Grr!
Trip Start
Dec 09, 2009
1
30
Trip End
Dec 10, 2010
Hambaiin Hüryee, Bulgan, Mongolia
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
I woke up to the gnawing sound of my iPod alarm at 7:30am on Monday morning. We had until 10:00am to get up and showered, eat breakfast and pack our bags in preparation for moving out of the hostel and in with the Nomads.
We had arranged, through the hostel to stay overnight in one of Mongolia's famous Gers and our driver was due to collect us at 10.
We managed to get everything together and even run back out to the ATM to get the money to pay for our excursion before the car was due to leave.
The driver whose name I could never pronounce was already in the car with the engine running as we jumped down the cold stairwell and out into the frosty air.
The hostel receptionist, another young man, followed us down with two sleeping bags which he threw in the boot of the 4x4 before bidding us a good trip and closing the door.
We took off out of Ulaanbaatar city centre towards the West, following the train tracks in virtually the opposite direction we had entered on the train yesterday.
We rolled out of Ulaanbaatar in our jeep for only around twenty minutes, just enough time to fill up with petrol, before the vast Steppes of central Mongolia began to unfold before us.
The landscape outside of the cities is empty, peppered here and there with herds of sheep and the odd Ger camp.
We expected to be travelling for around an hour and a half before we reached our destination but three hours later Julie Burns had nodded off on my shoulder and we were still travelling further and further into the barren wilderness. I was beginning to wonder what we had signed up for when all of a sudden the driver pulled the jeep onto the rocky shoulder of the road and Julie Burns darted up to see what was happening. He pulled out his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled a number, the phone tinkled as it rang; loud enough so we could hear it perfectly. A woman answered and the pair started jabbering in Mongolian. The driver hadn’t even returned the phone to his pocket as he jerked the steering wheel around and pulled the jeep back up, over the road and off the other side onto the snowy covered grassland. As the car picked its way through the scrub we could just make out the white parallel lines of a previous track and the driver headed for that. The car bounced and skidded along the track for at least a further three miles before the driver stopped suddenly. I locked eyes with Julie Burns passing a comment about Wolf Creek and cannibalism, suggesting – "I hoped we were not for dinner".
Once more however, after some heated Mongol discussion over the telephone the gentleman driver replaced his phone and continued down the snowy track for a few more yards and again yanked the car back onto the scrubland. There seemed to be no motive in his direction, just avoiding the odd oversized grass clump or frozen stream bed. We carried on like this, clinging frantically to every possible handle, lever, knob and bar for a further five minutes until eventually over the summit of yet another knoll appeared – a Ger. Stood waiting outside, wrapped up in an ankle length brown overcoat, was a little Mongolian lady and her puppy.
The car rattled to a halt outside the door and the driver got out and conversed briefly with the lady as he opened our doors. The lady greeted us with something I couldn’t understand and ushered us inside the low door of the Ger.
Despite their drab outside appearance the Gers are intricately decorated on the inside and our host lady showed us to one of the bed/sofas on offer, covered in blankets and rugs and pillows.
She brought each of us painted china bowls, a little like a Chinese rice bowl and poured us some steaming hot salty tea from a huge silver kettle. We sipped gently on the tea as the lady continued to ramble to our driver. In spite of our earlier fears everything seemed to be going OK.
We sat and chatted in English and our host and driver chatted in Mongolian while the lady started to chop some vegetables with a meat clever. This went for around an hour until eventually our potato, pasta, carrot and mutton broth was ready and served at a knee high table in the middle of the Ger.
Not before long, the lady’s husband turned up on his horse and joined us for mid afternoon tea and a bowl of his wife’s very tasty soup.
After dinner I knew I would need to make the unavoidable toilet trip so asked in my broken Mongolian where I might find the convenience. Our host lady showed me out of the door and pointed over the nearest hill. I repeated the point to confirm where she meant as there was nothing but grass as far as I could see. She agreed and nodded shoving her finger in the direction of the hill. I set off over the grass and snow until I was far enough over the hill to see the bottom and also out of site of the Ger. There was certainly no toilet here, no wooden hut, no hole in the ground, nothing, just a frozen stream bed and the remains of a dead sheep. As the cold began to bite and I was happy no one could see me I squatted down anyway!
Back at the Ger, as we had agreed upon booking, part of this trip would be spent on horseback, seeing the Steppes from the point of view of the Nomads. So once we had all drank and eaten enough to feed a small army we headed back outside into the cold air to saddle up one of the two horses which belonged to our new family. The driver explained in his extremely broken English “Only two horse, no three horse” which meant one of us would have to stay behind while the other left to go and work.
I volunteered Julie Burns to go first and so with a little aid from the friendly driver she hoisted herself up atop the tiny little brown horse and after some slight adjustment trotted off in hot pursuit of Duree (the husband)! I hung around outside the Ger, watching as they disappeared over the horizon, took a few odd photo’s of the landscape and the puppy who just would not stop chewing my leg then headed back inside to warm up.
