Entry 11 - back on two feet

Sony and I are back in the capital city, UlanBaatar. It’s been over a month since we parted from our horses, our horse sores all healed except for my left knee that still wakes me in the middle of every night throbbing. Maybe it’s good for my knee that I will be traveling instead of skiing this winter, but my sister, who is a physical therapist, told me pulled ligaments never heal; instead they are just replaced by weaker muscles that will always be more prone to re-injury.

Reflecting back on our horse journey, feelings of wonder and warmth well up in us. The magic that is still alive in the Mongolian countryside was once at the center of all our cultures, worldwide.

Before coming, my main interest in Mongolia was to see how people living without the concept of landownership played out in their psyche at large. When there is no land ownership there is no more “I own this, you cant go here or there, my place is better than yours, you don’t have as much as me, my view is better, this is where I sleep,” and so forth. In America, even walking past a private property along a road in what is clearly public right-of-way is cause for suspicion, concern and anxiety. Walking on private property and up to a house is a crime of trespass so grave that the owner would be justified in carrying out the penalty of death. This paranoia of each other that landownership brings about pervades all aspects of our relationships with each other. A root we see each other in a confrontation, not in a partnership. I never had one nervous feeling when approaching any ger in the countryside, late in the night and many miles from the nearest town. At any hour, without question or knock on the door, even a drunken stranger is welcome into a ger of another to eat and sleep. We don’t even know what an upset or annoyed Mongolian herder looks like as anger between herders must be exceedingly rare.

No landownership rides on the back of an unspoken partnership that has far reaching influence. No land ownership is just one aspect of the partnership societies that were once the world’s norm with only a trace of their prescience left. Only when the father needs to know who his offspring are does the partnership society collapse into a competitive society. The psychedelic rituals once at the heart of the partnership, now replaced with the ritual of the stone drunk, male-dominated beer garden revelries used to keep society in check periodically dissolving interpersonal barriers which the psychedelics target so effectively. Were it not for the continued need for paternal-ship, the 60’s may have succeeded in restoring the partnership and possibly the health of the planet looming ever closer to irreversible self-destruction.

The end of our horse journey included several days ride to the most western town on our tour, Batshireet. Batshireet resembles an American wild-west town of past, being the last main settlement before the foothills turn into significant mountains to the west and north.

Having a month left on our 5-month visa we rode west into the valley beyond thinking that maybe we could find a herder willing to guide us through what we were told to be impassible mountains, full of bandits and wolves. In addition to this lure of danger there is also a hot springs at the base of the largest mountain in the range where Ghengis Khan reportedly spoke to wolves for advice. We camped in a huge valley of the Onon River with the mountains visible at a great distance, rising to meet the skyline in a 360-degree panorama, making for spectacularly colorful sunrises and sets.

Finding a herder guide proved to be impossible, as September is the time of year there is a mad rush to cut, transport and store as much hay as possible for the upcoming winter animal rations.

With a broken GPS, horse sores and wounds and mainly the psychological strain of caring for horses 24/7 we gave up on the idea of ridding through the wilderness back to UlanBataar (UB) and instead to relax, camp with the herders, eat fish and take in the scenery. With the help of Purekhun, the local school computer teacher, we posted fancy for sale signs for three horses and horse gear. Within a few days herders were showing up outside our tent wanting to see the horses. We ended up selling the horses to what looked to be a gentle, kind herder who we were told loved horses and not to a slave driver, which a few seemed to be having a rough demeanor.

After I removed the hobbles from skittish red, the herder tied all three horses together and at my request lead them to our tent where Sony could have one last look at them. I thought for sure she would tear up, but she didn’t, future children beware, her nurturing side must not be all that strong. I felt sad to see them go off, but super happy to be free of them and that they were to as decent a place as a semi-domesticated horse could go. I felt a huge weight was removed.

The next day we found a ride in a Russian jeep a 14-hour ride back to UB. Coincidentally, in route to UB we received a text message from Neal Irons who just happened to be in mid-route also back to UB. Neal’s ride however was a 3-day journey from the western border of Mongolia, as he accomplished his mission ridding alone east to west. After being separated several months and the horse riding finished it was great to see Neal again. He strolled into the bar with a beard as thick as Grizzly Adams, a “g’day” in an even thicker accent and a very happy expression on his face.

We shared tales of each others’ journeys and gathered from Neal’s account that he went through three or more horses, riding them up to140 km per day until the horse was no longer ride-able. He only had ten photos or so, as he didn’t have a battery recharger, he slept on the ground, as he had no tent, he managed without a flashlight and rose to ride before dawn most mornings since being on the horse was better lying on the ground too cold to sleep. With any differences or hard feelings forgotten, we warmly parted and Neal border a train the next morning back to China and then Australia to tend his flock that his wife had been caring for in his absence.

