst the snow and we stop to photograph. They don’t run away. They’re used to people.
“If a wild camel sees a person it will start running and won’t stop for…” and this is where my memory fails me. Our guide tells us that it runs for six days, or six hours or six-hundred kilometres before stopping.
We stop into a ger for lunch. It’s mutton. Again. This time with pasta instead of potatoes. Lots of hospitality in the ger, but no spice in the food. In the west we’re spoiled with the tenderest cuts of meat. This mutton is chewy. Some of those on our trip are vegetarians and eat rice pudding nearly every meal. I’m starting to wonder if they’re better off. On exiting the ger we see the skull of the decapitated sheep we just ate.
Baga Gazriin Chuulu is a site of unusual rock formations, which once hosted a Buddhist temple in the small canyon of Surtiin Am. Under Stalin it was razed and only a bit of the ancient stone walls now remain. We climb the rocks and admire the lush red sky as the sun sets at the site of this grave tragedy.
Urinating in the middle of the night is a pleasure and a terror. As many stars as I could ever hope to see paint the sky and I’m intensely aware that I’m only standing on a tiny ball revolving and rotating in the vastness of space. I don’t know if there are wolves about, but I’m afraid of them nevertheless. As I get further from the ger and closer to the hole-in-the-ground, I’m more and more vulnerable and more and more exhilarated. Back in the ger, the fire is dying, so I shovel some more dung into the stove and crawl into bed with all my clothes on.
Mongolian towns feel even more remote than the camps of gers in the middle of the desert. They seem ill-fitted to the landscape. A billboard announces Trees Are Our Future! There is a little patch of small trees – planted by well-meaning Korean volunteers – meant to slow the continual growth of the desert and absorb some of the sand, which blows into towns and fills people’s lungs, blowing even further, picking up pollutants in China, reaching as far as Korea. It’s in one of these towns we meet an American Peace Corps volunteer.
“I put down Asia for my region and I was placed here.”
He seems fully entrenched. Unlike places like Barcelona or Seoul, where foreigners spend much of their time with other foreigners, he’s completely immersed in Mongolian culture, fluent in the language and often caught up in the drinking habits.
“Yeah, if they’re drinking, and they see me walk by, a big white guy, I pretty much have to go over. I usually do at least one shot, but it’s hard to walk away. I’ve had some rough mornings.”
Vodka is for sale in every town and empty bottles are strewn here and there across the expansive desert. A legacy of the Soviet era. There’s a brand with Genghis Khan himself on the bottle.
Airag is another way Mongolians get their alcohol fix. But unlike vodka, the alcohol content is rather low. It’s no exception to most Mongolian fare, which derives from meat or dairy. It’s fermented mares’ milk. It sounds disgusting, but it’s really not so bad if you drink a moderate amount as we do inside our host’s ger. We’re crowded together with the family of our tour guide’s sister. The airag is sour, but hearty. The only form of communication between us and our hosts is them offering us more airag, or some sour biscuits also made from mares’ milk, and us accepting it politely.
This time when I go out at night to do my business, instead of a flat desert, I find myself stumbling around between sleeping cows. I can’t find the latrine, so I relieve myself near the cows, hoping they don’t mind. Soon we’ll be back in the city away from herds of cows, goats, sheep and camels. I’m feeling a bit sentimental looking at these hooved beasts as I zip up my fly and head back into the warmth of the ger.