I was offered countless more cups of tea in Julie’s absence and tried to chatter with the pair that were left. Now Mongolian tea is unlike any other tea’s I have sampled the world over. Having just travelled through China I can safely say I tried a large selection of green, black, jasmine, chrysanthemum etc. But none came close to this. The tea is made from hardened tea stalks (not your average Premium Growth tips!) crush and formed into a hard brick like block about the size of laptop computer. The block is chipped away into the kettle and roughly two teaspoons of salt are added to the brew. It’s then boiled over the stove until beyond boiling hot then served in small bowls. It can be served with milk or without but always with a good portion of salt.
So, as you can probably imagine, after my eighth or ninth cup I was thirstier than before we arrived!
Julie Burns bounded through the door later that afternoon, rosy cheeked from her trot across the steppes. Duree waited at the door for me to get wrapped for my turn then led me over to one of the two horses. He helped me up although the horse stood no taller than a donkey. We set off into the wind towards the nearest hill and dipped down into a narrow gully. As we set off Duree began whistling a tune which to my ears sounded thoroughly Nomadic, I giggled and he asked if I was OK. I nodded enthusiastically so as we began to climb back up the opposite side of the slope he cracked his reigns together and both horses took off at a bound up the hill.
We rode for about five minutes up and over the hill; from the top I could see two more Gers side by side in their own protected valley. Duree led the way down and stopped the horses beside a homemade pen; part full of sheep and goats. We dismounted and he pointed at the closest Ger. Outside was parked an old, orange Honda motorbike, the seat clearly well worn and taped back together with thick black tape. As we neared the Ger a younger girl popped out and escorted me inside while Duree began ciphering petrol from the bikes tank.
Inside this Ger the girl sat me down on the sofa at the opposite side and placed a familiar looking white bowl in my hand, she picked a large pink flask from the stove top and topped up my bowl with yet more tea. This time I did get a slice of bread something akin to naan bread but less oily and a little fluffier, followed by a boiled sweet from a white carrier bag which the girl produced from one of the ornate orange cabinets around the Gers edge. I was still half way through my second slice of Ger bread when Duree came in through the door and waved me back outside. With my mouth still half full I followed and we both jumped back on our steed! We rode back towards our Ger, up and over the hill, this time not stopping outside but carrying on past back in the direction of the road. Behind the hill which sheltered the little Ger from the wind was a flock of 200 or so sheep and goats. As we drew closer at trotting speed Duree began a series of whoops and shouts which I can only presume were Mongolian for 'Haway’! The two of us trotted gently behind the flock of woolly creatures, weaving backwards and forwards to make sure we didn’t leave any stragglers. Duree interspersed his wild shouts with a gentle song which matched the tune of his previous nomadic whistling! I followed his horse backwards and forwards down into the valley from which the 4x4 had brought us earlier. As we neared the bottom we were met by a lone horseman doing very much the same as us but with a herd of around 10 cattle.
Duree rode up alongside the cow man and began one of these never ending Mongolian chats; they continued their conversation all the way back to the Ger. Myself, Duree and cow man all dismounted and tied the horses to a specially constructed ‘horse post’ in front of the Ger then Duree led the way inside.
Despite the fact we had been riding against the bitter wind for the most part and my face was presumably as rosy as Julies had been I wasn’t even slightly cold but as per usual the warmth in the Ger was powerful and I took my coat off quickly and laid it on the bed/couch.
Duree’s wife was sat beside the stove slicing small slivers from a huge leg of lamb, Julie was sat at the small orange table beside the driver and Duree and cow man took up positions on the opposite bed/couch to ours. I pulled up a small wooden stool at the table beside Julie. Although the Ger was full of people it never felt cramped or overcrowded, we all sat in our places, the Mongolians speaking Mongolian and Julie and I speaking English, it seemed to work quite well!
Dinner took a while to prepare so as Mrs Duree sat with her chopping board on the bed/couch I nipped outside to take some photos of the sun as it set over the hills in the distance. The cows and sheep were still safely grazing at the foot of the hill, the horses looked half asleep tied to their post and the puppy was inevitably still chewing my leg!
Our evening meal was a carefully and freshly prepared bowl of ‘buuz’ – steamed mutton dumplings served with salty tea. I managed to eat about six before I was completely full, the men managed to eat slightly more but there were still two pan full’s left, presumably for breakfast. Cow man left after dinner.
Although it had been dark for hours it was still only seven thirty and no one looked ready to go to bed. As Duree busied himself with something that looked like Sudoku from the back pages of a Mongolian ‘Women’s Weekly’, the driver asked for something in Mongolian which prompted Mrs Duree to reach for a small sewn bag from one of the orange cabinets, from which the driver poured a pile of sheep bones onto the table.
We spent the next two hours playing a number of different games with the bones and a die. Although none of us could communicate in each other’s language we seemed to fair quite well, Julie Burns even won one round of ankle bone horse racing!