We rested for a week then took a bus back to the countryside to Tsenkher, and hiked to a hot spring near the north Gobi Desert.

We stayed a week at one of the pools, developed in a Japanese-style and set in a beautiful valley. We placed our tent alongside to the pipe carrying the geothermally heated water to the handful of hot spring resorts and tapped a valve to fill our water bottles with the nearly boiling water and put them inside our sleeping bags to help keep our feet warm as the night temperatures were now far below freezing.

(the hot spring source, and frost on the ground)

Our next destination was Shargaljut, a hot spring on the other side of the mountains, which tour guides for westerners also visiting the springs warned us not to try and cross. They said it would be better to take a 3-day journey back to UB and then approach the springs from the south side of the mountains. However, as the bird flies, the springs were only about 80 km so we decide to try and hitch and walk our way there. After a few rides and several days later, we ended up in the foothills of the mountains where we camped next to herders and fished Tuul, big salmon for a few days.


One big truck, by the sound of it passed late in the night, the only vehicle headed into the mountains for the past several days. That morning the herders started taking their ger down, moving onto greener pastures so we figured this was a good sign to move on ahead. We walked 6 km to a bridge where we stopped to look for fish when two big trucks fully loaded with what looked to be sub-standard logs for building, which we later learned were to be sold in the market on the other side of the mountains as fuel for cooking and heating as there are no trees in the Gobi.

Sony riding in the lead truck and I in the other, it was possibly the most dangerous, roughest, slowest, 28-hour ride I ever experienced. The wooden bridges we crossed looked as if they would collapse under their own weight, let alone a fully-loaded truck and where there were no bridges, the river crossings were arduous.

The trucks were constantly getting stuck in the river beds where they had to pull each other out, it became my job to climb on top of the log stack and lower down the tow wire or lift the heavy hitch to disconnect or reconnect the towed trailer.


One crossing took over six hours with both trucks nearly getting stuck, the drive shaft of one of the trucks even broke and to my amazement one of the drivers produced a spare driveshaft from god knows where? Nothing phased the logging crew, three men and one tough woman in high heeled boots, looking like a Nazi gaestapo from Hiter’s elite guard. They all slept in the truck cab on top of each other with no blankets on the mountain summit. I was so cramped I ended up sleeping on bare ground next to the truck in the 15-dgree weather. Each time we broke down was an occasion for celebration. Their first reaction was to light up cigarettes and depending on the nature of the breakdown a bottle of vodka. Even with the broken driveshaft and truck half under river water so cold it would freeze immediately if it weren’t flowing gave cause for a party-like atmosphere. Betweeen bouts of strenuous labor, goat meat and drinks were served around some logs that were pulled of the truck to burn. It’s hard to imagine that these people risk their life and vehicles for such a pathetic load of wood, but as we slowly inched down into the Gobi, it became clear that the need for fuel must be dire with not a tree in sight.

After staying a few days in the front yard of a school teacher’s house we set out to Shargaljut, the next hot spring destination. Just a short 35 km drive northeast of town, but long enough to breakdown from overheating four or five times. We took a ride with three men and a woman, the men already smelling of alcohol. The occasion to drink with every breakdown was interspersed with stops at every ger within striking distance of the road to drink fermented horse milk.

What should have been at most a 2-hour ride quickly transformed into a cross between an insane road rally and pub crawl. The men were getting real cozy with Sony trying to feel her up, while the girl was guiding my hands to all her soft spots.

(fermented horse milk mustache)

The hot springs turned out to be a super letdown. Rather than pools of water outside next to the pretty river, all the heated water was collected in a tank and piped to a decrepit old building from the Russian era within which were rusty showerheads in dank, dark shower stalls.

I couldn’t image how to make the place worse. We took one shower and were anxious to take even the most cramped vehicle full of drunken perverts we could find back to the city.
While back in the city of Bayanhongor we hoped to catch a shared ride deeper into the Gobi, but didn’t have any luck and didn’t want to pay for our own private vehicle so we took a minivan back to UB with the intent of looking for engineering work with our remaining time before our train ride back to China. There is growing pressure here to suburbanize the countryside, at least around UB and build infrastructure for what will soon be the largest gold, copper and coal mines in the world. The GNP will double in the next 2 years making Mongolia the world’s fastest growing economy. This is all bad news for everything we love about the country, as the wealth will only stay in few hands and the land for the first time is being privatized and fenced off, sand and water contaminated with heavy metals is blowing or leaching contaminants, transporting them across the entire country and beyond, cow meat for export is rapidly replacing horse culture, backed by so-called American and European help organizations, funds are being used to encourage herders to abandon their lifestyles and move to towns and cities in order to provide cheap labor to build roads and service the rapidly expanding, dirty and dismal transportation system needed to move resources more effectively to China. In short, if you have any desire to experience life as a nomad, which is the humans natural state with the world’s last nomads at large, you shouldn’t wait another season for possibly I and others will be turning this place into the vapid world at large.

