After the meeting on Friday morning, Chimge told me that Baigali had decided to join Gaala and me for the weekend trip. Baigali understands spoken English pretty well, but is unable to speak it. So generally I can say something to her, and she can translate it into Mongolian, but unless the communication is very simple, she cannot translate the response. We left the CHRD office about 3:30 PM, and it took us about an hour to drive another CHRD staffer the approximately 3/4 of a mile home (traffic in Ulan Baatar is that bad). Between construction and traffic, it took us another hour or so to get to the outskirts of the city before we had the first of three flat tires.
Given the quality of the roads, flat tires are a way of life in Mongolia. So too are small shops, generally open 24 hours in even small municipalities that fix flat tires. Most of the time, they do the job right. Sometimes as we learned when one of the flat tires which we thought had been fixed became flat a second time, they do not.
I had thought the drive was about four hours to Karakorum, in actuality, it is probably closer to five, and, in our case, we did not arrive until about 11:15 PM.
I decided that my priority should be to get out of Ulan Baatar on weekends. Although I at first thought to ask Gaala to drive me to a popular hiking destination less than an hour from the city, he had always seemed particularly anxious to take me to Karakorum. It would not have been my first choice. Even though it was the site of the capital of Mongolia during the 13th century empire, the guidebook indicates that there is little there to see and it is a long drive. Nevertheless, Gaala is the designated driver for CHRD, and is known for taking both CHRD staffers and visiting attorneys on trips out of town. He is someone who is completely trusted by CHRD, and I thought that a trip with Gaala would be an excellent way to experience the country, in a way that I would not be able to do either on my own or with a tourist group.
And in truth, as described below, it was exactly that. Nevertheless, there was a hidden agenda: Gaala has extensive family in the Karakorum area, and it was not lost on me that the trip was an excellent way for Gaala to get his gas paid for a trip to visit relatives. If I had known someone like Gaala who had relatives who lived significantly closer to Ulan Baatar, perhaps I could have had the same experience without the necessity of 12 hours of driving over the weekend.
Upon arrival, we went to the home of Gaala's sister and her husband, who greeted us warmly, fed us both various sweets as well as a meal of noodles and mutton. We also drank shots of vodka; I would have stopped at three at the most, but it was not socially acceptable. Perhaps it was a gender thing; Baigali was not expected to drink more than one or two.
The next morning, Gaala took us to a memorial which was constructed about six years ago to the Mongol Empire. From the memorial, we had a lovely hike along a ridge, which gave us a spectacular view of the Omron valley. Gaala introduced a boy selling souvenirs as one of his younger brothers. After returning to the house, where we were fed a sumptuous breakfast, we headed out and stopped at a ger a few miles out of town, which was the home of another sister, where we were served another cup of milk tea. I also met another man who was described as one of Gaala’s brothers . When I asked him, through Baigali, how many brothers and sisters he had, he only answered "many.” In a neighboring Ger, we were joined by a man who directed us on a series of four-wheel-drive roads and jeep tracks to a ger which had apparently been set up fairly recently, where we met the two nomad families with whom we would spend the next 20 hours or so.
I was told to personally hand the gifts that we had brought to the two women who were identified as the wives. I then spent a fair amount of time joining Gaala, Julya and Choka, drinking glass after glass of vodka. Finally, I was asked if I wanted to ride a horse, which was one of the stated attractions of the trip. Baigali and I rode horses, guided by two of the children, about 11 or 12. I was feeling comfortable enough on the horse that I might have tried, if given the chance, to ride the horse without a guide, but was unable to communicate such a request. The horse riding ended when the boy who was guiding Baigali’s horse told me that horse that I was riding was his horse, and he needed it for work. I then watched him ride off to round up livestock.
During the rest of the afternoon, I spent a fair amount of time playing with the children (about six in all), teaching them how to spike in volleyball. At one point Choka commented that “Mongolian children love you.” Julya and Choka also pressed more vodka upon me, (including their home brewed vodka after we finished off two bottles of store-bought stuff). I also had my first taste of airag (fermented mare's milk, which tastes like particularly strong yogurt, but does not taste alcoholic).
