Nomad stay - day 1

Today we left the Gobi behind completely and entered the Mongolian Steppes. Hills of green carpet greeted as as we journeyed deeper into the land. Horses, sheep and cow grazed on the hillsides and valleys.

We finally hit an asphalt road as we made our lunch stop, a restaurant set into former shipping containers which was quite cool. The nomad family we’d be staying with is close by and we went off road again to find them.

Nomads typically move their flock where the grass grows so it took some time to locate them. They were still in the winter home but will eventually move to their summer home. The humble abode consists of a ger, two basic stables and a wooden storage shed, so we set up tents nearby for our group. We ended up getting our own tents since we were a small group.

In the afternoon, our drivers slayed a sheep for our Mongolian barbecue tomorrow. There’s a specific way it’s done so that the process is clean and what we hoped was quick and relatively painless. They hold each pair of legs together than make a cut, through the abdomen I believe (I had to look away for this part), then they reach in arm deep to locate a spot on the artery along the spine that would kill the sheep. Not a single drop of blood spilled (instead the blood collects the bottom of the now upside down body.

Next they skin the sheep before cutting open it’s chest to remove the internal organs. Our host lady would clean these parts out and boil them later to make a ‘sheep salad’. As there weren’t many of us, we were concerned about food wastage but were told the leftover meat and parts would be shared with nearby families.

Later in the afternoon, we gathered in the family’s ger for the sheep salad. Essentially it is the organs that have been boiled and put on a platter. A hunting of knife of sorts was on the tray so we could cut and sample what we wanted. It all the group was super keen but my favourite was the tongue and the tail. The tail was a little like crispy pork belly. I also had some of the liver (they they say it’s the lung, I’m pretty sure it tasted like liver) as well as the kidney. Perhaps it’s because of what we grew up on, it was not as foreign and strange to me.Læs mere