mongolia

Not even of the train yet and it's already becoming obvious that my small bag of tricks for survival would not be enough here. To the horizon scrub grass, sand and rocks. Sub-zero temperatures and howling wind are doable on foot if there is enough snow to dig in and build a shelter or there is wood for a fire but this is unlike anything i have ever seen.


Mongolia, the vastness of these steplands is undescribable. The horizon is broken every once in a while with a chunk of rock stickking up, sometimes even low hills with some snow sitting at their base, enough for water but not shelter. Every once in a while there are horses, small ones but sturdy looking and they would have to be the key.

Without a horse there would be no way to pack enough gear for the nights, no way to range far enough to find fuel or water or food.

After thailand with it's jungles teeming with animals and birds and insects, not to mention millions of people it's a pleasant change. It's easy to see how there are so many people there and not here. Survival would present some challenges but with the amount of raw materials at hand, no big deal. fuel to boil water even the dangerous animals are at least built of food it would be easy and a lot of people are proof. Here there are no people. at least not in comparison, a village every couple hundred kilometers, ruins of old houses once in a while but still the scene from the window is desolate more often than not.

The train pulls into a small community and i check the itinerary. We are in Sainshand, in the gobi desert. No wonder its like this. Sunrise was a spectacular affair, clear and warm feeling thru the window but the odd pony’s frisking along the tracks with their manes whipping and thick thick fur tell a different story. So does the frost in between cars thick next to the door on the jam side and feathering away, falling to the floor and crunching underfoot.

While we were stopped i stepped out in the flip flops inside the door of the cabin. It’s not that cold out, i tell myself but in the direct sun is always a different story. At night it got cold and out of the sun it’ll be cold. As the train pulls away i see a low mound of dirt with a chimney, the givaway that it’s someones home comes in the form of a taller mound of dirt with a hole dug in the ground at the far end, in the hole against the mound is a door. A wooden 4 panel exterior door on a mound of dirt about 60 feet long. Curiousity is killing me.

Breakfast, the dining car is different now, we must have changed it at the border last night when the wheels got changed for the difference in tracks from the standard to thicker russian system. Cryrillic signs and a menu with soups and beef pancakes and cigarettes and a dozen kinds of vodka as opposed to 3 kinds of chicken, sweet sour polk and meatball in brown sauce.

More snow now and hills, 10:30 and Ulaan baaar by 1:30. The temperature outside is -15 according to the thermometer in the dining car, the north slopes of the hills are bright white in the shade. While we eat i see a carcass against the fence alongside the tracks, it’s picked clean and bleached white. A Small cow or horse lying there legs tucked under it, head down as though it just laid down and went to sleep. Peaceful, serene the scavengers didn’t even dare disturb it. Just picked away till they got it all and left the bones in silent homage.

Ghengis or chinggis? Does it matter? However you spell it the people he came from and then left in his wake surely help lend credibility to the tales. Nomads in an incredible harsh surreal world, not believing in breaking the ground or leaving behind proof of their passage the single greatest testimonial to chinggis is the great wall that china built to keep him out.

Vodka for breakfast, vodka for lunch. For dinner, dumplings filled with mutton and onions and potato. And a bottle of vodka. When the dinner is done and the bottle is empty and we have sat for a bit our host sabina finally breaches the subject. “maybe another bottle of vodka?” in her heavy german accent.she’s been here 8 years and speaks mongolian like a native but i can’t help but wonder if they can hear the accent too.

we go out into the star filled coal scented night leaving julia with sabinas children and husband. We are in the gher district of Ulaan bataar where houses and fences look like relics from centuries past with the odd satelite dish just to keep things in this era. Rusted sheet metal and crumbling plaster and rotting wood of the stuff that doesn’t belong, then in every yard a squat round gher covered in heavy felt, we only go three yards before we stop and start banging on a steel gate. After a couple rounds of banging and shouting finally a very tall mongolian comes to the gate and lets her in, me he looks at suspiciously and i start to get the feelinging that this is going to be an adventure. Sabina barks some german mongolian at him and waves her arms around then we are in. Out of the night into a low ceilinged warm as hells kitchen little hovel just like the rest of them. And our host motions us towards the bed, his single peice of furniture in front of the tv other than a coffee table.

our mission to find another bottle of vodka has us three doors down from sabinas home in a gher-like house with a strange mongolian man serving us beer and sausage. Sabina explains that liquor resale is illegal and it's not polite to get right to business anyways. "take whats offered, it's custom." she says.


Then to explain further "Your safe inside the gher. You don't have to take anything you don't want too, but in the past if you didn't accept a host's hospitality when you left he could kill you."

