Ger living, day 2

How did the day go by?  Awfully relaxing, with a little bit of latent anxiety in the background, given the remoteness.

Turned out Badzar was quite the chess player, so we played a few rounds.  He beat me and got bored.  So he rounded up his brother and I and my Dutch companion went with his brother Sukh ("axe" - great names) on a camel ride to a local shrine. Sukh seemed pretty bored too, luckily for all of us, he had a smartphone and could play some beats while we rode out for well over an hour.  I guess the impulse to listen to pop music is pretty universal, whether you are commuting on the interstate or riding your camel in rural Mongolia.

Mongolia's defining characteristic?  Space.  Wherever you go, you can see to the horizon and usually there's not much between you and the edge of the world.  A recurring theme from all my pictures, and, well, most of my thoughts was how much damn space there was around me.

Is it a cool feeling?  Yeah, for a bit.  But honestly, being so absurdly alone is a new feeling for most people, and it can be a little unsettling.  Maybe that's why the Mongol's are so close - even with the whole world as their backyard, they spend most of their time almost on top of each other in their gers.  I certainly felt that impulse.  I could go anywhere I wanted, but most of the time I stuck to the people next to me and we moved in groups.  Do we humans have some impulse to huddle for protection?  It certainly felt that way out there.

Mongols practice a Tibetan version of Buddhism, part of a historical accident where they conquered Tibet and adopted the religion.  Here is the Dalai Lama - sadly, you'd never find these kids of shrines in the religion's heartland, Tibet.

It's a long walk, well, anywhere.  

Lots of parking.

Lazy camels... everyone is just hanging out and passing the time.

Cool shadows from the setting sun.

The long walk home... luckily we were just taking a walk around the religious landmark, which isn't much more than a pile of rocks with lots of blue prayer flags.

Sunset over the Mongolian Steppe.

Detail on the airag bowl... this one was handmade out of silver, with leather and wood finishes.  It might run you as much as $500 back in town.

A good way to pass the time.  They are going to love the iPad once it makes its way to Mongolia.

A bucket of milky moonshine and the communal chalice.

Here's the whole family, father, mother, three sons and a daughter.  One of the sons is a singer in town, the other is a teacher, the daughter is in university and the little guy is still hanging out on the ranch.

Kids everywhere are the same.

Ceremonial saddle.

Cheerful touch.

Looking rugged.

Getting ready to saddle up and take us on to our next stop.

Ger living, day 1

The fantasy of living with nomads starts with a single step... and a bumpy jeep ride to the middle of nowhere.

Home for the next two nights.

And the horses... the sheep and goats are out to pasture.

The first night I had the company of a Dutch guy who was doing a similar circuit... he was leaving after only a couple of nights though, while I was in for the long haul.

I have a theory that to really experience something you almost have to do it long enough for it to be familiar, and for you to get sick of it.  After two or three nights, who knows, maybe I would still be hungry for more.  But I was pretty sure that after 2 weeks in the boonies I was either going to really, really love Mongolia, or, more likely, be about ready to come home.

So this was day one of twelve.

As would happen over and over again during the trip, it was the kids that really brought the experience together.  As adults we get more reserved, more shy, and more afraid of breaking social taboos.  Kids don't care about any of that stuff, and they also tend to be really good at reading subtle clues, like body language or hand gestures, to figure out what's going on.

Our little guide this time around was Badzar ("thunderbolt").  He was probably about 10 years old.  In the States, we'd also probably say the kid has ADD, but out here it seemed like he was just an energetic kid out in the countryside.  He was obviously pretty proud of his zombie impression (see below), which he used to pretty good effect with every group of tourists, I'm guessing.

Getting settled included a little airag, which is fermented mares milk.  If it sounds like an acquired taste, well, it is, but if you insist and work at it, it can actually be pretty good.  The alcohol, about 1-2% by volume, keeps it from spoiling and helps napping during the hot afternoons.

Unfortunately for the authenticity of our trip, most of the families, including this one, had substituted the pure meat and dairy diet for some Western imports, including noodles, potatoes and rice.  I guess past groups had complained, but those additions aren't supposed to be part of the culture.  And the food was... basic, I guess, but nothing a little hot sauce couldn't handle (luckily I found a huge bottle at a grocery store in UB!).

The first thing I noticed about nomad / herder lifestyle was just how slow the days go by.  There's an early morning push to get the sheep, goats and cattle out to pasture, but then there's just a long, hot day of hanging out waiting, waiting and waiting.  People keep busy mashing the airag, or maybe doing laundry, but it's a lot of sitting around, staring at the sky, and now with solar panels - watching TV.  So much for the aggressive imagery of people on horses looking like heroes - well, there's that too, but it's as much a part of Mongolian life as crazy fraternity parties are part of life for the average American.

I brought a couple of heavy tombs to read (prepping for China), so I was prepared... at least for a little while.

Out of UB, day 1

I got up early the next morning to catch the cab that would take me to the bus that would take me to the van driver who would take me to the nomad.  A long day.  Exciting to finally get out of the city though.

Ger to Ger had a plan for me... basically, the idea was to take a bus for 8 hours to a region "near" UB, spend 6 days there with four different families, and then take another 8 hour bus farther out, to the White Lake, roughly in the middle of central Mongolia.  After another 4 days there with a different family I would come back with a few days to spare, fingers crossed, before my flight out.  

If this all seems pretty hardcore, well, it was, and it did make me nervous.  I have to admit that somehow, for some reason, I was just absolutely fascinated by the whole nomad, Genghis Khan, living in the middle of enormous, wide open spaces shtick and wanted to get close to it - maybe even be part of it - even if it was only for a few days.  The rational part of my brain said it wasn't going to be that special, and that there was a fair amount of risk to trying to do it, but some other part kept thinking it was romantic and exciting, in this primeval kind of way.  

