Getting there
I had lunch, same pelmeni soup as breakfast, with my train buddies before packing my bags to disembark in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. My driver arrived at the train station and off we went to the Ger/Yurt camp in the mountains outside of town. Along the way he told me many things about the history and culture of Mongolia, and particularly Ulan Bator. We drove about an hour and a half through rush hour traffic, stopping to get gas and then taking a fun side trip to a grocery store. We walked around looking at all the cool things, most of which are imported from Russia. We walked through the fresh food section and he showed me camel milk, which I immediately wanted to try. There were lots of meats, and he showed me a package of horse tongue, but it needed to be refrigerated. There was also an entire freezer case of different kinds of dumplings. We then walked through many aisles of imported candies and cookies before arriving at the beer aisle. It was full of the expected lagers and ales on the top few shelves, but the bottom shelves had an entire row of like 2-3 gallon bottles. Not mini kegs or growlers. Like normal shaped bottles only huge. I tried to take some stealth pictures; we’ll see how that worked out. When we got to the car, I eagerly opened my bottle of camel milk, somehow expecting a heavier, fattier version of cow milk (probably because that’s how buffalo milk tastes). Anyway, as I am sure you all guessed, that is not at all what it tastes like. I opened the bottle and it immediately smelled like yogurt. So I took a sip, prepared for a bit of tartness. Oh boy…it was tart…and salty?…and kind of yeasty flavored? Like if you told me it was some sourdough dough you had let rise and then dissolved in water, it would have been believable. So… not a fan. Thankfully it was a small bottle, but my guide assured me it is good for the kidneys. I feel like my kidneys might have other opinions.
What it’s like
The friends I made on the train said they had heard horror stories about the ger camp. People who had gone said that when you see it, your first thought is, “This is where I will die”. Lucy, the lady I had initially met in Beijing, was carrying a sleeping bag strapped to her pack. She was told that it gets to -20 in the ger when the fire goes out at night. (She also planned her own trip rather than going through a tour company, and booked her ger via Air B’n’B, so it could be true for her.)
Now that I have arrived at the ger camp, I see that those will not be my experiences. The gers could be considered ‘glamping’ at best. Inside, the ger is adorable. It is just a circular hut with 3 beds arranged around a woodburning heater, with the door being the 4th side. Usually it sleeps 3 people, but tonight I get the whole place to myself. It’s just tall enough that I can stand inside, but have to duck to get through the door. The interior is well lit, has cute animal-print bedding, and is 90million degrees. Turns out, this woodburning heater puts out a LOT of heat for such a tiny space. The thermostat says it’s 51 C in here. I’ll have to look up what that is in F, but the answer is too many. My guides left me to my own devices for the next 90 minutes, when we will have dinner. Until then, I will do a bit of writing, perhaps take a shower in the communal shower facility, and charge all of my electronics. Aside from dinner, there is nothing at all to do here at night. There are only 2 guests: myself and one of the ladies I met on the train. We are about 1500 feet above sea level with not a cloud in the sky and no light polution, so I can sit outside in the -10 C cold and stare at the stars, or I can sit here and write, or I can nyquil and sleep. No internet, no cell signal. Just peace and quiet after 26 hours of train life, which is mostly also peace and quiet.
Dinner with the Guide
My tour guide seems to be a nice enough guy. We had dinner at the ger tonight and were again served Westernized food, not Mongolian food, so I laid down the law. After that, things were smooth. He promised to find me some horse meat tomorrow, maybe camel, and possibly yak. He said that westerners always have stomach troubles when they eat Mongolian food, so he eases them into it. I was clear that I didn’t need him to make that decision for me and I have already expressed my own interests. So there’s that. The tension cooled a bit and we talked about all sorts of things, not intentionally talking about politics, but he mentioned going ice fishing and hunting and was talking about guns and taxes and I asked him more about their system. In Mongolia, there is a psych exam, then a safety class required before you can buy a gun. Then, every gun you buy has to be registered to you and you pay a tax on that gun every year. No one has hundreds of guns because why would you want to pay taxes on hundreds of guns? I didn’t explain our system, but really enjoyed asking him questions and listening to his stories. He said he has lost his taste for hunting since spending a year abroad in Dublin. He has grown more liberal now, which is kind of funny considering how generally conservative Ireland is. But he said he doesn’t enjoy hunting if he doesn’t need to kill an animal, and now that he is a tour guide who works in the city, he doen’t ever need to. He also completely on his own volunteered the information that he used to hate gay people, but since he lived in Ireland and worked with 10 people comprising 5 gay couples and he was the only “normal one” (<his words, obvs), he learned to be more accepting. He even said “I understand them and know what they want.” I have no idea what that means, but I’m pretty sure it’s abjectly false, but kind of endearing. Also, during the course of our discussion about hunting, he began explaining how expensive bullets were and how expensive meat is at the grocery store and gave me prices for like, halves, wholes, and quarters of animals, not meat by the pound.
The warmest winter
Several times throughout the evening, someone has offered to re-up my fire. It is still at least 110 degrees in my cabin. I have kept the door open most of the night. But I have continually tolde them that I can handle it. The firewood is in my room and as long as there are embers left, I’ve relied on woodburning stoves for heat before. NBD. Now that I have returned from dinner, though, there were only embers left, and I was warned that it gets incredibly cold at night. So I have put a few more logs on the fire to make sure my room doesn’t get below 90 degrees. He said I could take the blankets from the other beds if I needed them to keep warm until the guy comes and builds a new fire at 6 a.m. I’m pretty sure it’ll be fine, but I don’t want those to be my last words, so I accepted the offer to come builde me a fire at 6. in the morning. Well, I’m back in the cabin, next to my toasty fire. It’s 9p.m. and I have had a half of a nyquil pill. Time to nod off.