Three hours later we have finished four litres of beer, one large sausage, a loaf of bread and a bottle of vodka. our host is cooking some form of liver and noodle dish and has shown me a map of canada and pointed out toronto where his cousin lives. Things are going well but i am sure julia is going to be pissed having been left in a strange place in a strange land with some strange people for far longer than expected. And we haven't even negotiated a bottle of vodka for ourselves.

Just before the food is ready i make a break for it. "I have to go get my girlfriend, it's been hours and i am sure she's worried" I say then head out into the night.

It is so clear and cold i don't even feel drunk heading down the alley. Stars and snow and the sulphur smell of coal smoke in a totally alien world. When i find the correct house and bash in through the door Julia is asleep on a low bench and responds exactly as i thought she might. "i am so pissed with you...." "i know, you have to come help me drink vodka, i will explain on the way." Is all i have to offer her.

You don't have to accept everything they offer, and your safe as long as your inside the gher....

These words echo for the next week, we go to the countryside with sabina to visit her relatives there and learn more about these wonderful wild crazy people.

Rule one. gifts are important, some food. usually mongolian noodles or rice and potatoes, sweets for the children and cigarettes or vodka, preferably vodka.

Rule two. pecking order, sabrina married the eldest male in the family so what she says goes. We stay first in a gher belonging to the sister of her husband and her husband. They cook what she wants and we sleep as guests and family in their beds. If they don't do as she says she is allowed to bash them in the head, as she explains this she gives a male relative who will later be known as shithead a couple test bashes with a balled up fist on the top of his head. sure enough he grins and bears it. then does as ordered.

When we arrive there are 2 goats heads simmering in a large steel wok set into the fireplace, they have been expecting us.The oldest child is a 12 year old girl who's name means falcon in mongolian and within minutes she is tieing julia a friendship bracelet, holding the cord ends in her teeth and trimming the ends with a rusty cleaver from  the floor. with that done and the gift bottle of vodka drunk with the elders it is time for some treats. She picks a jawbone each for us and sets about scraping what meat is left on the heads into a pot along with the eyeballs. when our jaws are picked clean she splits the heads on the concrete floor with the cleaver and scoops the brains into a plastic cup then serves everyone a spoonfull in order starting with julia and i until they are gone.

The water the heads were simmering is is now used to cook rice along with some potatoes and onions and it is suprisingly good, while it is cooking the gher is uncomfortably hot so the children and i go outside and take turns sliding down a packed hillside on pieces of plastic from water jugs and garbage bags. there is a wooden sled as well and i take the youngest girl on my lap for a couple runs, later i find out that all children under 4 are girls.

Male children attract bad spirits so until they are 4 or 5 they don't get haircuts, are given female names and dressed in girls clothes. when it is time they to get there first haircut the family seeks out a monk who will tell them when the correct time is and who the correct family member is to perform the haircut. Very serious business indeed.

Rattle and lurch, 5 days of chasing the sun westward from mongolia, asia is in the east now where it belongs. On european soil and moscow time the 5 days spent amongst the mongol hordes seem a continent away.our wait at the train station was a vodka blurry goat smelling feat of stoic patience broken only by the occasional prayer for a shower on the train. The chinese train to UB had showers.....This is a mongolian train full of mongolians, and not the dirt poor kind we had just spent 5 days with but the upwardly mobile moneyed kind. which meant they had all just been to bejing and spent as much as they legally could on cheap chinese crap. this turned the train into a bizzare travelling circus slash bazzar slash flea market.
 
blankets and track suits, bras and 3-D jesus placemats. every new station is an excuse to get of the train and sell sell sell for 15 minutes. as we fill out our entry forms for russia the anything to declare section stops my eye and sure enough it is the middle of the night when we reach the border and at the mongolian border a mad shuffle occurs. The provodnitsa or train attendants are in on it too! ours hurriedly hangs 3 black leather purses in our room, one for each of us, and they match! 15 kms later the russians board the train and order every one out into the hallway 3 seperate times. once for a search by the border police, once for a search by a dog, and the last one for a search by a very very tough looking female soldier complete with pistol and 3 foot long mag light. I am sure she had a kalishnikov leaned agains the train somewhere outside but refused to carry it inside to keep things sporting. Later we hear from the only other english speaking passenger that in his car a mongolian was caught with too much stuff and all they did was search him a fourth time. when he re-entered his cabin he had less than he was allowed and all was well.

and that was mongolia in a nutshell. russia was a whole nother story for a whole nother day.