If nothing else, I needed to indulge this feeling before coming back home.  I think, secretly, I wanted to demystify it so I could do whatever I did after this trip in peace, knowing that I experienced what I had wanted to experience.

Ger to Ger had a plan for me - but how much did that plan really mean?  I'm not the most anal guy in the world, but this one took a big leap of faith.  Once I was out in the field, it was going to be just me and the locals.  Did they speak English?  How would they know who to take me to next?  What if they didn't know?  How was I going to find my bus to take me to the White Lake?  What if I got sick?  Ger to Ger basically told me to trust them - everything would be OK.  There might be other tourists at some of the families, but then again, there probably wouldn't.  

And then there are the everyday worries... like - what am I going to eat?  Where am I going to sleep?  And what is the bathroom situation like at the nomad camp?  More than anything else on my trip so far, this was going to test my comfort zone.  Traveling by motorbike around South America is adventurous, sure, but you're the one in control.  Now, not so much.

Mongolian buses, crowded, but comfortable.  And everyone is incredibly friendly!

Flashy seat covers.

Other tourists heading out of UB.

To be fair, this guy is Kazakh, but this is the fantasy that I was chasing.

Could I rough it and be part of that landscape?  That was the goal...

Getting into the field

I spent a few days at my base camp in Ulaan Bataar trying to find a way to get out of the city and into the countryside.  Ulaan Bataar is charming in its own developing, wild-west kind of way but there's not much to do and the fact that no one speaks English, and Mongolian is a) impossible to pronounce and b) written in cyrillic makes getting around the city a huge effort.

Mongolia is a peculiar place.  First of all, it is the least densely populated country in the world, by a long shot. Roughly 2.5 million people live in a plot of area about three times the size of France.  Canada, with its huge expanses of tundra and arctic, is roughly twice as crowded.

Because of this, Mongolia never really had cities, or a permanent civilization of any sort.  To its heart, Mongolia is a culture of nomads.  Ulaan Bataar, the current capital, is home to one out of two Mongolians today, but wasn't really settled until the 19th century.  Before that it was a "movable" city, and would change location every few years.  

This culture has seeped into Mongolian's everyday lingo.  Busses are called "goat carts", beer is called "yellow airag" (fermented mares milk).  Horses used to roam the streets of Ulaan Bataar until the 90s, when the government forbade them in the city center.  New immigrants to the city simply bring their tents and pitch them in the hills around the town.  

Mongolia calls itself a "frontier economy," which sounds hokey, except the second you land you realize it really is a frontier economy.  You understand what Americans settlers meant by "frontier" and that the Wild West was, actually, pretty damn wild.  Even in Mongolia, in the 21st century, it feels like the rules, whatever they are, don't really matter.  That's true whether it comes to traffic, city planning or just about anything else.  It is chaotic, dusty, polluted and yet it is full of energy and it's all going somewhere, fast.  Mongolia's current per capita income currently hovers around $3,400 - it has grown at almost 10% per year for the past decade, and if current mining projects are ever completed, it might increase by ten times.  Mongolia is the mineral version of Kuwait, and if all those reserves of copper and coal ever make it their way to China the average Mongolian might be richer than the average America, and it all might happen in our lifetimes.

But, before all that happened, I wanted to get a glimpse of the Mongolia of legend - cowboys on horseback, people living in tents the way they had for thousands of years, drinking fermented mares milk, herding animals and singing to pass the time.  Who knows - it may not be around for too much longer.  

Luckily, there is an organization called Ger to Ger (http://www.gertoger.org/) that had exactly what I was looking for.  The Company organizes something that straddles a trek and a homestay.  The basic idea is that they organize travelers into small groups of 2-4 and then set you off into the field on a string of home stays.  It's a chance to get into the countryside, get on horseback, and see the real Mongolia.  Because of how it's organized, it's also extremely affordable.

Back in adventureland: Mongolia

Transitions are telling moments.  One day I'm drinking beer in Munich with a good friend of mine, dressed in preppy clothes and enjoying the good life.  24 hours later I'm suddenly back in rugged adventureland, surrounded by the very people I had become 4 months into my motorcycle journey.  But while I had finished my version of the motorcycle diaries, they were in the middle of theirs.  

It took more than a few days to readjust to the rugged life in Ulaanbataar.

For intrepid adventurers doing the overland route from Europe to the Pacific, UB is the first civilized place after a lonely, lonely stretch of road.  Most of these modern Marco Polos had been in the boonies for weeks, living in tents, praying that they wouldn't need spare parts, and hoping they wouldn't get stuck - or worse - lost, on Mongolia's non-existent roads..  The prior "civilized" stop was Almaty, Kazakhstan, not exactly a cosmopolitan place and a few thousand miles to the West.  By making it as far as UB they had just about guaranteed they could make it to their destination.

It just so turned out that the place where I was staying was ground zero for these adventure travelers.  The place was on the outskirts of the city, had secure parking, and was run by an efficient and effective German couple who provided everything a traveler needed (thank god for the Germans and Swiss - budget travel without them would be just awful).

So I changed out of my gingham and into my NOLS gear, traded stories with the others, and got ready for one last adventurous push before the relative comfort of China, and finally, my return flight to the States.  

Not my bike, but exciting being close to someone else's trip.

Ger - the Mongolian tent - is going to be home for the next few weeks.

Welcome!

The guesthouse.  It includes a sunny patio, free high speed wi-fi (or as high speed as you'll get), and a wonderful menu full of hearty German food.

A preview of things to come.