Some other highlights:

(nomad timidly trying my cooking)

(taking down the Ger to move to warmer

Entry 10: In the Footsteps of Gengis Khan

After staying a week or so in Choilbason with Bimba, his sister and mom we arranged a truck to take our horses, Sony and I northwest 200 km to Dadal, described as an incredibly lovely small town of log cabins set in a picturesque valley a few km south of the Siberian border.

(the town of Dadal, comprising mostly of ethnic Buriats, who live in log cabins not Gers)

We helped load the horses onto the back of the pickup truck, not an easy task as the horses fight every push and pull and at times it appears they will destroy the truck, topple it over or hurt themselves. We had hoped the horses would have fatten up during their stay with the herders but they looked skinnier than when we left then as they had to be tied all night for fear of horse theft and thus couldn’t feed.

The first half of the drive to Dadal took only a few hours while the second half of the distance took the rest of the day and late into the night. We drove through several valleys and passes stopping at every ger to ask for directions which were few and far between. We drove on into the night on muddy, bumpy, nearly impassable roads along valley drainages and then winding up and through tree covered hills and passing the only bridge crossing of the Onon River, a major Mongolian River that has its headwaters just below the highest mountain peak in the area where Genghis Khan took refuge as a boy.

It was on this mountain Genghis spent his early years evading an enemy tribe leader that killed his father but by tradition had to spare Genghis’ life until age 11 when his enemy had the right to hunt him down and kill him. After flowing several hundred km just south of Siberia along the Russian border, the Onon River turns north and flows into Russia. The Onon is one of Mongolia’s rivers famed to be home to the Taimen, the largest - over 6 feet in length - Salmonoid species in the world. Look out Taimen, the Salmon Nomads are in town!

Our arrival to Dadal in the pouring rain felt to be an unfriendly welcome. With no one but drunk Mongolian men on motorcycles more interested in taunting than helping to ask for directions to wehre our super thirsty horses could drink. The sun rose the next morning, putting all my doubts aside, revealing a beautiful valley with soft rolling multi-colored hills bathed in sunlight to varying shades of blue, green and gray in the distance across a river tributary of the Onon lying just before us at the base of a gentle grass slope.

Just up hill of us, a cold spring surrounded by a wooden fence and decorated with hundreds of blue silk ribbons marks the place where Genghis Khan drank from as a boy.

Higher in the hills behind us were pine forests distinctly different from the flat dry grasslands we left behind in the East of Mongolia.

We spent the next two weeks exploring the rivers and hills around Dadal with our base camp located at a Ger of a young couple.

The owner of the ger, all thrity of his horses were stolen the year before (probably run into Russia) and now they only have cows. It seems that horse theft in the border areas of Mongolia is almost a multi-national sport. The girl spent part of her time fermenting a huge barrel of vodka, coagulating big vats of cream via a hand spun centrifuge and turning liter full bottles of locally picked red berries into jam, which I suppose they bartered with the towns people for things they needed like a solar rechargeable high powered LED flash light, the first that I’ve seen at a ger) that she proudly wielded.

(bread, baked from wood burning oven)

Sony and I did a one week horse trek loop down the river tributary and up the Onon river and over the hills and back to Dadal.

It was very difficult traversing marshes and steep hills along the river with grasses as high as the horses heads – over 6 feet in areas.

An amazing variety of wildflowers constantly surrounded us and wolves chattered through the night.

I figured a hobbled horse would be no match for a wolf pack so kept them tied close to our camp and stepped out of the tent periodically to build up the fire. On the last eve of the loop, we ran into the first tourist we’ve seen since coming to Mongolia two months ago – a French/Beligian couple with three horses. As they were on the other side of the river, we didn’t communicate much but we spied out all their horse gear with our binoculars.

Once back in Dadal, we met our second foreign tourists, two girls French and Indian, biking across part of Mongolia.

In exchange for taking them fishing, the Indian girl cooked us Indian food, in my opinion, the only thing better than sex. We had a great fishing experience, everyone catching trout while Sony landed a big 2.5 foot fish, just a baby but the famed taimen salmon. For the record, we released the baby taimen, even though I’ve heard that illegally poached fish taste even better.

Since we parted with Neale a month ago our Mongolian experience has been bliss. Not that traveling with Neale was bad, we learned so much about horses from that scruffy Aussie sheep herder and about ger life along the way. Maybe it was Neale’s do or die attitude about his quest to do nothing but an East to West Mongolian trek, in the straightest line possible, border to border that brought us bad energy resulting in complicated, un-relaxed travel or maybe it simply takes time to adjust to a place as unfamiliar as Mongolia. I always feel it takes me several weeks or more staying in one location to begin to feel a new place. In contrast most American barely have time to get off a plan and whisked to their resort destinations for a few days stay before they are back in their office chair. If vacation is defined by work and only a break from work, is that really a vacation?