The last game was one which involved lining all of the bones up to resemble the shape of a duck (it looked more like a pig to me) then rolling the die, which ever number it landed on you may pick up a group of bones of that number. If there were none of that number you must lay down a group of that number etc. etc.
By the time it came to going to bed I could hardly keep my eyes open, Duree’s wife made up one of the couch/beds for us both and hung a rug between the beams to give us a little more privacy. Although everyone else was still awake I fell asleep within seconds.
The next day Duree and Mrs Duree were up long before there was any light coming through the roof window. When I first checked my watch at the sound of their voices it was 4:30am. I turned over and fell back to sleep. I woke again at 8:30am but this time the driver told us to go back to sleep.
It was 9:00am before we finally woke up, our rug had been taken down so we guessed that meant time to get up. Following a breakfast of bread and blackcurrant jam and of course several bowls of salty tea we got dressed quickly and hurried outside for one last ‘toilet’ trip before we set off.
We said a brief but heartfelt goodbye and thank you to Duree and Mrs Duree and got back into the white 4x4 ready to hit the road. Before the road however were the three or four miles of grass and snow which had been our entrance to this place.
As had been the general consensus of this entire trip we weren’t entirely sure what today’s itinerary had in store. So we sat quietly in the back of the car watching the view unfold, holding on to the door handles should the driver suddenly take us off-roading again. Sure enough about one and a half hours back towards the city the car veered off the road onto the dirt and rocks at its shoulder. The driver wound down the window to bark a question to a frosty looking hitchhiker who responded by pointing down the road at some Gers in the distance. We followed his command and continued a little further.
Once at the Gers our driver carefully signalled, checked the rear view mirror then rammed the car off the road again onto the grass. We picked out one of the familiar snowy tracks and followed this for about four miles. Apparently this was either normal or these were classed as roads around here!?
We bounced past a few ‘tourist’ Ger camps with several Gers all fenced in safely, with toilet blocks and real showers, continued past a lonely signpost which read ‘Hustai Nuruu 7km’.
We must have driven those 7km’s as the next thing we saw was blue sign which stretch over the track we were following that read ‘Welcome to Hustai National Park’.
The Hustai is home to some of Mongolia’s most famous residents, the newly re-introduced Takhi wild horses. The horses were driven from Mongolia by poaching, overgrazing of livestock and human encroachment and in 1969 they were declared extinct in the wild.
Through a process of breeding captive Takhi’s in zoos across the world they were slowly reintroduced between 1992 and 2004. Now the Hustai is one of only three places in Mongolia and indeed the world where these horses can be seen in the wild. Now these are not just you average wild horse much like those found elsewhere in Mongolia, or the USA, these are a genetically different species, boasting two extra chromosomes in their DNA.
Once we were inside the national park we stopped to pick up an old, wizened looking man, wrapped up in a long black coat and green tattered woolly hat. He sat in the passenger seat beside the driver and they began waffling in Mongolian. He directed our driver down a series of winding steep paths, over a bridge and deeper and deeper into the national park. The wind had picked up now and as driving snow into the side of the car. After about 10 minutes our elderly guide point to the hills to our right, the driver pulled in and turned off the engine. Without the power of the heaters the car grew cold very quickly. It didn’t really matter however as within seconds we were all getting out the car anyway.
The guide pulled out a pair of battered binoculars and passed them around the four of us, one eye was completely out of focus and the view obscured by precision markers on the lenses but through the snow way off in the distance stood a group of twenty or so Takhi horses.
There were some slightly smaller than others, presumable younger, but all looked relatively the same. The same tan colour with a black mane hanging over a very thick set neck and shoulder.
The guide indicated we should head on up the hill towards them, so buckling my hat as tightly as I could around my face I followed on up the hill. A hare dashed out from somewhere beneath our feet which greatly excited the guide as he seemed to know the word for rabbit and he pointed after it as it ran off up the hill.
We walked up the hill for five minutes until we were stood almost opposite the stable of horses over the small valley. We stood for as long as possible in the freezing winds taking photos and watching them move slowly up the hill.
The guide left first, walking slowly back towards the car and we all followed one by one.
We dropped the guide back off at the spot where we had first picked him up and he strolled back inside.
We set off towards the road and continued back to Ulaanbaatar.
About forty minutes from the city we pulled into a tiny concrete building by the side of the road, the driver just said the word ‘food’ as he stepped out.
We ate another stodgy feast of lamb, vegetable and doughy noodles washed down with milky salt tea.
Whether it was the amount of food we’d eaten or the lack of sleep and excitement of the previous day we both nodded off for the remainder of the journey and woke up as the driver honked at the traffic jam of the city centre.
We pulled up suddenly outside the door of the hostel and the same guide who had waved us off, stood waiting on the pavement to greet us, as if he had never moved.
He opened the door and asked if we had enjoyed our trip as he leaned over and retrieved the sleeping bags from the back of the car. We both thoroughly agreed and chatted away about it all the way back up the stone stairs, even though he probably wasn’t listening!
