the Mongol Els

 (he’s not dead, just bored)

We would not be seeing the Gobi dessert on our trip but we were scheduled to cross the Mongol Els (aka “the mini Gobi”) on our way back to Ulaanbaator. We left the waterfall after lunch and six hours later, pulled off the main road where grass was smothered under miles of sand. At the base of the dunes, (aka, giant piles of sand), a half dozen camels sat around waiting for customers. Camel riding was on my Mongolia to-do list but after the adventures on horseback, I was happy enough just hearing about camel riding from other travelers.

“two humps more comfortable than one”
“the scary part is when the camel puts his front legs down first and you tilt towards the ground”
“the camel’s rein is just one rope, attached to a stick poking through its nostrils”
“there are always flies around the camel’s mouth and nose because it’s really stinky” (dehydration=stinky breath)

As we waited for the other two vans to catch up, I drew on the sand with a little Mongolian boy. I drew a happy face with a cap and said “chi!” (you). He corrected my drawing by adding a nose. I drew other things I knew the words for in Mongolian (sheep, camel). I didn’t know how to draw a horse so I asked him to do it.

This is the picture of the yurt we drew together. A man who had been watching us came up to me and asked if I wanted to go on a camel ride. (fingers pointing at camels and at money in his hand.) When I just smiled and kept on drawing, he spoke to the boy ( “sell a camel ride!” I guessed he was saying). The boy squirmed and tried to ignore him. After teaching me the boy’s name, the man decided to teach me the Mongolian alphabet, drawing the Cyrillic characters in the sand. I thanked him and stood up before he started charging for the lesson.

This entry was posted on December 29, 2008 at 9:14 am and is filed under Mongolia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.