Mongolia 3: The seven hour horseback ride to the Tsaatan reindeer herders

  One quick note that I forgot to mention regarding the Naadam wrestling was that the the loser of each match would have to maneuver under the winner's arm.  Then they would swing around the winner's body.  The winner would then be given a traditional Mongolian hat and do a slight birdlike flapping victory dance.  In between wrestling matches, and witnessed throughout Mongolia, everyone was familiar with each Mongolian song played.   People would often sing along.  An absurd amount of people wore New York Yankees baseball hats, especially in the countryside.  There were a few other teams represented, such as the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox.  My driver wore a UNC Davis sweatshirt. The Yankees were the mostly commonly found American reference by far.  When I asked the guide, he explained that people bought their clothing from cheap Chinese vendors.  They bought whatever was for sale, and couldn't read what was written.  The mutton flour covered soup was called "bituu shol."

  We passed the reindeer gates and encountered a large village.  I was hoping we would be near the end of the drive, but there was a couple of hours left.  The drive itself was socially, slightly awkward for me.  With the guide's poor English skills, there wasn't much point in trying to make conversation.  He would end up answering a different question than I had asked.  The three of them mostly spoke amongst themselves.  I looked out the window or played music using the car's audio system, and eventually used my own earbuds.  At one point on the previous day, the driver played a Radiohead song sung by a woman.  On this day, I played some real Radiohead for us.  The driver liked that.

                                        

  Around 7:00 PM we finally reached the village of Gurvansaikhan.  

This was the vehicle we travelled in.

  Before dinner, I took a short walk around the town with the woman that we were dropping of, before she departed.  She translated the writing on the buildings and gave feedback on my pronunciation of basic words and phrases.  Along the way, multiple young men tried hitting on her.  This was easy to tell, despite the language barrier.  The most blatant young man was on his motorcycle.  I jumped on this opportunity to ask him if I could take a photo.  This was one of the Mongolian phrases I had learned.  He agreed to the request.

  The guesthouse was very rudimentary.  The showers had to be heated ahead of time and the building allowed for one person to shower at a time.  The bathroom was a set of outhouses.  Two with a hole in the ground and one with a toilet seat to sit on.  The two hand washing stations had tanks that had to be manually filled with water . You pushed upward on the bottom dispenser in order to release the water.

  The morning of the horse ride, Dorj sat me down and handed me a set of rules on Mongolian horsehandling.  I was asked to sign a waiver.  Horses in Mongolia tend to be skittish and spook easily.  Don't wear a jacket that could rustle.  Plastic bags could scare them by the noise or movement.  The list went on.

  We drove about an hour west and a bit south.  I sent final texts to people, as I would not have cell phone reception again for over three days.  We stopped in an open field with some nearby trees and a stream.  Our horse guide would be from the family of reindeer herders that we would be staying with.  There were two elderly people hanging out with us, who would eventually leave with supplies, riding on the reindeer.  They wore wonderful traditional clothes and I asked the woman if she was comfortable with a photo being taken.

  The man offered me a drink.  In the Mongolian guide supplied by the tour company, it explained thatto be polite, accept food and drink offered.  You only were expected to take a sip.  For some reason, I decided to smell it, right as it was reaching my lips.  Alcohol.  The guide said vodka.  On this occasion, I had to turn it away.

This dog had accompanied the horse guide.  It was a neighbor's dog, and he would join us on the entire ride.

  It was strange being on the horse intially.  There really isn't anything to hold onto, except for a small metal ring.  You can perhaps hold onto the front of the saddle in a way.  The reins controls the horse, but it doesn't make you feel secure in the saddle.  Dorj was a seasoned rider, learning through his childhood.  He held a rope to my horse, making sure I was guided generally in the right direction.  I had to be the one to navigate the horse away from branches that might catch onto my leg, which I was quite poor at for pretty much the entirety of that first day.  I wore a helmet and had a backpack on, with two cameras and two lenses.  On my waist was a second bag, with one more camera and lens.  

  

  Riding is uncomfortable.  Galloping is extremely uncomfortable.  Horses can stumble.  This is especially true when going through mud that came halfway up the horse's leg.  Streams were tricky. Aside from the final thirty minutes, it was a sunny day.  I cannot imagine how uncomfortable and treacherous it would have been in the rain.

  Insects.  Once we reached the woods, a hundred or more mosquitos swarmed each horse, and therefore, us.  I would often see thirty or more of them clinging to the hats of the other two riders.  It was most unpleasant.  We took a total of four breaks, including one for lunch.  Getting off of the horses did not help the insect situation.  It was an absolute nightmare.  I tried dousing myself with insect repellant on the ride back, but it had no effect.

  The journey was flat for the first half.  About an hour into the ride, a bird flew off to our side, and it spooked my horse. This meant that it suddenly darted forward.  I asked for help while pulling the reins, which slowed it down.  The guide explained that some people freak and bail in that situation.

  About halfway through we began ascending.   At one point, we were on the side of a mountain, and I had to dismount for a while and walk alongside.  Then came the trickiest and most dangerous two hours of the journey.  The problem was the mud, the wet roots, the constant descending and climbing, combined with a very tight path of trees.  The horse almost fell once or twice.

  Our last break was about thirty minutes away from our destination.  I had trouble even standing up straight when getting off of the horse.  We rested for a bit and then I pointed out that the clouds looked gloomy and that we should move on.  We did, and it rained lightly.

