Tour day 1

We met Uka the evening before we were to set off for our six days tour of the Mongolian countryside. She had responded to an advert for a tour guide which I had posted on a Facebook group many weeks before and had impressed me with her enthusiasm and responsiveness to all my questions. On messaging her to establish where we should meet she invited us to eat out. We ended up at a Mongolian grill, which is apparently a "thing". I have since read that it is possible to have a Mongolian grill in many major US cities. In practice they work very much like the Chinese all-you-can-eat buffets with which we are all familiar. One is offered a selection of cooked and raw foods, the latter of which are taken to a chef to be prepared in front of you and generally with a certain theatricality. The only major difference here was the number of mutton dishes on offer, including a whole sheep's head, and the fact that several selections are prepared simultaneously on a large hotplate using long knife like spatulas.
I was a little disappointed to learn that Uka herself was not going to be available as our guide but was going to be entrusting us to someone else with whom she worked. Having met Gan however (see earlier posts), who if he had been more prompt in answering emails would probably have got our business I was still very happy that I had contracted with her company. Also present at the meal was Uka's boyfriend Baagii, who was to be our driver. He was a very friendly fellow with about as much English as we had Mongolian but we still managed to establish a good rapport, much aided by some pictures of our yurt. We all thoroughly enjoyed our meal and the company. The thing I most appreciated was the fact that I had not had to do anything. After nearly three weeks of being responsible for everything I could now sit back and let someone else deal with transport, food, activities and communication.
The next morning we met up with Baagii, Uka and our guide Elma and set off for our first stop, the races. This was a big meet but more reminiscent of a county point to point in atmosphere. Here there is no limitation on space and the 20 km race has no need to repeat a circuit. From the finish line it was only possible to guess where the start might be and when the riders eventually appeared it took a quarter of an hour to see them all cross. We had found ourselves a good position by the rails and as word got round that the riders were approaching we were surrounded by many other spectators, several of them also on horseback. Four elaborately dressed riders carrying batons were waiting just before the finish line and as the first riders came in these rode alongside them and passed the batons to indicate their position, then riding off with them to where they would be awarded what we were told were quite lavish prizes, motorbikes, household goods and the like. The youth of the riders was striking, with most being evidently of primary school age. This is indeed the rule in Mongolian racing, with riders as young as six competing in high stakes competitions.
One race was all we had time for and then it was back to the Land cruiser and another hour's drive before lunch. Just before our roadside diner we stopped off to circumambulate an ovoo. These are shamanic/animist shrines, ubiquitous throughout the Mongolian countryside, a pile of rocks, stones and items of personal significance with a central pole bedecked with ribbons. I was reminded of the cairns on top of mountains in the UK and indeed the practice of ovoo construction is very similar, with each visitor contributing their part by adding a little something in what our guide referred to as "the raising of the ovoo". To be sure, the Mongolian variant of this practice is more consciously ritualised than the British hiker's and Elma demonstrated the correct form, circling clockwise thrice and at each turn casting a stone on the pile. This was my first experience of the religious devotion which I was to discover ran deep in our guide, as she finished her raising with a whispered prayer, her hands pressed together. A striking feature in my experience never found on a cairn were the horses skulls, an honour afforded to the most meritorious beasts.
Our mutton based repas had barely reached our stomachs before we were on the road again. We were on a schedule and time was of the essence. Our destination was what our guide referred to as the "mini-Gobi" but which is more properly called Elsen Tasarhai. This is part of the Great Mongolian Sand Dune a narrow band which stretches over 80km. Our aim was to reach an encampment nearby and install ourselves in a ger in time to take a camel ride to the dunes before sunset. On arrival we were introduced to our hosts and served tea and biscuits in a ger by the family matriarch. Whilst we drank our hosts chatted with Elma and Baagii and we were left to look around us at how a Mongolian nomad family arrange their affairs. Compared to our own 8 meter yurt all the gers we saw in use by nomads were small, between 5 and 6 metres in diameter. There is no formal separation of sleeping areas, with beds serving as sofas for general use as well as work areas for the preparation of food. The wood burning stove is in the middle, with the flue coming directly out of the crown, an arrangement which we were later to fins makes it impossible to effectively seal the roof against rain. I was particularly taken with the solar electrical system. The control, distribution and battery storage were all housed in the casing of a small chest freezer. This struck me as ideal as we have often missed having a freezer, having made do for years with the small compartment of a caravan fridge.
After tea we were left to look around and amuse ourselves as we wished until the camels were ready. The area before the dunes is of course very sandy but far from arid, being covered in a large variety of small shrubs, grasses and flowers and cut through by streams. It is a popular spot and besides gers day campers pitch their modern weekend tents. Eventually the camels were prepared and we mounted. Being bactrian camels the saddle is mounted between the two humps and it is for this reason and their measured gait that camels are reputed to be more comfortable than horses. I am not entirely convinced of this, but probably it is down to my inexperience that I find both beasts equally uncomfortable. Though the camel riding had been one of the feature events of the tour I must admit to having found it a little perfunctory. The leader of our little caravan, a leathery ancient was more concerned that we should have good photographs than peace to enjoy the experience and much time was spent in artistic arrangements of camels and riders. Not for the last time I felt treated rather like another of the nomads' herd animals, a beast who must be tended to in a particular pattern in order to extract profit. It is of course to be expected, given the short periods of time, the turn-around of tourists and the lack of a common language. Still, it did make me appreciate all the more any genuine human connection. This was found after our ride, playing volleyball and basketball with some Mongolian tourist kids as the sun set over the distant dunes.Read more