The bliss that I now feel here doesn’t mean we haven’t had any problems; the red horse I was leading pulled so hard on his lead rope that my GPS dropped to the ground, which he then trampled as I could not get my white riding horse to stop on time. The GPS is my lifeline and I can now only read half of the LCD screen and daily, it is getting slowly worse, we rode back to camp after dark one eve and within a heartbeat of turning on my flashlight, the always skiddish red horse I was riding jumped so hard sideways to the left that I was falling backward before I could react. As I fell, my leg twisted hard before I could step out of the stirrup and the rope from the Brown horse I was leading wrapped around my neck and pulled hard almost strangling me as the Brown horse, now spooked, took off full speed after Red. I can now impress the ladies with a story about how I got my neck scar from the days I used to knife fight. Each night we use a section of rope called a hobble to tie three legs of each horse together so that it can not gallop off although a hobbled horse can still easily move many kilometers if it wants. The hobble also doubles as a whip to get a riding horse moving which I inadvertently dropped on the ground, spooking Red into throwing me off him (again) as he galloped into the grass adjacent the path stirring up a hornets nest, which then attacked the rest of us. Trying to shake the hornets, the White horse tried to gallop off in a straight line but I was able to get off the ground and grab his lead rope in time. I felt like the center pole of an insane merry-go-round as White ran in circle around me, bucking, pulling, and shaking his head violently until I decided to join the horses and run away also. Eventually, we managed to shake the hornets and gather up the horses. The semi-wild red horse, demoted to permanent pack horse, then went bucking wild when the pack slipped too far forward down onto his neck while walking downhill. A seamstress in Dadal fixed the bags that got torn apart in the bucking frenzy and we had her make two new bags to fit over the riding horses asses to lighten the load for Red. I discovered, there is a fine line between making the pack saddle to tight and not tight enough. I pulled so hard on Red’s belly harness, that I think I may have done permanent damage to his skin. It got real swollen, Sony cried, and now he is resting for a few days in a vacant pen we found by the river and he fortunately, looks almost like new again.

The next morning after our fish dinner, the girls left to continue their bike ride to Ulanbaatar while I am happy for having this horse riding experience, I hope someone shoots me before I ever decide to do another horse trip. I don’t think there is a better way to experience Mongolia than to enjoy solidarity with the people and ride horses as they do, but I am sure I can walk faster by the time it takes to pack and care for the horses each day as they barely walk as fast as a human at 3.5 miles per hour. On bikes, the girls cover as much ground as a vehicle each day but I think miss out on the experience of being a salmon nomad. I made sure to carefully check out all their bike gear in case I prefer to travel by bike someday but feel river kayaking may be the best way to explore this country next.

Back to the bliss….After finally leaving Dadal and parting with our host families, we headed up the ONon River and now camped river-side, the river recently swollen by thunderstorms.

The lightening was so close and bright last night it’s flashing as seen through the tent walls hurt our eyes. The view of the immense valley and distant mountains surrounding us is so big that we sat in sunlight today and watched the spirals of tornadoes form off in the distance to the north as thunder clouds built, formed, and floated passed us off to the West. In our river route from Dadal, we were treated with days of solitary riding, no Gers or people in sight,

incredibly pretty mountain passes and the most idyllic camp I can remember, next to a Ger with a small cold stream flowing passed feeding the big Onon river, purple flowers growing everywhere which our host mashed into salsa tasting of onions and big green smooth shapely mountains rising all around us. Sony and I waded out into the Onon and soon our fish bag was full of big trout.

On rainy days, Sony and I stay holed up in the tent and play Dungeons and Dragons.

The rules have changed much since I last played 25 years ago. So we have the new rulebooks in PDF format on the netbook to guide us. Every time a horse rider gallops up to our tent to investigate, I nearly question which world I am in. By the way, if anyone is interested I hope to form or join a Dungeons and Dragons group when I return to Seattle someday. We are now camped in Batshireet, a small frontier town, in the backyard of a cute little log home appearing palatial by Mongolian standards since it is the only home I’ve seen with two stories and a balcony.

It is chilly rainy and grey now after many days of hot clear sunshine. The remainder of our journey to this town set in the foothills of the region’s largest mountains alternated from joyous to difficult as we spent several days going one way and then having to back track as the road we followed terminated at the edge of a deep section of river with a cliff on one side and hills too steep on the other side to pass with horses. The joyous part was camping along the river, catching too many fish to eat and absorbing the beautiful scenery and the Mongolian activities all around us, picking berries, harvesting hay for the approaching winter,

hunting parties riding off into the mountains with their guns and dogs, herders herding (one of them a five year girl on a horse), unattended herds of animals coming for a drink then passing off into the hills.