Tonight, I agreed to attend the ‘Dance! Move! Play! Gathering,’ that promised hoop tricks, music, and poi (the Maori juggling toys, not the Hawaiian dish). I felt I qualified to join this event because I am one of the few people in my class who can keep a hoola hoop going around my waist (never mind that the rest of the class is made up of 4 and 5 year olds). 

Initially, I was intimidated because I didn’t know any spectular hooping tricks like incorporating different parts of my body or spinning with a hoop on fire but the event was actually really mellow. Deanne, the organizer, (that’s her on the left) brought a dozen striped hoops and we spread out in a gym, hoops a-spinning. Dani, who invited me to the event, had a hoop going around her foot while bent in a back bridge. I learned how to hoop while walking, and how to do the ‘cowgirl’ (hoop moving orizontally around hand, arm extended above head). I spent much of my time trying to get the hoop from above in the cowgirl position smoothly down to my waist and back up again. I only got hit in the face with spinning plastic few times though did manage to elbow myself in the ear. It wasn’t even that embarrasing running across the gym to retreive my runaway hoop. Concentrating on something so random and fun made me feel like a kid again and the two hours just flew by. Fingers crossed now and hope that my abs will be aching tomorrow from the work out. (Icing on the cake.)

In the waiting room, I waited for the results while trying to make out the original Japanese version of the book, “Everyone poops.” Suddenly, a nurse burst through the curtains of the exam room to hand me a face mask, “put this on.” Ahh, a big clue. I tried to smile at the little girl who sat down beside me but forgot that she couldn’t see half my face. So I squinted my eyes at her and hoped she understood that I was being friendly. Luckily with the mask over my mouth, I could sound out the words to “Everyone poops” without the people beside me overhearing and thinking me strange.

I thought about keeping the mask on to protect innocent passersby from the same virus that attacked innocent me. Yet, it was so hard to breathe through the material over my mouth that I pulled it off as soon as I left the doctor’s. On the way home, I tried extra hard not breathe my flu virus type A on anyone.

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

Travel guides always say that learning a few words in the local tongue goes a long way in warming up the locals. I’ve always been too shy for that but in Mongolia, not only was it easy to learn and use Mongolian, but it was often necessary!

Here is a list of words I learned during my two weeks in Mongolia:

Sain bain nuu (hello, how are you?)
Baiyarlaa (thank you)
Akh (older brother)
Ajil (job)
Jorlong (toilet)
Muur (horse)
Hun (sheep)
Yamaa (goat)
Ishik (baby goat)
Yemee (camel)
Os (water)
Choco Pie (Choco Pie)
Showerl (mortar)
Teny (your)
Hoorts (hammer)
Sheement (cement)
Scotch (scotch tape)
Chi (you)
Yawi (let’s go!)
Duu (younger sibling)
Kheden (when)
Supermarkt (supermarket)
Ger (yurt)
Nar (sun)
Sar (moon)
Khirtekh (eclipse)

Other expressions that regularly popped up were “how old are you”, “family?” and “how much?” (that was for drivers who acted as impromtu taxi drivers on the streets of Ulaanbaatar). These sentences were too complicated for me to retain so the Mongolian and I would take turns pointing out questions and answers from my phrasebook. Next time though, I will definitely take a Mongolian–>English dictionary with me.

But on the way back to Ulaanbaator, my van mates started pointing out hills and houses they recognized from our initial drive out to Kharkhorin. They concluded that Mongolians have such an intense connection to nature that they have superhuman ability to recognize and memorize subtleties in the landscape.

My memory was not as good as my fellow travelers’ but I could tell that all our time in the countryside did leave me with an appreciation for the land. My particular connection to nature was through my bladder. It was what set off a signal of hope whenever I spotted a large rock nestled in tall grass, a valley, or a dip in the land. Toilet pit stop ahead!

“Goat!”

I suspected no one actively wanted to eat goat but after days of mutton, we were ready for a second option.

“Can we eat a baby?” Juno asked. (On the construction site, he had been running after baby goats for fun, catching them by their baby horns and threatening to eat them.)

Our guide finished conversing with the hosts on her cell phone and said, “no, we never eat the babies.” It’s probably considered wasteful to cut short a lifetime of wool supply.

