On the Road to Tsaagannurr

I'm in the middle of nowhere; somehwere between Khatgal and Tsaagan Nuur. Renchen has been looking at the map a lot more than usual - I'm getting kind of worried. We've been driving across the countryside - there are no tarmac or gravel roads. There are ruts where vehicles have previously travelled. Because of the uneven terrain, we've been averaging about 20km per hour. From my American perspective, this seems extremely slow. However if we went any faster, the Russian jeep may have been flipped over or damaged beyond repair. My brain's synapses have been reduced by about 15%, due to all of the rough roads that are jarring my head.

Last night was my first experience with a local family. We drove until Renchen was tired, and then we proceeded to stop at two different gers before we found someone who was willing to let us stay with them for the evening. Our hosts were a poor family of 6; mother, father, 22 yr old son, 7 yr old son, a 70 yr old grandfather, and some unidentified man. I can only describe what happened as an experience. When we arrived, they invited us in for milk tea and dried cheese curds (which was basically rawhide for humans). We headed outside to prepare dinner; even though it was cold, we had wonderful sunlight that was lighting up the steppes in front of us. After dinner, we retreated back into the warmth of the ger; and talked with the family. They were interested on why I was visiting Mongolia. While I don't want to generalize, I think that most Mongolians were confused about my trip. Why would I want to leave a country that they were longing to live in? This didn't apply to the older generations, but the younger generation definitely held these thoughts.

Around 11pm, it was time to sleep. There were two beds in the ger - one belonged to the senile grandfather and the mother slept on the other bed. She graciously offered me her bed, which I felt that I couldn't refuse. By sleeping in the bed, that meant that I didn't have to sleep on the ground, shoulder to shoulder with the other 4 members of the family. Grandpa had been talking to himself incessantly, and of course this didn't change when it was time to sleep. While I laid in two sleeping bags (they were doubled up so that I wouldn't freeze), I was secretly begging him to shut up. I laid on the bed for about an hour - trying to meditate myself to sleep. At some point during the night, I fell asleep. Only to be awakened by the dog barking outside. When I woke up in the morning, I was wishing that I had slept on the soiled ground. Outside of the ger, the world looked like a different planet.

In the morning, the mother gave me a giant hunk of bread with butter. The butter had a consistency of hair gel - it was very sticky and quite thick. I was happy to be sitting in the middle of the Mongolian countryside with the family. I now began to understand the difficult lives that these people live. Their ger is about 15 ft. in diameter; the family sleeps next to one another each night. There is no privacy, no sense of your own space. I was thinking about how the eldest son was the same age as my brother. He was constantly tending to the flock of livestock, and even if he wanted to live on his own terms, it wasn't an option. Maybe he wouldn't want his own space - I'm starting to think that time spent alone is regarded as lonely and sorrowful.

I'm reading a book titled 'Maximum City' - it's a book about Bombay (Mumbia), India. The author spends time with homeless families in slums, and they have similar feelings. The people that he interviews don't leave the slums even when they have money, because in the slums there is a sense of community. In the apartments around the city, people live lives that are separated from one another. The slum dwellers regard this as the worst of all possible situations. The whole concept is very foreign to me, but I'm excited again that there are these differences around the world.