Day 7 - Nomadic Life

Today we head off towards Tsagaan Suvarga where we'll be staying with a nomadic family, the Dashdorov. We are slowly getting back in the groove of our own nomadic life, but not quite yet. I can feel everyone is still quite exhausted, especially after Oscars' 2am ballet dance where he woke everyone up thanks to jetlag 🤪

We start our journey with a lovely driver, far far more smiley than the previous one! One quite odd thing about Mongols here. They tend not to smile at all, or are really generous with their smiles. Our previous driver only once faintly smiled for the last photo we took with him. He was otherwise particularly grumpy, unless he was teasing and joking with Oscar. This one, is smiling from the get-go. But what I see most often, is that they are pretty serious, and warm up to smiling only quite a bit later, once we've managed to have a couple of laughs. Then the smiles don't stop.

Anyhow, our driver, in his normal job, is a construction worker, has 4 kids but with a very wide spread in age. He proudly shows us his house, in one of those huge towers along the road. He also speaks no English. Google translate will have to do, even if in our first attempt, he tells me the came fell down. We all have a good laugh, him included, once he gets how bad the translation is!

We stop at a big westernized supermarket to stack up on some essentials (ramen noodles for survival moments where food won't be available, and for a change from..mutton!) Interestingly we meet a local lady who speaks some German and French, and who studies nomadic life.

Ready for 10 days of nomadic life hopping and 2000kms of off road driving! Woohoo.
All is green around us! Totally different from from our last experience which was as dry as it gets!

First thing we pass is a Milk farm of ... horses!!!

The drive is smooth. Stop for food, I ask the driver to order for me what he thinks is best. Guess what he gets me? Mutton soup with noodles 🤣 Nora Skye struggles 🤪

We get to our first night stop. There is absolutely mad wind. I can also see that the prospect of the rough life is tough on all of us. Lennox lands the worse bed this time. A blanked on wood. Some of us get what we think is a thick mattress, but... it is a wood frame with a thin frame on top! Hahaha! 🧐 But Lola kindly offers her brother her own bed. 😲

We go see the camels, walk around for a while, Oscar starts seeing heaps of bugs which he tries to find in his book, as well as incredibly cute lizards, and I can feel everyone starts to loosening up. Strange. The mood lifts, and the magic of mongolia starts taking us by the hand again. Food is what it is, mutton and starch. But little plus, I ask whether we can try camel milk and yogurth. To my greatest surprise, it is for once LENNOX who seems to hear the taste the best! Really not bad, even though it tastes like it has turned. I do finish it happily (better than mutton!). What is tougher on the palate, I must admit, is the milk that they go fetch for me. I struggle to swallow, but to be polite I do finish half my bowl. Lennox seems also able to handle it!!!!! The others, absolutely... not! It tastes really rancid, a bit gewy, and with bits. And still warm from the Camel🥵🥶🤯 I am still wondering whether my stomach will manage to survive this one intact 😅

But as a reward for the tough experience as we warm up to the family, they offer our kids to go for a camel ride. We never tire of those! Good fun!!!

The night is magical, noise of wind and howling... camels (they do sound like wolves), then when the wind dies down, we can hear the bugs on the roof. (Or in the case of Ian, inside his ear, and which refuses to get out for a while!) What peace when we come out to go to the loo at 2am with Lola and enjoy the sheer silence and darkness of the night! SO magical! And a little extra, it is WARM!Read more