How to be portable

 A camel is not a minivan

When traveling in Mongolia, you’ve got to pack light. Think nomadic style: everything you need for survival, you can carry on your back.

Wonder how you would cope with the barest of possessions? Here are a few ideas:

1. Try cement debris as facial exfoliator, to be activated during mid-day sunscreen application on the construction site. Dusty fingers massaging upon dusty skin is excruciatingly effective.

2. To build a pillow where there is none (like when you are an overnight ger guest), roll up your spare clothes and shove into your emptied sleeping bag sack for a lumpy head rest.

3. Or, in case you failed to pack proper cold weather gear, put every spare piece of clothing you’ve brought on your body. As for Pillow Plan B: your sleeping pad rolled up becomes a perfectly functional pillow to keep your shoulder from getting crushed on the wooden platform Mongolians call “a bed.”

4. The Costco granola bars your mom had you pack in case of hunger are a good icebreaker when offered to locals and children in the countryside.

5. When you roll up your dirty socks and run them under some water, they get reincarnated as a sponge bath tool on pants sticky with dirt and sweat.

6. During your moment of morning toiletries behind the ger, the sleeve of your zippered sweatshirt acts as a fine face towel.

7. When running low on water, use the last of your morning tea for rinsing your mouth and toothbrush after brushing. Don’t forget to shake off brown tea bits from rinsed toothbrush.

Things I wish I had brought despite fantasies of being portable:
1. postcards of my home to show locals
2. (oh so versatile) sweatpants instead of PJ bottoms
3. aloe vera (to repair the cement damage on my skin)
4. rubber bands (for wrapping up half eaten packs of (carefully rationed) food).
5. Mongolian –> English dictionary

This entry was posted on January 26, 2009 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Life-altering, 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.