  Once we arrived, we were immediately summoned to the teepee of the host family.  I was served milk tea, along with homemade cheese and bread.  Milk tea is a very traditional Mongolian drink which I had read about, but this was my first time drinking it.  I don't quite know how to describe it.  It doesn't taste much like tea actually, which is good, because I really don't like tea.  This milk was reindeer milk, which I tried not to think about.  

The location of the camp.

    I was given two camping pads stacked on top of a small wooden platform.  We had a kitchen table in the middle and Dorj unpacked the cooking supplies.  Then the reindeer came back to the camp for the night.

  A vegetable pasta dish was cooked for dinner and broccoli soup for breakfast.  Bottled water was packed for me, but Dorj and the rest of the camp drank from the stream.  We brought instant coffee and powdered milk.  Dorj repeatedly brought up how we had to eat only vegetables.  Since Mongolian diet consists of mostly meat, this was strange to him.

  There was no electricity and no cell phone reception.  The families used solar panels to power small handheld gaming systems for the children, phones to play on, and even small tv(which was used with a small satellite).  They used a fire to heat the teepees occasionally, and to cook.  Dorj used gas canisters.  One night we slept with a fire, but like it was in the ger, you wake up cold in the middle of the night.  The communal toilet was on the far side of the hill.  It was a deep hole with wooden boards covering it, except for the center.  This allowed you to plant feet on both sides while using it.  There were stones piled up on three sides, which allowed people to see the top of you.  This was so they could see someone using it, but not enough to see their bottom half.

  According to Dorj, there are three hundred and fifty reindeer herders remaining, divided into east and west settlements.  Reindeer herders are known as the Tsaatan.  The families get paid the equivalent of one hundred dollars per person by the government to keep the traditional lifestyle alive.  In the winter, the women and children stay at the local village.  At one point they showed me a video of an avalanche that had killed thirty of their reindeer and had a devastating effect on their lives.  They chose to dig up the reindeer to make use of their bodies.

  At about 3:30 AM each morning I would be woken up by the sounds of the reindeer, which sounded like pigs grunting.  I made a sound recording of it one morning and converted it into a video.  No visuals, just the sounds that I heard one morning at 4:00 AM.

                                            
 

 The first night went well, though it was extremely cold.  I wore many layers, along with a camping bag and blanket on top of that.  I spent the next day hanging around the camp, reading, and watching the people.  There were many kids around, from age three or so up to maybe ten.  I learned that kids are sent around their early teenage years to boarding school in the town that we had just come from.  I joined them in playing volleyball as well.  They had a game where everyone would hit in a circle, but if you missed or hit the ball in the wrong direction, you sat in the center.  Then, if someone hit the ball at you, or missed, and you were able to touch it, you rejoined the circle.

  Around mid afternoon I decided to take a solo hike along the hillside and made my way towards the nearest other Tsaatan settlement.  I saw many wildflowers and insects along the way.  As I came closer to the other village, I came across large area of melting snow and ice.  I first tried walking atop it but it did not feel solid, so I walked around.

  When I arrived at the other camp, there was a group of maybe eight people compromised of about five tourists and three Mongolians.  They looked up but couldn't be bothered to even say hello, and resumed their conversation as if I did not exist.  I simply turned around, put my earbuds back in, and made my way back to my camp.  

  I carefully avoided the mud until the final stretch, when I was unable to find a clear path around it.  I was tired by now, so I decided to walk straight through it.  My shoes were drenched in this process.  I left them out to dry, put plastic bags over fresh socks, and hobbled around the camp.  New tourists joined us that night, the Tsaatan put up a makeshift volleyball net, and everyone played.  I couldn't safely play on the terrain without shoes, so I played with one of the dogs while watching and played with some of the little kids that wanted a partner to play with.

  The sunset was wonderful.  I walked around with my plastic bags over my socks and took pictures.

    That night I had mild food poisoning, which was unpleasant.  I was extra tired when I woke up, despite sleeping later that usual. The previous morning, the families came into our teepee and presented us with their carvings.  They would gather antlers that fell to the ground and made carvings to sell to people.  I asked Dorj if it were possible for me to see them during the carving process, so I could see how it was done.  They agreed.  As I watched by the fire, I began to feel slightly feverish.

I ended up buying these.

This was a children's puzzlelike game that Dorj showed me, that he was familiar with from his childhood.

  When I returned to the teepee, I took another nap.  I had received at least thirty mosquito bites on that first day.  Perhaps it was this combined with the wear from the long hours on horse, and the mild food poisoning that made me feel poorly that day.  I chose to eat mostly just rice, and to rest.  By late afternoon I felt well enough to do a short horse ride back to that neighboring village, to visit the sister of the horse guide.  We spent some time with her, drank milk tea, and riding back.  

  That night it poured all night.  There was loud wind and thunder.  Thankfully, we woke up to sunshine and I felt well again.

  When we returned to the original departure point, our driver was there, with a man I had never met.  He was around my age and spoke better English than my guide.  He said he was a friend of our driver. I did not understand why he was there.  He offered to put my backpack into the car and I asked him not to.  He suggested that that must have been my camera bag.  I never told him I had cameras.

  Back at the previous guesthouse, we ate dinner, watching the cows roam the streets while a rainbow formed over town. 

  I showered for the first time since before I left.  This time, for some reason, music began playing from the shower.  No matter how I tried, I could not get it to stop.  It played Christmas songs on repeat, all horribly, horribly out of tune.  I took another voice only recording.  Then I went to bed early.