We traveled, by car over the roadless steppe, about a kilometer to the other ger, where I participated or tried to participate, in the milking of the goats. Baigali walked back with the young girl who had basically adopted us (she is featured in the photographs, wearing a green top – she told me her name, but I can’t pronounce it, let alone spell it). At some point, it became him clear that the car, with all of our stuff, needed to be moved back to the original ger, but Gaala was passed out on the driver’s seat.
I walked over to the original ger, explained the situation to Baigali, assured her that I could drive the car back if necessary, but that we probably needed to do something about Gaala. We walked back, and were able, with considerable difficulty, to rouse Gaala. What I did not know was that Gaala had arranged to purchase a sheep. After he had been roused, an adult sheep was picked up and unceremoniously dumped in the trunk of the car for the trip back.
Upon our return, a sheep’s head was cooked: this is considered a delicacy, and our hosts ensured that I had an opportunity to sample the choicest parts of the food: it was delicious.
After removal from the car, the live sheep was never given a chance to move, but was tied on a very short rope. It was then led to a secluded area behind the ger, where it was placed on its back. Since I have been eating a lot of meat since I have been in Mongolia, I felt it was an important part of my education to see how the sheep was to be slaughtered. I had expected that Julya would kill the sheep by slitting its throat: instead, he stabbed it in the chest, and proceeded to remove the heart, and then the other internal organs. During the approximately two minutes that it took before the sheep was undoubtedly dead, it occasionally went into convulsions, and I was obliged to hold its hind legs.
In the evening, the girl in green amused herself by ordering me to “sing a song” and then ordering me to stop. I also helped her with the roundup of the livestock: all of the baby animals, both calves and baby goats, were placed in the corral, while the adults were left outside. This meant that we grabbed the babies, sometimes while they were nursing, and either dragged or carried them to the corral.
I had thought that the sheep's head was dinner: in actuality, we were served an additional dinner at about 9 PM, consisting of boiled mutton and rice.
After dinner, I placed my sleeping bag out on the ground, intending to sleep outside on the open steppe. I was emphatically told not to do this, first by one of our women hosts, and then by Baigali. Since it rained all night, it was probably a good thing that I slept in the ger. Baigali slept in the car, along with the girl.
When I awoke at 5:15, no one else was awake, and I went for a walk and jog for about an hour. When I came back, Julya was butchering the sheep. For about an hour and a half, we hung out, drank some more vodka, and various other individuals wandered in until everyone was awake. We were served milk tea and biscuits and it was, so I thought, time to leave.
Choka spoke a few words of English, and was able to communicate to me that Barack Obama was good. The restrictions of the language being what they are, I did not want to try to engage in a nuanced conversation about Obama: I simply agreed that he was good, and to Choka’s delight , used sign language to make it abundantly clear that I thought that George Bush was bad.
When we tried to leave, we discovered that the battery in Gaala’s car was dead. Although nobody had cables, our hosts were able to figure out some way of transferring the charge from the battery in their pickup truck to get the car started. We then all drove back to the other ger, where, in addition to milk tea, we also had several bowls of airag and were offered more home brewed vodka.
Choka joined us for a drive across the steppe to Khar Balgas, the ruins of the 8th century capital of the Uighur Khaganate. All that is left of the city are the exterior walls, a line of stupas outside, and one high stupa inside, which we climbed. Then we went to the home of Choka’s parents, where we stayed for about an hour and a half while his mother cooked us a meal of noodles and mutton, and, once again, vodka was urged upon us.
Finally, we said our final goodbyes, and went to tour the monastery of Erdene Zuu Khiid, which was the first Buddhist monastery in Mongolia, founded in 1586. The monastery is immediately adjacent to the site of Karakorum, the capital of the Mongolian Empire in the 13th century, which was destroyed in 1388. Many of the remnants of the buildings were apparently used for the construction of the monastery. Most of the monastery was destroyed in 1937, as part of the Stalinist purge of Buddhism, but several buildings survived, and a considerable amount of artwork was preserved. We also walked over to Karakorum.
The long drive home was broken up for a camel ride. When we were almost home, we had another flat tire, this time on a bridge just outside of Ulan Baatar and we had to change the tire in heavy traffic.
For some reason, I did not have a lot of energy after getting home about 7:45 PM, and after a light dinner, was soon asleep.
