Living like a nomad

17th August 2008


Camping out under the stars, dinner with the locals, horse riding from place to place - this would be the promotional version of the last week Skye and I spent in Tereji National Park with four host families. The reality - no shower and proper toilet for eight days, in their place we had the open forest and the river. Looking back it was fun, but at the time, no shower for that long was pretty tough. It was pretty much like a desert, baking hot during the day and bitterly cold at night. I didn't have a proper sleeping bag and improvised by using my backpack as a leg/feet warmer. Host family two gave us blankets were were fantastic, the sleeping mats we hired from gertoger under the impression that they were inflatable, were not.

The horse riding was really fun, the horses here are really small and hardy, not more than 13 hh (if you're a horsey person). The saddles are not so fun, they are made of wood and the bridles are made of what looks like scrap pieces of leather tied together to resemble some kind of head wear of horses. The way to ride in them is to stand up in your stripps while at the same time screaming 'choooooo' in a deep throat-ed way to make the horse go faster.

Getting of the two hour bus from UB we travelled by ox cart to the first host family. Here we were helped by two very persistent younglings who were adamant they knew better than us how to put our rented tent up. We herded the goats around and up the mountain with one of the younglings. The Mongolians like music and he was one of a few people who asked us to sing. I did a rendition of 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes', Skye did 'The Hello Song' then we did a duet/round thing of 'Row Row Row You're Boat.' When asked to sing with a 18 year old, I did Britney Spears, Celine Dion and the Backstreet Boys.

I thought the food was good through the week, Skye I would say would not agree. The Steppes of Mongolia are not the best place for a vegetarian. My favourite food from all the host families were the hardened part of the top of milk so that it was like a thick cream or butter with bread, a salty noodle soup with vegetables and dried meat and yak yogurt which tasted like the yogurt pots in China you get from the side of the road. They make the noodles similar to the way I've seen udon being made, just flour and water rolled out, folded and cut into strips.

We got to swim in the river, take time to read our books, sit in the sun. Mongolians don't really use clocks, if they set a time to be somewhere and they are late it's bad luck, so we slowed right down while living with the nomads. We spend the longest time with host family 2, a 26 year old lady, her husband and their 5 year old daughter. The host Mum was eight and half months pregnant and was amazingly active - no swollen ankles and she barely went to the toilet. We helped this family move their ger of which the roof is made up of about 100 poles. Each one of these she cleaned in a bath tub as well as wash all the inside decorations by hand. Through gestures and using the orientation book we figured out that only married couples have their own ger and in the country the usual age to get married is about 20. The ger is set up like a clock, the door is at 6 o'clock and you enter and walk clockwise round. 12 o'clock is the place where the most respected person/people sit. We were often offered to sit in this stop by the families. I went to one family where the TV was in the 12 o'clock place, this ger was all young people, it's nice to know where their respect lies. It's a very open society, there were always people coming and going, other family members, friends. Host Mum and Dad from family two were both one of 10 siblings, that is a lot of babies.

The company we organised this tour though, www.gertoger.org, organised a mini Naddam. Host Dad from family 2 won the wrestling competition and his horse won the horse race. The riders are boys between 6-12 years old, any bigger and they are too heavy.
Our third host family was an older couple where the Dad was a professional wrestler and had the appearance of a bear or an ox. We did archery with him and the host Mum taught us how to play an ankle bone game and how to tie a traditional knot of the Mongolian dress. We then got to dress up in some Mongolian clothing and had our pictures taken. All the families were very interested in our digital cameras and what pictures we had taken.

Our last host family wasn't that exciting, it took us three hours by ox car to get to them from Host family 3, about 13 kilometers. Host Mum 3 stayed for a cup of the salty milk tea then had to do that all over again to get back. The host Dad from family 4 was more interested in the Olympics than entertaining us, so we had a lazy few days reading, watching the judo and boxing as well as washing our clothes in the river. I was served dumplings filled with a nasty looking/smelling meat, Skye's dinner was much tastier, the same dumplings but filled with mashed potato instead of a suspicious looking meat.

We've met a lot of Europeans on our Mongolian travels all with word perfect English, we spent a few days with a Danish couple on our tour and a pair of Portuguese guys on the bus back to UB. All in all my week living as a nomad was a good, eye-opening experience, one that I wouldn't forget in a hurry.