The Long Way Down, Up and Around: Ger life, day three, family two

Badzar's family was wonderful - his brothers were as patient as could be with my terrible horse and camel skills and his parents were generous and patient (a recurring theme) with my incipient curiosity. It must get old after a while, having visitor after visitor poke his nose around in your home. If it bothered them, they certainly didn't show it.

But, all good things come to an end. After a second night of fitful sleep - the dogs bark and howl all night - it was time to move on and see a different side of Mongolian life.

My knees and rear end still hadn't recovered from the past few days of riding - especially the trip to the watering hole that was a good three hours round-trip. You see, Mongolian horses are pint-size - they're really more like ponies - and fitting in the stirrups means you have to bend your knee at an awkward angle. The saddles are traditionally made of wood with silver decorations, and even with the pillow they provide tourists they're still pretty tough. If you want your knees to relax... well there goes your rear end. And if you try to save your behind from too much punishment your knees give out. For the first few days out on horses I played this game over again and again, to the amusement of my Mongolian hosts.

Most Mongolian learn to ride before they learn how to walk, and the sight of Westerners learning how to handle a horse for the first time must have been pretty funny. I guess it would like us watching someone learn how to ride a bike for the first time, or learn to swim. It feels so natural that you wonder how someone else could be having so much trouble!

It was another 2 hour camel ride to our next stop, a couple with seven daughters and a son near the main road.

One of the great things about staying with a couple of different families is that you can see all the different flavors of family life. As it turned out, each of the four families I stayed with was very different. Comparing across all those different families gave me a little bit of sense for what was "Mongolian" and what was more an idiosyncratic part of family life.

Again, it was the kids in the family that helped me integrate for the one night I was there. This time it wasn't chess, or TV... it was volleyball! It wasn't the last time spontaneous volleyball would happen in the middle of the steppe, and I wonder if my experience was unique or if volleyball really is the quasi-national sport of Mongolia? I could never really figure it out.

Mongolian's name their children very literally; the guys are named after macho things like thunderbolts, axes, rocks and predatory animals, and the girls are named after beautiful, feminine things like chrysanthemums, peace, flowers and jewels. Altantsetseg ("golden flower") succeeded "thunderbolt" in taking me under her wing at my second homestay.

What happened that day? Well, we took another horseback ride out to some abandoned stone monuments, Indiana Jones style. Scattered all over Mongolia are these little stone statues - no one really knows who created them, or why. Locals still think they have supernatural powers, and its not hard to see why when you're standing in the middle of the steppe with a mysterious, ancient stone statue in front of you. We made the most of the opportunity by taking some silly pictures.

We passed a couple of hours with some volleyball, occasionally wiping off the volleyball when it got sent into the goat pen.

Then were was a lot of hanging out as visitors passed through - friends and family who just wanted to say hello. Since everyone has so much free time on their hands, it's fair game to swing by a buddy's ger and just say hello. No need to call ahead, no need to make plans - I bet the whole idea of fixed social plans would strike people as a bit strange, actually. It reminded me a little bit of college, actually, and of my time in Morocco during college. Or maybe the office on a really slow day?