Gobi and the shit
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2009
1
9
52
Trip End
Nov 20, 2009
Dalandzadgad,
Omnogovi,
Mongolia
Saturday, February 14, 2009
We covered quite a lot of distance during the six days, although in many places it wasn't possible to drive any faster than 40 km/h, if even that. Driving there was just incredible as there aren't actually any signs or roads - only some tracks leading to different directions. So how does the driver know which track to follow? No idea. We didn't even have any kind of a map with us. Our driver was called Baira, but his English was quite limited so we didn't find out the secret of his orientation skills. I guess he has just been driving there a lot. He also had mechanic skills equal to MacGyver's and that was needed as we had two flat tires (and only one spare tire) in the beginning of the trip. Another problem with car was on our last morning as it was so icy cold that the van refused to start. Baira solved this problem by putting our gas-fuelled cooking device to flame under the motor of the car for about an hour. Simple and effective.
We stayed again each night in a ger of a local family. Apart from the night in the village of Dalandzadgad, the gers just seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. The families usually had 2 or 3 gers and we stayed in one them while Baira stayed with the family in the other. Families also had animals, usually at least dogs and sheep. Sometimes also camels, cows, goats and horses. Each of the families had solar panels next to their gers, so usually one of gers had television and even a dvd-player - it's quite bizarre actually as a ger is anyway some kind of a tent, resembling somehow those of Finnish army's, with iron stove in the middle of it to warm it up. The thing with warming is just that there are hardly any trees in desert and only some areas have coal, so what can you actually burn there? Yeah, that's right, the animals' shit. We had many conversations about it like this:
"This is camel's shit here today, right?"
"No no, it's goat's shit."
"You think so? I saw similar pieces of shit two days ago around the camels near the ger we stayed in.."
"Yes, but camel's shit must be bigger, I think we had it three days ago. And don't you see how many goats they have there on the backyard?"
"No, I think we had horse's shit three days ago."
And so on. We also had serious and long discussions analyzing the heating power and burning time of different animals' excrement. Camel's shit turned out be our favourite. You actually get used to the smell pretty quickly too, and soon you'll notice you're putting some more shit in the stove with your bare hands like the locals do.
Another thing to talk about during and after the Gobi trip is food. We got 1-2 Mongolian meals per day and everybody seems to like it at first. However, at some point you get enough of it. The meals consist of meat and rice or pasta, and the meat is always the same mutton, sometimes disgustingly tough. There may also be some carrot among the rice and meat but definitely no more vegetables. So towards the end of our trip it became regular that we filled our plates with ketchup, chili sauce and soy sauce right after the night's hostess had served us the meals and turned her back. And after the trip we for sure went to the Irish pub close by to pig out some burgers.
So I'm actually already in Beijing, wrote this on the train while I finally had some time. I'll probably try to write some kind of an overview of my Trans-Mongolian ride and something about Beijing in the next few days.
