Jeep Trip
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2005
1
32
Trip End
Dec 10, 2005
Kharkhorin, Mongolia
Saturday, November 12, 2005
One freezing cold November morning, two Mongolians, two unsuspecting Australians and a Welshman piled themselves into a rickety Russian jeep and drove out into the vastness of the Mongolian desert. This country gets more days of clear blue sky than any other, though the brilliant sunshine does little to take our mind off the fact that it is negative 15 degrees outside.
At the steering wheel is Gunna, an ex-Mongolian army officer, built like a brick poo-house. I'd say he knows these desert roads like the back of his muscular veiny hand, but there are no roads, simply tyre marks left in the dirt from the last time he trekked out to these nowhere lands. His enthusiasm for this trip is infectious, and he punctuates the otherwise barrenness of the terrain with ancient tales about the area in his unique brand of English he learnt entirely from television and chatting with tourists.
Phil, the Welshman we befriended on the train from Russia sits in the passenger seat while Mel and I bounce around in the back with Dawa, Gunna's girlfriend and our chef for the trip. Dawa is a vet by day, and when we ask which job she prefers she answers,"Definitely vet, I like to castrate horses".
Our first stop is Khustain National Park, one of only places in the world where you can see 'takhi' - the last remaining wild horses. They are not simply horses that have become feral but a genetically different species, boasting two extra chromosomes. We take the jeep out into the park and see herds of takhi galloping around in all their extra-chromosome-ness. From a distance they do look much like horses but on closer inspection you can see they actually have much bigger heads and smaller butts.
The story of their survival is a unique one. They were 'discovered' by a Polish explorer in 1878. Many were captured soon after and taken back to Europe to live in zoos. Meanwhile back in Mongolia, their numbers in the wild were diminishing thanks to hunting and overgrazing until they became extinct in 1969. At that time only 12 remained alive in the zoos. Special breeding programs in Europe and Australia brought the numbers back up and with help of international environmental agencies they were reintroduced back into the wild in 1992. The entire global population of takhi is now descended from the bloodline of only three stallions (they have electronic tagging to combat the huge risk of inbreeding that accompanies this fact).
Next stop was for lunch and a visit to the out-house, which consists of a two planks of timber balanced above a smelly four metre deep hole in the ground (I will never complain about 'squatter' toilets again). As the sun started to set over the sand dunes in the distance we thought we'd stop by a Ger village for some photos of the view. The second we stepped out of the jeep Mel and I were accosted by a 14-year-old Mongolian girl. Jumping at the chance to practice her English, she immediately invited us into her family's ger for a cup of tea. A ger is a moveable nomadic home, similar to a small circus tent, made of sheep's wool and felt (see photos).
We sit down while the young girl's mother pours us a cup of Mongolian tea (green tea with milk and salt - takes some getting used to). Her father is mending a pair of hand-made boots over a candle on the floor and appears to be ignoring us. The girl quizzes us about our nationality, profession and marital status and tells us that she is studying to be become a translator and that her one hobby is 'translating'. She desperately wants to exchange addresses with us so she can write letters to us in English.
Suddenly Dawa bursts into the ger and tells us we "must leave now okay". Mel and I slurp down the rest of our tea, write down our addresses and say farewell to our new friend. We get to the car and present her one of the clip-on koalas we've been carrying around for moments like these. Just as I get my camera out Phil tells us "there's no time for photos", slams the door, and we speed off into the distance. A bit confused Mel and I ask what we missed. Turns out while we were getting chummy with the locals, Gunna was fighting with them. The village drunk had approached him demanding money for bringing tourists into 'his territory'. Gunna refused, words were exchanged, and next thing you know you have the whole village trying to restrain the drunk while Gunna runs back to the jeep to fetch his crowbar. As Phil brings us up to speed, Gunna is driving like a man shaken while Mel and I think back and try to picture this all happening while we were sipping our salty tea, blissfully unaware.
The next day's itinerary included walking across a frozen lake (only 5cm thick so you could see fish swimming around below your feet - very cool) and trekking over sand dunes as we headed to our destination for the night, the ancient capital Kharkhorin. There isn't really much left from ancient times though they do have 'Phallic Rock' which points to neighbouring 'Vaginal Slope'(see photos), and 'Turtle Rock' where we saw locals come to leave lollies and chocolates as sacrifices to the gods (and then watch them be devoured by a wild dog seconds later).
After spending our first night in a tourist ger run by a kind old lady with a taste for our vodka, we found ourselves in Kharkhorin's most expensive hotel (3 US dollars per person). Dawa cooked us dinner in our room on a portable wok, then we drank vodka and played an ancient Mongolian card game called 'Benicta' (translates as 'I have only one'). We didn't have the heart to tell Gunna that it was actually exactly the same as 'Uno', but he was impressed at how quickly we picked up the rules.
There was a small nightclub on the ground floor of the hotel, so when we could no longer put up with the doof-doof echoing through the building we thought we'd head down and check it out. Male to female ratio: 20 to 1. Dance floor: completely empty, that is until we arrived and the lure of the young blonde foreigner girl got a few Mongolian men off their feet for as long as it took for them to realise Mel was not on the market.
In the morning we visited Erdene Zuu, Mongolia's oldest monastery, which contained a few restored temples and a ger full of monks cultivating marijuana plants. The rest of the day included a lot of off-road driving, exploring a section of the ancient Silk Road, more frozen lakes and a visit to a well operated by a man in traditional costume on a horse.
Our final night accommodation plans were to stay with a nomadic family. As there are no telephones or electricity in these parts, there's no phoning ahead to organise this. In Mongolia hospitality is a matter of sheer necessity rather than a chore or social obligation. Every home in the desert serves as a potential hotel, restaurant, pub, repair shop and information centre.
Gunna simply pulled over in front of the nearest ger when dusk approached, chatted to the family inside for a few minutes then invited us in. The mother and 2 eldest children would spend the night with their neighbours while the father and youngest bub would share with the five of us.
The family ger plays a vital role in shaping the Mongolian character. The small confines (radius of only about 4 metres) forces families to interact with one another, to share everything and work together. The lack of privacy and need for compromise makes inhibitions fade away and tightens relationships between relatives. It is not uncommon to have 3 generations all living within the one ger. We met our host family's grandfather briefly that night, the most respected member of a Mongolian family. They treated him like the wise elder he was and he looked most dignified in his magenta Buddhist monk robe and accompanying 'Nike' baseball cap (also magenta for colour coordination).
The children were very shy to begin with, and we were later told that we were the first westerners they had ever seen in real life. They warmed to us after we gave them each their clip-on koala, which they immediately attached to their dressing gowns and carried around with them for the rest of the night. Dawa cooked us up yet another mutton feast, as Gunna explained to Phil, Mel and I that the young girls of nomadic families often leave in their teenage years to go to university in the city while the young men stay to work on the farm. Apparently when the girls return all learned and sophisticated they have no interest in the comparatively primitive farm boys and marry city boys instead.
Despite the lack of running water, electricity and society as we know it, the nomadic Mongolians seem quite happy with their life following the herds. The simplicity of their life is inspiring and demonstrates how little we actually need to live a happy and fulfilling life. You can 'feel the love' between family members, being each other's room-mates, work-mates, and friends means they've come to know each other on a very deep level. Nearest neighbours can be 20 miles away, so community occurs on a much smaller scale for these families. Although this particular family did have frequent visitors thanks to the enormous satellite dish they have sitting next to the dung heap, their black and white solar battery-powered TV picking up Japanese Sumo wrestling and making them the most popular nomads in town.