By the time we arrived at our host’s cosy ger, our dinner was already in preparation. In this picture, you can see pieces of goat chopped up atop a cupboard.

For the barbeque, our host filled a big pot with heated stones, goat meat, carrots, and potatoes. The pot was covered with a lid held down by a random piece of metal. Then it cooked over the campfire for about forty five minutes.

We all ate together in the main ger: the Habitat group, guides, drivers, and the host family. The Mongolians passed around a bowl of the fermented mare’s milk but understood travelers enough to not bother offering us a sip. They also passed around toothpicks but I was sad to not receive one of those because it really is an essential utensil when dining on tough goat meat.

The best part of the dinner was the singing. We asked if they had a Happy Birthday song (in honor of Wei’s birthday) and they said no, but they would sing a song in honor of his mother without whom, there would be no birthday for Wei. Then they sang a song about fathers for the same reason. (I’d read that most of Mongolian music is about nature so it’s pretty hard to find a song not in honor of mother earth, father sky, or indirectly, their offspring’s birthdays…) We sang them “que sera sera” led by Carol and a TGIFriday style birthday song taught to us by Cassandra.

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, I was praying as our hosts assigned horses one by one to members of our group. The family we were staying with didn’t have 20 horses (for us and our three guides) but they managed to round some up from the neighbors. I raised my hand for the short stocky one and quickly discovered that Mongolian horses were, if anything, consistent.

After a few unproductive tugs on the reins, this horse also lost faith in me and ran away from the group. It was in a gentle trot instead of an angry gallop. Luckily, it pulled to a stop 200 meters away at the clothes line which I assumed was his home base. Juno, who had equestrian experience, rode up to my rescue and informed me that horses tended to head home when they felt uncertain and that (surprise!) I needed to show him who was boss.

He barked directions at me. “Pull the left reign. Hard. Keep your elbows in. Don’t wrap the reins around your fingers.” Both my horse and I cooperated and we rejoined the group as it set out on the trek to the Orkhon waterfall.

I am happy to report that all but two of us stayed on our horses. At one point, Juno’s horse reared up and threw him when it got spooked by an approaching vehicle. Francine’s horse got freaked out by the rattling pills in her purse and started galloping in a mad circle. Luckily, Francine also had experience with horses and according to eyewitness accounts, she hung on for as long as she could like a real rodeo cowgirl.

[This is a photo of Wei crossing the waterfall on his bare feet after a moment alone on the other side on his 36th birthday.]

The ride back was indeed uneventful as I kept my horse on a ”short leash.’ A part of me wanted to let loose and experience the thrill of the runaway gallop one last time but I was not brave enough to dig my heels in and tell my horse “choo.”  

Cassandra: That wasn’t a giant sheep. That was a baby yak.

Yaks were the most exotic creatures I had ever seen. Something about the unabashed hairiness and the slopes of their backs (not unlike the hills of San Francisco). They resembled cows but had horns like bulls. The Mongolian attitude towards animals was a constant source of fascination for me. Where I come from, if you don’t lock up your animals, someone would steal them, or they would run away and hurt people. The yaks were so mellow, giving the impression that they had no interest in charging at people, not even at foreigners with cameras. 

Here’s a funny story: Before bedtime one night, Francine and I were making our way into a valley of darkness (seriously, we wanted to pee away from the lights of the gers and vans). I stood a few feet in front of her to guard her modesty but could not protect her from a voyeur beside her. Just as she was pulling her pants down to squat in the pitch darkness, we heard a snort. It was a yak letting her know that she was not alone. Or maybe the yak was trying to tell her “don’t back up any further, sister.” Either way, we were relieved that the reaction was so gentle coming from a wild animal unaccustomed to strange foreign girl behavior. 

From this photo, you can tell that baby yaks don’t look much like giant sheep but actually more like fuzzy donkeys. (My frame of reference is very limited.) I took many photos of a pair of baby yaks before one of them got freaked out by my proximity and moved to hide behind its mother. The other one tried to be brave and by not letting me interrupt his sunbathing. I could tell that from time to time, he looked over to his mother for reassurance and I could tell that she was keeping her eye on me.

Decomposing animals were not an unfamiliar sight in the countryside. But it was rare to come across something that looked like the remains of a mammoth (granted, a very small mammoth). Which one of the five snouts (horse, cattle, sheep, goat, camel) do you think this once was?